Shortly after my discharge from the US Marine Corps in 1979, I returned to my home in Ireland and joined the Irish Republican Army. Sometime after that, I was ordered back to America by the IRA leadership to acquire weapons. When I got to Boston, I was introduced to republican sympathiser called John Connolly, an old man who hailed originally from County Galway. John didn’t have a criminal bone in his body, but after living a lifetime in Southie (the local vernacular for South Boston), he knew who some of the major criminals were. The IRA needed money, guns, and false driving licenses to buy more guns. Law-abiding citizens are a poor source for these items. If my mission was to succeed it was vital that this meeting went well. I describe it in the following edited extract from my memoir ‘The Yank’.
I first met Jim ‘Whitey’ Bulger when I was taken to Triple O’s tavern by a son-in-law of John Connolly. I had another IRA man called ‘Mark’ with me. I had met Mark through the IRA support network in America. He had been wounded while on active service in Ireland and was recuperating in the States.
Mark and I were shown a short film on the Irish Troubles in a back room of Triple O’s. We were then brought to a dingy upstairs office to meet Jim Bulger. I can’t remember when I first heard the name ‘Whitey’, but I recall being advised not to call him that to his face.
Shortly after that, Whitey Bulger and a group of men I later learned were Steve Flemmi, Kevin Weeks and Pat Nee met Mark and me in the Southie apartment where we were staying with republican sympathizers. We sat across from each other in the living room, sizing each other up. Everyone was courteous. It occurred to me that my accent might seem unusual, even suspicious, as it was more American than Irish. I hoped it would not cause them to doubt my bona fides as an IRA volunteer or even suspect I wasn’t who I purported to be.
It didn’t take a genius to determine who was the boss. Whitey did most of the talking on behalf of his team. I didn’t know Jim Bulger from a crow and I knew nothing about his criminal activities or operations, nor did I want to know. I had a vague notion he could help us acquire guns, but little more than that, and I didn’t really want to work with criminals. When I told Martin McGuinness that I was extremely uncomfortable with this operation, his succinct reply was, ‘Little old ladies in NORAID can’t get us M60 machine guns.’
Whitey spoke knowledgeably about the Troubles. He knew more about the topic than many people in Ireland living south of the border. He read a lot and asked sensible questions. Whitey wasn’t emotional about it like some Americans. He struck me as being intelligent and professional. I rapidly deduced that whatever criminal activity this guy was involved in, he wasn’t snatching handbags off grannies.
To say I didn’t trust him and his men was an understatement. It takes time to build a relationship. I also didn’t know what they could do for us or how far they were willing to go, but I doubted Whitey would jeopardize his own enterprise for our benefit. Still, any help they could give would be appreciated.
After an hour or so of conversation, Whitey handed me a wad containing $5,000 as a donation. I thanked him and placed it on the table in front of me. I took out a notebook and noted it down. I asked Mark to witness it. Pat Nee later told me that Whitey was impressed with this. Pat said that if I had taken the money and put it in my wallet, we would never have gotten another penny.
I couldn’t help glancing at a sea bag they had brought into the room. It was similar to the ones we used in the Marine Corps. I was curious as to what it contained. After handing over the money, one of Whitey’s men opened the bag and emptied it of weapons. There were at least a dozen pistols, including semi-automatics and revolvers. There was also an M1 carbine and a Chinese AK-47 with an under-slung folding stock. Pat Nee said the AK-47 was brought back from Vietnam by someone who had fought there. He told me he, too, had been ‘in-country’ with the Marines. I was tempted to tell him that I had served in the Corps but decided to bite my tongue until I knew him better.
Mark and I thanked them for the money and weapons. For all we knew, this could be the extent of their support. Nevertheless, we were grateful. It was far more than most gave. I decided to push the boat out and ask them if they knew of any way we could get false driving licenses. We needed them to purchase weapons from gun stores. A New York state license was best because, at that time, it did not include a photograph. However, a good forgery from another east coast state would suffice.
Whitey seemed animated by this and eager to help. He told me he would get someone to steal a driver’s license-making machine from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. This guy’s motivated! I thought. That particular resource, however, never materialized.
Whitey eyeballed us. ‘You guys look like a couple of Micks just off the boat. You gotta blend in around here.’ He handed Pat Nee a wad of cash and told him to have us looking like Southie boys by the next day. So Pat Nee took me and Mark shopping. We were fitted in classic 1980s gear – Members Only jackets, Calvin Klein jeans and cowboy boots. We certainly looked the part by the end of that day.
I lost track of the number of times someone in the States told me they knew a fellow who could ‘get us anything’. I was well aware that the only people who could get us anything were the FBI. If someone claimed they could supply arms, I wanted to know how they got them and why they were willing to sell to us. You cannot buy a man-portable surface-to-air missile from some guy on a bar stool.
While in New York, I was told that an Irishman had a contact who claimed to have a large number of M16 assault rifles for sale—brand new in the boxes. The inventory numbered around 900 weapons. I was immediately suspicious, so I sent a communication asking how the rifles had been acquired. A week later, a message returned with a cover story that seemed tantalisingly plausible.
Apparently, the weapons were stolen from a railway car that had been part of a freight train held up in or near an Indian reservation in upstate New York. A small gang of Native Americans occasionally robbed a stalled freight car if they could break into it. The weapons were being transported from the Colt factory in Hartford, Connecticut. Military rifles, I was told, were often shipped under the radar as nondescript freight in trucks and trains because it was more secure to transport them this way than in openly marked containers that advertised their contents. The robbery was strictly opportunistic; the thieves hadn’t known the shipment contained rifles. There was severe heat from the Feds and they were keen to get rid of them at a reasonable price.
It seemed too good to be true. I returned to Boston and asked Pat Nee to organize a meeting with Whitey Bulger. I understood that Whitey had excellent police contacts at local, state and federal levels. I told Whitey the story and asked whether he could use those contacts to verify if such a theft of M16s had taken place. He got back to me three days later and informed me that the scenario was a complete fabrication—the robbery never happened. I was being set up. It wouldn’t be my last close shave.
As time went by, I got to know Whitey better and began to hear stories about him from some of his men. He could be impulsively generous but just as impulsively deadly. One story I heard was that he needed a man killed but didn’t want any suspicion to rebound on him. So he entered the man’s apartment, placed a blow torch, sleeping pills and a bottle of whiskey on a coffee table and told the man to choose his method of murder. Whitey made it clear there was no way out— it was going to be one way or the other. After a few hours of crying and begging, the man eventually downed the pills and whiskey. His death was classed as suicide. The story may be apocryphal, but something about Jim Bulger made me believe he was capable of it.
I had to walk on eggshells. Whitey asked me to show him how to make an under-car booby trap bomb used by the IRA. This was an improvised explosive device that was attached under a target vehicle with a magnet. It contained a mercury tilt switch. The bomb would detonate when the car moved or hit a bump in the road.
I had to think quickly. We could not have Whitey Bulger killing people in Boston with technology linked to the IRA. I lied that I had no idea how to make one, that our engineering department manufactured them and all our volunteers had to do was place them on a target and remove the safety peg. I kicked the can down the road. I told him I would find someone in Ireland who would fly to Boston and show him how to make the booby trap. I knew that would never happen, but it gave me breathing space to work on other things.
Whitey suggested he could arrange for IRA men on the run to move to Boston, where he would supply them with false identifications, work and places to live. I knew what he was getting at. He saw himself with a small army of IRA hitmen indebted to him and under his control. That could never happen either.
One evening ( several months later) I was in the basement of a South Boston house belonging to someone who knew Whitey Bulger and let us use it while he was away. I was drilling out serial numbers on some AR-15s and Colt Commandos
It was an easy operation as the numbers are located on the magazine well and the holes bored through it did not affect the weapon in any way. I usually had help from Pat Nee and others while performing this task, but on this occasion, I was working alone.
Later that evening Whitey and Steve Flemmi came down the steps into the dimly lit basement and stood watching me for a while. We engaged in small talk as I worked. Suddenly, I felt a wave of paranoia sweep over me. It crossed my mind that if Whitey wanted me out of his way, for whatever reason, now was the time to do it. I felt alone, cornered and defenceless. None of the guns in the basement were loaded.
As I drilled and chatted, I remember thinking I should have taken my Colt Python revolver and hidden it beside me underneath a jacket or a towel. At the first hint of aggression, I could have grabbed it. Then again, the six-inch barrel on the Python might have made it unwieldy at such close quarters. A snub nose would be better and could fit into my pocket. I quietly swore to acquire one and not let it out of my reach in future.
I was still sore about Whitey’s pimp remark and his bullying of me and his girlfriend in her apartment. Not sore enough to shoot him over it—I’m not that precious—but angry that at some point he must have come to regard me, or my mission, with a degree of contempt. Otherwise, why would he have spoken like that? Was he jealous of my relationship with Pat Nee? Had he concerns about Pat and the Charlestown crew putting their heads together and coming up with plans that didn’t include him? A scheming mind incessantly presumes everyone around him is scheming also.
Despite his apparent civility, something about the vibe in that basement spooked me. Had I been armed and had Whitey made a threatening gesture, I would have killed him without a moment’s hesitation. When he left the basement with Steve, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I vowed I would never again place myself in such a vulnerable position.
Jim Bulger was giving us crucial help, but he thought like a criminal not a patriot. He didn’t grasp the political considerations we had to factor in when planning or conducting military operations. Nor did he have the type of personality that would tolerate all that aid going in one direction for long. I knew that if my Boston mission dragged on without something in it for him, I would eventually wear out my welcome.
I sometimes had the feeling that Whitey was sizing me up, that he didn’t quite know what to make of me. On more than one occasion, it crossed my mind that gun-running activities on his patch could one day cause him difficulties he would need to resolve. Pat Nee was sincere and highly invested in our project, which took him away from work more profitable for Whitey. I wondered what would happen if my mission ever seriously conflicted with Whitey’s operation. I suspected I could end up in a lobster pot at the bottom of Boston harbour. Eventually, the IRA would send someone looking for me. All Whitey had to say was, ‘Jeez, I gave John $200,000 to bring over to you guys. Ain’t you seen him?’
I never trusted Whitey and could never relax in his company. I was a soldier… but Whitey Bulger was a killer.
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From THE YANK by John Crawley, published by Melville House on Sept. 6, 2022.
