US TIGHTENS RULES ON INFORMANTS

Changes Follow Furor Over FBI Mob Dealings

Tough new Justice Department guidelines designed to prevent the cozy
camaraderie that led to criminal charges against the star FBI agent
who handled gangsters James ''Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen Flemmi will
be put in place as early as today.

The national guidelines, developed in the wake of federal court
hearings in Boston throughout 1998 that exposed the controversial
relationship between the FBI and Bulger and Flemmi - who are charged
with killing 19 and 10 people respectively while working as FBI
informants - will for the first time require the bureau to share
information on informants with other agencies, including federal
prosecutors.

The FBI has had a longstanding policy of protecting its informants by
shielding their identities from outside agencies.

The guidelines, drafted over the past two years, will require the FBI,
the US Drug Enforcement Administration, and all other Justice
Department agencies to report suspected, unauthorized criminal
activity by informants to prosecutors and alert federal prosecutors
when the target of a federal criminal probe is an informant, according
to US Attorney Donald K. Stern.

The new rules also prohibit agents from socializing with or exchanging
gifts with informants - an apparent reaction to the revelation that
FBI agents in Boston routinely dined with Bulger and Flemmi and
swapped Christmas presents.

US District Judge Mark L. Wolf held lengthy hearings during 1998 after
Flemmi claimed that the FBI had given him and Bulger permission to
commit any crime, short of murder, in exchange for information about
their rivals in the New England Mafia.

He found that Flemmi and Bulger had not been promised immunity from
prosecution by the FBI.

Bulger and Flemmi, members of Somerville's defunct Winter Hill Gang
who later formed their own criminal empire, had been targeted by
numerous federal and state investigators throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

But the FBI didn't alert federal prosecutors that Bulger and Flemmi
were longtime informants until the eve of their January 1995
indictment on federal racketeering charges, along with then New
England Mafia boss Francis ''Cadillac Frank'' Salemme and a number of
other defendants.

During a brief telephone interview yesterday, US Attorney General
Janet Reno credited Stern with helping to revamp older guidelines. She
said the new ones were likely to be adopted today.

''I think what's key here is there will be greater accountability,''
said Stern, who served on an adhoc committee with several other
prosecutors from around the country and met with officials from the
FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to discuss the
handling of informants.

''An informant program that has integrity and accountability is
critical for law enforcement,'' said Stern. ''So I consider these
changes to be absolutely necessary to provide that and to ensure that
the public has confidence in law enforcement.

''I should not have learned about [Bulger and Flemmmi's work as FBI
informants] days before the indictment,'' Stern said. ''That's not the
way to run the railroad.''

Retired FBI Special Agent John Connolly Jr., the longtime handler of
Bulger and Flemmi, was charged last year with tipping off the pair to
the identity of two other FBI informants and a potential witness
against them, prompting Bulger and Flemmi to allegedly kill the three
men.

Connolly is also accused of warning Bulger to flee on the eve of the
1995 indictment. Bulger, 71, has been a fugitive since then and is now
on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. The bureau is offering $1 million
for his capture.

Flemmi, 66, has been jailed for six years awaiting
trial.

Last September, Bulger and Flemmi faced an avalanche of new charges,
including allegations that Bulger killed 19 people and Flemmi killed
10.

Attorney Anthony Cardinale, who represents Salemme, said of the new
informant guidelines, ''I think we established without any question
that the informant program as it was practiced in Boston relating to
organized crime investigations was simply itself a crime. What the
public has to realize is that this is a problem that's
nationwide.''

Attorney Martin Weinberg, who represented hitman-turned-government
witness John Martorano during the hearings, characterized the new
guidelines as ''the most enduring and most significant consequence of
the hearings.''

Weinberg added, ''The litmus test of the future success of the
guidelines will depend on the extent to which decisions are made not
by the FBI, but instead by disinterested Justice Department lawyers,
because the history of the last 30 years demonstrates the FBI cannot
be trusted to police itself.''

The full text of the guidelines, which are more than 40 pages long, is
expected to be made public today.

The new guidelines were the topic of intense bargaining by the Justice
Department and the investigative agencies, chiefly the FBI, officials
familiar with the process said.

A key sticking point was whether Justice Department prosecutors would
have the authority to monitor and supervise the relationships between
agents and informants.

Some prosecutors believed that a fundamental problem with the old
system was that it relied almost entirely on the FBI to voluntarily
report problems, and that there needed to be more checks and balances
in the way informants are handled.

The new guidelines provide an apparent compromise, requiring periodic
involvement by prosecutors, but not day-to-day supervision. Under a
so-called ''sunset'' provision in the new guidelines, agents will be
required after a certain period of time to justify their continued use
of their informants to Justice Department prosecutors, or the
relationship will automatically terminate.

The framers of the new guidelines pointed to the FBI's 20-year
relationship with Bulger and its 30-year relationship with Flemmi as
examples of the sort of prolonged arrangements that can breed problems.