US gangsters and Irish republicans: bloody lesson for our law enforcers

JOHN McIntyre was one of life’s misfits who got mixed up with the wrong crowd, became implicated in drugs and gun-running, and ended up being murdered in 1984.

This week, as a result of his murder, his mother and brother were awarded $3.1 million in damages by a court in Boston.

His family argued successfully that an FBI agent had provided the information which allowed his killers to identify him.

McIntyre’s mother recalled in a 1989 book, Valhalla’s Wake, that he seemed to develop a kind of death wish as a young man, living on the dangerous side of life.

After less than distinguished service in the US army, during which he was jailed on drug charges, he later became involved in drug smuggling.

He was associated with Joseph Murray, who was reputed to be an IRA leader in the Boston area. Although his IRA involvement was possibly only a convenient cover for his criminal activities, Murphy got McIntyre involved with the IRA in February 1982.

On January 11, 1984, Murray, McIntyre and Galway-born Pat Nee arrived on a four-day visit to Europe. In Amsterdam they reportedly discussed gun-running plans with Michael Browne, skipper of the Fenit-based fishing vessel, Marita Ann, before making brief visits to Fenit and Belfast.

James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, head of the notorious Winter Hill Gang, supposedly provided the money for the weapons, but those who knew him said he probably got the money from the IRA.

McIntyre sailed on the Valhalla with the arms shipment for the IRA in the early hours of September 14, 1984. The plan was to rendezvous with the Marita Ann off the Kerry coast.

Murray flew to Shannon and was supposed to sail on the Marita Ann to be present when the two ships met at sea but, instead, he promptly returned to the US because his wife had supposedly become ill.

After the seizure of the Marita Ann on its way back to Fenit with the arms, the British leaked a report that the Americans had tracked the Valhalla by satellite. On being arrested for questioning after returning to Boston, McIntyre — who suspected Murray of betraying the operation — agreed to provide information and to set Murray up for a drugs bust.

The FBI was informed, but on the night of November 30, 1984, McIntyre disappeared. He was 32. His body wasn’t found until some 15 years later.

Although McIntyre had agreed to act as an informer, his family blamed Seán O’Callaghan, who had told the Special Branch here that the Marita Ann would be landing the arms. When O’Callaghan was allowed to visit the US in 1997, the McIntyre family were indignant.

“I can’t believe they’d let that rat in”, McIntyre’s brother, Chris, complained. “If I saw him on the street I’d put a bullet in his head”.

McIntyre’s mother fumed when told of O’Callaghan’s visit: “That rat, that snitch, that informer. My son was set up because of him. When it was suggested that my John was an informer, it tore my heart out, and it killed John”.

The sordid story shows that many of those involved in the gun-running saga were informers.

It was Bulger, the man who supposedly funded the operation, who provided the FBI with details of the Valhalla. He had been an FBI informant since the 1960s, along with his sidekick Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi. They had been using the FBI, and everybody else, for their own criminal purposes. Bulger got close to his FBI handler, John Connolly, who became one of the FBI’s most celebrated agents due to his involvement in the fight against organised crime. In reality, however, he was just helping Bulger and Flemmi to eliminate their competition. They were providing Connolly with money as well as tip-offs about their competition.

Bulger actually provided the information that led to Murray’s arrest in 1987 on drug trafficking charges. This allowed Bulger to take over Murray’s drug patch.

The surviving crew of the Valhalla were prosecuted the same year. Bob Anderson, the ship’s captain, pleaded guilty to gun-running and served almost three years in jail, as did Pat Nee. Murray was freed in 1991, but was shot dead shortly afterwards by his wife during a domestic argument.

Nee was jailed again later for his part in an attempted armoured car heist in Boston. He is currently plugging a book on his exploits, A Criminal and an Irishman. Over the years Bulger and Flemmi appeared to live a charmed life. Connolly told them of anyone informing on them. Once the local police, Drug Enforcement Agency or FBI began to close in on Bulger with inside information, the informant would suddenly disappear.

Seventeen people were murdered in this way. In 1980, for instance, one of the gang, Louis Litif, agreed to provide the FBI with information on a murder that Bulger had arranged, but Litif was suddenly murdered himself. The following year another gang member, Brian Halloran, began supplying information on the killing of Litif, but he was also murdered.

ARTHUR ‘Bucky’ Barrett disappeared on April 6, 1983, shortly after he began giving information. His body was later found close to that of John McIntyre.

Connolly was highly celebrated when he retired from the FBI in 1991, but then things began to go wrong for the two men he had protected for so long.

Flemmi was arrested in 1995. Facing murder charges, he began to tell the whole story in order to avoid the death penalty. He led the police to McIntyre’s body and told how the victim had been lured into a trap on November 30, 1984, after Connolly told them that McIntyre was co-operating with the DEA and had linked Bulger to Murray. McIntyre was chained to a chair and interrogated for five hours. They then tried unsuccessfully to strangle him with a boat rope.

“Do you want one in the head?”, Bulger asked when they were unable to strangle him. “Yes, please”, McIntyre pleaded.

“It is difficult to imagine a more distressing set of circumstances — physically and mentally — than those encountered by McIntyre during the minutes preceding his death”, Judge Reginald Lindsay concluded in this week’s judgement.

After shooting McIntyre a number of times in the head, Bulger went upstairs to lie down, while Flemmi knocked out McIntyre’s teeth to make it harder to identify the remains.

Flemmi has been jailed for life. Connolly received a 10-year sentence for racketeering and is awaiting trial on a murder charge. Bulger is on the run. He is currently No 2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. (Osama bin Laden is No 1).

We never seem to learn from the mistakes they make in America. The FBI essentially turned a blind eye to Bulger’s activities because he was providing them with valuable information. The people informing on him were sacrificed, and hence the McIntyres have now been awarded over $3 million.

Could that happen here? In 1985, Seán Corcoran, a low-level informer, was murdered by the IRA after he indicated to his garda handler that he suspected Sean O’Callaghan was a garda informer. Shortly afterwards Corcoran was murdered by the IRA.

O’Callaghan bragged graphically in a 1988 interview with journalist Gerard Colleran, now editor of The Star, that he personally shot Corcoran. The interview was not off-the-record, and Mr Colleran indicated to gardaí, through his lawyer, that he was willing to provide the information, but they have never even asked him about the interview in the past 18 years.

Was Corcoran sacrificed? His family certainly deserve answers, but the authorities apparently don’t want to know. Are we inviting a McIntyre case of our own?