Whitey Bulger and His F.B.I. White-Washers

In 1961, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover stressed in a memo, the imperative to develop "live sources within the upper echelon of the organization hoodlum element." Joseph (the Animal) Barboja was one of those live sources. When authorities began looking into a 1965 murder that Barboja has participated in, his contacts in the F.B.I. engineered a scheme to protect him by implicating four other non-involved men in the murder.

"Tribalism is a recurring theme in the Bulger saga, but the film ["Black Mass"] suggests that the tribe allegiance of scrappy neighborhoods transcends any subsequent pledge they might make to a criminal gang, or to the feds." "Few activities were more reviled in this Irish-American milieu than snitching." "An effective inside man in a criminal organization is also, necessarily, a criminal in good standing -- and therefore a dangerous person with whom to be in business." [1]

"With Bulger, as with Barboja, the asset came to seem to be so valuable that the government did more than tolerate his bad behavior; it began to enable that behavior even to engage in criminal activity itself." "For  security reasons, relationships with informants are often carried out in secret, with little oversight; the usual temptations become hard to resist." [2] When Whitey Bulger learned that Morris, the supervisor of his handler, F.B.I. agent Connollly, had a fondness for wine, he kept Morris plentifully supplied with wine.

After Whitey Bulger was discovered hiding out in California after being on the lam for many years, just as Bulger had been given a pass in his criminal career, when Bulger was put on trial  for multiple serious crimes, the Justice Department gave a pass to the killers from Bulger's gang in the interest of prosecuting Bulger."The notion that Whitey Bulger's pact with the F.B.I. represented not a gross aberration, but something  like business as usual is almost too bleak to contemplate." [3] There is no definitive information about how many confidential informants are working for the F.B.I. at any one time; however, in a 2008 budget request, the Bureau put the number at 15,000. After the official complicity in Bulger's crimes became known, the Department of Justice ordered the F.B.I. to track any crimes committed by its informants. In a 2013 letter, the Bureau disclosed that in the prior year it had authorized informants to  break the law on 5,939 occasions.

Once law enforcement bends the rules for active criminals, it becomes bound to their sources. Once more, the culture rewarded agents who landed top informants. Shouldn't the government have some responsibility for the violent actions of those it promotes, shelters and protects?