G-Men and Gangsters

While the true story of the devil's bargain that the FBI entered into with the vicious murderers Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, leaders of Boston's Irish Mafia, is a compelling one, Spinale's book adds little to previous accounts. He traces the roots of one of the worst scandals in FBI history, stemming from a single-minded pursuit of La Cosa Nostra that led veteran federal agents to coddle criminals at least as culpable as those they sought. The catalogue of Bulger and Flemmi's crimes is a truly gruesome one, and the number of""good guys"" caught up in protecting them once they began providing information on their Italian counterparts is disillusioning. Students of John Dean's bestseller Worse Than Watergate will find the section detailing recent Bush administration efforts to keep the full story from reaching congressional oversight committees of interest. Despite Spinale's presumed access to insider secrets by virtue of his admitted status as a La Cosa Nostra associate, there's not much here that a reader of the many newspaper stories will learn. Those looking for better-written, less repetitive overviews of the whole sorry story--ones that do justice to its decades-spanning drama--should turn to Dick Lehr's Black Mass or Edward J. Mackenzie's Street Soldier.