|
November 6, 2008.
MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Former FBI agent John Connolly was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder for leaking information to Boston mobsters that led to the 1982 shooting death of a gambling executive who also had ties to gangsters.
Former FBI afent John Connolly showed no reaction as he was convicted of tipping off Boston mobsters.
Jurors deliberated less than three days before delivering the verdict following a two-month trial.
The jury acquitted Connolly of conspiracy, but he still faces life in prison when sentenced December 4.
Prosecutors said former World Jai-Alai president John Callahan was killed after Connolly warned gangsters that Callahan might implicate them in other slayings. Boston mob kingpins James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi were FBI informants handled by Connolly.
Connolly, who showed no emotion when the verdict was read, long denied involvement in Callahan's killing.
Connolly was convicted in 2002 of racketeering because of his relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, including a 1995 tip that enabled Bulger to escape arrest and begin a life on the run that continues to this day. Bulger is one of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives.
The story that unfolded over the past two months in a Miami courtroom spanned more than two decades of Boston's underworld, a tale that has already spawned several books and was the basis for the 2006 Martin Scorcese film "The Departed." Matt Damon played a crooked Connolly-like law enforcement officer and Jack Nicholson was the Bulger-esque Irish-American mobster.
Connolly retired from the FBI in 1990 and was later indicted on federal racketeering and other charges stemming from his long relationship with Bulger and Flemmi, who paid the agent $235,000 over the years for protection, according to trial testimony.
In a case considered one of the FBI's worst failures Connolly was convicted in 2002 and is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence in the corruption case. He was indicted in 2005 in the killing of Callahan, 45, whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport in August 1982. He had been shot at least twice.
Confessed mob hit man John Martorano testified that he shot Callahan -- at one time a good friend -- based on Connolly's warning that the gangsters would probably all go to prison if Callahan talked to the FBI about an Oklahoma businessman's killing a year earlier.
Defense lawyer Manuel Casabielle insisted that Connolly was innocent, that his job as a top FBI organized crime-buster meant dealing with unsavory characters -- "top-echelon informants" in FBI parlance -- who possessed sensitive information about top Mafia kingpins in Boston.
"Him and other agents like him were the tip of the spear in the fight against the Mafia," Casabielle told jurors in closing arguments.
But Flemmi, Martorano and other mob figures testified that Connolly made sure the gang was shielded from prosecution for numerous crimes, even multiple murders, and supplied information about possible turncoats or "rats" in their own ranks that needed elimination. Prosecutors said at least two other men who were FBI informants died violently because of Connolly's leaks.
"John Connolly swore an oath to the FBI and the United States of America," said prosecutor Michael Von Zamft. "He gave up that public trust because he decided he would rather be a gangster than an FBI agent."
Callahan was killed, according to testimony, because Connolly told them the FBI was about to apply pressure on Callahan to give up information about the 1981 killing of World Jai-Alai owner Roger Wheeler in the parking lot of a country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The gangsters feared Callahan would not hold up and might confess to the FBI that they were responsible for Wheeler's slaying. Callahan had wanted Wheeler dead so he could retake control of World Jai-Alai.
Flemmi is serving a life prison sentence and admitted to 10 murders. Martorano cut a deal with prosecutors by agreeing to testify against Connolly, and spent 12 years in prison after admitting to 20 murders, including the killings of Wheeler and Callahan. Martorano is now a free man.
The link below is the source of the following excerpts regarding manipulation of precious metals prices (to suppress them) by three alleged major banks.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/93744-precious-metals-manipulation-lawyers-prepare-for-battle?source=yahoo
It’s concluding paragraph is as follows:
“Market manipulation is, of course, a felony level offense. We don’t yet know who the perpetrators are, but it is reasonable to assume, from the fact that they were privy to the most sensitive information, that they are very well connected. That is the only way they would have known of the upcoming central bank currency intervention. In all likelihood, therefore, no help will come from the U.S. Justice Department or the CFTC. Some official help, however, might come from some of the more honest and aggressive of the state district attorneys, and/or attorney generals. State based criminal charges could be brought, based upon violation of state blue sky laws, regardless of the refusal of federal authorities to act. For the most part, however, victims will need to lead the charge, possibly with a RICO based civil class action that could include hefty awards of punitive or triple damages.
More excerpts are as follows (and the full article can be accessed with the link above; at issue is the covert workings of organized crime in US financial institutions):
Word on the street is that previously silent victims of precious metal manipulation are now, for the first time, grouping together to do battle in the courts of the United States of America. Class action lawsuits are being planned against the suspected manipulators of the gold and silver markets. What is the basis of the lawsuits?
About two weeks ago, on August 18, 2008, I published an article titled “The Disconnect Between Supply and Demand in Gold & Silver Markets”. In the article, I explained how relatively small amounts of money can be strategically used to collapse the price of multi-billion dollar commodities markets, such as gold and silver. In short, unscrupulous manipulators can use either fictional silver/gold, or gold “swapped” to them by Central Banks, to create an artificial supply. This fake “supply” can then be strategically used to attack the price, on the futures markets, which, in turn, will profoundly affect the spot price. Collapsing the spot price can, in turn, destroy investor confidence, market stability, and the willingness of more conservative investors to take large permanent positions in precious metals. After collapsing a market, using the techniques described, unscrupulous manipulators can buy back their short contracts, from shell-shocked long position holders, at a profit.
Soon after my article was published, hard evidence of a vast change in short positioning began to emerge. The first discovery was made by tireless silver market researcher, Ted Butler. The data he found led to yet more work, and, soon, similar activities were revealed in the gold market. All this begs the question. Why would a handful of banks suddenly have the infinite wisdom to take incredibly large short positions, immediately before the unexpected rise in the value of the U.S. dollar, and the collapse of precious metals prices? Remember, these are probably the same players who got us, and themselves, into the credit crisis….
….None of these factors can stand alone, of course, but, together, they constitute a coordinated and highly effective effort to prop up the dollar. The U.S. dollar’s upward surge is obviously NOT based upon fundamentals. It is based on coordinated currency intervention. The rally is being used, by our Orwellian double-speak Federal Reserve, and its coordinating foreign central bankers, to “break the back” of anti-dollar, pro-gold market sentiment.
What they fail to realize is that the dollar is not merely the victim of negative market psychology. It is the victim of many years of corruption, within the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, including repeated FMOC action that has sacrificed the good of the nation, in favor of a small group of favored Wall Street bankers. When the coordinated efforts relax, the U.S. dollar, being an incredibly flawed currency, will fall deeply. We must remember that there is an unsustainable $750 billion dollar per year current account deficits, enormous federal budget deficits, and a failing economy that continues to fall, deeper and deeper, into a broad downturn.
The hollowed out economy of the United States of America is no longer efficient enough to sell manufactured goods into the world marketplace, unless its currency is allowed to deeply depreciate. Therefore, this currency intervention cannot continue permanently. Manufacturing for export has been, up until the intervention, the only bright spot in the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve and its friends are now busy destroying that bright spot, in the interest of helping a few favored banking institutions. Part of the reason for the timing of the current dollar intervention may be a desire to help Lehman Brothers executives sell their company to the Koreans for a nice price. This attitude, however, and the Fed’s consistent actions in favoring some financial institutions over others, permeates Fed thinking, and has led to the current crisis. In the long run, the same thinking will lead to the long term downfall of the U.S. dollar as an international medium of exchange. The abuse of public funds to favor one institution over another is an important reason to shut down the Federal Reserve, permanently.
When the currency intervention ends, a new round of U.S. dollar depreciation will begin. The currency will fall much lower than before. In their turn, gold and silver will rise much higher than anyone is now imagining. Now is an excellent time for dollar holders to unload dollar denominated assets. Those assets will start heavily depreciating when currency intervention ends, and gold and silver will go up. If you buy precious metals now, the world’s central bankers will be paying part of your bill. If you wait, you will have to pay the entire bill yourself, which, simply put, means you will pay a higher price.
We are currently in a “sweet spot” for buying precious metals, because, as the world’s economy progressively gets into worse condition, and as central banks, all over the world, progressively loosen monetary policy in response, more and more paper money will be chasing the same amount of real goods.
But, let’s get back to the discussion of the 3 perpetrator banks, who wrote all those shorts, right before the dollar began taking off. They probably had inside information about the currency intervention. By taking advantage of it, they achieved several purposes.
First, by collapsing precious metal pricing, they shell-shocked most “long” futures participants. This allowed the perpetrators to unwind tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars (when we add the invisible, but much larger, derivative trading world of inter-institutional “dark pools”) worth of short positions that they had written at much higher prices. The unwound positions are much larger than anyone now realizes because they include, not only direct bank assets directly, but, also, off-balance sheet entities – short positions owned indirectly, through controlled entities that are not be formally listed as “banks” inside CFTC’s position papers.
Second, they were able to carry out their own wishes and that of the politician-economists at the Federal Reserve. There is an ongoing need to suppress gold and silver prices so as to support dollar hegemony. The Fed’s primary dealer system runs a closed show, in which the U.S. dollar must be the dominant world currency. If it loses that status, they lose their ability to profoundly affect and manipulate markets worldwide, including, most importantly, on the American stock market. The Federal Reserve and its client banks do not enjoy unfettered access to unlimited amounts of gold, and the U.S. Treasury no longer holds any silver at all. So, they must settle for inducing heavy crashes, now and again. While this technique cannot stop the rise in value of the monetary metals, nor their inevitable return to the basis of international exchange, it can and does slow that rise. High levels of volatility discourage highly conservative investors from taking large permanent positions in gold and silver, as all financial institutions and people always did, prior to the time that the price became volatile, during less manipulated times.
Third, and finally, they did what most people do with illegal inside information that can be converted to cash. They made a lot of money by taking very large short positions immediately before a known price crash. Direct profit to their bottom line, not including the unwinding of other short positions, amounted to several billion dollars, at minimum.
Market manipulation is, of course, a felony level offense. We don’t yet know who the perpetrators are, but it is reasonable to assume, from the fact that they were privy to the most sensitive information, that they are very well connected. That is the only way they would have known of the upcoming central bank currency intervention. In all likelihood, therefore, no help will come from the U.S. Justice Department or the CFTC. Some official help, however, might come from some of the more honest and aggressive of the state district attorneys, and/or attorney generals. State based criminal charges could be brought, based upon violation of state blue sky laws, regardless of the refusal of federal authorities to act. For the most part, however, victims will need to lead the charge, possibly with a RICO based civil class action that could include hefty awards of punitive or triple damages.
|
