Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob

Whitey Bulger was a good crook, one who knew all the angles. But he didn't draw the line at using the FBI for another angle to make himself wealthy and powerful. And he knew just who to target to make that plan work, an FBI agent who grew up in his own neighborhood. The lengths of Whitey's guile, and the depths to which the FBI agent was willing to descend, are phenomenal.

This is certainly one of the FBI's worst moments in history, rivaled only by some of Hoover's shenanigans. Where do we lay the blame for this debate - in the lap of the crook who found a way to manipulate the system? Should we blame crooks for acting like crooks, even if they turn out to be preternaturally good at it. Or do we lay the blame on the corrupted FBI agent, show more who never shook his youthful desire for neighborhood cache with the toughs? Maybe we put th blame squarely on the FBI and it's systems and managers, the ones who rewarded the corrupt agent for his 'numbers' rather than looking more closely at what he was doing, the managers, most specifically, who could be corrupted themselves.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended show less

I thought this was fascinating and it was terrifying, too. It was hard for everyone in law enforcement to imagine how Whitey Bulger and Steve Flemmi were able to operate with such impunity in Boston during the 1980s--but it was because the FBI protected them. FBI agent John Connolly was star-struck with the wiseguy informants he was supposed to be handling, meanwhile the residents of South Boston were shaken down, drugged, and extorted and no one would stop the crime. It's true this book is journalism, written by Boston Globe reporters, but the material is so good it's engrossing even with minimal literary embellishment.

The scene is Boston, starting in the 1970s. The FBI has made it a top priority to clamp down on organized crime (in this case, the Mafia, populated by the Italians of North Boston). John Connolly, a very young FBI agent, is called to the Boston office to work in the Organized Crime unit. The idea was that if he could find someone to rat out the Italians, the FBI's job would be made much easier. Connolly begins to cultivate James (Whitey) Bulger, a former acquaintance from Connolly's old neighborhood in South Boston. Bulger was a career criminal, beginning his future occupation as a young boy, and he and one of his associates, Steve Flemmi, had ties to the Italian mob in Boston. Whitey was also part of a gang in Southie. He became an show more informant for the FBI, and in return, he was given protection by the FBI. His information was very helpful and did help to put away some of the Mafia guys, but in the meantime, he also gave info on anyone in South Boston that he considered might be standing in his own way as he rose up through the ranks of the criminal underworld.

The authors, Lehr and O'Neill, used a variety of first-hand sources to not only write this book, but to break the entire story in the Boston Globe. What they examine here is basically the true cost of the information provided by Bulger. While he's giving them good information, he's also being allowed to literally get away with murder.

I won't go further into this book, but I picked it up the other night and could hardly put it down once I started. I guarantee you that if you have an interest in organized crime, this is a no-miss story. I would like to say that I was appalled by the sheer abuse of power from members of an institution created to protect the American public, but frankly, it's getting harder and harder to be surprised any more.

Very well written and very taut; I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in organized crime, the FBI, in the so-called Irish Mob in the United States or in true crime in general. show less

My daughter gave me this book for Xmas because of my interest in Irish-American history. I was really impressed with the legwork these former reporters did in order to get the story, and even more impressed with the even more extensive legwork that the detectives and policemen needed to do in order to curtail the activities of Whitey Bulger and his many partners in crime.

A fascinating look at how the good guys and the bad guys operate.

I started out somewhat interested in the story but it soon got bogged down in a mass of details that I lost interest in keeping straight. I'm not that fascinated by true crime or gangsters so it was always going to be a uphill slog for me but I thought the local angle would keep me going and it did, for a while. But I mostly wanted to understand the why more than the what and that I never really got. How did Connolly become the willing conspirator of Flemmi and Bulger, was it just the old neighbor ties? Was it more? Was it just plain old power corrupts? That would have made a more interesting book for me. This just ended up dragging to what I knew was the conclusion.

I should like this! It's a book with true crime, mind-blowing intrigue, violence, unimaginable corruption of values that ought to be inviolable, and platters and platters of Italian food. What's not to like?

Quite a bit, unfortunately. The series of articles that ran in the Boston Globe - the meat of the book - actually appears in the middle, starting with a chapter called Murder, Inc. (at least that's the first one I recognized). The beginning is a long, slow buildup added to flesh out the book. If you can survive the opening chapters, and keep track of the characters involved (the author annoyingly alternates between last names, first names, and mob names, tripling the number of things you have to memorize just to follow along), you'll show more certainly know everything there is to know about how Whitey Bulger neutralized every law enforcement agency that set out to bring him down.

But with Whitey in the news, it's good to read, even if it's got some slow bits. show less

Black Mass has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while, I was looking for a third book about Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger written by Dick Lehr, I have “Whitey” and have been trying to find “Underboss”. Then I saw the movie “Black Mass” (starring: Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Bulger brothers and Joel Edgerton as John Connolly, former FBI agent) was scheduled to be released in September 2015. I decided I had to read the book before I saw the movie, which I desperately want to see (I haven’t seen it yet, I have seen “Pawn Sacrifice” and “Steve Jobs”).

In 1988 Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill started to write a story for the Boston Globe about the Bulger Brothers, Jimmy and Billy. One was Boston’s show more most powerful criminal and Billy was the most powerful politician (which some might say is the same, but hey he never killed anyone, that we know of). In the course of the investigation, they discovered that Jimmy Bulger seemed to be made of teflon, since 1965, while he climbed the ranks of Boston underworld from street soldier to boss, he had not been arrested, not once. He seemed to know when the authorities were closing in on him. He knew about wiretaps. Some in law enforcement felt ‘the fix was in’ even so far as ‘the FBI had secretly provided him cover all these years’. But there was no proof. Mobsters hated informants, this was the world Whitey Bulger lived in. In the end however, the FBI had to come clean, Bulger and Flemmi (Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi) had been informants for over 20 years.

The first meeting between John Connolly, FBI agent and Jimmy Bulger was in 1975, Flemmi was already an informant at this time, had already experienced the protection the FBI could offer, he was never questioned about his criminal activities, even the murders he may or may not have committed. When asked, he told Bulger “Go talk to him.” The deal was made, and the fix was in. There is more to this story than two mob guys being informants and more FBI involvement than one agent covering up. Connolly covered Flemmi and Bulger, other agents covered him. There was a massive head in the sand approach to what was going on. The truth started to come out in 1997, 10 months later after sworn testimony and the opening of secret FBI files the Boston FBI office was revealed to be a gigantic stack of shit. This book tells it all.

Detailed with extensive documentation this books read like a too good to be true Godfather book, except its true, and it’s fascinating. I recommend this to true crime fans in particular fans of mafia books. show less