Black Mass

Going back to the 1970s, when the unholy alliance was forged, Morris recalled a “time frame” of “intense pressure on agents to have informants” against the Mafia. “There was a lot of pressure,” he testified. He talked about how he teamed up with John Connolly and, together, they rode Bulger and Flemmi to stardom in the Boston FBI office as the master agents in the war against the Mafia, even if, in truth, the ride was a free fall into hell. Morris rued the day he hitched his star to Bulger, Flemmi, and Connolly and ended his professional life in Boston in fear of both Bulger and Connolly—Whitey because of his hold on him through the $7,000 in bribes he’d taken, and Connolly because of his network of political allies, most notably Billy Bulger.

Despite a relentless effort by defense attorneys to get Morris to concede that he’d promised Bulger and Flemmi immunity from prosecution, Morris disagreed. He admitted he’d leaked investigations, but that hardly constituted a grant of immunity. He testified he didn’t have the authority as a supervisor to confer immunity on the mobsters. “Immunity was a very formal process, and there’s actual documentation,” he said. There was none for Bulger.

Toward the end Morris began to wobble. Following questions about yet another instance where his shady work with Bulger may have cost a man his life, one of the defense attorneys suddenly departed from the set sequence of questions. Turning to Morris, the lawyer catapulted to a higher meaning, demanding to know what Morris could have been thinking all these years: did the FBI’s crusade against the Mafia justify the Bulger evil? “Do you agree that your conduct as an FBI agent in connection with Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi was consistent with that concept, that the end justifies the means?” Brought up short, Morris sagged noticeably, and he struggled to regain his monsignor’s placid demeanor. He sighed and looked sadly off to the side.

“I’m not certain of that,” he testified softly.

By the end there was nothing left except for Morris to acknowledge the part he’d played in all that had gone wrong. Urged by defense attorneys to explain “more fully for us” how he was compromised, Morris said that he “had violated standards, integrity, rules, regulations.” Was John Connolly part of that process of compromise?

“I felt that he participated in it,” Morris replied, “but I accept responsibility for my own actions.”

THE shocking confessions made headlines, and about this same time John Connolly began to speak out—not in court but outside of court to reporters. From the sidelines the retired agent, now fifty-seven and still working as a lobbyist for Boston Edison, began offering sound bites to rebut the testimony given under oath before Judge Wolf. Each time a retired agent or government official took the stand and provided testimony that in any way criticized him, Connolly would sound off and call the witness a liar. So, for example, when retired FBI supervisor Robert Fitzpatrick testified that agents complained about Connolly “rifling” their files to find out what they had on Bulger, Connolly reacted, “That’s ludicrous.” Connolly angrily told reporters that Fitzpatrick’s testimony was nothing more than “unmitigated nonsense.”

The list of “liars” grew and grew. But Connolly saved his best lines for Morris, whom he began calling “the most corrupt agent in the history of the FBI.” Each day after Morris finished testifying, Connolly would condemn his former friend and supervisor. Morris may have only met with Connolly, Bulger, and Flemmi a dozen times over the years—while Connolly saw the mobsters hundreds of times—but Connolly insisted that he himself was a model FBI agent who’d never broken a single rule. All of Morris’s wrongs, said Connolly, “he did that on his own.”

Talking about the difficulty of the job he’d performed so well, Connolly said that handling informants was “kind of like a circus,” and “if the circus is going to work you need to have a guy in there with the lions and tigers.

“That was me. I was no John Morris, back in the office with a number 2 lead pencil. My job was to get in there with the lions and tigers. And I am no liar like Morris.”

Near the end of Morris’s testimony Connolly even made a brief court appearance. Having teamed up with a prominent defense attorney, R. Robert Popeo, Connolly strode into the courthouse in an expensively tailored suit and brushed past throngs of TV cameras and reporters saying he wanted to clear his name. He was a hero, not a villain, and now this band of prosecutors led by Fred Wyshak was out to bust him. He’d become the government’s scapegoat, a victim of runaway prosecutorial rage, when the truth of the matter was that he was a highly decorated FBI agent who’d done nothing wrong. “The proof is in the pudding,” Connolly said, defending the Bulger deal. “Look at the decimated New England Mafia.”

Then, standing in court on April 30 before Judge Wolf, the lawyer Popeo explained that unless Connolly was granted immunity from prosecution—like John Morris—he would not let his client testify. He would not allow Connolly to be “blindsided” when the government had made it known that Connolly was under investigation. Connolly then asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, walked outside, and resumed a tirade against Morris, who was still inside waiting to wrap up his eight days of testimony.

“I made him look away,” Connolly said of Morris. “He couldn’t even look me in the face.”

The Connolly sideshow continued into the summer, and a pattern developed: an affronted Connolly would issue heated public denials to any witness’s incriminating words. He disputed most of former supervisor Jim Ring’s testimony, particularly Ring’s account of the concerns he’d had for the “stupid” way Connolly met Bulger and Flemmi for dinner. Connolly wasn’t the only one in denial. Billy Bulger, now retired from politics and the president of the University of Massachusetts, joined the Connolly chorus after Ring in court told about Billy Bulger dropping in on one meeting. “I never met the man,” Billy Bulger said about Ring. “It never took place, but the business of denying such things is to make it appear as if something sinister had happened.”

By midsummer Massachusetts representative Martin T. Meehan announced plans to hold congressional hearings into the FBI’s long affair with Bulger, saying the revelations tumbling out in the federal courthouse in Boston raised concerns about “establishing, maintaining, and monitoring relationships between agents and informants.” But like much of the nation’s business during late 1998, the inquiry was soon pushed aside by President Clinton’s impeachment.