I know what Dapper O’Neil would say to US Rep. James Comer about his ongoing efforts to compel the FBI to hand over a clean copy of an informant’s tip alleging a $5-million bribe by a foreign national to then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2015.
The Dap would chuckle and tell the Kentucky Republican: “Good luck, pal!”
You see, back in 1981, the longtime Boston city councilor was getting the same run-around from the corrupt G-men that Chairman Comer is getting today.
The feds were giving Dapper the same stiff-arm (and middle finger) they’re giving Comer now.
Under federal law, the FBI had been forced to turn over a document Dapper had been looking for, but there was a problem. Everything that O’Neil wanted to see in the report was… redacted, that is, blacked out.
As Comer said on TV this week, “My experience with getting documents from the FBI, when they’re redacted it’s all blacked out. They don’t show you anything.”
From 1981 to 2023, nothing has changed.
Dapper O’Neil’s problems with the FBI dated back to 1980. A lifelong Democrat, he endorsed a Republican for president – Ronald Reagan. He even campaigned with Reagan and his wife Nancy down in Bristol County.
The Dap created a bit of a stir when, seeing Nancy walking to the stage, he turned to some reporters and quipped, “Not a bad tush, for an old broad.”
After Reagan’s landslide win, Dapper asked the new president for the job he’d always dreamed of — US marshal in Boston. He’d had enough of the City Council — “the Munsters,” as he called them.
Marshal Dapper — it had a great ring to it.
Reagan was all in on the idea, but there was a complication. The FBI would have to conduct a background check on the Dap. A couple of months later, Dapper got the word from the DOJ.
Sorry, Dap, but the FBI report on you was… devastating.
Dapper went crazy. He’d been robbed. But then he heard about some new legislation that had been passed by the people he used to call “social-planning liberal do-gooders.” It was the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that anyone could use to get government documents — theoretically, anyway.
Dapper filed a FOIA request for his own FBI report. A few months later at City Hall he got a packet from the G-men. He was very excited. Now he would know who had ratted him out! I was working out of City Hall and Dapper called and told me to come downstairs if I wanted a story.
By the time I got to the fifth floor, I could hear him swearing from out in the hallway. I walked in and Dapper was standing up, holding up a page of the report to the overhead lights, trying to make out what was written under the black marks. But the light wasn’t helping. He could see nothing on the paper except… blacked-out lines.
“What the bleep is this bleep?” he was thundering.
Neither of us had ever seen anything like this before. Boy, have I seen a lot of it since then. Rep. Comer is 100 percent correct — FBI redacting is a total scam.
Dapper handed me a few sheets and asked me if I could maybe make out the names underneath all that government ink. It didn’t take long to see how hopeless the task was — these were copies, not originals.
Of course the G-men were toying with Dapper.
They didn’t redact any of the rotten stuff everybody said about him — “voted for liquor licenses and then accepted free meals and alcohol… an ignorant bully… rude to his colleagues…” etc. But no names, no Sixth Amendment rights to confront his accusers. One of the damn goo-goos even called the Dap a “reprobate.”
“What the bleep is a reprobate?” he bellowed. (We had to look it up. It means an unprincipled person, a rascal.)
The feds left only left one name un-redacted — Ed Lineberger (or something like that). He was a jailbird and he had a beard — two strikes against him right there, as far as the Dap was concerned.
A couple of years earlier, as Dapper had been leaving Amrheins in South Boston after dinner, Lineberger had pulled a knife on the Dap and mugged him. As he fled down West Broadway, the Dap pulled out his trusty .38-caliber Police Special revolver and shot him.
It wasn’t a life-threatening wound, and as he was taken away in an ambulance, a puzzled Lineberger asked the EMTs, “Why’d he shoot me? All I wanted was his money.”
Now Dapper was finding out that the damn bastard who’d stuck a knife in his face had ratted him out to the FBI from his prison cell. He had told them that Dapper was insane. The Dap was amazed — this bird that’d brought a knife to a gunfight was calling the guy with the gun crazy?
I asked Dapper if he wanted me to deliver a message to Lineberger in my story in the paper.
“Tell him I’ll see him at his next parole-board hearing!” Dapper said.
The next morning, I went down to check in with Dapper. He was still steaming. One of his aides timidly poked her head into his office and whispered, “Councilor, it’s Lineberger on the phone. He’s calling from prison — collect.”
Dapper stood up and started screaming again, just as his aide had known he would do.
“Tell that bearded little weasel I don’t take collect calls from jailbirds!”
Or words to that effect.
Now Comer says he’s going to get the FBI’s un-redacted report on Biden’s alleged $5-million payoff tomorrow. He had to inform the FBI that he had already had a copy of the FD-1023, which was smart, because otherwise they would never, ever have coughed up anything.
In fact, at first the feds lied to him and said no such report even existed. Now that they’ve been busted, they’re promising to hand-deliver him a clean copy of the report they said didn’t exist.
As Dapper would say, “Good luck, pal.”