Rating: 
Summary: Very Disturbing
Review: This book --which I am in the process of reading-- takes on a classic problem involving police informants. Sometimes, the "snitch" gains the upper hand in his or her relationship with the law enforcement agency involved. This is precisely what happened in the Bulger case. Except it wasn't just a situation with one policeman crossing the line but a group of them. And the misconduct went beyond the ordinary to the point where the tail was quite literally wagging the dog.So far, my impression of "Black Mass" is very favorable. It appears meticulously researched and is written in an easy to read style. My one complaint is that the biographical details on Bulger are a little sketchy in places. Specifically, the authors only briefly mention what Bulger did before he got out of prison. I would have found it useful to know more about what he was doing while "in the can" and before. Yet I'd rather have less biographical details from that period than too many (which is a mistake some authors make --overwhelming their readers with a crushing amount of trivia).
Rating: 
Summary: It can't be true
Review: This book rips the door off its hinges on the back-room deals struck by the FBI's John Connolly and Whitey Bulger. The great lengths that Connolly went to cover Whitey's track will make your stomach turn. The writers capture that sense, back it up with hard evidence, and invite the reader into that dark place where the line between good and evil merge. O'Neill and Lehr have beaten everyone to the punch on a story that has never been told and will shock the senses. Black Mass is destined for greatness and is a book that was made for the big screen.
Rating:
Summary: Master reporters reveal FBI's dirty deal with Irish mob
Review: At first it seems like pure fiction: One of Boston's most notorious mobsters, who also happens to be the brother of one of Massachusetts' most powerful politicians, spends more than a decade as a secret informant for the FBI. And, using his informant status as a shield, he grows his criminal empire and commits just about every crime on the books, including murder. As incredible as it sounds, it's all true and it's all here, and it's better than fiction. This is a powerfully written narrative by two prize-winning investigative reporters who covered the story and revealed some of its most dramatic elements. By combining their powerful reporting skills with rich writing flair, Lehr and O'Neill bring readers into the heart of darkness. They show how a relationship that began among children in the housing projects of South Boston evolved into a corrupt deal among dangerous adults that ultimately humiliated the nation's top law-enforcement agency and extended the reign of some of the very mobsters the FBI was supposed to eradicate. The book moves seamlessly from the streets and storerooms of Boston, to the corridors of political power, to the ornate federal courthouse where the deal comes crashing down.
Rating:
Summary: Can i have more please?
Review: This is a study in how informants are made and maintained... Here is an example of how one man, probably linked to this case without his knowledge, was approached.. The man worked for a government contractor and shortly after weird things began happening. He suddenly lost a good civilian job,began getting routine IRS audits, had phone and email problems, and was approached by a number of women who befriended the man, rejected overtures for dates, then reported back the man was gay--falsely. Friends speculated NSA,the CIA or FBI was involved because all of these have a role in this Bulger case. Then the man became unemployable and had evidence of continuous bank record monitoring. When new 'friends' appeared and the man began noting checks on money being used to help them, those bank records suddenly became tampered with and the records unavailable, as if referring to a classified employee.
Rating:
Summary: Appendix B
Review: In the 1970s, Whitey signed on to the Top Echelon program. In the late 1970s a boy who was being overseen by former government officials,"Patsy" was assigned a female social worker by the name of Debbie Richards, a name mentioned in this book. Patsy was bounced around in state child care while William Bulger was in the Senate. In 1982 Patsy was befriended by "Tim",a man claiming to be a former "mental health counselor" undergoing a career change while at technical school. Just prior to meeting "Tim", another man appeared in Woburn,Mass ,where Patsy lived, going by the same name at a different address. "Patsy II" began creating problems for Patsy I, notably going AWOL in the army and much more while sending authorities after Patsy I.In 1992 Patsy was introduced by mutual friend to "John Doe" and a new friendship was formed. In 1995 Whitey fled after a local newspaper article in the Boston area did a story on Patsy' search for his unknown father and family roots.About the same time, "Tim" and "John Doe" began acting strange...
"Tim" began acting inexplicably hostile while "John Doe" began acting hostile and accusatory. Later,John Doe claimed to be taking notes and possibly tape recording staged conversations, in which Patsy was steered into making statements which could be taken out of context as if building a case for later use. Tim began doing the same.Tim hailed from the area where an FBI office existed in Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts. This whole situation appeared as if a boy tied to one of the principals in the Bulger case was systematically assigned monitors to keep tabs on him during the period Bulger and Flemmi operated and when Bulger fled and the situation unravelled, the boy,now a man,became a target of revulsion and blackballing. The boy might have had ties to Bulger's victims,adversaries, government agents, etc.
Even the Dept. of Justice, which Patsy corresponded with concerning the harassment, claimed no knowledge of the correspondence, citing its classified records section.
Rating:
Summary: Can you tell me more?
Review: In the 1960s, a boy ('X') was shuffled around in multiple states, threatened with his possible murder by a man alleged to be the driver for one of the gangsters listed in this case.In the 1970s the boy was befriended by a caseworker from Jamaica Plain attached to a subcontractor for Massachusetts who arranged a social security number for the boy while bouncing the child around foster homes who repeatedly threatened and intimidated the boy over a period of years in the late 1970s. Whitey signed up in the mid-1970s.
In the 1980s, 'X'now a teen, lived in Middlesex county while another person going by the same name and same town popped up and began having his mail diverted to this new man's address. Over the next 10 years, this man appeared to follow the teen as he became a man, calling his workplaces and leaving his name, moving to the same towns, and even attending the same church wherever this boy went. Once 'X' was nearly arrested for being AWOL, as this man was in the army and had used his address.
In the 1990s 'X' had a local newspaper article detailing his search for his unknown father.Not long after the editors and reporting staff changed and claimed no knowledge of their predecessors. After that, the man lost his job, began getting getting threatening calls and to be followed by men in suitsas well as plainclothes. on at least one occasion one of the plainclothes men was referred to as "Mr. Ring". An older man moved into the apartment complex beside 'X' and across from a unit where a woman claiming to do " acccounting for the government" lived.This man had Tennessee license plates,carried a revolver and claimed to work construction. Weeks later the man was seen driving a phone company truck and moved out immediately afterwards.But not before being seen laying cables from his apartment to the one across the hall.Barry Mawn, formerly of a Tennessee FBI office,was newly assigned Boston SAC. 'X',attending Northeastern University,suddenly began having problems with some instructors who appeared to have an unknown hostility to 'X'.Northeastern is where Agent Morris and R.Robert Popeo had affiliation. In addition to having many.many problems with his phones,'X' began courting malice from a group of 10(10 is the number of alleged secret witnesses against Whitey)who used threats and intimidation and coercion to keep the man constantly in fear and blamed him for "what is going on.." in the Bulger case. Since all of this,the man has been destroyed completely financially and careerwise and questions have been raised if FBI personnel have been monitoring the man and interfering with employment and communications as well as assuring financial destruction(like a state trooper was by Bulger).The man went to the Justice Department to seek help and was blown off by the Justice Management division while taps and traces by local police were ineffective against the hostile calls.
Additionally, the man repeatedly got daily blank phone messages from a phone linked to MBNA offices in Florida, where Paul Rico lived and which corporation Louis Freeh later became a senior Vice President of.
Since ,Trooper Foley, the champion in this case, has retired, the Government Reform hearings are closed, and there seems to be no one who can hold the FBI accountable.
Rating:
Summary: Can i have more please?
Review: Written by two veteran Boston reporters, "Black Mass" is a story of crime and corruption that turns into a gripping tale of good intentions gone awry. Taking place on the mean streets of South Boston, a mere twenty miles or so from where I've lived my whole life, this book tells of a violent intersection of cultures: the tribal culture of Irish America, the often-closed culture of the Federal Bureau of investigation, and the violent culture of organized crime. And unfortunately, it's all true. At bottom, "Black Mass" presents a haze of divided allegiances and moral ambiguity, that may well shake your faith in our government-appointed protectors. Looming large over the whole story is the imposing figure of James J. Bulger Jr., or "Whitey Buljah" as he is more commonly known around these parts. Long before the Bloods and Crips were household names, Bulger emerged from a culture where street gangs were omnipresent and career options for adults were mostly restricted to the Armed services, politics, factory and police work, or crime. Unfortunately, Whitey Bulger never quite outgrew the gang culture of his youth, and he proved exceedingly skilled at the crime profession. As intelligent as he was soulless, Bulger graduated from street enforcer to bank robber (with a stint in Alactraz along the way) to organized crime kingpin with his hand in all things illegal as the head of the vicious Winter Hill Gang. Along for the ride was the aptly nicknamed Stevie "The Rifleman" Flemmi, a barbaric killer whose Mafia connections made him a perfect stoolie in the Boston FBI's war against the Mafia. It was in 1975 against the backdrop of the FBI's battle with La Cosa Nostra that FBI agent John Connolly, who emerged from the same projects as Bulger, crafted a plan to bring Whitey and Flemmi into the Bureau's fold as informants. It sounded like a sweet deal for all those concerned: Bulger and Flemmi got to take out the Winter Hill Gang's competition, and the FBI got a well-placed ally in its effort to bring down Boston's ruling Angiulo family. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. The FBI did manage to bring down the Angiulos, due largely to its now-legendary wiretapping operation at Gennaro Angiulo's headquarters, but Bulger and Flemmi remained connected to the FBI long after they had outlived their usefulness. In fact, as this book makes clear, the two gangsters greatly enlarged their stature in Boston's underworld during the 1980's, and they did it with the full knowledge and even collaboration of the FBI. As O'Neill and Lehr explain, the shared South Boston origins of Bulger and Connolly, which seemed like such an asset back in 1975 when Connolly was recruiting Whitey, ultimately became a liability. Coming from a tight-knit, tribal culture like Southie, Connolly couldn't exactly be counted on to maintain his objectivity in dealing with Bulger, whom he even came to refer to as a "good bad guy." An even deeper problem, though, was John Connolly himself: a smooth-talking lady's man who liked the high life a bit too much, Connolly eventually became virtually indistinguishable from his prized informants. Hanging out with Bulger and Flemmi and accepting their gifts, Connolly didn't just look the other way while Bulger, Flemmi & Co. enlarged their empire and the bodies piled up; he was an active assistant in their operation. Although they were frequently pursued by the Massachusetts State Police, local detectives, and even the DEA, the two gangsters were virtually untouchable. Perhaps even worse, O'Neill and Lehr make it clear that the FBI's mishandling of its two prized informants went beyond John Connolly's corruption to encompass a massive institutional failure. With Connolly corrupted and a series of supervisors compromised, the Bureau's guidelines for oversight of informants became essentially null and void. Falsified reports that exaggerated Bulger and Flemmi's usefulness while understating their criminal activities became the norm, and even those in other law enforcement agencies who suspected something amiss had their efforts blocked. One painful lesson to be drawn from this book is that the law is only as strong as those who enforce it. When those charged with stopping crime drift to the other side, where do we turn then?
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: This is a fantastic book. I knew nothing of the true story, so I found every twist and turn very entertaining. It is well written and doesn't get too bogged down in gritty detail. I read about 2-3 books a month and this ranks near the top of ones I've read in 2003. The story is very interesting, but the strength is in it's characters. Whitey, Flemmi, Connolly, etc. all have their moments. I found myself many times thinking to myself, I cannot believe this. But it's true, scary in fact. It has all the elements of a great movie, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been adapted already. It has Scorsese all over it. The authors give you a good taste of life in South Boston and of course expose a criminal decade or two that was aided by the FBI. This isn't conspiracy theory stuff, btw. Agents in the FBI protected their star informants, giving them tips, covering up information, that allowed them to stay on the street and supposedly bust others. Highly recommended.
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