Shameful

"This is today's FBI"

Isn't that how the old saying went? Turns out that "today's FBI" circa 1965 wasn't something to be particularly proud of. According to this Hartford Courant article, 4 men (or their estates; two are deceased) are suing the Federal government because Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, in their zeal to cultivate an informant in the Mob, allowed them to be convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that they did not commit.

The scary part of this is that no one would have ever known, if a separate investigation into law enforcement corruption hadn't turned up thousands of records supporting the mens' case, including evidence of illegal FBI wiretapping and lying on official reports in order to help frame the men.

Some of this stuff is absolutely chilling. Seems that one of the actual murderers in the case, Joseph Barboza, was believed to be responsible for 21 murders, yet the FBI helpfully relocated him to San Francisco as one of the first men in the Witness Protection Program. Barboza was gunned down there in the 1970s. Surprise, surprise. You can thank the Justice Department if people like this character or Sammy "The Bull" Gravano end up being your neighbors. I bet they tell some amazing stories around the holiday barbecue.

Did the Federal Government own up to its errors and try to make it up to the men wrongly sent to jail for decades? Of course not. According to the article,

"Last week, Justice Department lawyer Bridgette Bailey-Lipscomb, in an opening statement that lasted less than 10 minutes, disputed the lawsuit's contention that Rico and other FBI agents coached Barboza to perjure himself in the Deegan trial. She also argued that the federal government should not be responsible for convictions in state court.Bailey-Lipscomb said that the FBI had no obligation to provide information about its relationship with Flemmi and Barboza to state authorities. Nonetheless, she said, the FBI did provide some information, but she did not say what it was."

Let's parse this, shall we? "We didn't have to provide any info about this case to state prosecutors, but we did anyway. We're not going to tell you what we provided, but it doesn't matter, since we're not responsible anyway". This is what the government lawyer said in court about this case LAST WEEK. They're still trying to duck responsibility for this mess. At first they said that they couldn't be sued over this at all. Fortunately, a judge and the First Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

Probably the coldest part of this whole story is in a deposition given by H. Paul Rico, a disgraced former FBI agent who died in jail while awaiting trial in a separate murder case. Quoted in the article:

"Pressed about the consequences of convicting an innocent man such as Salvati, Rico snapped: "What do you want? Tears?" Salvati and his wife sat just 20 feet away, listening with expressions of horror".

Nice.

Memo to the Federal Government: Settle this case. Haven't you screwed this up enough?