The Herald has filed an appeal after the FBI rejected a request to turn over public information on the case of Whitey Bulger.

“At the outset, it needs no belaboring that the Bureau has long sought to conceal evidence of its own conduct with respect to the subject of the Herald’s (records) request, one James Joseph (Whitey) Bulger, Jr.,” Herald attorney and columnist Jeffrey Robbins wrote in the appeal.

“Its efforts in concealing this information have substantially enabled it to keep its conduct secret, even though that conduct has proximately resulted in the killing of numerous innocent people, whose families have been deprived of the basic information about how the Bureau, acting in collusion with Mr. Bulger, did what they did, and did it for so long,” the appeal continues.

The appeal, filed April 10, is in response to the FBI rejection in late March to a request for records related to Bulger’s case, which the Herald filed under the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act. Numerous questions remain regarding the FBI file on Bulger, who was convicted in 2013 of 11 counts of murder and many counts of extortion, money laundering, drug dealing and firearms possession, including those around the protection the FBI granted him as a high-level informant.

In the rejection to the Herald’s original request, the FBI said the records are “law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceeding.”

In the appeal, Robbins notes that Bulger was “arrested in June, 2011 and convicted in August, 2013, and was jailed until his death in October, 2018, five and one-half (5½) years ago” and that the FBI did not provide supporting detail regarding any ongoing law enforcement proceedings.

The existence of such proceedings, Robbins writes, is “extremely doubtful, and strain credulity given the facts and the Bureau’s unwillingness to do anything more than recite the general language of the exemption.”

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Some of Bulger’s Winter Hill gang associates are alive and locked up, including Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi who’s parole date is set for 2218. Bulger’s former FBI handler John “Zip” Connolly was convicted on charges including racketeering, taking bribes and second-degree murder related to his dealings with the Southie mobster but was let out on compassionate release after he received a terminal diagnosis.

People related to the case critiqued the FBI’s decision to withhold the records in March.

“There’s no way in hell they shouldn’t tell all,” Steve Davis, the brother of one of Bulger’s victims, previously told the Herald. “It’s not right to all of the loved ones of victims still looking for answers.”