Читать книгу Black Mass - Dick Lehr - Страница 9

Introduction to the Paperback Edition

In 2000 we published the first edition of Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal. Much has happened since the initial publication. Many of the so-called mighty have fallen, ranging from corrupted FBI agents past and present to the upper echelon of the Bulger Gang. In the years since Black Mass a slew of other books have been published about Bulger and the FBI, creating, in effect, a Bulger genre all its own: books by other journalists, gangster tell-all books by former members of the Bulger gang, and, more recently, inside accounts by investigators who pursued Bulger only to confront a corrupted FBI blocking their path. The FBI agent at the center of the scandal, John J. Connolly Jr., was convicted on November 6, 2008 of second-degree murder for plotting with Bulger to kill a man who was set to cooperate with investigators against them. Connolly, now seventy-one, is imprisoned in a Florida jail. Most significantly, the central figure in the historic scandal, James J. “Whitey” Bulger Jr., after being a fugitive from justice since 1995 and on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, was captured on June 22, 2011 in Santa Monica, California, where he’d been hiding in plain sight while living as a retiree with his longtime companion, Catherine Greig. Black Mass is a narrative account of the FBI’s dark deal with Bulger, revealing its origins, Bulger’s reign of terror during the 1980s while protected by the FBI, and, finally, the public disclosure in the 1990s of the deep and toxic FBI corruption. With new developments has come new information, and we are grateful to have the chance to update the story of the FBI and Bulger that is Black Mass.

DICK LEHR AND GERARD O’NEILL

January 2012