Smart cops?
Flemmi alleges more FBI
$200,000 to Connolly, cash to 5 others, he says
By Shelley Murphy and Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff | May 19, 2005
Notorious gangster Stephen ''The Rifleman" Flemmi said in two recent depositions that he and his partner, James ''Whitey" Bulger, paid more than $200,000 to their FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., while working as informants, and gave cash to five other agents.
Questioned under oath in lawsuits against the government over the FBI's handling of the gangsters, Flemmi said they paid $5,000 each to John Newton and John Morris and $2,500 each to Nicholas Gianturco, Michael Buckley, and John Cloherty. Transcripts of the depositions, taken in October and last month, were reviewed by the Globe.
Flemmi, who began cooperating with the government after he pleaded guilty in 2003 to 10 murders and was sentenced to life in prison, also said that James Ring, the retired supervisor of the FBI's organized crime squad in Boston, accepted a $500 pipe from him and Bulger and leaked them information about ongoing investigations in the 1980s, according to the transcripts.
''We kept the goodwill going," Flemmi said in an April 28 deposition when asked why they made the alleged payoffs.
While Morris has admitted taking $7,000 from Bulger and Flemmi and tipping them off to investigations and Connolly was convicted of racketeering in 2002, the other agents, who are now retired, vehemently denied Flemmi's accusations. Most are working now as investigators for law firms or in corporate security jobs.
The exposure of the FBI's corrupt relationship with Flemmi and Bulger, officially acknowledged in 1997, has already triggered a national scandal, led to secret mob graves, and triggered lawsuits and sweeping indictments.
Flemmi's depositions in the civil suits, which were brought against the government by families of victims killed by Bulger's gang, contain new allegations about ties between FBI agents and gangsters who led a criminal organization every bit as violent and powerful as the Mafia.
He implicates three FBI agents -- Cloherty, Buckley, and Gianturco -- who have never been accused of taking bribes before, and his depositions reveal for the first time his allegation that he and Bulger paid Connolly more than $200,000. In general, Flemmi's latest allegations described in new detail the relationship he says he and Bulger had with Connolly.
The government is now relying on Flemmi, 70, as a key witness in a Florida murder case against Connolly and a federal perjury case against former New England Mafia boss Francis ''Cadillac Frank" Salemme.
Ring, who denied leaking Bulger and Flemmi information or receiving any gifts, said that the activities of Connolly and Morris were ''sickening and disgusting" and led to ''a pall of suspicion" that has allowed Flemmi and others to mix fact with fiction and falsely accuse honest agents.
''As an admitted perjurer, Steve Flemmi, from the comfort of his jail cell, can say whatever he wants about whomever he wishes, knowing he will place a dark cloud over that person's head and create personal misery for that person, the person's family, and friends," said Ring, who retired in 1990 after 25 years with the FBI.
Gianturco, who acknowledged during prior court proceedings that swapping Christmas presents with Bulger and Flemmi was a mistake in judgment, called Flemmi's allegation that he took money from the gangsters ''absolutely, positively false."
Cloherty, who spent 30 years in the FBI, said, ''I vehemently deny ever taking money from Flemmi or any other person in connection with my official duties."
Buckley, also a 30-year veteran of the bureau, said he had no idea what Flemmi was talking about or ''why he raised my name" and denied taking any money.
Newton, who retired from the FBI last year, couldn't be reached for comment, but in the past he has denied taking money from Bulger or Flemmi.
It's not the first time that Flemmi has alleged FBI misconduct. After he and Bulger were indicted on federal racketeering charges in January 1995, he asserted that the pair had been promised immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing information to the FBI about their rivals in the Mafia. But Flemmi later admitted that he lied about some of what he said in hearings before a federal judge on the FBI's relationship with the gangsters.
Connolly was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted in May 2002 on charges that he protected Bulger and Flemmi from prosecution and alerted Bulger in advance of his 1995 indictment so he could evade capture. Bulger, who later was charged with 19 murders, remains a fugitive.
During Connolly's trial, a former Bulger associate, Kevin Weeks, testified that cash payoffs were made at Christmas time in the 1980s to Morris, Connolly, and Newton, as well as to some 20 Boston police officers.
In his recent depositions, Flemmi said that back in the 1970s, when he and Bulger belonged to the Somerville-based Winter Hill Gang, they paid 25 to 30 Boston police officers for a variety of favors, including tipping them off about imminent raids and telephone taps. The only officers he named were detectives Joseph Cunningham and John Nee, who have since died.
Sergeant Thomas Sexton, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department, said he couldn't comment on the alleged payoffs. ''What he is talking about is an era that has long since passed," he said.
Much of Flemmi's testimony during the depositions focused on murders that he admitted he and Bulger committed while they were working as informants.
Flemmi said that the gangsters paid Connolly more than $200,000 in cash during the 15 years he served as their handler, including a $10,000 severance bonus when Connolly retired from the FBI in 1990. While Connolly was still in the bureau, he and Bulger took trips together to Mexico and Provincetown, Flemmi said.
He also said that Connolly warned him and Bulger about the identity of informants or potential witnesses against them, prompting them to kill Richard Castucci, a Revere nightclub owner, in 1976; Edward ''Brian" Halloran, a gang associate, and Michael Donahue, an innocent bystander, in 1982; John Callahan, a Boston financier with ties to Bulger's gang, in Florida in 1982; and John McIntyre, a Quincy man involved in a plot by Bulger and his associates to ship guns to the Irish Republican Army, in 1984.
During his April 28 deposition, Flemmi identified Patrick Nee of South Boston, a former Bulger associate, as the unidentified triggerman who helped Bulger kill Halloran and Donahue in a car on South Boston's waterfront.
''It's not true," Nee said during a telephone interview this week. Flemmi is ''not man enough to take his misfortune on the chin like we've all had to do," Nee said. ''That punk just isn't willing to do his time like a man."
Connolly was acquitted three years ago by a federal jury of leaking information that prompted Bulger and Flemmi to kill Castucci, Halloran, and Callahan. But earlier this month, based on Flemmi's cooperation, Connolly was charged in Florida with first-degree murder in the slaying of Callahan, whose body was found in the trunk of a car at Miami International Airport.
E. Peter Mullane of Boston, one of three lawyers representing Connolly, said that Flemmi ''is a guy who's in jail for the rest of his life and can say whatever he wants without fear that anything is going to happen to him that can make his current predicament any worse than it is."
''There's no credibility remaining to this man whatsoever," Mullane said.
The US attorney's office and the FBI declined to comment on Flemmi's allegations.
During the April 28 deposition, Flemmi also said that Howie Winter, the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, gave payoffs to unnamed Somerville politicians in the 1960s and 1970s and made a $5,000 donation to John F. Kerry, when he was ''running for office in Suffolk County" in the 1960s.
David Wade, spokesman for the junior senator from Massachusetts, said, ''Not surprisingly, this convicted felon's facts are wrong on all three counts. John Kerry never ran for office in Suffolk County; there was no contribution; and he did not run for office in the 1960s, when he was serving his country in combat in Vietnam." Wade pointed out that Kerry helped prosecute Winter in an extortion case.
Winter, in a telephone interview this week, also disputed Flemmi's contentions, denying that he ever paid off politicians. ''I really don't remember giving [Kerry] anything," Winter said.
Flemmi also said during last month's deposition that he had learned that the Globe was receiving a break on its electricity bill from Boston Edison, where Connolly was working as head of security after he left the FBI in 1990.
''One of the engineers over there did something with the electricity so the Globe wasn't paying the full amount of money," Flemmi said.
Alfred S. Larkin Jr., a senior vice president for the Globe, said: ''While we haven't looked at specific bills dating back 10 to 15 years, we do know that we have always paid our electric bills . . . We don't believe that Mr. Flemmi's comments are accurate."
Michael Durand -- a spokesman for NStar, Boston Edison's successor company -- said the firm could find no record of the Globe having received free electricity.
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