Bulger IRA links laid bare in Boston trial and recent book
By JAMES O'SHEA, IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Sunday, July 21, 2013, 7:33 AM
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| James 'Whitey' Bulger |
An FBI agent gave Whitey Bulger 40 pounds of plastic explosives most of which was sent to the IRA a key witness in the Whitey Bulger trial has stated.
Steve Flemmi is the prosecution key witness already serving life without parole who says he accompanies Bulger on most of his murder sprees, including the strangling of Flemini’s own girlfriend, Debra Davies, because she knew the two men were FBI informers.
On Friday Flemmi testifies that in the 1980s, FBI agent John Newton gave him and Bulger a case of C-4 explosives to send to the IRA.
“It was a surprise when we got it,” Flemmi old the court adding that he believed that Newton, who was a former Green Beret, got the plastic explosives while in military training.
Newton had the explosives in his South Boston home and arranged for the two gangsters to come and pick it up. Newton has denied the accusation.
Links to the IRA have surfaced in the trial. Bulger was very close to senior IRA figure Joe Cahill, meeting him frequently in Boston after he smuggled him across the border from Canada on a supporters bus when the Boston Bruins hockey team were playing a Canadian side.
Bulger idolized Cahill according to Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy two Boston Globe writers who have written a definitive book on Bulger called “Whitey Bulger” Bulger had an Irish passport obtained legally through his grandparents nationality in 1987.
Following the explosives hand over, the IRA worked with the Bulger gang on getting more weapons which ended when the Valhalla trawler left Gloucester, Mass in 1984 chock full of guns and explosives for the IRA. The 7 and half tons of weapons was estimated to have cost $1 million dollars.
The arms were handed off to an Irish fishing trawler the Marita Ann but that boat was stopped and boarded by Irish navy officials tipped off by an IRA mole.
