virgo
11-02-2007, 11:20 AM
Interesting (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_on_re_us/mob_fbi_agent).
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - A former FBI agent accused of conspiring in a mob murder spree has been cleared of the sensational charges, but the vaunted law enforcement agency received a scathing rebuke from a judge in the process.
In a four-page decision that brought the trial of ex-agent Lindley DeVecchio to a stunning end Thursday, state Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach said the FBI violated its own rules by allowing DeVecchio to court a known killer as an informant for well over a decade.
"In the face of the obvious menace posed by organized crime, the FBI was willing ... to make a deal with the devil," Reichbach said in a hushed Brooklyn courtroom. "At best, the FBI engaged in a policy of self-deception, not wanting to know the true facts about this informant-murderer whom they chose to employ."
The judge also referred to testimony by Linda Schiro, informant Gregory Scarpa's longtime girlfriend, that Scarpa had assisted the FBI in finding the bodies of slain civil rights workers in Mississippi. In 1964, she said, Scarpa shoved a gun into the mouth of a Mississippi Klansman — a threat that persuaded the man to reveal where the trio's bodies were buried.
"That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information ... is a shocking demonstration of the government's unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime," the judge said.
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - A former FBI agent accused of conspiring in a mob murder spree has been cleared of the sensational charges, but the vaunted law enforcement agency received a scathing rebuke from a judge in the process.
In a four-page decision that brought the trial of ex-agent Lindley DeVecchio to a stunning end Thursday, state Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach said the FBI violated its own rules by allowing DeVecchio to court a known killer as an informant for well over a decade.
"In the face of the obvious menace posed by organized crime, the FBI was willing ... to make a deal with the devil," Reichbach said in a hushed Brooklyn courtroom. "At best, the FBI engaged in a policy of self-deception, not wanting to know the true facts about this informant-murderer whom they chose to employ."
The judge also referred to testimony by Linda Schiro, informant Gregory Scarpa's longtime girlfriend, that Scarpa had assisted the FBI in finding the bodies of slain civil rights workers in Mississippi. In 1964, she said, Scarpa shoved a gun into the mouth of a Mississippi Klansman — a threat that persuaded the man to reveal where the trio's bodies were buried.
"That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information ... is a shocking demonstration of the government's unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime," the judge said.