Keller @ Large: Billy Bulger, Others Were In Denial About Whitey's "Reign Of Terror"
BOSTON (CBS) - The Bulger family name runs deep in Massachusetts. Whitey's brother William served as senate president and the head of UMass.
I have followed the Bulger story with a mounting sense of amazement and disgust over the degree to which a cross-section of our community, from powerful politicians to journalists to folks on the street, played pretend for decades about the carnage wrought by one of history's most vicious criminals.
Whitey's little brother William was far from the only Bostonian in denial about his reign of terror.
Read: The Bulger Indictment (.pdf)
"While I worried about my brother, I now realize that I didn't fully grasp the dimensions of his life," said William Bulger at his congressional hearing in 2003.
In the years before the decomposed bodies of his victims began to emerge from their shallow graves around the city, Whitey was routinely excused as a townie Robin Hood, a criminal, yes, but one who looked after his own.
WBZ's Jon Keller is at large:
"We're talking about a community and a city that was hoodwinked for years into the idea that he was some kind of Robin Hood figure," said Dick Lehr, an author.
Read: Bulger Left "Trail Of Bodies"
Lehr co-authored the definitive treatment of Whitey's unholy alliance with the FBI.
"The only drug Whitey didn't like moving through Southie was a drug he didn't get a cut from," said Lehr.
And for his participation in the code of silence about Whitey's depravity, brother William also paid a price.
His plum position as president of UMass crumbled under him in 2003 after his disastrous testimony at this the congressional hearing into the Bulger/FBI scandal, where it emerged that William Bulger once recommended corrupt FBI agent John Connolly, Whitey's in-house protector, for the job of Boston Police Commissioner.
"The enormous harm that flowed from Whitey Bulger and his ties to the FBI is almost incalculable," said Lehr. "We're not talking about corruption in a single case or investigation, we're talking about corruption as a way of life here."
Timeline: A Life Of Crime
"Whitey Bulger was closer to Hannibal Lecter than to Robin Hood," added Lehr.
There are all different types of corruption, including of course the obvious ones that Whitey and the FBI engaged in. But, don't forget about the corruption of negligence, when the rest of us turn away from egregious criminality on the morally corrupt presumption that if we don't see it, it didn't really happen.
