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Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob

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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.

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?

~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.~

An associate to be referred to as 'Pat' has been a target ever since Bulger fled. In the past few months, Pat has been approached by an alleged relative of alleged Bulger murder victim Brian Halloran. This relative seemed bent on establishing a rigorous schedule for Pat and had barely concealed hostility for Pat. Pat has suspicions that Pat might be a child of one of the informants, agents, or murder victims in this case and that it may have been leaked out deliberately or not. Pat has had all sorts of problems since Bulger left and was warned by a Cellucci/Bush supporter to leave Massachusetts when Bulger fled " or lose everything".

Governor Cellucci hosted his transition team meeting at the office of Sullivan and Cogliano, a recruitment firm with past ties to deceased Rocco Solimeno's business partner.

Many bad things happened to Pat after Bulger fled. Pat became the target of personal attacks, rampant unemployment, financial destruction and eventual homelessness, all following the threat of the Cellucci/Bush supporter's predictions. Is Pat paying the price for something Pat doesn't even know about their past?

One might wonder what programs the government is currently operating that we will be shocked to learn of in the future.

I know a person, 'M', who believes they are linked to the Bulger case but this information was kept from them by state and state authorized personnel in Massachusetts. M was abandoned into state care and bounced around among abusive and neglectful foster homes until landing at the New England Home for Wanderers in Boston. While in state care M was introduced to a foster family.M was well treated and loved this family but they were limited in the help they would give.

In the early 90s, M wrote an autobiography detailing experiences in state child care,good and bad, with names and places changed to protect those involved while portraying the essence of the experience.

While in state child care, a medical issue that might relate to leukemia symptoms was noticed but the foster family and state-approved authorities refused more involved investigative procedures, while taking photos.

In 1995, Bulger fled and M's medical records began disappearing when requested for.M was maneuvered into what may have been a secure worksite staffed with government employees posing as normal employees of a Fortune 500 company in Massachusetts.This small group of employees took every opportunity to ridicule, harass, poke fun at M. At different times, each employee claimed to represent a different Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate as they harassed M. One person claimed to support Harshbarger, another Malone, a third Cellucci, and so on.While M was working employees in this building were calling M's home on a daily basis, where a neighbor claiming to work construction but in fact drove a telephone truck was situated across the hall from an individual who " does accounting for the government". At one time workmen were seen laying cable from one unit to the other across the hall, as if a monitoring station for M.

As pressure was induced at work and from anonymous harassing callers and even what M considered close friends, his doctor, a man in his 30s, suddenly resigned the field of medicine as M suspected he was trying to have M involuntarily committed.Another doctor involved had association with the family of a Justice Dept employee.

A few years after Bulger fled, M was approached in the guise of a coworker who newly befriended M. This coworker in the ensuing 2 years claimed to be watching M at the gym, know M's video rentals, know M's financial transactions, and to be obsessed with such things as how much M left for tips at restaurants and what M's home is like. A few years after severing the relationship, M learned that the video store M frequented was owned by a Governor Paul Cellucci supporter and that one of the workers there had ties to law enforcement. Whenever M's coworker introduced M to a new restaurant and M went there by themself, the coworker responded angrily.Whenever M raised the Bulger case to the coworker, this coworker got very angry and hostile. As a matter of fact, most of the people in M's life that M expressed concerns about the Bulger case turned hostile against M for no express reason, as if these people knew of some connection between M and the Bulger case but M was never told of this connection and being blamed for it.

Jonathan Harr wrote a book about a legal case involving early victims of a leukemia epidemic in Woburn, Mass. called " A Civil Action". George Cashman, head of Teamsters Local 25 and an alleged supporter of John Connolly of the FBI, lived in Woburn while Connolly lived in Stoneham, the next town. Spec Agent Morris of the FBI lived in Lexington, again adjacent to Woburn. Frank Salemme hails from Burlington, again next to Woburn. Sonny John Cincotti, listed in this book, is linked to Massachusetts Insurance Agency in Somerville and to an escort service but is backed by Gerry Angiulo. Whitey is said to have had a Woburn girlfriend. Somerville is 3 towns from Woburn and the Mafia induction ceremony taped by Sonny Mercurio occurred in Medford, 2 towns over from Woburn. George Cashman has been supported by Ambassador Paul Cellucci and is currently under probe for movie tampering. H Paul Rico hails from Belmont, Mass. a few towns from Woburn. Limone hails from the Medford-Somerville area.

In the early 1960s, just prior to the outbreak of the Mclean-Mclaughlin wars, Woburn was the fulcrum for a clash between forces: 1) Space industry, and 2) Defense industry.After JFK died, Flemmi emerges and 7-8 yrs later Bulger. And in the 1980s NSA establishes Boston as a recruiting center.

This book is a more comprehensive look at a number of informants for the FBI nationwide, including Jack Presser and others.

One thing this book nor other the other,Black Mass, brings up, is that a man named Rossi attached to the DA's office was scandalized for making manipulating phone calls and for having personal documentation suggesting Bulger and Flemmi be investigated.

Would Billy Breen have any information relevant to these guys?

Why has the media not investigated former army buddies of Flemmi at home and in Korea nor air force colleagues of Bulger?

I know of an individual i'll call 'PS111'. PS111 was raised in state child care in Massachusetts.One boy raised with PS111 for a while later was setup and possibly became an informant for the Massachusetts state police. This 'friend' later sold a car after this case erupted to PS111 rigged to explode and disappeared in a mode very similar to one used by H Paul Rico in this case.

Over the years since Bulger has disappeared there is indication of police harassment of PS111 in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It has been speculated PS111 was raised in state child care, is the son of Bulger or perhaps one of Bulger's victims and this was kept by state officials. In 1995 it may have been leaked out about PS111's background and PS111 made to suffer for a background of which they knew not. Mass. Atty General Tom Reilly in addition to Scott Harshbarger and Paul Cellucci were all said to support Bulger.

Recently the Boston papers announced that John Connelly's case will probably not be heard in 2002-- 7 years after Whitey fled.

There is one individual with a link to Rocco Solimeno's business partner who has had nothing but a continuous succession of bad experiences, many suspicious, in the employment sector in Massachusetts and New Hampshire since this case broke.The former business partner of Solimeno was allied to Sullivan and Cogliano (personnel placement)the same offices where former governor Cellucci held his transition team meeting.When the Bulger case imploded, this individual,introduced to Solimeno's partner as a young child ignorant of Solimeno, this person became the focal point of blame in the increasing finger pointing in the Bulger case. It was as if the person had some hidden past kept from that person but known to insiders and when this unravelled that individual, now an adult, became a target for vengeance.This person knew nothing about Solimeno and had been introduced into this circle by state authorities.

In 1995, I knew someone who had worked for a defense contractor and had been threatened by an individual who claimed to work for the federal government. When Bulger disappeared, this person suddenly got fired and longtime friends and acquaintances with roots back to the Boston and Somerville areas as far back as the 1950s and who also alleged dual ties by family affiliation to the FBI and Mafia began acting hostile and anxious towards this person, 'Jim' inexplicably. Threats were made against 'Jim's' girlfriend and when Jim went to the local and state police in Massachusetts, they were uninterested in helping. When Jim went to the FBI they acted hostile and the Justice Department accepted Jim's communications and then told him they don't talk to citizens and go get a lawyer after Jim's car had allegedly been rigged to blow up ( or was it a ruse such as the one Morris authorized in the Bulger case?). Attorney general Scott Harshbarger's office told Jim in plain terms that the AG's office is not his private attorney even though Jim was getting harassing phone calls of a serious nature from untraceable sources and threats were made that Jim could be maimed,set up or killed by organized crime.

Jim was warned by an associate of Rocco Solimeno that he would be blackballed from finding work anywhere in the area and that serious consequences remained if Jim stayed in the area.

Jim began suspecting his communication with the Justice Department was being leaked and when he requested copies of any files the government had on him, the FBI claimed they were too busy to fulfill the request and the Justice Department claimed ignorance. While working for the defense contractor, Jim was informed by a government rep that the Justice Department would have investigated him quite thoroughly.

As the Bulger case has unravelled since 1995, Jim's fortunes have dwindled as the case has progressed in a highly suspicious manner. Since 1995, Jim has been approached by individuals claiming strong family ties to the FBI and various agencies of the Justice Department.Nearly all contacts have involved intimidation or the solicitation of personal information subsequently used to hurt Jim in his affairs.

Jim was a ward of the courts and has a background largely withheld from him even as he has been ridiculed,neglected or harassed despite not knowing this background. Jim was also targeted heavily by the IRS-Brookhaven, NY when this case broke.

Dan Burton and the media might want to investigate what if any link Jim has to the Bulger case and why he has been a target and by whom.