It was the brainchild of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover: the Top Echelon Informant Program. Under its protective umbrella, dangerous felons were courted and coddled and given free reign to commit the worst crimes imaginable in exchange for damning insider information about the bosses of organized crime. Dangerous conmen and sociopaths, like South Boston's James "Whitey" Bulger, became Bureau-supported criminals kingpins, indulging in robbery, extortion, even murder under the eyes of the FBI. Only now, forty years after the program was first conceived, is the true story of blood and madness being told and an account made of the bodies left in its wake.
A prize-winning Boston journalist, Ralph Ranalli now exposes a shocking history of corruption, terror, and violence born of an unholy collusion between America's top law enforcement agency and some of the worst criminal psychopaths ever to victimize an unwary nation.