Grisly tale of crime and corruption raises haunting questions here

The dangers of police corruption are currently being highlighted in a Miami court case, which would be much bigger news if it were not for the global financial crisis. The FBI admits that it is its most embarrassing case ever

WHEN Veronica Guerin was murdered in 1996 nobody doubted that organised crime was flourishing in parts of this country. When it flourished elsewhere, there was usually police corruption, but we had almost none.

This week the Morris Tribunal reported into garda corruption in Donegal. On the whole the Garda Síochána has a good record, but there are inevitably bad apples in every barrel, and if they are not ejected they contaminate other apples. Is it naive to think that there were only problems in Donegal? The dangers of police corruption are currently being highlighted in a Miami court case, which would be much bigger news if it were not for the global financial crisis. The FBI admits that it is its most embarrassing case ever.

John Connolly, the former FBI man, is currently on trial for the murder of a Boston accountant in Miami in 1982. There is a strong Irish connection between Connolly and criminals who formed an integral part of Boston’s Irish mafia.

As Connolly tells it, the story began in 1948 in a Boston ice cream parlour when he was eight-years-old. He was with two friends when 19-year-old James “Whitey” Bulger, a local thug, offered to buy each of them an ice cream cone.

Connolly refused. He said his parents had told him not to take gifts from strangers.

“Hey, kid, I’m no stranger!” Bulger said. “Your mother and father are from Ireland. My mother and father are from Ireland. What kind of ice cream to do you want?”

“Vanilla,” young Connolly replied with smile. He should have heeded the advice of his parents.

In 1956 Bulger was convicted of a series of bank robberies and sentenced to 20 years in jail. He was considered so dangerous that he spent time in the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay. After finishing law school, Connolly joined the FBI. In 1975 he was posted to Boston, where he recruited Whitey Bulger as an FBI informer. This, it would seem, was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Bulger provided information on criminals, who were arrested, and he then moved in on their patch.

Joe Murray of Charlestown, a major drug smuggler, had ties with the IRA. Bulger tipped off Connolly that Murray was sending seven tons of arms to Ireland on the fishing vessel Valhalla in September 1984. The arms were transferred to the Marita Anne off the coast of Kerry.

Deputy Martin Ferris was arrested on the Marita Anna as it was heading back to Fenit. John McIntyre, one of those on board the Valhalla, was arrested shortly after returning to Boston. He was lifted on suspicion of trying to break into his estranged wife’s home. Once in custody, however, he offered the police details of drug smuggling and the gun running in a desperate attempt to extricate himself from the clutches of those with whom he was involved.

A local detective called in the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The 32-year-old McIntyre was clearly petrified of his colleagues. “You don’t know where you’re going to end up or what kind of demise you’re going to come to,” McIntyre said. “I just sometimes feel like I’m trapped in this whirlpool and I can’t get out of it.”

McIntyre agreed to provide information. “I’d like to be able to sleep at night,” he said.

Although the Valhalla operation was gunrunning, he said that Murray had also planned to include a cocaine shipment, but he had not been able to get the stuff from Colombia in time. “This guy had a mountain of information,” the arresting detective later explained. The DEA shared the information with the FBI linking Murray to Bulger. McIntyre demonstrated his credibility by giving details of a drug shipment that was due shortly on a freighter. The boat was searched as it entered Boston Harbor on November 16, 1984, and 36 tons of marijuana was seized. Shortly afterwards McIntyre was killed by Bulger, but his body was not found until January 2000.

At least four other associates of Bulger were murdered after they began talking to the FBI, or were suspected of being prepared to talk. There was plenty of evidence to arrest Bulger, but the FBI did not touch him, because his stock as an informer was soaring, along with the reputation his handler, Connolly.

On the basis of information provided by Bulger and his sidekick Steven Flemmi, the FBI arrested and jailed Mafia boss, Gennaro Angiulo, along with his lawyer, and 22 other mafia mobsters, as well as Joe Murray for drug smuggling.

When Connolly retired from the FBI in 1990 after 22 years of service, he was highly celebrated. Without Connolly to protect them, however, Bulger and Flemmi soon came under close scrutiny.

Flemmi was arrested in 1995, made a deal with the prosecutor to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty to ten murders. He is currently serving a life sentence. He testified about Connolly’s involvement, and the former FBI agent was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to ten years in jail in May 2002.

In 2006 Flemmi testified that McIntyre was murdered after Connolly told them that one of the people on board the Valhalla was cooperating with authorities. Judge Reginald Lindsay ruled in a civil suit that Connolly was the “proximate cause” of McIntyre’s death and the federal government was therefore responsible. He awarded McIntyre’s mother and brother $3.1m in damages. Bulger was due to be arrested at the same time as Flemmi, but absconded. He is currently No 2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, behind only Osama Bin Laden. His former partner Kevin Weeks testified this week that Connolly told him to warn Bulger of his impending arrested.

Connolly was retired five years by then, so who told him about Bulger’s impending arrest and, more importantly, why? Some haunting questions also need to be answered in this country.

Seán O’Callaghan had provided the Special Branch with the information in relation to the Marita Ann. His identity was a closely guarded secret, but four days before the Marita Ann set sail, Seán Corcoran, a low grade informer, told his the Special Branch handler that O’Callaghan was in contact with a garda.

The PIRA was inevitably going to look for a leak after the seizure of the Marita Ann. Was O’Callaghan notified about what Corcoran had said? Shortly afterwards Corcoran was murdered by the PIRA in Kerry, and his body was dumped in Ovens, near Cork City. O’Callaghan stated that he informed the gardaí in advance in a bid to save Corcoran. O’Callaghan lied about having killed Corcoran in separate interviews with the Boston Globe, Sunday Times, and The Kerryman. He later explained that he had wanted to force the gardaí’s hand.

“I stated that three bullets had been used when I knew that only one was used,” O’Callaghan explained in his memoirs.

“I stated that Corcoran was kneeling when I knew that forensic evidence would prove otherwise.” He said he deceived the press because he wanted to compel the gardaí to investigate why Corcoran had not been rescued.

“The garda had to be forced to reveal why they had not intervened,” O’Callaghan insisted. Was Seán Corcoran sacrificed? It is has taken the FBI more than a quarter of a century to face up to the Connolly case.

It is a about time we had a proper explanation of the Corcoran case.