CNN news 2011-06-28
An old-school crime story and a new approach to nabbing a fugitive. James "Whitey" Bulger is the stuff of legend， loan sharking, drug rackets, and more than a dozen alleged murders. A reputed Boston kingpin who inspired fear and Hollywood scriptwriters. His larger-than-life persona borrowed by Jack Nicholson in the movie "The Departed."
Makes me curious to see you in this neighborhood.
Well, today, Boston's most notorious gangster and his longtime girlfriend are in jail after 16 years on the run.
Kara Finnstrom in Los Angeles where they'll make their first court appearance today.
And let's take a look at this PSA right now, Kara.It was a very unusual strategy that actually led to nabbing him, right?
Right. Certainly it was. You know gangster ，we're told that a tipster actually saw this PSA that was airing. FBI agents say he saw it, and then he called in, and he led them to the pair last night.
Interestingly enough, James "Whitey" Bulger had eluded authorities for more than a decade and a half. They tried to find him but he traveled.He'd use disguises and he'd gone all around the world eluding them so finally they went after his girlfriend and they aired these PSAs which had specific information about her. And that's what ultimately led them to him.
And tell us about that information. Actually, some of it's quite comical.
Yes, they included some very specific information about her. They said that she'd numerous plastic surgeries, that she liked to go to the beauty salon,that she's been a dental hygienist. And so she usually had her teeth cleaned about once a month.
And then you see a picture here of her with some dogs. They also say she loved dogs and that she often would take long walks on the beaches with Bulger.So they created kind of a painting of who she was hoping that would lead them to her and it did.
Nothing like bright white teeth leading you to a notorious gangster.
Now the FBI has actually been criticized for overlooking a lot of his heinous crimes for information，in response for getting information from him on other gangsters, right?
Yes. He's legendary in the Boston area and there had been widespread reports that the FBI had used him as an informant and perhaps they had cozied up to him too much, allowing him to escape, that he'd gotten word of，that he was about to be arrested.
The FBI on its own Web site does say that he had infiltrated their agency.So there were lots of concerns about this over the years.I am sure they are very glad at this point to have him behind bars and to try and close this chapter.
You don't actually agree with these new policies. You think kids should be patted down, Mary. Why?
Well, whenever you carve out wholesale exceptions to the security rules, terrorists, hijackers, et cetera people who want to see us harm ，will exploit the wholesale carve-outs of the security rule. And so, what would be a better policy is to train the screeners to use better discretion to figure out what is the threat and what isn't and to hone in more particularly instead of carving out these wholesale exceptions.
And as a former prosecutor, I can tell you, I had worked on cases or know of cases where children as young as 6 or 7 in the United States were used unwittingly to carry out plots of crimes. So, we are creating an exception that will be exploited by terrorists.
All right. Interesting. You hit the age that I wanted to bring an example of exactly. As the TSA is changing its policy on children, it came after this video was released of a 6-year-old girl getting a pat-down.
You know, what do you tell a parent, though, who is very uncomfortable with this? How do you justify it to them?
Well, I'm a parent and I traveled the world with my kids because of my job as an aviation lawyer.My kids as young as infants had to go with me on many work assignments. And what you do is you train your children. You're a parent. Children take clues from you.
My parents as young as 3 were taught how to go through pat-downs and back then, the airlines were doing it, and they were far worse than the TSA and we were often targeted because of my work.
And so, you train your children. This is what we do.
And, just remember, you know, every inconvenience is not a constitutional infringement.And so, some things you have to do, and what I told my children is we have to do this because sometimes bad people take things on planes, which turned out to be sadly true on September 11th.
And I think the parents owe a responsibility to the children so they can travel the world without feeling insecure or hassled.
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