Black Mass

July 31, 2000
A triumph of investigative reporting, this full-bodied true-crime saga by two Boston Globe reporters is a cautionary tale about FBI corruption and the abuse of power. Gangster James "Whitey" Bulger ruled Boston's Irish mob, and his wary collaboration with the Italian Mafia, which he detested, was the cornerstone of the city's balkanized criminal underworld. (His younger brother, Billy Bulger, was the iron-fisted president of the state senate and later president of the University of Massachusetts.) Few suspected that Whitey Bulger and his partner, crime boss Stevie Flemmi, were both FBI informants; their squealing helped the FBI to put a score of mobsters in jail and wipe out the Angiulo crime family. Here O'Neill and Lehr (Pulitzer winner and Pulitzer finalist, respectively, and coauthors of The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family) maintain that overzealous FBI Agent John Connolly, who was Whitey's handler, and Agent John Morris, Flemmi's handler, "coddled, conspired and protected the mobsters in a way that for all practical purposes had given them a license to kill." FBI agents looked the other way while Bulger and Flemmi went on a 1980s crime spree that, according to witnesses, included extortion, bank robberies, drug trafficking and a string of unsolved murders. This complex, dramatic tale climaxes with a 1998 federal hearing that found that Connolly and Morris had essentially fictionalized FBI internal records to downplay the stoolies' crimes while overstating their value to the Bureau. In 1999, a grand jury probe launched by Attorney General Janet Reno led to Connolly's arrest on charges of racketeering and obstruction of justice (he's now out on bail). Also named in the indictment were Flemmi, already arrested by state police in 1995, and Bulger, now a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. This in-depth look at the FBI's war against the Mafia includes the first-ever secret recording of a Mafia induction ceremony, complete with pricking of fingers and blood oaths.

June 1, 2000
Lehr and O'Neill, an editor and reporter, respectively, at the Boston Globe, have worked closely on many pieces of investigative journalism as well as on their 1989 book, The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family. Their new book is another work of crime reporting, this time centering on FBI agent John Connolly's acquiring the legendary Irish gangster James "Whitey" Bulger as an informant in 1975 and some of the more regrettable consequences of their collaboration. In a highly detailed text, complete with an extensive notes section, the authors vividly capture the turbulent culture and conflicting loyalties of the Boston underworld. This is essential for Boston-area libraries because of its local focus, but elsewhere it will be of interest only to libraries with extensive criminal justice collections elsewhere in the country. [Whitey Bulger is still at large and high on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list.--Ed.]--Charlie Cowling, SUNY at Brockport Lib.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2000
Readers moved by Michael Patrick MacDonald's "All Souls" may want to follow the law enforcement side of his South Boston story. The shocking revelation in "All Souls" was that Whitey Bulger, Southie's "protector," was not just profiting from the drug trade that was killing the community's kids, he was also an FBI informant, with his crimes under government protection. In "Black Mass," the editor and a reporter on the investigative reporting team of the "Boston Globe" trace the teamwork between FBI agent John Connolly and Whitey Bulger from their childhoods in South Boston, to the deal they cut in the '70s for Bulger's help in taking down Boston's Italian gangsters, through years when law enforcement looked the other way as Bulger bullied his neighbors and took "rent" from the drug dealers and petty criminals who preyed on them. FBI man Connolly wasn't Bulger's only "clout"; his brother was president of the Massachusetts senate during much of this period. Whitey's now on the FBI's Most Wanted List, and indictments are still coming. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)