Mob Informant Scandal Involved Highest Levels of FBI # # Saturday, July 27, 2002 # # BOSTON - For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters in Washington # knew that its Boston agents were using hit men and mob leaders # as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious # crimes including murder, the Associated Press has learned. # # Until now, the still-unraveling Boston FBI scandal has been # portrayed largely as the work of a handful of local agents - # mavericks willing to deal with the devil to bring down a Mafia # family. # # But documents obtained by the AP directly connect FBI headquarters # to a pattern of collusion with notorious killers. # # The AP found 20 memos from Boston agents to the FBI director's # office, along with six replies, showing that headquarters was # told of the abuses and condoned them. # # Written between 1964 and 1987, the memos made it clear to # Washington that the informants had killed and were likely to # kill again, describing one of them as "the most dangerous # individual known" in the Boston area. The memos also alerted # headquarters that two of the informants were crime bosses, active # "at the policy-making level" of criminal enterprises in Boston. [snip]