The meeting in the back room of The Irish Wolfhound, a North Milwaukee Avenue bar that caters to as many Mexicans as Irish, began auspiciously enough. John Tuttle, a recent transplant to Chicago from Boston, announced he had sold five tickets to the upcoming banquet for the Friends of Irish Freedom at the Golden Flame Restaurant on West Higgins Avenue. The tickets went for $35 a pop, and Tuttle's newfound friends were so impressed by his salesmanship that they applauded, forgetting for the moment that this was the very same guy they had been warned about recently by friends in Boston. They didn't even notice Tuttle had handed over $180 in cash for the tickets to the group's treasurer without bothering to ask for his $5 in change. Unusual behavior for a guy making six bucks an hour greasing cars at a Bridgeview garage. Tuttle's good standing was short-lived. Two hours later, when the group's vice president, Chris Fogarty, saw Tuttle slip his hand into his jacket and grab something hard inside, he lunged at him. Thinking it was a weapon, Fogarty was surprised to find that, whatever it was, it was sewn inside the lining of Tuttle's leather jacket. Taking a Swiss Army knife, Fogarty cut the lining and found a small tape recorder and transmitter. Tuttle was surrounded by his now-erstwhile friends, pinned up against the wall. "Who are you working for?" they screamed. That was answered soon enough when FBI agents walked through the bar and into the back room. Without a word of explanation, the agents escorted Tuttle out. It probably would have ended there. Except that some minutes later, FBI agent Ed Buckley realized the Nagra tape recorder was missing and rushed back into the bar. "Where is it?" he demanded, pulling open a refrigerator, searching under seat cushions in desperation. No one answered. Those who witnessed the scene recall that Buckley's eyes were wide, his breathing labored. The Nagra cost something like $2,000. How would he explain this to his supervisor? Not only was the bureau's cover get blown, but government hardware worth two grand was lost. Buckley stormed out of the bar. There would be hell to pay. Some 18 hours after the farce in the back room of the Milwaukee Avenue tavern, Chris Fogarty and his wife, Mary O'Sullivan, were arrested at gunpoint in their apartment on Lake Shore Drive. Simultaneously, FBI agents rounded up Frank O'Neill, an old-timer who runs a West Side bar that bears his name, and Tony McCormick, a carpenter who, the FBI alleged, was a member of the Irish Republican Army. They were charged with threatening a government witness and trying to secure weapons for the IRA. The former accusation was based on a tape recording of what supposedly took place the night before at THE tavern, the latter on the uncorroborated word of John Tuttle. For more than a year, the FBI pursued an aggressive prosecution of the four Chicagoans. The case ended abruptly on Jan. 15 when someone in the federal government realized the case was a misguided attempt by the FBI to make the best of what was simply a badly bungled undercover operation. The charges were dismissed. Left in the wake of the dismissal, however, are many disturbing questions, not the least of which is why the FBI would use John Tuttle-a young man who allegedly was a habitual abuser of alcohol, took drugs, and got arrested-as an undercover operative. The Friends of Irish Freedom espouses unpopular political opinions, supporting what the American, Irish and British governments have deemed a terrorist organization. But the FBI's attention seems overdone, if not entirely misplaced. The Friends of Irish Freedom are literally barroom patriots, preaching to the converted, if anyone at all. They are small in number, in influence and in ability to raise any significant amount of money, whether it goes legally to the families of IRA prisoners, as they say it does, or illegally to the IRA, as the government has charged but never has proved. Court records show the FBI paid Tuttle more money in nine months to infiltrate Friends of Irish Freedom-nearly $20,000-than the group itself raised in the same period. That amount doesn't include the legal fees the government picked up following Tuttle's arrests in the Chicago area. While in the employ of the federal government, area police say, Tuttle managed to get arrested for drunk driving twice, cause an auto accident and beat up a woman with whom he was sharing an apartment. So why is the FBI so interested in an obscure group of activists and so willing to engage in what is, at best, dubious official conduct? That is hard to answer because the FBI won't comment beyond a blanket denial that any of its agents engaged in any wrongdoing. It could be the FBI's reaction is merely a manifestation of embarrassment. The government dismissed the charges only after being put on notice by lawyers of the four who were arrested that they had uncovered considerable evidence that raised questions about the authenticity of the FBI's tape recording and the credibility and character of its star witness, John Tuttle. It was Tuttle's engaging in petty criminal activity and his desire to escape the consequences that first led him to offer his services to the FBI. Tuttle began asking leading questions, either as an FBI operative or as an undercover wanna-be, at meetings of the Boston chapter of Friends of Irish Freedom. Unable to elicit incriminating conversations there, Tuttle moved to Chicago in the summer of 1991, but not before obtaining the names and addresses of Friends of Irish Freedom contacts in Chicago. He told associates in Boston he needed the names because they could help him get a job. In fact, 30-year-old John Tuttle was gainfully employed-as an informant for the FBI. Testimony by federal agents indicate he was paid depending on the significance of the information he rendered-meaning he had an incentive to embellish. Tuttle attended four meetings at The Irish Wolfhound and briefed Buckley, his FBI handler, after each meeting. It was after Tuttle contended McCormick had asked him about missiles that the FBI decided to wire Tuttle up. His career as a wired witness ended only two hours after it began. At first, the FBI made it clear they intended to push the case to the limit. They said Fogarty had threatened Tuttle with the knife and that the others had made threats on Tuttle's life after discovering the surveillance devices. But after attorneys Peter McCabe and William Murphy formally notified the government that they were prepared to prove the FBI tape was, in fact, a fraud, the government dropped the charges.

In the end, the government could not produce the tape on which agent Buckley had said the threats against Tuttle were contained. Every scintilla of evidence, then, was based on the highly questionable and completely unverifiable word of one John Tuttle. John Tuttle grew up in Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston that is a place unto itself. It is a historic area, site of the Bunker Hill Monument, marking the spot where two centuries ago American revolutionaries suffered a defeat that was considered a victory because they inflicted so many British casualties. Amid Charlestown's quaint brick buildings, however, is a rough element, young toughs whose pastimes include baseball, hockey and bank robbery. Tuttle grew up in this environment, hanging with the wise guys. And make no mistake, the wise guys hold considerable sway in Charlestown. About 75 percent of the murders that have taken place in Charlestown since 1975 remain unsolved. No one sees anything. If someone does, memories get weak. Charlestown, home to historic monuments and the Code of Silence, appears to have the greatest concentration of blind amnesiacs in America. Over the last two decades, yuppies have moved into Charlestown in large numbers, diluting the strength of the natives, who call themselves Townies. Townie hoods call the yuppies "Toonies" because they break into their BMWs and Saabs to steal the stereos. John Tuttle was among those who seethed at the Toonies. "He used to say how much he hated them moving in and taking over," said one Townie who knew Tuttle as a teenager. Charlestown was nearly torn asunder by a court-ordered desegregation of Boston's schools in the mid-1970s. With the possible exception of South Boston, nowhere else was busing opposed more vociferously. Some opposed it because it took away neighborhood schools, some because they hated blacks. All Townies resented a suburban judge forcing them to do something that would not affect his own kids and the rest of suburbia. John Tuttle was among those schoolchildren whose lives were turned upside down. In the best of times, college was a lofty aspiration for a poor kid from Charlestown. In the middle of THE busing turmoil, it was a pipe dream. Tuttle, like many other Townies, looked for a trade. And, like many of his peers, he joined the Army after leaving high school. You can take the kid out of Charlestown, but you can't take the Charlestown out of the kid. While serving in Germany, Tuttle was court-martialed for selling LSD to other soldiers. In April 1985, a military judge ordered that Tuttle be dishonorably discharged and sentenced him to six years in prison. Tuttle arrived at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., at approximately the same time as Jerry Angiulo, the underboss whose Mafia family had taken control of Boston in the 1960s because the Irish gangsters headquartered in Charlestown were too busy killing each other. Tuttle spent only two years in prison; Angiulo will probably never get out. Tuttle returned to Charlestown, where nothing but trouble awaited. "He drank too much," said George Collier, who became wary of Tuttle soon after he began attending meetings of the Charlestown chapter of Friends of Irish Freedom. "He told me this story about three masked guys coming to his house. It was just this bizarre story that made no sense. He told me he wanted to make a fresh start but that he couldn't leave town because his parole officer wouldn't let him go." At some point, however, the parole officer signed off. John Hurley can't prove it, but he believes Tuttle was already working for the FBI by the time he decided to move to Chicago in the summer of 1991. Hurley is one of the founders of Friends of Irish Freedom, which several years ago split with the older republican support group, Irish Northern Aid, or NORAID. "All I know is, everybody is supposed to sell raffle tickets. That's how we raise money," Hurley says. "John Tuttle was the only one who always managed to sell all his tickets. Now, where do you think that money was coming from?" Frank O'Neill's bar has seen better days. It used to be you had to get there early on a Friday because the place was jammed by quitting time. It seemed as if every Cook County court employee who lived on the West Side made a beeline to West North Avenue and O'Neill's. A native of Northern Ireland, Frank O'Neill came to Chicago in 1955 and opened his bar a few years later. In its heyday, O'Neill's needed four bartenders to keep up with the crowds, who liked the music from the giant organ in the center of the bar and the stained-glass images of the Irish countryside that rise above it. O'Neill didn't leave the neighborhood; the neighborhood left him. It used to be that judges, big-shot lawyers and aldermen were regulars at O'Neill's. Now the most famous denizen is O'Neill's poodle, Patch, who plays pool by pushing the cue ball with his paws. The dog appeared on the "Stupid Pet Tricks" segment of David Letterman's TV show a few years back. Sometimes, Patch is Frank O'Neill's only company in the bar. The neighborhood has changed. The middle-class Irish and other ethnics have left for the suburbs. They have been replaced by mostly poor blacks, who don't drink at O'Neill's. Still, Frank isn't one to complain much. He has stayed true to what he started. Despite his family's pleas that he leave, he won't. The handful of patrons who still pop in for a beer don't talk about the good old days as much as the latest mugging in the parking lot out back. Frank's dedication to the business that put food on his table and his kids through college is matched only by that to the cause for which he fought back home: a united Ireland. "I grew up in Carrickfergus, and it was an awfully rough place to be if you were a republican," he says. "I was 18 when I joined the Free State Army down south, thinking I'd bring them north. I told them all the terrible things that happened to nationalists up north. They couldn't care less." In 1943, at the same time he was a member of the Irish government's army, O'Neill joined the IRA, which was outlawed on both sides of the border. "Most republicans I knew at the time were locked up," he recalls. "They were worse on us down south. A fella I knew, Charlie Kerins, was executed. And to add insult to injury, they brought over an English hangman to do him." O'Neill recalls the details like it was yesterday. Tired of the harassment he got for his militant views and unable to get a job, O'Neill decided to try his hand in America. He started in Montreal, driving a bus, before coming to Chicago. "I didn't know a soul. I thought I was the only Irishman in Chicago."