Fitzpatrick, a former agent who spent two decades with the FBI, tells the stomach-churning story from inside the bureau’s “integrity-challenged’’ Boston office. Fitzpatrick’s is a tale of organizational dysfunction and corruption that extends beyond a single rogue FBI agent - the convicted John Connolly, Bulger’s “handler’’ inside the Boston office - into the top echelons of the federal law enforcement agency.
Fitzpatrick says that the FBI’s desire to eliminate the Italian mob clouded the judgment of many. While Connolly and others inside the bureau inflated the importance of the information Bulger passed on, Fitzpatrick, who actually arrested Mafia kingpin Gennaro Angiulo in a North End restaurant, repeatedly tried to argue that Bulger, who was clearly a public danger in his own right, had limited value as an FBI “asset.’’ Fitzpatrick spent much of his time in the Boston office trying in vain to terminate the agency’s relationship with Bulger, his efforts blocked by higher-ups who viewed him as a troublemaker.
In exchange for becoming an informant, Bulger received a dream deal, Fitzpatrick says. First, his handlers promised to protect him, leaving him to continue his criminal enterprise without competition from the Italian mob. They let him know about pending investigations of his activities by other state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the Massachusetts State Police and the US Drug Enforcement Agency. And, they tipped him off about associates who were cooperating with law enforcement. Armed with this information, Bulger is alleged to have tortured, dismembered, and “disappeared’’ these “rats’’ all over Greater Boston.
