He was referring to it not as the focus of this article, IMO, but to establish his credentials, and when he talks of Whitey Burger and the heinous behavior of the Boston FBI branch, he certainly knows of what he speaks!
And yes...you aren’t the only one who suspects Massachusetts stirred up trouble with the British because they like to stir up trouble...when General George Washington took command of the colonials in Cambridge, MA, his distaste for them knew no bounds, and he did, I think, consider them, apart from the warm bodies, more trouble than they were worth...:)
I have always thought their tendency to be troublemakers extended from their Puritan ideology. Being so self-righteously smug has long been a habit for those people.
They just lost their belief in an actual God, but kept all that self-righteousness.