Disgusting Display: Federal Prosecutors Trash Honest G-Man At Bulger Trial

Robert Fitzpatrick was one of the honest agents at the FBI’s Boston field office who expressly advised the Bureau in the early 1980s to sever its relationship with Whitey Bulger as a useless informant, and it was deeply disturbing that federal prosecutors smeared this good man’s reputation yesterday for not ringing the alarm bells louder as reported by CNN:  “prosecutor Brian Kelly suggested Fitzpatrick was not interested in shutting down a bad informant: ‘weren’t you more concerned about your own bureaucratic career than rocking the boat?’”  That’s rich.  Doesn’t the federal government actually destroy whistleblowers who blow the whistle too loudly?
 

 
Last year Fitzpatrick released his book Betrayal which tells the story of how “Bulger used the FBI to get away with murder” as then reported by Chuck Leddy for The Boston Globe:

Fitzpatrick says that the FBI’s desire to eliminate the Italian mob clouded the judgment of many. While [Bulger handler John] Connolly and others inside the bureau inflated the importance of the information Bulger passed on, Fitzpatrick, who actually arrested Mafia kingpin Gennaro Angiulo in a North End restaurant, repeatedly tried to argue that Bulger, who was clearly a public danger in his own right, had limited value as an FBI “asset.” Fitzpatrick spent much of his time in the Boston office trying in vain to terminate the agency’s relationship with Bulger, his efforts blocked by higher-ups who viewed him as a troublemaker.