When Gardner Museum Director AnneHawley openly challenged the integrity of the FBI’s Gardner Heist investigation  by saying: ‘Their investigation was possibly corrupted and compromised from the start,” in the July 2005 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, it came at the historic low point for the FBI’s Boston office. Two months earlier, in May of 2005 Boston FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., was formally charged with a 1982 gangland slaying in Florida. It was Connolly, who tipped off  James "Whitey" Bulger  about a pending indictment that led to his fleeing the state, triggering a worldwide 16 year manhunt. At that point, Connolly was already serving 10 years in federal prison for protecting FBI longtime informants including  Bulger.  That same month the Boston Globe reported another Connolly informant, “Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, had said “in two recent depositions that he and Bulger paid more than $200,000 to their FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., whi