Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down by Jon Land, Robert Fitzpatrick Page B
Authors: Jon Land, Robert Fitzpatrick
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Police and Boston Police Department were hearing things from their own informants—rumors of feds who were enabling felons—and complaints were flowing into the Boston FBI office as a harbinger of the firestorm ignited by MSP head Colonel O’Donovan after the Lancaster Garage incident.
The FBI attempted to walk a fine line by ensuring that these clandestine Top Echelon relationships resulted in more good than harm. Summing up that ultimately impossible challenge, John Connolly would later tell me in reference to Bulger and Flemmi, “Sure, they’re bad guys, but they’re our bad guys.”
PART TWO
BLOWBACK
“You got me.”
12
MOUNT LORETTO, 1958
When I left the Mount in 1958 it was to enter still another institution—the U.S. Army. Without telling anyone, I enlisted as a young private and did my infantry training at Fort Dix in New Jersey. I had no money and needed a job, and for most of us kids in the Mount, the military was the way to go. I felt at home with a cot, three squares, and some pocket money to boot. My training took me to a succession of military instruction schools in Texas and New Mexico, the most exciting being a nuclear warhead school in Los Alamos—until, that is, I learned that we might have been guinea pigs for nuclear testing the whole time! Looking back, that became a strangely appropriate metaphor for what I’d later face in Boston, since the office was truly toxic.
Once my training was complete, I was shipped to Germany, just outside Mainz and Wiesbaden. The culture shock I experienced was disorienting at first. Here I was, a kid fresh from the Mount, finding myself in postwar Germany, where the ruins and spoils of war were still evident. Yet it was also mysterious and exciting, and I was being paid to do this. I was fortunate enough to take over the company supply unit, and within a year I had my sergeant stripes and more opportunity. Being overseas was a great adventure for me, and later, I’d reflect that I grew up in this new culture, which expanded my horizons beyond my wildest dreams.
It was wonderful. I went to schools at Wiesbaden and Mainz and Heidelberg, grabbing college credits for future enrollment. The barracks I stayed in was an old SS casern with a fair amount of history. As a basic infantry soldier with a “supply military occupational specialty,” I traveled throughout Europe increasing and enhancing my desire to know more. My boss, a Ranger captain, signed me up for OCS (Officer Candidates School) and even got me a nod to West Point, after which my Seventh Army commanding general put me in for a slot. I was achieving beyond my wildest expectations.
At the same time, Father Kenny, who’d long taken an interest in me at Mount Loretto, suggested a scholarship to St. Peter’s College in New Jersey in lieu of West Point. Father Kenny saw the priesthood in my future, believing my compassion made me ideal for the job. There had not been many successs stories like that from the Mount, and to the good Father I looked like a legitimate candidate.
“You know people, Fitz,” he told me once.
“What do you mean, Father?”
He just smiled in response, but I gathered that he recognized that I was an effective listener and that I had a way of understanding and interpreting information beyond the words people used when talking to me. Perhaps Father Kenny was sensing in me the traits that would later make me one of the FBI’s new profilers. I had used those skills in my one and only meeting with Whitey Bulger, learning from his body language more than he had thought he’d told me. I had a visceral sense that matched his. Bulger’s persona was pure selfish stuff to enhance his own perceived legend. But Father Kenny was also talking about my compassion, a compassion born of feeling for the weak, needy, and indisposed; I had been all of these things myself as a boy and had learned to recognize them in those I was drawn to help. A coping mechanism, I guess, but it
The FBI attempted to walk a fine line by ensuring that these clandestine Top Echelon relationships resulted in more good than harm. Summing up that ultimately impossible challenge, John Connolly would later tell me in reference to Bulger and Flemmi, “Sure, they’re bad guys, but they’re our bad guys.”
PART TWO
BLOWBACK
“You got me.”
12
MOUNT LORETTO, 1958
When I left the Mount in 1958 it was to enter still another institution—the U.S. Army. Without telling anyone, I enlisted as a young private and did my infantry training at Fort Dix in New Jersey. I had no money and needed a job, and for most of us kids in the Mount, the military was the way to go. I felt at home with a cot, three squares, and some pocket money to boot. My training took me to a succession of military instruction schools in Texas and New Mexico, the most exciting being a nuclear warhead school in Los Alamos—until, that is, I learned that we might have been guinea pigs for nuclear testing the whole time! Looking back, that became a strangely appropriate metaphor for what I’d later face in Boston, since the office was truly toxic.
Once my training was complete, I was shipped to Germany, just outside Mainz and Wiesbaden. The culture shock I experienced was disorienting at first. Here I was, a kid fresh from the Mount, finding myself in postwar Germany, where the ruins and spoils of war were still evident. Yet it was also mysterious and exciting, and I was being paid to do this. I was fortunate enough to take over the company supply unit, and within a year I had my sergeant stripes and more opportunity. Being overseas was a great adventure for me, and later, I’d reflect that I grew up in this new culture, which expanded my horizons beyond my wildest dreams.
It was wonderful. I went to schools at Wiesbaden and Mainz and Heidelberg, grabbing college credits for future enrollment. The barracks I stayed in was an old SS casern with a fair amount of history. As a basic infantry soldier with a “supply military occupational specialty,” I traveled throughout Europe increasing and enhancing my desire to know more. My boss, a Ranger captain, signed me up for OCS (Officer Candidates School) and even got me a nod to West Point, after which my Seventh Army commanding general put me in for a slot. I was achieving beyond my wildest expectations.
At the same time, Father Kenny, who’d long taken an interest in me at Mount Loretto, suggested a scholarship to St. Peter’s College in New Jersey in lieu of West Point. Father Kenny saw the priesthood in my future, believing my compassion made me ideal for the job. There had not been many successs stories like that from the Mount, and to the good Father I looked like a legitimate candidate.
“You know people, Fitz,” he told me once.
“What do you mean, Father?”
He just smiled in response, but I gathered that he recognized that I was an effective listener and that I had a way of understanding and interpreting information beyond the words people used when talking to me. Perhaps Father Kenny was sensing in me the traits that would later make me one of the FBI’s new profilers. I had used those skills in my one and only meeting with Whitey Bulger, learning from his body language more than he had thought he’d told me. I had a visceral sense that matched his. Bulger’s persona was pure selfish stuff to enhance his own perceived legend. But Father Kenny was also talking about my compassion, a compassion born of feeling for the weak, needy, and indisposed; I had been all of these things myself as a boy and had learned to recognize them in those I was drawn to help. A coping mechanism, I guess, but it
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