Where’s Whitey?

William Bulger is the former president of the Massachusetts Senate and the current president of the University of Massachusetts. He also is a loyal brother.

The recipient of this loyalty is brother James “Whitey” Bulger, head of Boston’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, accused of racketeer, extortionist, murderer and, for the last seven years, fugitive. That William refuses to even discuss with authorities knowledge he may have about Whitey’s whereabouts is loyalty gone tragically wrong, an affront to decency and the rule of law. For the families of perhaps as many as 22 murder victims it is an unforgivable insult.

It gets worse. William Bulger was subpoenaed to testify Friday before Congress, a Boston field hearing by the House Committee on Government Reform. He answered the subpoena and appeared before the committee. He then refused to testify, claiming protection from self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. The hearing, led by Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, promptly adjourned.

It’s worse because the interest of the committee is not to bring Whitey to justice for his heinous crimes (the torture and killing of innocent bystanders was an alleged specialty) or even to ascertain whether William committed perjury when he told a grand jury last year he hadn’t heard from his brother since just a few weeks after he went missing. It is to determine the extent to which Boston-area organized crime infiltrated and corrupted the Boston-area FBI.

Whitey Bulger went on the run in January 1995 after being tipped off by former FBI Agent John J. Connolly Jr. that he was about to be indicted. Connolly was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to 10 years in prison for tipping off Bulger and other mobsters about their indictments. There is strong evidence that FBI agents participated in manufacturing false evidence to convict innocent people for Winter Hill crimes. The four-year gap between Whitey’s disappearance and his placement on the most-wanted list is allegedly the result of some in the FBI not wanting him found since he might divulge damaging information about the agency.

Corruption and cover-up are never acceptable; the key role the FBI will play in homeland security and the total confidence it must enjoy among other government agencies and the public make it unacceptable. No matter how damaging the information he may divulge, Whitey Bulger must be found and heard.

The importance of this may not be readily apparent to the fugitive’s brother, but they should be to the members of Rep. Burton’s committee. Their vote to deny William Bulger a closed hearing, though made with good intentions and in the interest of public disclosure, should be rescinded. They should support his bid, which they previously opposed and which was rejected by a federal judge, for immunity from prosecution should his congressional testimony contradict anything he told the grand jury. There simply is more at stake here than misguided loyalty.