federal prison where he will be for the rest of his life. welcome joe and bulger s defense attorney hank brennan. joe, you talked to him through his attorney. who is he and how was he able to control the underworld and law enforcement? that s the essential question of the movie. whitey bulger was a brutal vicious killer but he s also a guy who had law enforcement in his back pocket. he paid off people for information. the conventional story that has the boston media has invested itself in is he was a paid informant of the fbi. but there s evidence to suggest that he was not an informant at all. that the corruption and relationship was much more corrupt and that he was not an informant but he was actually using the fbi as a source of information and he was being protected by the department of justice because there was a credible threat that the head prosecutor at the time, jeremiah o sullivan, might be bumped off
i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i m still working. he s retired. i hope he s saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you re just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we ll help you get there. the most frightening and compelling american criminal of the past few decades is probably whitey bulger. he terrorized boston killing many, many people, ruling the underworld, and protecting himself via his tight relationship with the fbi and other law enforcement outfits. marty scorsese based jack nicholson s character in the departed on bulger and next year johnny depp will play
well, one of the interesting phenomenons at the trial is that i ve never seen at a trial where the defendant s the victim s families were cheering the defense on because the defense in cross-examination was trying to ferret out the truth about these very issues we re talking about. you had a trial where loved ones of victims were actually supportive of the defendant s counsel because it was they trying to get this information out about the nature of the corrupt relationship of the fbi and the department of justice. you know, clearly bulger s reign of terror had a tremendous impact on all of these victims. that s precisely the tragedy here because he could have been and should have been brought in, you know as early as 1979, should have been indicted. shouldn t have been allowed to
went into the facts of whether he was an informant, and i asked every single witness if they had ever heard him give them information. and every witness for the government that they called that was a former law enforcement officer said jim called said ji bulger never gave them information. whether there was one piece of information that ever led to a prosecution, the answer was no. those are really the facts. that s not my opinion. sir you got when you have a local journalist who has a stake in the claim of the bulger franchise and put his legacy as part of the fiction but you guys you guys are sensationalizing this in the robin hood folk lor and he was a murderer. was that money well spent for whiter bulger s defense? you never heard me call robin hood of anything. i called facts and because it upset certain people and attacks the institution in somehow people are offended. what you should look to the
bulger in a film called black mask. but whitey s real story is as compelling as hollywood could conceive. and he buried people there, buried people there and he went to sleep there. there were over 25 years where bulger ruled the organized crime world. he was never charged with even a misdemeanor. is the government excited about having bulger come back? some people certainly are. but there are others who have many sleepless nights about what james bulger s going to testify to. i asked the questions. i got the answers. i had contacts on the state police, the boston police, also on the fbi. when he was captured he came out of the elevator and faced law enforcement with their guns drawn and they were screaming at him get down on your knees, get down on your knees. whitey bulger s not going to get down on his knees for anybody. from a gripping new doc called whitey: the united states v. james j. bulger made by joe berlanger which includes some interesting phone italian vi