WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The Justice Department has agreed to allow investigators from a House committee access to some documents related to FBI criminal investigations.
After President Bush claimed executive privilege in December, the House Government Reform Committee threatened to hold the administration in contempt of Congress.
Most of the documents relate to several FBI scandals concerning the use of informants in organized crime investigations in New England during the 1960s and 1970s.
"I want to thank the attorney general and the White House for working with us as we have been trying to uncover the corruption that existed in the Boston FBI for four decades and do our part to right a tragic wrong," said Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind.
The committee had subpoenaed as many as 15 documents and prosecution memos involving the use of testimony by Joe "The Animal" Barboza in several Mafia trials in the late 1960s and the use of two Boston mobsters as confidential informants, James "Whitey" Bulger and Steve "The Rifleman" Flemmi, from 1975 to 1995.
Bulger and Flemmi are suspected of having ordered or committed as many as 20 slayings during that period as the men allegedly consolidated control over the Boston organized crime community, despite working with the FBI.
Burton has demanded any documents that discuss the decision by the Justice Department not to prosecute the men until 1995 despite the widespread belief they were using their FBI relationship to help the criminal enterprise.
In a related case being looked at by investigators, it appears the FBI knowingly allowed four men to be convicted in 1967 of a murder, despite clear evidence the men were not involved.
In the Senate, Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have introduced legislation to increase oversight of the FBI and to give the Justice Department inspector general the authority to investigate abuses within the bureau.
