Re: [A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland... FBI

[sherrynstan@xxxxxxx]

As long as we are outing our respective governments for criminal collusion:

Sunday Herald - 07 December 2003 
The FBI used this guy to frame men for murders they did not commit ? to keep the real killers free. 30 years later, the cover-up goes on
>From N oel Young in Boston


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The idea of four innocent men going to prison for life for a murder they didn?t commit is horrifying enough by any standards. But the fact that Boston FBI agents knew of their innocence, set up the conviction, and allowed the injustice to roll on for more than 30 years, has horrified America.
It was part of a long-running FBI scheme to protect top-secret informants, who frighteningly were murderers themselves, it has now been revealed. Two of the men wrongly accused in 1965 of the killing of smalltime Boston crook Teddy Deegan, died in jail; the other two were finally released. Joseph Salvati after 30 years in jail and Peter Limone after 33 years incarceration. 

Now the FBI has been accused by a powerful congressional committee of causing ?incalculable damage to the public? by protecting their deadly informants over a period of 38 years. 

In a report running to 141 pages, entitled Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI?s Use Of Murderers As Informants, the House committee on government reform has branded the FBI?s behaviour as ?one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement?.

As a result of the programme, says the committee, ?FBI agents became corrupt, encouraged perjury in death penalty cases, let innocent men languish and die in prison, and allowed people to be murdered, all in the name of protecting informants?.

The committee reached a number of devastating conclusions: 

l Well over 20 murders were committed by FBI informants, among them by Boston?s most notorious gangster James ?Whitey? Bulger, who is now near the top of the FBI?s most wanted list. Bulger went on the run in 1995 after being tipped off by an FBI man. ?At least some law enforcement personnel, including officials in FBI Director J Edgar Hoover?s office were well aware that federal informants were committing murders,? says the report.

l To protect informants, federal law enforcement ?actively worked to prevent homicide cases being resolved? in states as far apart as Florida and California. 

l The Justice Department is even now using ?questionable means? to fight $2 billion (£1.15bn) in lawsuits from the families of those murdered. 

The heart of the committee?s case is the rigging of the evidence against the four men accused of the murder of Deegan.

The star witness against the four was Joseph ?The Animal? Barboza, a mob hit man and FBI informant, who lied convincingly that the four men in the dock had carried out the murder. 

An FBI man also gave the court false testimony. The reason for the frame-up: the FBI allegedly wanted to recruit one of the real killers as an informer.

The four were sentenced to life, which was to mean death in jail for two of them. 

Joseph Salvati, now 70 and completely exonerated, is living with his wife in a ?subsidised housing? one-bedroom apartment in Boston. He is suing the government for $300 million (£173m). So far no offer has been made. 

In his suit, Salvati says the FBI not only helped lay the blame for Dee- gan?s murder on him but fought later efforts to have his 1968 conviction overturned.

?Members of the FBI actively intervened in Mr Salvati?s efforts to commute his sentence, in an apparent effort to conceal their illegal conduct in securing his conviction,? says Salvati?s lawyer Victor Garo who has represented him throughout his imprisonment. 

Garo said Salvati?s enormous time in jail had taken a heavy toll on his wife and four children. ?Joseph Salvati was forced to watch his children grow up through visits in a prison visiting room.?

Salvati says the FBI let him and the others take the rap for the killers as they were attempting to persuade one of them, Vincent ?Jimmy? Flemmi, to become an informant.

Peter Limone, 69, freed in 2001, is also suing the government, accusing the FBI of helping to implicate him and the others despite knowing they were innocent.

Judge Nancy Gertner rejected a plea by the US government and a number of FBI agents earlier this year that Limone?s case be thrown out. 

?It is hard to conceive of accusations that shake the legal system closer to its foundation, that would do more to challenge this nation?s most basic assumptions of honesty, fairness, and trust in the administration of justice,? she wrote in her judgment in US District Court.

?If they prove true ? they offer a cautionary tale at a time when courts and legislatures seem more and more prone to arrogate unchecked authority to law enforcement officers and prosecutors ? all in the name of ?national security.? 

Louis Greco, the third framed man, died in prison in 1965.

The Boston Globe, described how an FBI agent talked chillingly about Greco?s conviction. 

Citing closed-door testimony from a former mafia boss Frank Salemme, the paper said that FBI man Dennis Condon had come into Salemme?s car repair shop with another FBI agent, H Paul Rico, for coffee and doughnuts.

According to the Globe, Condon had said: ?I wonder how Louie [Greco] likes it on death row ? he wasn?t even there when Deegan was killed.?

?Dennis was quite elated about the conviction,? said Salemme. He asked Condon how he could have testified at the trial of Greco, knowing that he was innocent. Salemme said Condon told him that Greco had killed ?plenty of others,? if he hadn?t killed Deegan.

In his suit, Limone is also seeking damages for himself and for the families of Greco and Henry Tameleo, the other prisoner who died in jail.

It seems justice catches up, even with rogue FBI men. John Connolly, whose name is dotted throughout the committee report, is already serving a 10-year sentence for racketeering and obstruction of justice. He is also the man who tipped off Whitey Bulger to go on the run.

Last month, retired FBI agent Rico ? who sneered ?What do you want, tears?? when asked about Salvati?s wrongful imprisonment ? was charged with murder and conspiracy in a 1981 killing, reportedly on the evidence of another murderer turned informer.

An FBI spokesman in Washington said that, under Director Robert Mueller, the agency had now embraced major reforms, and completely ?re-engineered? the agency?s informant programs .

The spokesman added: ?While the FBI recognises that there have been instances of misconduct by a few FBI employees, it also recognises the importance of human-source information in terrorism, criminal, and counter-intelligence invest igations.?