© AP Photos/J. Pat Carter and U.S. Marshals ServiceStephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, left, on Sept. 22, 2008, as he testified in a Miami court in the murder trial of former FBI agent John Connolly; and James "Whitey" Bulger, right, in a June 23, 2011 booking photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service. Flemmi, Bulger's alleged former partner serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to 10 killings, is expected to testify in Bulger's trial Thursday, July 18, 2013 in federal court in Boston. Bulger, now 83, is accused in a 32-count racketeering indictment and in playing a role in 19 killings in the 1970s and ‘80s while he allegedly led the Winter Hill Gang in Boston.
An FBI agent gave Whitey Bulger 40 pounds of plastic explosives most of which was sent to the IRA a key witness in the Whitey Bulger trial has stated.
Steve Flemmi is the prosecution key witness already serving life without parole who says he accompanies Bulger on most of his murder sprees, including the strangling of Flemini's own girlfriend, Debra Davies, because she knew the two men were FBI informers.
On Friday Flemmi testifies that in the 1980s, FBI agent John Newton gave him and Bulger a case of C-4 explosives to send to the IRA.
"It was a surprise when we got it," Flemmi old the court adding that he believed that Newton, who was a former Green Beret, got the plastic explosives while in military training.
Newton had the explosives in his South Boston home and arranged for the two gangsters to come and pick it up. Newton has denied the accusation.
Links to the IRA have surfaced in the trial. Bulger was very close to senior IRA figure Joe Cahill, meeting him frequently in Boston after he smuggled him across the border from Canada on a supporters bus when the Boston Bruins hockey team were playing a Canadian side.
Bulger idolized Cahill according to Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy two Boston Globe writers who have written a definitive book on Bulger called "Whitey Bulger".
