A JUDGE has ordered the US Government to pay a record $US101 million ($116 million) for the FBI's role in the wrongful murder convictions of four men, condemning a cover-up that ran "all the way up to the FBI director".

Two of the men, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco, died in jail after being wrongly convicted of the 1965 gangland murder of a low-level mobster. Two others, Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati, were exonerated in 2001, prompting the filing of a civil lawsuit. Limone was released after 33 years in prison; Salvati had been paroled in 1997.

Thursday's scathing ruling by a district judge, Nancy Gertner, describes the charges levelled against the agency as "shocking" and the Government's defence as "absurd".