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Controversy surrounding the FBI took center stage in the trial of reputed gangster James “Whitey” Bulger Monday, with lawyers sparring over the agency’s flawed use of criminals as informants.

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Prosecutors said Mr. Bulger spent years as an informant, and presented evidence suggesting he abused his secret role to help him get away with murder and other crimes.

Defense attorneys are putting a different spin on Bulger’s relationship with federal agents – citing corruption within the FBI’s Boston office to raise questions about whether there’s credible evidence that Bulger was an informant.

Either way, the federal law enforcement agency doesn’t come out looking good.

Officially, this high-profile criminal case is about whether Bulger will be found guilty of racketeering charges that include 19 murders and other organized-crime activities. But unofficially, the trial is also serving as a venue for airing missteps and corruption within law enforcement – most notably the FBI.

Some criminal-justice experts say the tale of Bulger as informant symbolizes an era when FBI personnel were desperate to make headway against the Mafia.

To the FBI at the time, Bulger and his main crime partner, Stephen Flemmi, were important informers against Italian-American organized crime in the region. The problem: They themselves were also big-time criminals, who appear to have gotten the best of the FBI relationship for years.

Some murder-victim family members say the FBI role, as revealed in this trial and others before it, is deeply troubling.

“Did anybody not get immunity?… It seems like nobody’s going to jail here,” said Tom Donahue, the son of a 1982 Boston murder victim, referring to the immunity that some former FBI officials have been granted in the case.

Talking to reporters outside court Monday, Mr. Donahue said his father was killed because one FBI informant (Bulger) was worried that another FBI informant (Brian Halloran) would incriminate him. Mr. Halloran was shot in a car outside a Boston restaurant. Donahue’s father was shot just because he was neighbors with Halloran and happened to be giving him a ride home at the time.

Halloran and Donahue represent two of Bulger’s alleged 19 murders in the trial, which started early this month.

One of the next witnesses for the prosecution will be John Morris, a former FBI supervisor in Boston.

But not all FBI personnel have, like Mr. Morris, been granted immunity from prosecution.

Notably, FBI Agent John Connolly is already in prison because of his role as an informant “handler” who went astray. Mr. Connolly frequently interviewed Bulger and Mr. Flemmi, and drew up reports with information they provided about other criminals. But Connolly also accepted money from Bulger and Flemmi, and fed them information.

Connolly was convicted in 2002 for warning Bulger that an indictment was coming – enabling Bulger to successfully flee Boston early in 1995. Then Connolly was convicted of second-degree murder in Florida in 2008, for telling Bulger’s group that one of its associates might become a cooperating witness – a tip that resulted in a 1982 murder.

In Monday’s courtroom duel, the prosecution had the lead role – spending all four hours of the court session walking through evidence based on Bulger’s FBI informant file with witness James Marra of the US Department of Justice.

But the defense scored a victory by getting Judge Denise Casper to sustain a key objection. In effect, the judge ruled that prosecutors can’t imply that the statements attributed by the FBI to Bulger were actually made by Bulger.

If the defense scored a technical victory on this point, however, that doesn’t mean it will ultimately win the war over whether Bulger’s legacy includes the “informant” label.

Prosecuting attorney Fred Wyshak presented numerous documents attributing information to Bulger. The tips were often detailed, fingering specific people as alleged murderers, for example.

And although the FBI’s own reputation is sullied, the jury is unlikely to view Bulger as a something akin to an underworld saint.

Some of the nuggets attributed to Bulger appeared to aimed at keeping FBI investigators off his trail. Prior to the murder of drug dealer Halloran, for instance, the FBI reported tips from Bulger saying that Halloran’s life was at risk from other criminals.

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No new carpet or furniture for the home she's lived in for 46 years. No fancy car in the driveway.

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After being gifted a life-changing sum following a school bus bullying episode seen around the world a year ago, former bus monitor Karen Klein says she really hasn't changed all that much.

Sure, the "Today" show mug she drinks coffee from reminds her of the widespread media attention her story brought, and the occasional stranger wants to snap her picture.

She's also retired, something the 69-year-old widow couldn't afford before.

But Klein, who drove a school bus for 20 years before spending three years as a monitor, remains as unassuming as she was before learning firsthand how the kindness of strangers can trump the cruelty of four adolescent boys.

"It's really amazing," Klein said at her suburban Rochester home, still perplexed at the outpouring unleashed by a 10-minute cellphone video of her being ridiculed, sworn at, and threatened by a group of seventh-graders last June. They poke at her hearing aid and call her names as she tries to ignore them.

"Unless you have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," Klein says calmly a few minutes in.

One boy taunts: "You don't have a family because they all killed themselves because they don't want to be near you." Klein's oldest son committed suicide more than a decade ago.

The video, recorded by a fellow student, was posted online and viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube.

When 25-year-old Canadian Max Sidorov was moved to take up an online collection to send her on vacation, more than 32,000 people from 84 countries responded — pledging $703,873 in donations.

"It's just the way it hits them, I guess. I don't know. I don't know," Klein said, still unsure of why it all happened.

Sidorov has called it "ridiculously more than I expected."

Klein used $100,000 as seed money for the Karen Klein Anti-Bullying Foundation, which has promoted its message of kindness at concerts and through books. Most recently, the foundation partnered with the Moscow Ballet to raise awareness of cyberbullying as the dance company tours the United States and Canada.

"There's a lot I wish I could be doing, but I don't know how to do it," Klein said.

"I'm just a regular old lady," she added with a laugh.

She has spent some helping family members and friends, and "the rest is under lock and key" for retirement, and maybe a motor home to do some traveling, she said. She wants to get back to her crafts, fix some things around the house, maybe get new carpet and furniture, and take it easy, especially since having a pacemaker implanted in March.

"There are other people who it would probably change dramatically," said Klein's daughter, Amanda Klein-Romig. "But for her, no, everything's the same pretty much. It's not like she's jaunting every weekend to a different place."

Klein has been to Boston, Toronto and other cities to promote her foundation. She participated in a WNBA anti-bullying event with the New York Liberty in Newark, N.J., and has been invited to appear on "Raising McCain," a cable television series launching this summer starring Arizona Sen. John McCain's daughter, Meghan.

"There's a lot of nice people out there, I have learned that," Klein said. "And to ignore the negative people."

Klein has been criticized by those who say she didn't do her job that June 2012 afternoon and by others who think she sought out fame and fortune.

"They make it sound like I did this on purpose," Klein said. She didn't even know the incident had been recorded until being called in to school by administrators and the police.

"She didn't ask for this," Klein-Romig said.

Klein has met with one of the boys who bullied her. He and his parents came to her home to apologize. The other three sent typed apologies, which she said struck her as less sincere.

"I hope they learned a lesson; they probably didn't," Klein says, shrugging. "It might have been a big joke to them."

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