Black Mass

To be sure, John Morris had coordinated a seven-days-a week bugging operation that required around-the-clock staffing by forty agents. He’d handled a crisis a day for four months. Operation Bostar wiped out the Angiulo crime family, an enduring law enforcement triumph that Morris hoped would carry him to a job as special agent in charge in a major city.

But Morris was also failing just as surely as he was succeeding. He left telling signs of his slowly unfolding destruction behind in the Colonnade room. Besides emptying more than two wine bottles, Morris had stumbled out of the hotel leaving behind the top-secret government tape recording he had so proudly played for Bulger and Flemmi. Indeed, the tape was retrieved only when Flemmi realized it was being left behind and went back for it himself.

Though the turning point had been long before, perhaps nothing so summed up just how masterfully Bulger had turned the tables on the FBI and just how corrupted the FBI had become than the end of the Colonnade night. A drunk Morris was driven home in his own car by Whitey Bulger. Flemmi followed in the black Chevy. Morris and Connolly may have once thought they were in control of the relationship, but they and the FBI were now just intoxicated passengers. It was midnight in Boston.

CHAPTER NINE

Fine Food, Fine Wine, Dirty Money
John Connolly and John Morris were now the keepers of the Bulger flame inside the FBI. And for Boston’s increasingly fearsome foursome—Connolly, Morris, Bulger, and Flemmi—an era of good feeling had begun all around as the boundary lines between the good guys and bad guys blurred.

Perhaps they had always been blurred. Certainly Flemmi saw that there was something special between Connolly and Whitey Bulger. It was South Boston, for sure, and maybe part of it was a father-son thing. But Flemmi didn’t mind; he’d come to like Connolly in his own way. The brash agent, Flemmi said, “had a personality.” Bulger and Flemmi had grown fond of Morris as well, and Connolly made a point of telling his boss the good news. “These guys like you and will do anything for you,” said Connolly, according to Morris. “If there’s anything you ever need, just ask, and they will do it.”

Theirs was a mutual admiration society.

Morris, in turn, continued to envy the swagger, the confident style, the influence that Connolly had around town. The local agent seemed to have friends everywhere. Inside the office he may not have been particularly close to Sarhatt, or even Sarhatt’s successor, James Greenleaf, who took over in late 1982, but Connolly had strong friendships with many agents on the Organized Crime Squad as well as with other FBI managers. Nick Gianturco, for one, was enamored of Connolly. “He was by far the best informant developer I’ve ever seen in the bureau,” Gianturco said. More important, Connolly maintained ties with key agents he’d worked with earlier in New York City who by now had been promoted to headquarters and held high-ranking positions, particularly in the criminal division. John Morris was fully aware that Connolly’s FBI friends in Washington “had influence on me personally and my career.”

Then there was Billy Bulger, who had emerged as the state’s most powerful—and feared—politician since being elected president of the Massachusetts State Senate in 1978. Connolly had made sure to take Morris over to meet Bill Bulger, and the supervisor was impressed by Connolly’s easy access. “He just seemed to know a lot of politicians.”

Connolly, recalled Morris, liked to talk up his influence. The two agents might be chatting, looking ahead to life after the FBI, and Connolly, noting his cache of contacts, would say that “there would be a lot of good opportunities for jobs and so forth once we left the bureau.” The friendships that Connolly had inside the FBI and in Boston were like money in the bank.

Morris carefully tracked these matters. He was ambitious too and wanted to make a name for himself. Connolly seemed to be everything, however, that he was not. The intense Morris envied Connolly’s easy style, his ability to turn any problem that arose into someone else’s concern. In Connolly, Morris saw a fixer, and therefore, thought Morris, “it was important to me that he liked me.”

It was also a time for Connolly and Morris to count their professional blessings. Connolly had spun, Morris had covered, and together they rebuffed the suitability review of Bulger and Flemmi that began in late 1980 and lasted into 1981. They’d kept Sarhatt at bay, displaying a genius for exploiting loopholes in the FBI’s oversight of informants.

FOR his part, Connolly was soaking up the good vibes.

Ordinarily an informant handler worked mostly alone, in a kind of isolation —all part of protecting the informant’s confidentiality. And Connolly was mostly by himself when he met Bulger and Flemmi, either at one of their apartments or, in good weather, in the middle of the Old Harbor housing project where he and Bulger had both grown up, at Castle Island, a Revolutionary War fort overlooking the water at the easternmost point of South Boston, or along Savin Hill Beach.

But everyone on the Organized Crime Squad seemed to know he was handling the legendary Bulger, and Connolly seemed to like it that way. Besides Morris and Gianturco, agents Ed Quinn, Mike Buckley, and Jack Cloherty all knew. The word even spread beyond the squad. It was as if Connolly wanted others in the FBI to know about his prize. He was showing off.

“I have two guys you may want to meet,” Connolly told rookie agent John Newton one day at work. Newton had been transferred to the Boston office in 1980. He’d been assigned to an entry-level squad running background checks on new government hires—a far cry from a coveted assignment like Connolly’s on the Organized Crime Squad. Looking for a place to live, Newton was steered to John Connolly, and Connolly had helped Newton find an apartment, right in South Boston. They’d become friendly. Connolly learned that before Newton had become an FBI agent he’d served in the army’s Special Forces Unit. “John seemed interested in that,” Newton later said about his new pal.

“He said he had, you know, two informants, Jimmy Bulger and Stevie Flemmi,” continued Newton, “and that they were interesting guys.” Given Flemmi’s army background, Connolly suggested that Newton might “have something in common with them.”

You want me to hook you up with them? Connolly asked.

Newton figured, why not?

The meeting was scheduled for around midnight at Whitey’s. Newton rode with Connolly, who knew his way around Southie blindfolded. Connolly might have chatted on about what a good thing the FBI had in Bulger, maybe even replayed for the new listener the excitement of the Wollaston Beach rendezvous. Enlisting Bulger had been the stuff that FBI legends were made of, and Connolly liked to make it clear that he had the starring role.