A review by srash
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr
5.0
Read this after aspects of it were alluded to in the Southie memoir I read earlier this year, though I'd been wanting to read it for a long time.
Black Mass chronicles a truly shameful, decades-long maelstrom of corruption and dysfunction in the Boston FBI office. The main result is that the FBI turned a blind eye to the crimes of the city's most notorious gangster, Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, because he was an FBI informant.
Agents with ties to his South Boston neighborhood--or those who, for various reasons, were vulnerable to Bulger's and his friend's machinations--spectacularly violated basic informant handling protocols and even sabotaged other agencies' investigations into Bulger, which only helped Bulger stay out of jail and defeat his rival gangsters.
Basically, Bulger and his cronies flourished because nobody was willing to challenge the status quo or question the obvious irregularities too deeply. The result was an influx of drugs into the streets of Boston, the consolidation of Whitey's grip on the city, and the murder of more than one potential witness.Would actually be a good book for anyone in management to read to see what NOT to do.
Nobody comes out of this story looking good.
Black Mass chronicles a truly shameful, decades-long maelstrom of corruption and dysfunction in the Boston FBI office. The main result is that the FBI turned a blind eye to the crimes of the city's most notorious gangster, Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, because he was an FBI informant.
Agents with ties to his South Boston neighborhood--or those who, for various reasons, were vulnerable to Bulger's and his friend's machinations--spectacularly violated basic informant handling protocols and even sabotaged other agencies' investigations into Bulger, which only helped Bulger stay out of jail and defeat his rival gangsters.
Basically, Bulger and his cronies flourished because nobody was willing to challenge the status quo or question the obvious irregularities too deeply. The result was an influx of drugs into the streets of Boston, the consolidation of Whitey's grip on the city, and the murder of more than one potential witness.Would actually be a good book for anyone in management to read to see what NOT to do.
Nobody comes out of this story looking good.