Rating: 
Summary: Believe it or not!
Review: I don't know what to believe in this case. I have had correspondence with the Justice Dept in which they kept much of it,redacted some of it, and just kept collecting it and never doing anything about it. Later i found out the hard way that some of my pleas for help with the Justice Dept had been leaked to some of the people harassing me. This is perhaps similar to the experience of McIntyre and others in the Bulger case.After contacting the Justice Dept, i suddenly became unemployable and had episodes of harassment here and there. One day i went to the car dealership to have my car serviced. Before I got there, an older man wearing his US marshalls cap was at the service desk and made a point of approaching me with some light banter. I had had much positive experience with this dealer. After he left, the dealer told me my car would cost 3x higher to fix than it later did at another garage when i refused. In this case some individuals approached the FBI and it was leaked out,later getting them killed. People at the Justice Dept and FBI have top secret security clearances and they are supposed to be trustworthy. Just before he fled, it was leaked to the paper that Bulger was an informant-- was this designed to make him a target and to avoid the controversy that has now erupted? And with all the heat coming down on Connolly and his family, does this go to show what all the extensive background info that goes into a high level clearance and govt work is compiled for-- future retaliation?
Rating:
Summary: His point of view
Review: I don't know if Bulger and Flemmi really did all that is alleged but I think it is only fair to hear Bulger's side of the story as well as Flemmi's and Connolly's..if you or I were in their shoes, wouldn't we demand a fair hearing? The public has a love-hate relationship with the FBI and Justice Dept and law enforcement in general. On the one hand we feel relatively safe knowing these employees watch out for those who might harm us and on the other we fear they can become like those we are afraid of to begin with.
Rating:
Summary: Marked men
Review: I think it is quite possible that Bulger and Flemmi were selected very young and groomed, perhaps without their knowledge, for the roles they would later have as informants. It may be that because they were so successful, replacements for them have been tracked as youngsters and maneuvered into circumstances to replace them. Whitey might not have been able to succeed in normal industry if the govt was all over him. Perhaps the govt made it such for him that he could not get meaningful work and had to resort to crime to survive. Perhaps Whitey even has a child somewhere who has been used against him so if Whitey did not comply with his handlers his child might be neglected,abused or worse. This coercion might have involved agencies other than the FBI or in conjunction with them.
Rating: 
Summary: Story needed to be told
Review: There are many many scary things going on right now. 60 Minutes recently had a segment discussing the FISA court, a secret court where the Justice Dept can obtain 24 hour long term surveillance warrants against targets without that target being able to see the probable cause or evidence against them and so has no defense. This permits the govt to search through your trash,enter your home when you are away,bug every room in your home and tap your phone, acquiring your deepest secrets and that of your family and friends. The Secret Service is beginning a childhood profiling program to 'identify' problem kids according to some model only they know as well as building voice and picture profiles on everyone. A National genetic database is being built so that even your family genes will not be safe. Carnivore and other as yet unannounced software programs allow the govt to screen email and internet activities and in general scan the internet environment looking for targets. Technologies are being introduced that will someday force you and i to have ourselves and/or our children implanted with electronic tracking chips ostensibly for noble puproses but which may have far more nefarious motives. And companies such as EMC and others are buildng vast storage capability that will one day allow massive amounts of information to be stored about anyone. Our privacy dwindles until one day nothing in our lives will be sacred. One of the many issues in this book is the amount of control the govt has over its employees, but also how much the govt will frame its own employees to save institutional face. Recently the CIA went after some of its own for having a secret chat room and fired and disciplined a number of them. Chances are these chatrooms were relatively harmless but they went back 15 years! The problem here is that any lawyers and judges brought in to defend the employees must be cleared by the CIA, not enough time to mount a defense on behalf of the employees. One thing of serious concern is whether there is an integral relationship between organized crime and organizations such as NSA or other such supersecret,elite organizations.
Rating:
Summary: Hidden agendas
Review: One thing thse general public does not seem to be aware of and i have learned from past contact with numerous agencies is that many government employees are hedging on lucrative careers in the private sector after leaving the agency they work with. This is as true of the FBI as it is with EPA,OSHA, FDA and on and on. So when someone goes to a government agency with a complaint the losses that individual has suffered are counterbalanced by concerns of rocking the boat with a future employer. Many many government employees leave their positions for work within major companies and there is an informal exchange and network between existing and previous government employees. Like with the Jai Alai executive in this case, H Paul Rico left the FBI and went to work for Newport Jai Alai. Connolly left and took an executive position with Boston Edison. This sort of thing is commonplace and makes one reconsider what one's upward mobility in the corporate world really is. Another way of looking at this case is : does the government itself view whistleblowers and citizens who come forward with complaints as enemies of the state? Is the govt essentially a reactive entity and those who come forward prompting it to action considered acting contrary to the interests of freedom and democracy by urging the govt to exert tighter control?
Rating:
Summary: Of ends and means
Review: No one should be shocked by this book. There is a certain gritty reality in this story which many of us know intuitively but feel powerless to address. Can crime and morality be controlled fully by any one body? Prohibition did not work and it seems the real answer lies in a spiritual,ethical and moral evolution that contradicts the social darwinism we see rising each day around the world. Prostitution is a global issue masked by innocuous business names,SIC codes and discreet financial arrangements that serve needs that may originate from dysfunctional relationship formation. Drugs are seen as pain avoidance mechanisms no less legitimate than caffeine or tobacco or nutritional supplements but are no cure and perhaps the real issue that needs addressing is how much people will resort to this temporary fix to escape a perceived unhappy life. Why are so many people seeking escape from their environment? Can we honestly deal with that? Extortion is a simple extension of social darwinism and survival of the fittest. Murder for hire is said to originate with the concept of retribution and the reduction of human life to whatever dollar value such markets bear.Some may see it as the concept of 'eye for an eye' carried to its most extreme conclusion. So perhaps knowing Prohibition didnt work,the govt has been left having to manage such things to an acceptable level of risk.It might be akin to a company stating it has zero tolerance for product defects but knowing that such a goal is not practically attainable over the long haul and there will always be some statistically unacceptable output.
Rating:
Summary: Some things to ponder
Review: If you have ever seen an application to work for the FBI, it is voluminous and very detailed and an enormous amount of info is obtained about the applicant. If Connolly was as shady as is alleged, it is odd nothing came out of the top secret clearance process. If other agencies with perhaps even more clout than the Justice Dept or FBI are involved, it might be possible that Connolly and Morris and Rico are telling the truth when they denied giving authorization.Perhaps Flemmi and Bulger were authorized by a third govt party
Rating:
Summary: Unanswered questions
Review: If you follow this case, there is a pattern.. Steve Flemmi's brother was arrested and his assets frozen. Whitey Bulger's sister's claim to Whitey's lottery earnings has been withheld. John Connolly's sister-in-law's club was recently raided for gambling. Whitey's assets have progressively been taken. Maximum pressure seems to be applied here. The tactics seem so heavy-handed that one might wonder how much control this small core group really had for nearly 3 decades. The allegations made are indeed very serious, but as is all too common, one is presumed guilty before proven innocent.All the allegations may or may not be true but this remains to be proven in court. The media has permitted many allegations except the possibility that many of them may not be true. As the murder victims have found out, the govt is not always forthcoming with information where it might be exposed in a sensitive light. With the capacity of the Justice Dept to go after such behemoths as Microsoft, how difficult would it have been to go after Bulger and Flemmi and Connolly?
Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Two Cities
Review: Somerville and Charlestown, center of the Mclean- Mclaughlin Wars. In the 1960s these two areas were in funding conflicts between those who wanted the space program(Somerville) and those who wanted the Boston Navy Yard (Charlestown).Question: did the Mclean-Mclaughlin wars result over money and how it would be spent in the Boston and metro Boston areas? With the Bulger case, you have Kevin Weeks showing investigators he knows where bodies are then attributing them to Bulger and Flemmi, but there is only his word that Bulger and Flemmi did it. You have Bulger and Flemmi who hail from Boston but take over Somerville turf. Then wreak havoc on both sides. Around the time of the Mclean-Mclaughlin wars, local newspapers estimated at least 24+ separate organized crime families in operation. I am no scholar,but some research of the local history and social phenomena in play suggests that 'mob wars' are triggered by major economic events in which one or more of the organized crime factions feel that have not received their fair share.If this is true, then the civil war between the space program advocates and the Navy yard advocates may have provided fodder for the Mclean-Mclaughlin wars. If the violence was at severe as has been alleged, perhaps Flemmi and Bulger, former military personnel were assigned the task of restoring order to a situation that exceeded the capacity of local and state law enforcement. How do you stop two factions hell bent on killing each other?
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful analysis of the FBI - Bulger connection
Review: This book provides an excellent summation of the relationship that developed between ambitious FBI agents and the ever manipulative Bulger. It shows how the FBI in it's obsession with taking down the LCN, at first rationalized Bulgers criminal behavior and later became a accomplise to it by informing Bulger of investigations by other agencies and telling him who was informing on him. At times early in the book the authors jump ahead in their chronological telling of this tale, to show the outlandish behavior of the FBI agents and their inappropriate closeness with him and Flemmi, this caused some confusion as to what events happened when especially when the authors returned to the specific time period they were discussing. However this doesn't take away from the over all picture they were painting and in the end they make an excellent case.
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