>>11776961 lb
Why does it look like a g at the end of the redaction…you need a surname ending in g.
weiner
Durham old article 2001
But interesting
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-01-28-0101295017-story.html
"So far, as a special prosecutor in Boston, Durham has identified enough potential grand jury targets to become something of a full employment service for the defense bar. Defense lawyers, having belatedly reached the conclusion that his investigation is for real, are now scrambling to figure him out."
"Two and one-half years ago, then-U.S. Attorney General Janet C. Reno appointed Durham to explore allegations that, for three decades, FBI agents and police officers in Boston have been in bed with the mob. In particular, he is looking for crimes committed by agents working with James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, two murderous gangsters who served as FBI informants for a combined 50 years.
What Durham has found to date is nothing less than sensational, judging from what has become part of the public record.
Among other things, he has accused a decorated FBI agent of setting up at least three murders and he is examining evidence suggesting that a second agent might have participated in another – the execution of a former owner of World Jai Alai Inc., once one of the country's leading parimutuel businesses. What's more, he has charged state and local police officers in Massachusetts with secretly helping Bulger and Flemmi. A half dozen bodies have been unearthed from secret graves scattered around the city."
2001 Durham article
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-01-28-0101295017-story.html
""He's obviously a very fierce competitor," Cardinale said. "But he's not a zealot. And he does it by the rules. He is very professional. He is courteous. I've been up against them all over the country and I'd put him in the top echelon of federal prosecutors. He's such a decent guy you can't hate him. That can make it hard to get motivated."
The view from within law enforcement is even less complicated.
"There is no more principled, there is no more better living, there is no finer person that I know of or have encountered in my life," said Richard Farley, a former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's New Haven division."
"In 1989, someone fired a .22-caliber bullet into William "The Wild Guy" Grasso's brain and dumped his body in a thicket of poison ivy near the Connecticut River. That, in turn, provoked a frenzy of court-authorized, electronic bugging because, at the time of his death, Grasso was underboss of New England's Patriarca crime family.
The bugs resulted in horrible recordings because gangsters have learned to turn up the radio while they whisper. Poor recordings became stacks of lousy transcripts riddled by the parenthetical word "unintelligible." Normally, senior prosecutors do not concern themselves with transcribing FBI audiotapes. Durham does.
"John is a perfectionist," said Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin, a former prosecutor who worked the Grasso case with Durham.
"Sometimes he'll look over a transcript and he won't be satisfied," Devlin said. "Of course, the agents say he can hear grass grow. He does have, actually, remarkable hearing. It's like Ted Williams seeing the seam on the ball turn."
By deciphering a phrase that had been written off as unintelligible, Durham turned up a piece of evidence supporting the critical prosecutorial contention that mobsters in Connecticut and Rhode Island were working together."
"With mobsters around New England linked, Durham could build a regional racketeering case against those eventually arrested for Grasso's murder. He ultimately convicted mobsters elsewhere of crimes committed by associates in Connecticut.
Somehow, Durham has remained cynicism-free over a quarter century of jailing professional felons. The man who remarked that his four sons can attend college wherever they choose so long as the school has a "Cross" in its name once fired off an angry note to a Connecticut bishop after a priest appeared in court as a character witness for a Ku Klux Klansman.
He likes to hunt ducks, work trout with a fly rod and still looks fit. He has thinning hair, steel-framed glasses and probably a closet full of gray suits. He has a tart sense of humor and, despite a daunting professional schedule, is a fixture at wakes and retirements. He takes Lent seriously and rarely misses Mass on Sunday.
But there are few glimpses of his private life. Asked if he would cooperate with a journalist writing about him, he volunteered to make available "all the information to which members of the fourth estate are entitled under freedom of information laws." Pressed, he said: "You know, I'm not the only person working on this case. Why don't you write about the others. They deserve credit.""
""You underestimate Durham at your own peril," said Hugh Keefe, a New Haven defense lawyer."
2001 Durham article
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-01-28-0101295017-story.html
"Through the 1980s and '90s, Durham prosecuted or supervised every organized crime case in Connecticut. His team contributed critical evidence to the conviction in New York of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. He conceived the strategy that put Connecticut's big cities a decade ahead of those in neighboring states in eradicating violent urban crack gangs a strategy that was later adopted elsewhere in the country. He demoted himself to assistant U.S. attorney about two years ago guilt, friends said, over spending too much time in Boston.
"John was given that thing in Boston, I am quite convinced, because he has a reputation for being above the fray, of being absolutely incorruptible and of absolutely calling things the way he sees them," said Ira Grudberg, a defense lawyer in New Haven. "Despite the fact that he can be a hard ass about certain things, I believe he is a real straight shooter."
Evidence produced during a federal criminal trial in the late 1990s suggested that a group of senior FBI agents, over a 30-year period, established a bizarre alliance with what was arguably New England's most ruthless criminal outfit.
For years, rumors flew in Boston that some criminals were committing murders and obstructing justice with FBI protection. It was suspected that men were wrongly convicted of crimes because the real criminals worked for the FBI.
The bureau dismissed the rumors as fantasy. Defense lawyers struggled futilely to prove them. Detectives from states as disparate as Connecticut, Oklahoma and Florida worked a series of murders connected to the jai alai industry and wound up with nothing but shared suspicion of the FBI and bitter knowledge that their cases dead-ended in Boston.
A specially selected task force of investigators from around the country, operating under his direction, now appears on the way to succeeding where earlier investigations failed. Collectively, allegations in the string of indictments Durham has obtained so far present an incredible picture: Two supposed FBI informants put law enforcement to work for them. There is evidence that agents set up men for gangland murders for as little as a diamond engagement ring and a few thousand dollars."
"Not surprisingly, the task force has met with resistance. It has come from FBI officials interested in protecting themselves and Massachusetts detectives afflicted by law enforcement's peculiar institutional jealousies. But longtime associates describe Durham as determined to push on, even if he is increasingly put off by what his task force is finding.
In the early 1990s, a scrap of paper containing Durham's home address was found in the wing of the Hartford jail holding a group of mobsters judged sufficiently ruthless to be denied bail. Durham supervised their indictments and was preparing their prosecution.
Word moved quickly through the law enforcement grapevine. Heavily armed officers converged on the home and Durham was greeted in his own driveway by a shotgun-carrying agent.
But there are limits to what even the most heavily starched agent can take, and a prosecutor who insists on separate checks for coffee sometimes needs to be brought up short.
When a foursome of detectives won Red Sox tickets at a law enforcement golf tournament, but couldn't make it to Fenway Park, they gave the seats to Durham, whose deepest flaw may be the Red Sox. This occurred at a time when Foxwoods Resort Casino was experiencing a run of bad press after a couple of gangsters were trying to insinuate themselves into casino operations.
Durham snatched the tickets, took his sons and spent the found money on overpriced sweatshirts.
Back at work, there was a letter in his box a forgery, it turned out, on filched stationery from a high casino executive. The casino was thrilled, the letter said, that the man who would supervise any casino case could use its complimentary seats. In the future, they were his for the asking.
The big laugh the detectives planned ended up as a frantic search through outgoing mail at the U.S. attorney's office. Durham had mailed a check and apologetic letter to the casino before anyone could spring the joke on him.
At the press conference, Durham finally couldn't avoid a question.
"Does the Department of Justice have the stomach to pursue this investigation to its conclusion?" one of the reporters asked, meaning will the government find some excuse to shut down the case to prevent further shredding the FBI's credibility?
It was the only question Durham answered.
"The government absolutely has the stomach," he said."
Durham article 2009
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918738,00.html
"Colleagues say Durham is thorough and cautious in deciding whether a case deserves to be prosecuted. But once he fixes on a target, the veteran lawyer usually catches his prey."
"Led a task force to go after Hartford street gangs in 1992. Also spearheaded mob prosecutions of the Gambino, Genovese and Patriarca crime families.
•Led numerous public corruption investigations in Connecticut, including that of former Governor John Rowland, who resigned in 2004 and pleaded guilty to accepting gifts and vacations from contractors doing business with the state. He served a year in prison."
"At the request of then-Attorney General Reno, investigated whether notorious Boston mobsters James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi had corrupted the FBI agents whom they served as informants. That probe led to the conviction of retired FBI agent John Connolly Jr., sentenced to 10 years in prison for helping the two avoid prosecution. The investigation helped inspire the Martin Scorsese film The Departed.
• In 2000 he uncovered FBI documents showing four convicted murderers had been framed by agents in the 1960s. Two of the men were released, and later won a $100 million civil judgment against the government. The other two had died in prison."
"Nobody in this country is above the law, an FBI agent or otherwise, and ultimately the ends do not justify the means.""
— Unusual public remarks at press conference the day former FBI agent John Connolly was convicted in 2002. (Boston Globe, January 7, 2008)"