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KEVIN CULLEN

Delusional man turned into whipping boy for FBI’s sins

Robert Fitzpatrick and his wife, Jane, left federal court in Boston on Thursday.Aram Boghosian for The Globe/Globe Freelance

A couple of years ago, when retired FBI agent Bob Fitzpatrick testified for the defense during Whitey Bulger’s trial, those of us who had known Fitz over the years sat in the courtroom and cringed.

It wasn’t that Fitzpatrick got up there and tried to bolster Bulger’s preposterous claim that he wasn’t an informant. It wasn’t even that he portrayed himself as a noble figure in a Boston office of the FBI that at the time was fairly ignoble.

It was his fantastic, self-aggrandizing stories. About pinching Jerry Angiulo, who ran the Mafia in Boston. About finding in a Memphis stairwell the gun that was used by James Earl Ray to kill Martin Luther King Jr.

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With each story, Bob Fitzpatrick seemed more and more unhinged, like he was occupying a parallel universe.

When Brian Kelly, the prosecutor, got up to cross-examine Fitzpatrick, his first question was fairly direct: “It’s fair to say that you’re a man who likes to make up stories?”

On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that what Bob Fitzpatrick engaged in was more than fantasy. It was perjury and obstruction of justice.

The fall of Bob Fitzpatrick is just the latest example of Whitey Bulger poisoning everything he touches. The testimony Fitzpatrick provided for Bulger’s defense has been used, word for word, against him. It forms the 12-count indictment against him.

The indictment suggests that the Justice Department resented that Fitzpatrick held himself up as a whistleblower who tried to save the FBI from Whitey Bulger. It cites a 2001 episode on “60 Minutes” and the book he wrote, “Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought To Bring Him Down.”

The book was, like its author, prone to great exaggeration. It contained made-up conversations between Whitey Bulger and some of the people he murdered.

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The government says Fitzpatrick lied when he testified that he had been transferred to Boston as the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge to clean up the office. In fact, the indictment says, it was a routine assignment and he received no special instructions.

The government says Fitzpatrick lied when he claimed that at his initial meeting with Bulger, Bulger denied being an informant.

The government says Fitzpatrick lied when he claimed he tried to close Bulger out as an informant.

The government says Fitzpatrick lied when he claimed he was demoted in retaliation by a superior, when in reality he was demoted for falsifying reports about a shooting.

The government says Fitzpatrick lied when he claimed credit for arresting Jerry Angiulo, and for finding the rifle used to kill Martin Luther King Jr.

To be honest, the indictment surprised me. I remember that Bulger’s prosecutors — Kelly, Fred Wyshak, and Zach Hafer — seemed more astonished than angry when Fitzpatrick kept telling whoppers. It made the prosecution case look stronger. It made the defense look patently ridiculous.

Kelly had a field day cross-examining him. It got so bad, especially the second day of Kelly’s withering cross-examination, that some of us in the media gallery actually felt sorry for Fitz. It was like watching a bar fight when one guy is on the ground and the other guy is kicking him.

It went from comedy to farce. When Fitzpatrick had trouble remembering things, Kelly asked him if he had memory problems.

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“Not that I recall,” Bob Fitz replied.

All that was missing was the laugh track.

But it turns out the government didn’t just laugh this off. The resentment against Fitzpatrick smoldered like a cigarette dropped down the back cushion of a sofa.

What makes the indictment of Bob Fitzpatrick seem so vindictive, so gratuitous, is that there were other FBI agents who did far worse in the service of Whitey Bulger and never faced charges. Some were accused of taking money from him. One allegedly gave him a bunch of C-4 that Whitey promptly shipped off to the IRA. A bunch of them knew he was killing people while he was an FBI informant.

And then there was that agent who told me in 1988 that I’d be murdered if the Globe Spotlight Team exposed Whitey Bulger as an FBI informant. That charming guy was never charged with anything and is still cashing his big fat FBI pension.

Turns out, Bob Fitzpatrick is being charged, in part, because the others weren’t. He is paying for the indulgence afforded other FBI agents who should have been charged with misconduct, minor and major, for their dealings with Whitey Bulger.

Fred Wyshak, the federal prosecutor who chased Whitey the way Captain Ahab chased the big white whale, stood outside the courtroom where Fitzpatrick was arraigned Thursday and defended the charges by pointing out all the other agents who skated because the statute of limitations had expired.

Wyshak said this case is prosecutable.

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The FBI, by the way, had nothing to do with this. This was right from the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s office. There are many FBI agents, former and current, who think Bob Fitzpatrick is a scapegoat, that his prosecution is vindictive, that he is being singled out needlessly, that this is all so heavy-handed.

But a federal prosecutor I know shrugged when I told him all this.

“We couldn’t let this go,” he said. “This guy was an ASAC (assistant special agent in charge). He was ASAC during eight of the [Bulger] murders.”

Put bluntly, while Fitzpatrick claimed he was doing all he could to close Bulger out as an informant, Whitey was killing people left and right.

On Thursday afternoon, Bob Fitzpatrick, 75 years old and his hair dyed a reddish brown, walked into a courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was the last FBI agent I ever expected to see charged with trying to help Whitey Bulger.

In the upcoming Hollywood film about Whitey, “Black Mass,” Adam Scott plays Bob Fitzpatrick. Apparently, he’s something of a hero in the film. But that’s just the movies.

Two years ago, after that devastating cross examination mercifully ended and Bob Fitz left the stand, I saw him briefly outside the courthouse. He actually thought he had a much better day on the stand than the first day.

He was utterly delusional. Apparently, that’s a crime now.

Which begs this question: If you tell a lie and really believe it, is that still perjury?

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Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.