Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob [Mass Market Paperback]

Ralph Ranalli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2001

It was the brainchild of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover: the Top Echelon Informant Program. Under its protective umbrella, dangerous felons were courted and coddled and given free reign to commit the worst crimes imaginable in exchange for damning insider information about the bosses of organized crime. Dangerous conmen and sociopaths, like South Boston's James "Whitey" Bulger, became Bureau-supported criminals kingpins, indulging in robbery, extortion, even murder under the eyes of the FBI. Only now, forty years after the program was first conceived, is the true story of blood and madness being told and an account made of the bodies left in its wake.

A prize-winning Boston journalist, Ralph Ranalli now exposes a shocking history of corruption, terror, and violence born of an unholy collusion between America's top law enforcement agency and some of the worst criminal psychopaths ever to victimize an unwary nation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A riveting contribution to all investigative reporters' true mission: digging up what the public has a right to know." (Boston Globe )

About the Author

Ralph Ranalli is a veteran legal journalist for the Boston Globe and has written extensively about the FBI's Top Echelon Informant Program for both the Globe and the Boston Herald. His coverage of the Boston FBI scandal spans more than 400 newspaper and magazine articles and earned a 1998 news writing award from the Associated Press. Deadly Alliance is his first book.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch; Reprint edition (July 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380811936
• ISBN-13: 978-0380811939
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,097,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars FBI's deal with Devils, January 24, 2002

By 

Alain Fournier "wubby" (Hamilton, Pembroke Bermuda) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob (Mass Market Paperback)

The first time I encountered the events described in this book was I believe on a 60 Minutes segment. The segment documented the relationship between Willaim Bulger a well known and successful Boston area politician and his gangster brother James "Whitey" Bulger. I remember finding the story interesting but not particularly intriguing. "Deadly Alliance" on the other hand I found to be endlessly fascinating.

This book deals with an informant program within the FBI called Top Echelon. The point of these informants was to penetrate and compromise organise crime, specifically the Mafia. These informants were criminal themselves who were members of the crimal groups being targeted or were associates that dealt with them in the course of their criminal activities. The focus of this book is on the FBI Boston bureau and two of its Top Echelon informants, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephan "The Rifleman" Flemi, and on how the FBI turned a blind eye to their lethal activities and actively encourage and helped their accession in Boston's criminal world. The FBI agents also actively sabotaged other agencies investigations on their top two Boston informants in order to protect them and enhance the bureau's and indvidual agents prestige when they latter arrested many of the the same figures being investigated. With the exception of the informants of course.

Ralph Ranalli does a masterful job of going over the FBI's history and evolving philosophy that explains the creation of the Top Echelon program and how it was given leeway to act as it did. As mentioned above the focus is on the FBI Boston office and the handling of the Top Echelon(TE) informants James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephan "The Rifleman" Flemi but Ranalli also examines the FBI's relation with other notorious TE informants. Featuring crooked agents and very brutal TE informants the Boston TE program is the one that suffered the most abuses and is the most interesting.

Ranalli's prose is clear and precise. He does an excellent job in explaining the various events including the consequences and why they occurred. He delineates the cast of characters clearly and precisely. It could have easily been muddled since there is an enormous amount of people involved in the events described in this book. An enormous amount of research has went into this book making it a solid and thoughtful read.

Like I previously mention it's a fascinating and sordid story. Told in concise and entertaining way. If you enjoy reading about organised crime you will surely enjoy this terrific narrative. I found out that there is a book called Black Mass that covers the same ground. I have yet to read it so I can't compare the two but I will since this book has fuel my interest in these events.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading!, May 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob (Mass Market Paperback)

In this case we see how a covert operation can be carried out and its participants dispensed with when the job is done. The government is shredding Flemmi's family apart, turning relatives against one another. It seems plausible a number of players now prevalent in the Bulger case are in fact long term plants held in abeyance until the time is right, such as with Martorano and Weeks.

An acquaintance who has been totally destroyed since Bulger fled in 1995 has been approached by individuals claiming family ties to the upper tiers of local and national FBI managementwhile having been misled by the Justice Management Division of the Department of Justice. These approaches usually involve intimidation or extortion with the deliverers claiming FBI affiliation in the Merrimack Valley region of northern Massachusetts which includes a regional FBI office outside of the Boston office.

Has the Defense Investigative Service and FBI teamed up to squeeze a child of Bulger or a close friend of Bulger's to keep Bulger away?

Are Whitey Bulger and Flemmi's names being smeared to bringclosure to their roles in a covert operation?

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some questions, January 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob (Mass Market Paperback)

~This case raises many many issues. One is whether informants should be used completely confidentially. In a criminal case you have the right not to incriminate yourself and you are apprised of this right by the police. With informants, however, you can be incriminating yourself, even jokingly, and never know it because the informant does not have to inform you that your dialogue will be forwarded to their handlers. What is to stop an informant from making stuff up about a target, all the while~~ the target has no idea nor means to refute the assertions of the informant?

Does the FBI send in informants who themselves set up innocents to appear as the informants responsible for a bust? I know one man, "Bill", who worked at a company in which a former employee was busted by the FBI for a computer theft ring in Chelmsford,Mass and was befriended by another man who claimed to be "new". After Bill left, this 'friend' kept in touch and after a year of friendship divulged that they~~ were not new to the company following the FBI bust. After the bust,it appeared as if Bill was being set up to appear as the informant by this 'friend', who may have been the true informant for the FBI. This whole thing might be an example of an innocent being set up by the FBI to protect its informants.~