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?
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I picked up the 2015 paperback movie edition of Black Mass at a local used bookstore. Needless to say after seeing the movie, I read the book and it was very interesting and intriguing. Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill answers one question: how were notorious mobsters like James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi able to lead a reign of terror in South Boston and evade prosecution from law enforcement agencies for nearly two decades? The secret: they were informants for the Boston FBI. The Special Agent who was their handler was John Connolly, who was a childhood friend of the gangster. It chronicles their initial relationship in their youth, and their reunion in 1975. As native sons of South Boston, they had a mutual adversary in the Italian Mafia in North Boston. Against ethics and FBI regulations, Connolly got a little too close to his sources, and he and another FBI agent John Morris (his supervisor) were corrupted and turned out; the G-men then became just Gs (as in gangsters)! In exchange for information on rival South Boston gangs and the Patriarca crime family (who at that time split up into rival factions, and the Winter Hill gang fought the Angiulo faction), the two agents tipped off the mobsters about wire taps and raids from local police and other law enforcement agencies, and of course the identities of informants who were later murdered by the Winter Hill gang. Also, it goes into depth about Whitey's younger brother Billy Bulger, who was another powerful man in Boston, and the milieu was not in crime but politics. His relationship with Whitey was very close and complex, and many say that he was complicit in his brother's countless wrongdoings.Of course the tale ends with many indictments and convictions of the Winter Hill gang members (including then-retired Special Agent Connolly, who was practically a gangster himself) and Whitey Bulger's 16-year flight from prosecution and later capture in 2011. He was convicted in 2013.I definitely recommend this book to be a cautionary tale about how law enforcement agencies should not have relationships with criminal informants and how not to abuse their power in fighting crime.
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Luke Dennison
An amazing story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 22, 2017fitzy
Well written and a different viewpoint
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 18, 2018
Joe
Fantastic story( fact is surely stranger than Fiction)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 10, 2017
