FBI’s tip tale stinks as much as agency’s past
By Michele McPhee | Monday, June 27, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by John Wilcox
Iceland. Seriously? We are expected to believe that a woman from Iceland watching TV spotted Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend in Santa Monica where he has lived in the same apartment for 15 years just four miles from an FBI office?
Why didn’t the feds just tell us one of Santa’s elves called the tip in from the North Pole? That might explain Bulger’s creepy beard and Catherine Greig’s Mrs. Clause-looking locks, wouldn’t it?
Last week, the feds indignantly defended the 16-year hunt for the Boston mobster who terrorized this city allegedly murdering, stealing and tarnishing the reputations of real lawmen by getting into bed with corrupt agents who were no better than government hacks — willing to do anything to protect their careers and bloated pensions.
But there are too many holes in the abysmal story we were told at an embarrassing press conference last week after Whitey Bulger’s capture to make the feds’ assertions stick.
Let me get this straight. Whitey is on the lam and he happens upon a swanky place just three blocks from the beach that just happened to be rent-controlled. Because rent-controlled apartments on the Pacific Ocean are so easy to come by, where the management apparently takes cash and doesn’t do background checks. In a neighborhood near Bulger’s niece, Mary. A short walk to a famous Boston-themed barroom Sonny McLean’s, where the owner is now selling T-shirts that read: “I saw Whitey at Sonny’s.” The name must have reminded Whitey of his old boss, Buddy McLean, the first leader of the Winter Hill Gang.
I smell an FBI safe house. Don’t forget an FBI tip sent Bulger on his merry way in the first place.
Then there is the public service announcement itself. The FBI had targeted plastic surgery and dental trade magazines, but up until June 20, no one thought to reach out to the legions of American women who might have sat next to Greig as they had their roots touched up in local hair salons. Were there no women on the Bulger Task Force?
The FBI has insisted repeatedly it didn’t know where Whitey and his moll were before last week. The agency swears it got some Icelandic tip from their daytime women’s talk TV campaign. It may be true that the new crop of agents and federal prosecutors are clean and wanted Whitey. But there are too many unanswered questions about how he got away in the first place that should make U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz want to hand this case to an independent body, so the taint of the dirty Boston FBI office of the past does not leave a stench all over the work the feds are doing in this city now.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1348178
By Michele McPhee | Monday, June 27, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by John Wilcox
Iceland. Seriously? We are expected to believe that a woman from Iceland watching TV spotted Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend in Santa Monica where he has lived in the same apartment for 15 years just four miles from an FBI office?
Why didn’t the feds just tell us one of Santa’s elves called the tip in from the North Pole? That might explain Bulger’s creepy beard and Catherine Greig’s Mrs. Clause-looking locks, wouldn’t it?
Last week, the feds indignantly defended the 16-year hunt for the Boston mobster who terrorized this city allegedly murdering, stealing and tarnishing the reputations of real lawmen by getting into bed with corrupt agents who were no better than government hacks — willing to do anything to protect their careers and bloated pensions.
But there are too many holes in the abysmal story we were told at an embarrassing press conference last week after Whitey Bulger’s capture to make the feds’ assertions stick.
Let me get this straight. Whitey is on the lam and he happens upon a swanky place just three blocks from the beach that just happened to be rent-controlled. Because rent-controlled apartments on the Pacific Ocean are so easy to come by, where the management apparently takes cash and doesn’t do background checks. In a neighborhood near Bulger’s niece, Mary. A short walk to a famous Boston-themed barroom Sonny McLean’s, where the owner is now selling T-shirts that read: “I saw Whitey at Sonny’s.” The name must have reminded Whitey of his old boss, Buddy McLean, the first leader of the Winter Hill Gang.
I smell an FBI safe house. Don’t forget an FBI tip sent Bulger on his merry way in the first place.
Then there is the public service announcement itself. The FBI had targeted plastic surgery and dental trade magazines, but up until June 20, no one thought to reach out to the legions of American women who might have sat next to Greig as they had their roots touched up in local hair salons. Were there no women on the Bulger Task Force?
The FBI has insisted repeatedly it didn’t know where Whitey and his moll were before last week. The agency swears it got some Icelandic tip from their daytime women’s talk TV campaign. It may be true that the new crop of agents and federal prosecutors are clean and wanted Whitey. But there are too many unanswered questions about how he got away in the first place that should make U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz want to hand this case to an independent body, so the taint of the dirty Boston FBI office of the past does not leave a stench all over the work the feds are doing in this city now.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1348178
