Informing For the FBI
By Josh Resnek
What do you say to a friend you’ve done business with, or shared secrets with, or possibly did something illegal with, when you discover this friend has been informing the FBI all about you to save his own skin?
The mayor knows a bit about what to do.
He made a decision, told no one about it – no one – because to reveal what he had done would not be understood by people who believed when they were dealing with him only to find out that others in law enforcement were involved.
When you make this type of deal with the FBI, as the mayor did, it can be problematic.
What does this mean?
Dealing with the FBI, and keeping it a secret, is a bit like having a double life and trying to hide it.
The mayor has been leading that double life, or so it appears.
It is no longer hidden.
The mayor crossed an invisible line with the gangster element he seems to so enjoy cavorting with, making alleged deals, playing cards, and breaking bread together with the unknowing when he decided to give the FBI information..
Indeed.
A proffer agreement is not an immunity agreement, but this is where the comparison fails.
“It’s not an immunity agreement,” the mayor will likely try to explain.
Talking with the FBI secretly is a big step to take in order to protect oneself from their grasp. It is not a crime to cooperate with the FBI. The crime is to do so and to hurt the people you are compromising in order to save yourself.
“I just wanted to make it possible to tell the FBI some secrets I told them I’d give them some information about others from time to time, and maybe, just maybe, the FBI might take the heat off of me,” he may well say.
Not a bad strategy, if you are willing to accept the consequences of giving up others to the authorities, especially if it saves your own welfare in the process. When some individuals have so much to hide about their own dealings past or present with the mayor, well it gets a bit hotter and nastier than tossing a drink in someone’s face when he informs the FBI about them.
Has the mayor gone over the line a little choosing to cooperate with the FBI? Will this help take the heat off him and onto the friends and associates he is telling stories about?
Telling stories about the crimes of others to the FBI to give yourself some breathing space in a hot FBI investigation could be used to even a score.
In some quarters, telling stories about others to save yourself is considered extremely bad behavior and a terrible strategy.
The mayor decided to talk to the FBI.
When he made an agreement with the government, which is revealed in all its treachery in the Leader Herald today, he understood exactly what he was doing. He made a deal because he had to save his own skin and felt there was no other way but to give up others.
No one knows this better than the mayor.
No one knows this better than those who he may have given up to the FBI.
Maybe he hasn’t given anyone up to the FBI although records we have indicate otherwise.
The mayor understands how the underworld works, and some say and allege, as the Sterling Suffolk amended complaint does, that the mayor did things he might or should be indicted for, and yet he hasn’t been indicted.
In fact, many people around here who claim to know about the mayor’s alleged private deals claim he appears invincible. How do you remain invincible in this world when the FBI is chasing you and your colleagues all over the city? Invincibility comes at a price. Cooperating with an investigation can often make you invincible, at least for a little while.
How else can the mayor or anyone explain the FBI failing to come in and swoop down, make arrests?
Some people will claim this proffer agreement he signed with the government doesn’t tell the whole story about the mayor’s alleged cooperation.
People say, and documents reveal, the FBI knows more about the mayor than he likes to believe and certainly more than he wants to tell us.
The mayor likely lives in fear of the FBI and this ongoing investigation that does not appear to want to go away.
Again, this explains why he’s spent so much and continues to spend his precious cash on criminal attorneys. Who pays criminal attorneys the big money he’s been paying unless they are close to a large problem?
The question around here among his detractors, and even among those who love him is this: How does he get away with everything he does?
This is a favorite theme often discussed in local circles.
Trading information with the FBI does not endear those who have something to hide to the mayor.
It petrifies those people in the first instance, and then in the second, they make a decision to stay away from the mayor lest they should be ensnared by the FBI.
The mayor will be inclined to defend his information association sharing agreement with the FBI.
He’ll say publicly that he wanted to identify all the bad guys and let the FBI know.
He’ll claim he was being a great mayor by doing so.
The only caveat to such expression from the mayor is that the FBI was and still may be after him and what’s worse, who knows exactly what he’s told the FBI about others?
He didn’t give the FBI information clandestinely to get a citizen of the year award.
Rather, he was being chased for a long time by the FBI, and he was forced or either decided voluntarily to trade some information in return for a kinder gentler look at him.
The decision he made to sign what is called a proffer with the US Attorney in Boston, didn’t protect him against indictment or prosecution for municipal corruption, and yet he has remained a free man, capable of doing whatever he wants.
How does he remain a free man, allegedly giving the FBI information about others?
Six years is a long time without a conviction – and the US Attorney’s office has gone a long while without successfully prosecuting its various investigations to the end – to indictment, to trial, to conviction.
The Everett stuff investigated by the FBI seems locked in a never ending time warp.
The mayor has been at the center of a great deal of the FBI’s effort, and to date, he’s remained free to do what he does all the time without the worry of being caught.
What exactly is that all about?
Only he knows and he isn’t about to admit anything or plead guilty or to indict himself.
The way the proffer works, well, all the help in the world the mayor gives to the FBI won’t stop the mayor from being indicted by the FBI if this is where things are heading.
You have cast your fate, and your friends, to the wind when you decide to talk with the FBI.