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FBI

• Originally published 08/13/2013

  Bulger guilty in gangland crimes

  BOSTON — James (Whitey) Bulger, the mobster who terrorized South Boston in the 1970s and ‘80s, holding the city in his thrall even after he disappeared, was convicted Monday of a sweeping array of gangland crimes, including 11 murders. He faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.The verdict delivers long-delayed justice to Mr. Bulger, 83, who disappeared in the mid-1990s after a corrupt agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation told him he was about to be indicted. He left behind a city that wondered if he would ever be caught — and even if the F.B.I., which had been complicit in many of his crimes and had relied on him as an informer, was really looking for him.“This was the worst case of corruption in the history of the F.B.I.,” said Michael D. Kendall, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Mr. Bulger’s associates. “It was a multigenerational, systematic alliance with organized crime, where the F.B.I. was actively participating in the murders of government witnesses, or at least allowing them to occur.”...

• Originally published 08/08/2013

  Natalie Zemon Davis: How the FBI Turned Me On to Rare Books

  Natalie Zemon Davis is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton and Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author most recently of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. (May 2008)My passion for history has been life-long: an unending fascination with the past and its meanings for us in our own time. Within that frame, I’ve had several turnings as I tried to give voice to people often ignored in the great historical narratives. Let me take as an example an event that seemed at first like a downturn.

• Originally published 06/18/2013

  FBI digging for bodies at home of "Jimmy the Gent" Burke

  NEW YORK — Investigators with jackhammers and shovels are digging under a New York City house once occupied by a famous gangster who is said to have buried victims in familiar places.The work started Monday the Queens neighborhood that was home to James Burke, a Lucchese crime family associate known as “Jimmy the Gent.” He was the inspiration for Robert De Niro’s character in the 1990 Martin Scorsese movie “Goodfellas.”Burke died behind bars in 1996, two decades after authorities say he masterminded a nearly $6 million robbery at New York’s Kennedy Airport — one of the largest cash thefts in American history....

• Originally published 06/09/2013

  Beverly Gage: Somewhere, J. Edgar Hoover Is Smiling

  Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded....There can be no question that COINTELPRO was more intrusive—if also more targeted—than today’s apparent efforts at mass technological surveillance by the National Security Agency. But there is at least one important distinction that makes today’s scandal far more disturbing. When the FBI launched COINTELPRO, it was acting alone, outside of the boundaries of established law. Today, what the NSA is doing appears to be legal—and nearly every branch of the government is complicit. Unlike Hoover’s activities, the NSA’s programs come to us with the seal of congressional and judicial approval. It didn’t take J. Edgar Hoover to engineer this scandal. We did it to ourselves....

• Originally published 05/14/2013

  NARA returns Landau docs

  BALTIMORE — FBI and National Archive officials are returning to their rightful owners more than 10,000 important historical documents seized during a massive theft investigation involving a well-known collector of presidential memorabilia.Barry Landau and assistant Jason Savedoff were caught stealing documents from the Maryland Historical Society almost two years ago. An investigation led authorities to a cache of thousands of stolen documents in Landau’s New York City apartment, including some containing a who’s who of American and international history. Both men pleaded guilty to their crimes and are serving prison sentences.Now, officials are returning the documents to 24 identified victims nationwide, including university libraries and historical societies in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. On Monday, they returned 21 items to the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore....

• Originally published 03/19/2013

  FBI: We know who carried out greatest art heist in American history

  The FBI knows who pulled off the biggest art heist in history, but they aren't naming names. And as for what become of the $580 million worth of masterpieces stolen exactly 23 years ago from a Boston museum, investigators say that trail went cold a decade ago. The FBI said Monday it would be "imprudent" to disclose the identities of the thieves who stole 13 works of art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, but said they belong to a criminal organization, and they said they believe the art work has "changed hands several times" over the years....   

• Originally published 03/18/2013

  F.B.I. Says It Has Clues in ’90 Boston Art Heist

  The F.B.I. said Monday that it believes it knows the identity of the thieves who stole 13 paintings 23 years ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, one of the most infamous art heists in history.Officials from the F.B.I. said they believed that the paintings were moved through Connecticut and the Philadelphia area perhaps a decade ago by a criminal organization. They declined to reveal any more about the identity of the thieves, saying the investigation is continuing.The F.B.I. is establishing a Web site, www.FBI.gov/gardner, as part of a publicity campaign to alert the public. That campaign includes billboards to be placed in Connecticut and Philadelphia, with reproductions of the paintings in hopes of prompting anyone with information to step forward....

• Originally published 03/17/2013

  Cartha D. DeLoach, No. 3 in the F.B.I., Is Dead at 92

  Cartha D. DeLoach, who as a top aide and confidant to J. Edgar Hoover was the F.B.I.’s liaison to the White House and a powerful intermediary between Hoover and President Lyndon B. Johnson during an especially tense political era, died on Wednesday on Hilton Head Island, S.C. He was 92.The death was confirmed by his son Tom.Mr. DeLoach, who was known as Deke, spent more than 25 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rising to deputy associate director, the No. 3 position, behind only Mr. Hoover and the associate director, Clyde Tolson.