Where the Bodies Were Buried by T. J. English Page A

organized crime prosecutor.
    â€œNow,” asked Carney, “in the course of doing this, did you approach Jeremiah O’Sullivan for assistance?”
    At the mention of O’Sullivan’s name, Hafer stood up: “Objection.”
    â€œGrounds, Counsel?” asked Judge Casper.
    â€œBeyond the scope. Relevance.”
    The judge thought about speaking further on the matter out loud, but instead said, “I’ll see counsel at sidebar.”
    The lawyers huddled off to the side with the judge, away from the jury so they could not be heard.
    The sidebar process is a staple of American jurisprudence, an opportunity for both sides to discuss a point with the judge that, by its very nature, might become prejudicial if it were to be discussed in open court. Sidebarscan be tedious for a jury and public observers; they interrupt the flow of the proceedings and give the impression that something important is being withheld from the public, which, in this case, was true.
    â€œWhere are you going with this?” Judge Casper asked Carney, with the court stenographer nearby recording every word.
    The defense lawyer explained how he would question Lieutenant Long about O’Sullivan, chief of the federal New England Organized Crime Strike Force. It was Carney’s understanding that, in his request for approval from O’Sullivan, Long told him specifically that he did not want the FBI to know about the bug, telling O’Sullivan that he did not trust them. “And O’Sullivan said, well, the FBI would have to be involved.” So Long and his team decided to go around O’Sullivan and instead seek as their cosigner a prosecutor from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. They did get approval, and the bug was secretly planted in the garage. Almost immediately, the bug was compromised. Somehow, the gangsters knew about the bug almost before it was planted.
    Said Carney to the judge, “I will ask Lieutenant Long if he conveyed knowledge of the bug to many people or rather kept it in a very tight circle. And I expect he’ll say he kept the knowledge of the bug to a very select, handpicked group of people that he trusted. I’ll ask him if, to his knowledge, John Connolly had any knowledge of the bug. I expect he’ll say no. Did he tell John Morris [Connolly’s supervisor] any information about the bug? I expect he’ll say no. And then I’ll ask him, so the only person in federal law enforcement who would have known about the bug was, to his knowledge, Jeremiah O’Sullivan.”
    â€œAnd how is this relevant?” asked the judge.
    â€œBecause it suggests that O’Sullivan may have been the person who led to the compromise of the bug.”
    The prosecutor jumped in: “Anything that O’Sullivan said to Long is hearsay. This entire line is well beyond the scope of direct [examination], and it’s not relevant.”
    The discussion continued, and it was animated. For the defense, it was a major point. In terms of detailing the range of the corrupt conspiracy that had enabled Bulger, it was crucial: Carney was attempting to throw out a broad net, and the biggest fish he hoped to entangle was the late Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan.
    Only in recent years had it emerged that O’Sullivan, with his impeccable and imposing reputation as a fierce crime fighter, had quite possibly been the Man Behind the Curtain in the Bulger saga. When he passed away in 2009 at the age of sixty-six, his role in having protected Bulger and Flemmi was not fully known. Though he had been served with a subpoena to appear at the Wolf hearings back in the late 1990s, he was exempted from testifying when he suffered a stroke that allegedly prohibited him from speaking. In later years, he gave no interviews nor ever attempted to fully explain his motives.
    In his time with the Strike Force and later as U.S. attorney in Boston, O’Sullivan made some enemies. He