When Government Meets Organized Crime
...But the public's missing something more valuable than mob drama: "This trial is not just about organized crime," writes the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan, it involves "the corruption of the federal government — the same government banning you from this trial — in the form of a disgraced FBI. It's a civics lesson worthy of us all."

Indeed, from 1975 to 1990, in its quest to bring down the Italian mob, the FBI's Boston office became partner in crime to Bulger's "Winter Hill Gang." A 2004 House Committee on Government Reform report, "Everything Secret Degenerates," found that "a number of men were murdered because they came to the government with information incriminating informants" and the FBI tipped them off.

"When you give us information on one person and they got killed," then a second, and a third, Bulger's partner Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi testified in 2008: "I mean, he's an FBI agent, he's not stupid."...