The rise and fall of James 'Whitey' Bulger | News Review - 9:38 AM 7/30/2023
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In 1975, James J. “Whitey” Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster and member of the powerful and deadly “Winter Hill” organized crime gang, [1] met with a Boston FBI agent and agreed to provide information about Winter Hill’s primary competitor in crime, the Boston La Cosa Nostra (LCN).
This arrangement proved fruitful for the FBI because Bulger and his Winter Hill gang associate, Stevie Flemmi, already a long-time FBI informant, provided information over several years that assisted the FBI in dismantling, in separate time periods, two leadership tiers of the Boston LCN. Among those convicted was Raymond Patriarca Jr., the boss of the New England LCN based in Providence, Rhode Island. [2]
Bulger also informed his FBI handler that Angelo “Sonny” Mecurio, a made member of the Boston LCN was disgruntled and ripe to become an informant. Mecurio subsequently became an informant and in October 1989 provided the FBI with the historic opportunity to bug an actual LCN new member induction ceremony. [3]
The potential for successful case outcomes must be carefully weighed against the significant risks involved in developing long-term relationships with individuals with violent organized crime past histories. (FBI)Bulger and Flemmi eventually rose to undisputed leadership roles in the Winter Hill gang and in the early 1990s entered into an agreement with Frank Salemme, the new head of the New England LCN, to peacefully split control of organized crime activities in and around Boston. [4] Winter Hill and the LCN controlled virtually all Boston area organized crime until December 1994.
At that time, the Boston U.S. Attorney’s Office, with primary investigative assistance from the Massachusetts State Police and the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, was about to indict Bulger, Flemmi and Salemme for racketeering, involving extortion, gambling, and loan sharking. [5] Bulger was allegedly tipped off to the coming 1995 indictment by the now-retired FBI agent who originally recruited him and immediately took off and became a fugitive. [6]
For the next 16 years, Bulger eluded capture and settled under an alias alongside his longtime girlfriend Catherine Grieg in an apartment in Santa Monica, California. During his time on the run, Bulger was placed on the FBI's Top Ten most wanted fugitive list with a $2M reward offered for his capture.
In the spring of 2011, an FBI agent and a Deputy U.S. Marshal working together on the Bulger Fugitive Task Force decided to focus their efforts on Catherine Grieg. This strategy paid dividends and resulted in an acquaintance of Grieg recognizing her in a news publicity blitz and contacting the FBI. The Task Force deputy marshal recognized the significance of the tip and alerted his FBI supervisor. The tip resulted in Bulger’s capture by FBI agents in Santa Monica shortly thereafter and his return to Boston to face trial. [7]
Bulger was charged in a superseding federal indictment with racketeering involving 19 murders. He was convicted in a Boston federal court in August 2013 of racketeering involving 11 of the 19 murders originally charged and sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 5 years.
Bulger’s federal prison transfer, placement in general population and immediate murder
In April 2018, officials at the FBP Coleman facility in Sumter County, Florida attempted to transfer Bulger to another FBP institution. The transfer request indicated that Bulger needed a higher level of medical care (i.e. Level Four Medical Care).
The Fourth Circuit court opinion in the lawsuit reported that “[b]ecause his high care level (level four) limited the number of institutions where Bulger could be designated, the April request was denied. In October 2018, Coleman officials resubmitted their transfer request, this time indicating that Bulger was a medical care level two. The [FBP] approved Bulger’s transfer to Hazelton, [8] a medical care level two institution. At the time of his transfer, Bulger was 89 years old and utilized a wheelchair for long-distance mobility.”
According to the court, on “[t]he night of his arrival at Hazelton, Bulger was placed in the general population. The following morning at 8:20 a.m. – less than 14 hours after his arrival – [FBP] staff found Bulger unresponsive in his cell.
Bulger’s 2018 murder in federal prison resulted in a lawsuit filed against various Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP) officials and the United States by Bulger’s brother.
According to the (lawsuit) complaint, “within hours of [that] placement,” inmates “believed” to be from New England and loyal to the mafia killed Bulger using a “lock in a sock” bludgeoning weapon.”
The Bulger family lawsuit
William Bulger [9], Administrator of James Bulger’s Estate, sued the United States and several FBP staff members in federal court. He alleged that FBP officials violated his brother’s Eighth Amendment rights by improperly transferring him to Hazelton, placing him in general population and failing to protect him from attack at Hazelton. He also sued the United States pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). 28 U.S.C. §1346 (b), alleging prison officials were negligent in failing to intervene and protect Bulger. The federal district court dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety and Bulger appealed.
The opinion of the Fourth Circuit [10]
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the lawsuit, including the Eighth Amendment constitutional claims and the FTCA negligence claims.
The court observed that Bulger brought the Eighth Amendment claims against individual FBP officials in their personal capacity pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. [11] The court observed further that, “In Bivens, the Supreme Court held that an 'implied' cause of action under the Fourth Amendment entitled plaintiffs to sue federal officials for money damages arising from unreasonable searches and seizures. … [T]he Court found that no ‘explicit congressional declaration’ forbade such a remedy and inferred a cause of action from general principles of federal jurisdiction to ‘use any available remedy to make good the wrong done.’” [12]
The Fourth Circuit noted that in recent years the Supreme Court has consistently rebuffed attempts to expand “implied” Bivens actions. The court explained, “The Supreme Court has continued to caution lower courts to beware of ‘arrogating legislative power.’ [13] Because ‘creating a cause of action is a legislative endeavor,’ the Court warned that ‘the Judiciary’s authority to [create causes of action under the Constitution] is, at best, uncertain.’” [14] “And in Ziglar, [15] the (Supreme) Court explained: ‘[I]t is a significant step under separation-of-powers principles for a court to determine that it has the authority, under the judicial power, to create and enforce a cause of action for damages against federal officials in order to remedy a constitutional violation.’”
Based upon its review of recent Supreme Court commentary on its hesitancy and reluctance to extend Bivens to other alleged constitutional violations, the Fourth Circuit agreed with the lower court not to allow a Bivens-style cause of action to proceed regarding Bulger’s alleged Eighth Amendment improper transfer, placement in general population and failure to protect claims. [16]
The Fourth Circuit likewise affirmed the lower court’s decision to dismiss Bulger’s Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) negligence allegations against the United States. The court noted that the FTCA involves a limited waiver by Congress of the sovereign immunity of the United States. The waiver of sovereign immunity includes permitting individuals wronged by negligent actions of federal government officials to sue the United States for monetary damages. However, the FTCA contains an exception to the congressional waiver of sovereign immunity, known as the “discretionary function” exception.
The court observed that the statutory language of the exception bars any lawsuit “’based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused.’” [17] The court explained that particular actions by federal employees involve discretion when they involve “’an element of judgement or choice.’” [18] The court further explained that “[c]onduct involves an element of judgment or choice unless a ‘federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow.’” [19]
The court determined that “there was no federal statute, regulation, or policy that ‘specifically prescribe[d] a course of action’ with respect to the challenged conduct.” [20] The court concluded by ruling that the FBP official’s decisions regarding Bulger, including assessing his medical condition, transferring him to Hazelton, placing him in general population etc., involved judgment and discretion and fall within the discretionary function exception.
Lessons learned
- Recruiting and operating organized crime gang members and bosses as long-term confidential criminal informants is a dangerous game for law enforcement officers. The potential for successful case outcomes must be carefully weighed against the significant risks involved in developing long-term relationships with individuals with violent organized crime past histories.
- Law enforcement informant handlers and their superiors should be acutely aware that potential long-term organized crime informants have almost certainly murdered others in the past and will do so again on their own or upon orders to do so. Absent special circumstances, recruiting them as informants may be a bridge too far.
- If operating this type of individual is essential and deemed necessary, extreme caution is indicated. Often, the informant will eventually be charged with murder or other serious crimes while working for law enforcement. Accusations from the informant and others that the law enforcement officer was aware of the crime, approved of it before it happened, or ratified it after the fact are sure to follow. Such accusations, even if false, can destroy the reputation of the officer, and seriously damage the reputation of the involved law enforcement agency.
- Based upon recent Supreme Court opinions reflecting hesitancy and reluctance to extend Bivens-style constitutional claims against federal officials beyond the parameters of the Fourth Amendment, lower federal courts are likely to reject Eighth Amendment and other constitutional claims against FBP officials.
- The discretionary function exception to a congressional waiver of sovereign immunity pertaining to negligence claims directed at the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act will likely bar those claims from being successful when the alleged negligent decisions of federal officials involve deliberation and judgment.
References
1. Bulger’s early life of crime included bank robbery for which he was arrested by FBI agents, tried and convicted in federal court and sentenced to serve time in various federal prisons, including Alcatraz. Upon his release from prison, he returned to his home in South Boston and eventually rose to a leadership role in a South Boston organized criminal gang. From there he joined the Winter Hill gang, located in Somerville, Massachusetts.
2. Patriarca Jr. became the boss of the New England LCN after his father Raymond Patriarca Sr. died in 1984. Patriarca’s father ruled as the ruthless and feared boss of the New England LCN for 30 years before his death. Patriarca Jr. was indicted in 1990, along with twenty other LCN members, by a federal grand jury and charged with racketeering involving murder, extortion, gambling and narcotics. He plead guilty in 1992 and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
3. Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, “Whitey Bulger,” W.W. Norton & Company, and the Globe Newspaper Company Inc. 294-295 (2013). The FBI bugging of the LCN induction ceremony in Medford, Massachusetts was the first time this was ever done and was used by federal prosecutors in other prosecutions of LCN members to establish the existence of the LCN as a criminal organization.
4. Salemme and Flemmi were long-time trusted criminal associates, and their past association made this agreement easy to pull off.
5. Although these men were suspects in several gangland-style murders, the original indictment did not charge anyone with murder. Murder charges came later in other indictments.
6. The retired FBI agent was eventually arrested by the FBI and convicted by a federal jury for, inter alia, tipping off Bulger to the pending indictment.
7. California FBI agents moved quickly on the tip. They confirmed Bulger and Grieg’s presence in a Santa Monica apartment building and lured him to the garage under his apartment on a ruse. When Bulger entered the garage, he was arrested at gunpoint.
8. FBP Hazelton is located in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
9. William Bulger was formerly President of the Massachusetts State Senate and later served as the President of the University of Massachusetts.
10. William M. Bulger v. Hugh Hurwitz, Federal Bureau of Prisons, et. al; United States of America, (No. 22-1106) (4th Cir. 3/3/2023).
11. 403 U.S. 388.
12. In effect, the Supreme Court in Bivens created a Fourth Amendment constitutional cause of action against federal officers in their personal capacity for alleged violation of constitutional rules regarding search and seizure. This was done by the Supreme Court without Congressional Authorization.
13. See, Hernandez v. Mesa, 140 S. Ct. 735, 741 (2020).
14. See, Egbert v. Boule. 142 S.Ct. 1793, 1802-03 (2022).
15. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1856 (2017)
16. Federal correctional officials should be aware that prior to the Supreme Court’s reluctance to extend judicially created constitutional remedies pursuant to Bivens, the court decided Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 in 1980. This case applies to federal prison officials and according to the Fourth Circuit, “the Court held that an inmate’s estate could proceed on a claim for money damages against prison officials for allegedly violating the inmate’s Eighth Amendment right to be free from deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs by failing to treat the inmate’s asthma, leading to his death. Carlson, 446 U.S. at 24–25.”
17. See, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a).
18. Rich v. United States, 811 F.3d 140, 144 (4th Cir. 2015).
19. Berkovitz ex rel. Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531, 536 (1988).
20. Berkovitz, 486 U.S. at 536.
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7.27.23 - Orthodox Judaism as the creation of Abwehr
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During World War II, Jews were overrepresented in combat units in Allied armies and in resistance forces operating all over Europe. Many Jews carried rifles, parachuted behind enemy lines, flew fighter and bomber aircraft, and did a host of other jobs that helped the war effort. But a few managed to make an impact in a much bigger way. This is the story of one such Jew from Italy, who fought the Nazis without ever firing a shot. His name was Renato Levi and he changed the face of the war in the Middle East.
After the war Levi’s story was classified, his files locked away and his accomplishments forgotten. When Levi died in 1954 his story almost died with him. Only recently have historians been uncovering more information about the Jew who fooled the Germans and changed the course of the war.
Levi was recruited as a spy by the Germans in his native Genoa in 1939. After being approached by the Germans he went to the British Consulate and offered to secretly work as a double agent. The British instructed Levi to allow himself to be recruited by the Germans while maintaining contact with them. He followed their orders and the Germans sent him to Paris, where the British connected him with the French secret service, the Deuxieme Bureau. There he was shared by both countries while pretending to spy for Germany. But the German victory over France was so swift that the Germans had no need for a spy in Paris, so he was soon recalled to Genoa and given a new mission.
He was instructed to head to Cairo to be their spy at the center of the British war effort in the Middle East. Levi traveled to Egypt via neutral Turkey, where he reestablished contact with British intelligence. They spirited him to Palestine to debrief him with the aim of making sure that he was still working for the Allied cause. The declassified intelligence report of that debrief lays bare Levi’s motivation:
His motives for working for us are difficult to fathom. He is, of course, a Jew and says he wants to do something to help the Allied cause because it is fighting on behalf of the Jews. In addition, he obviously has considerable love of adventure, and enjoys the work for its own sake. He is very fond of women, and the work gives him ample opportunities of travel, and of handling large sums of money, which he would not otherwise get. He showed no particular dislike of the Germans or the Italians; in fact he often described the good times the Germans had given him.
After being cleared by the intelligence services, Levi was sent on to Cairo and handed to a shadowy intelligence unit named A Force. This was the British intelligence team in charge of disinformation in the Middle East. With the German army bearing down on Cairo, A Force needed to bring Levi, their new double agent, into play. But they faced a dilemma; Levi had been told by the Germans that a wireless radio set would be sent to him once he was in Cairo and he was to use it to transmit information to them. No wireless set ever materialized. Without a way to contact the Nazis to pass them disinformation, A Force commander Dudley Clarke decided to send Levi back into the arms of the enemy.
This was no small task, and it involved Levi agreeing to travel back to Italy via neutral Turkey and then crossing into the Third Reich, while the Holocaust was taking place, to walk into the arms of German intelligence and lie to their faces. The only thing A Force could offer him to help in this endeavor was a cover story. He was to tell them that he had successfully made it to Cairo and bought a wireless transmitter from an Italian hiding in Egypt, an Axis sympathizer called Paul Nicossof, who could send wireless transmissions in Morse code. A Force needed Levi to give German intelligence the correct frequencies and make sure the Germans intercepted “Nicossof’s” transmissions. Of course in reality there was no Nicossof, just an A Force wireless expert transmitting false information. Levi had been instructed by A Force to tell German Intelligence to intercept transmissions from Nicossof twice a week starting on Monday the 25th of May.
The cover worked. The Germans not only intercepted the messages, but they also reacted to them in precisely the way the British needed. The first big success was convincing the Germans not to trust their other intelligence sources regarding an upcoming British offensive. As a result, Operation Crusader caught Rommel by surprise when it was launched on Nov. 18, 1941. Commonwealth forces pushed the Axis army back across the desert into Libya, leading to the liberation of the port of Tobruk.
A year later, the British managed to fool the Axis again in preparation for the El Alamein offensive. In October 1942, A Force transmitted to German intelligence that the British build-up of forces was to be used to invade the Mediterranean island of Crete rather than launch an offensive in North Africa. Hitler ordered the island reinforced with units that otherwise would have been available to fight at El Alamein 10 days later. Rommel and his Afrika Korps were defeated and pushed back across North Africa, never to return.
The disinformation transmissions to the Germans continued throughout the war covering operations around the Mediterranean theater. But the British never directly heard from Levi, the man responsible for making it all happen, after he left Turkey. The spymasters of A Force only knew that the Germans had started responding to their wireless transmissions, so they assumed that Levi had managed to fool them.
In actuality, being back in Axis territory proved incredibly dangerous for Levi. A former French agent known as “Jean” recognized Levi as having worked for the Deuxieme Bureau and warned the SS that he had been a French agent. This led to some tense conversations between Levi and his German handlers but he managed to convince them that he was still their man.
Then he was arrested by the Italians who accused him of “having cooperated with the British Intelligence Service in Belgrad [sic] (Yugoslavia) and in Cairo.” The Italians interrogated him over a period of several months. Levi’s German intelligence handlers refused to intervene. Despite repeated interrogations, Levi proclaimed his innocence. He was held for months without trial but never confessed to having spied for the British, only for the Germans. He suspected that he had been set up but was never sure.
During his eventual trial, Levi was asked if he was “of Jewish faith” and responded that “he was of Jewish origin but Catholic by religion.” The next day he was sentenced to “five years confinement as a political prisoner for being socially dangerous.” He served most of his sentence in a prison on Tremeti, a small island in the Adriatic. He was eventually moved to a facility on the Italian mainland where he was liberated by the British army in October 1943.
Once liberated, Levi made his way back to A Force who’d had no idea what had happened to him. He explained his arrest, interrogation, and eventual imprisonment. They gave him 1,500 pounds for his efforts and another 2,000 pounds compensation and sent him on his way. Levi died in 1954 in Italy. His story died with him, until researchers discovered his files when they were declassified over 50 years later.
The files revealed how the succession of events in Levi’s life coalesced to make him into a natural spy. He was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1902 to an assimilated Italian Jewish family. His parents moved to India in 1910 where he became a British subject and fluent in English. A few years later Levi was sent to Switzerland to complete his education where he learned to speak German and French like a native. He had a thirst for adventure which led him to try his hand at becoming a businessman in Australia. He joined the Australian Italian chamber of commerce, he even served as a witness in a robbery trial. He ended up going bankrupt and trying to flee the country only to be arrested by Australian police. A judge ordered he be held until he coughed up the cash he owed. These experiences would have served him well later as he was interrogated and cross-examined by the Italian security services.
The word “Jew” catches the eye when reading through the declassified intelligence files. It follows Levi through all the reports on his activities. He was even described as being “of Jewish appearance” by the British intelligence officer who debriefed him. There is no evidence of Levi hiding his Jewish identity from the British, Germans, or Italians nor any evidence of it impacting his ability to carry out espionage, though as we have seen it did come up at the end of his trial.
But why did the Germans recruit a Jewish spy? A historian at the Holocaust Educational Trust Martin Winstone told Tablet that he suspects the reason may have been the involvement of the less ideological Abwehr (German military intelligence). “The Abwehr was not led by ideological Nazis and its head Wilhelm Canaris was involved in many of the military plots against Hitler. This does not necessarily mean that these people were free from antisemitism themselves, but there was perhaps a more pragmatic approach than other organizations such as the Gestapo when it came to intelligence operations.” There are references in the British intelligence reports to the Abwehr and the even less ideological Italians playing a role in handling Levi.
Tablet contacted one of Levi’s surviving relatives, his great-nephew Kee Levi, to find out more about him.
“He was always a bit of a black sheep in the family; he was always going to my grandfather because my grandfather was always bailing him out,” Kee confides. “I’m so glad he survived the war because I think that so many people like him didn’t!” he added. “Immensely brave some of the things he did. Foolhardy, really.”
The story of the bitter rivalry between two Jewish agents in World War II has led one historian to speculate on the many different ways the war could have played itself out
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Aug 6, 2022
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Aug 6, 2022
At the height of World War II, Samson Mikicinski, a Jewish Polish-Russian businessman, rescued top models, society women and female relatives of exiled Polish leaders from occupied Warsaw and smuggled them to Paris. During the same period, Edward Szarkiewicz, a Jew who was born in the Lviv Oblast of Ukraine, converted to Christianity and operated as a British mole working within the Polish security service. The encounter between them is the subject of a recently published book by historian Yaacov Falkov, “Between Hitler and Churchill: Two Jewish Agents and the Effort Made by British Intelligence to Prevent Secret Polish-Nazi Collusion” (Magnes Press; Hebrew).
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