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  One day Kuris told me about how the mother of one of his girlfriends had been giving him a hard time. And why was that? Laughing, Kuris explained that the mother was angry because her fifteen-year-old daughter was going out with man in his thirties. “You go out with a lot of fifteen-year-olds?” I asked. At this point, our relationship was sufficiently established that I could ask fairly direct questions without appearing inappropriately inquisitive. With a wolfish grin Kuris said, “They’re all fifteen.” He was pushing my definition of “villain” to the limit, but I just chuckled, knowingly. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

  Sometimes the chickens do come home to roost. After the arrest for counterfeiting, Kuris’s case went to trial after more than a year of preliminary proceedings. (The defense attorney was his third lawyer. The first two had petitioned the court to be relieved from the case, citing threats from, and fear of, their client. I could believe it.) After a proper foundation was established through my testimony as the UC in the case, a selection of the many recordings with Kuris was played for the judge and jury. When the tape of the meeting that included the homophobic rant was played in its entirety (establishing an upcoming purchase of counterfeit bills), the jurors paid closest attention during the long, bigoted rant. From the witness box, I observed twelve disapproving stares from the jury box, with one juror in particular glaring daggers at the defendant. In about the time required to eat their lunch-hour sandwiches, these citizens made the excellent decision to send this felon up the river for a number of years.

  * * *

  The magic number was 50. The prosecutors over at the White Plains office of the U.S. Attorney had determined that this was the ceiling on the number of subjects that could be manageably processed under the umbrella of RUN-DMV. Additional subjects would strain their resources to the point that the cases would be adversely impacted. The Bureau bosses concurred. Fifty, a nice round number, would send a clear message to like-minded corrupt government employees. And the case had to end somewhere. As Alex Perez, I was now operating at DMV offices in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Yonkers, White Plains, and even in New Jersey, as well as at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (for the Social Security cards) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which provided the green cards. The number of subjects was growing exponentially. I could have made a career out of RUN-DMV.

  The last curtain drop was scheduled for Wednesday, November 3, 1993, two and a half years after the first visit to Holyland. Craig Dotlo had arranged with the manager of the Ramada (that housed the New Rochelle office) to rent the entire basement for the day, as the processing center for the mass arrests. Each subject would be taken directly into the basement via a service entrance, searched, property-vouchered, photographed, fingerprinted. Forms would be completed, then he or she would be taken for a detailed interview to one of many hotel rooms rented for that purpose. Some would be interviewed prior to processing, depending on room availability. All FBI business concluded, there followed a short trip to the federal courthouse in White Plains for arraignment, after which the Deputy U.S. Marshals would take custody of the newly minted “defendants.”

  Fifty arrestees, at least four agents per arrest team, and additional agents for surveillances, tracking down missing subjects, conducting interviews, security, administrative chores—the logistics were intimidating, and nearly a third of the approximately one thousand agents assigned to the New York office were drafted for this extravaganza. On Monday, Vicki conducted the briefing for all involved in the auditorium at 26 Federal Plaza. I made a brief appearance at the podium, so they would all know what I looked like. If you see Alex on Wednesday, don’t arrest him! That evening, back in New Rochelle, I had one of only two big arguments Craig and I ever had over the course of what turned out to be a decade’s good work. Considering the intensity of most of our cases and the high stakes, operationally as well as personally for me, I think this low, low number reflects the respect Craig and I had for each other. But the disagreement that night was a big one. (The second argument led to a subject committing suicide, as recounted in a later chapter.)

  In order to enhance the subject interviews, Craig announced that he wanted me to walk into each hotel room to personally confront each arrestee. Seeing Alex Perez, learning that I was an FBI agent, they would presumably throw in the towel and make a full confession.

  I was not vehemently opposed. It was way beyond that. I was so opposed I was going ballistic. We already had airtight, locked-down, impossible-to-lose cases, overflowing with video, audio, photos, documents—you name it. Emotions in the hotel rooms would be running high; the results could be nasty. And, as neither Craig nor the others understood, it would be particularly unpleasant, depressing, and emotionally charged for me. After all, I’d been bouncing around with some of these guys— Julio Dominguez, Duardo, Carlos, a few others—for a couple of years. But I could not get through to Craig, and he was my direct supervisor, the boss. At 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday I was en route to New Rochelle for the arrests scheduled for 6:00 a.m. The reactions to the “confrontations” ranged from resignation to violent hostility. Duardo, a runner from Yonkers whose son had carved my—that is, Alex’s—initials on his skateboard, smiled wanly. You were only doing your job, Alex. I understand. Midmorning a true sociopath from the Bronx hit the other end of the spectrum. He and his older sister (a Santería sorceress, also arrested) managed the business in the Bronx that his brother-in-law officially owned. The owner was already serving a life sentence for murder. I’ve long since forgotten his name, but not his eyes. This isn’t over. This is personal. I’ll be coming for you. I was already in a bad mood, tired and crabby, and this encounter didn’t improve my outlook. An hour later, Jack Karst, a New Rochelle organized-crime agent, found me at my cubicle. Jack bore a striking resemblance to Superman, muscles included. He had heard that I’d been threatened. Not to worry, I said, I can handle the guy. Jack proceeded to the basement where the psycho was being printed, grabbed him by the collar, and glared into his eyes. Take a good look motherfucker. I want you to remember my face … Because if anything, I mean anything, happens to Alex, it’s the last fucking thing you’ll see in this fucking world. You fucking understand? The loser understood. He was on the verge of tears, pleading, when Jack dropped him back to the ground.

  A closing note to the RUN-DMV arrests was the report, which came in late that morning, of the team sent out to arrest Carlos, the runner who had processed my very first no-ID, back in Yonkers. A cheery Puerto Rican about my height, late twenties, with wavy hair, mustache, and a mischievous glint in his eyes. You remember Carlos. Well, he was dead. Two weeks earlier, police had responded to a domestic-disturbance call at his apartment. In the course of that intervention, he had “fallen” down a flight of stairs. That news did not lift my spirits that evening.

  6

  The Long Arm of the Lie

  Put it this way: crime shows on TV almost invariably get one element wrong. At every level of law enforcement in the real world, cases go awry just about as often as the crimes do. Subjects screw up and make critical mistakes—such as trusting my alias—and get arrested, convicted, and serve time. But it is disconcerting how many other subjects go free—and through no good effort of their own. Sometimes the investigation flops or has a near crash because of issues beyond almost anyone’s control (such as a UC being on the floor of the NYMEX commodities exchange and being recognized as a former assistant DA by an ill-willed colleague—COMMCORR). Sometimes it’s honest human error (for instance, the night I was fooling with the video camera joystick in the predawn hours before BLUE SCORE went down, a major police corruption case described in the next chapter). But sometimes it’s because of completely unnecessary institutional infighting and bullshit. That last is what agents in the field find so frustrating, generating as it does cynicism and black humor. One of my few regrets in my Bureau career is not having kept a log of the potentially significant and successful cases that never got going, or did get going
but never reached fruition, because of inaction or disinterest or lack of backbone on the part of upper management—the bureaucracy.

  Winston Churchill: “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Likewise, the FBI is neither perfect nor all-wise. Its bureaucracy is the worst, except for all other law enforcement agencies here and abroad.

  The inherent problem at the management level of the FBI is not a mystery. It was explained to me in my early years by an old hand, and in some respects it is virtually universal. The management structure in any organization is a pyramid. The new hire starts at Level 1, rock bottom, and struggles, competes, perhaps cuts some corners and shaves some truths in order to climb all the way up to … Level 2. Then onward and upward, with the available positions fewer and fewer at the higher levels. Up there are the best bureaucratic infighters—not necessarily the smartest, but definitely the most competent at this particular endeavor, the most cunning, the most ambitious and motivated, the true believers and the true achievers. But not everyone wants to live that life at the top, or scramble to reach it. Most people in most organizations, whether in corporations or public service, don’t have what it takes.

  In the FBI and, I believe, in many other law enforcement agencies, the vast majority of the men and women who become special agents seek the excitement and rewards of working cases. They want the immediate gratification that comes from saving a kidnap victim, thwarting a terrorist attack, fast-roping from a hovering helicopter, or in my case, gaining the trust of a crooked politician, a cocaine cartel boss, a Mafia capo, a treasonous government official, a Wall Street swindler. The main reward of good casework isn’t a lot more money or plaques on the wall, and certainly not promotion. It is, besides the respect of peers, better cases, those with ever more significance that offer more of a challenge. Together with this increased responsibility comes more independence and less oversight. (I mentioned my dreams of glory and headlines before COMMCORR fell apart. I called it a potential career-maker. All true, but the result I wanted was not a corner office; it was better cases, my choice of cases. As things worked out, I was cut a lot of slack in conducting my UC ops. But that’s another discussion.)

  The last thing most agents want is to sit at a desk, removed from the action. But the higher you climb on the FBI pyramid, the more removed you are from the real world. In the case of the Bureau and the federal government in general, we have to make allowance for a budget item introduced by President Jimmy Carter: “salary compression.” This is a euphemism for a ceiling, a cap on salary, and a pretty low one. If the corner office were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, maybe more agents would be interested in living there. But it’s not. The extra monetary reward will always be relatively insignificant. In this important respect, the FBI pyramid bears no resemblance to the corporate model.

  At the FBI, the bottom line is literally where it’s at: most special agents want to stay near the bottom of the chart. An important side benefit of their lack of interest is heightened camaraderie among fellow agents. Nor do they have to compete for promotion in nasty ways, as is the norm for CIA case officers (the functional equivalents to FBI Special Agents). CIA officers compete fiercely for their intelligence sources, on which they are evaluated. The camaraderie within the FBI and its absence of competition-induced acrimony is a huge benefit, and one that sales people and junior executives in the outside world probably cannot fathom.

  There are signs, however, that in the New-Era FBI, this culture is eroding. A more burdensome bureaucracy has changed the nature of the special agent’s job. I’ve mentioned Hoover’s “10% Rule”—agents spending more than one-tenth of their workday in the office weren’t doing their job. Today, according to an internal study, agents spend 53 percent of each day at their desks, doing what used to be called paperwork. Concerns about political correctness have eliminated most workplace humor, however benign. The good-natured ribbing from the old days may now lead to an EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) lawsuit. I guess I sound old school, behind the times. Well, when it comes to this kind of PC thing, I am. (Though when it comes to using the latest twenty-first-century tech wizardry, I’m not.)

  Raucous retirement and transfer parties, once mandatory, are fading into Bureau history. And in another sign of the changing times, the Bureau’s first formal whistle-blower emerged in the early aughts. Mike German, an experienced undercover agent, accused case agents and their managers of concealing and altering documents—offenses unthinkable in the old FBI. Hoover’s creation and maintenance of files documenting the activities of individuals on his enemies list, while certainly a misuse of power, involved neither the fabrication of facts nor the destruction of official records. Though an abhorrent practice, the content of Hoover’s secret files was nonetheless true fact, and their availability through the Freedom of Information Act attests to their non-destruction. (Despite corroboration of German’s claims by a Department of Justice investigation, the managers were never disciplined.)

  But some managers are necessary. Who are they? Often, they are those who are now certain (if they ever doubted) that they’re not really that comfortable on the street. Natural selection during training and on the job is ruthlessly effective. The proverbial “man on the street” wouldn’t last two hours on the real street, and some agents learn quickly that they are unable to adapt: they may not have the social skills to develop the necessary rapport to conduct successful interviews; or the street sense to distinguish between fabricators and potentially valuable informants; or the cunning to conduct invisible surveillance of trained terrorists; or the survival skills necessary to handle situations that in an instant can become life-threatening; or the thick skin and sense of humor that used to be a prerequisite to earning the respect of your fellow agents. So, if now you’re in management, what are your new priorities? To climb higher. What’s the route? Well, it’s not to make waves, or to have any disasters cross your desk, or to take many risks, because bold decisions require taking risks, and should things go wrong in the field a promising career within the bureaucracy can screech to halt. The best route to the top is to make friends in higher places and get your ticket punched.

  Are there good FBI managers? Absolutely. Are there managers willing to make bold decisions? Certainly. But are there many others who…? We all know the answer.

  After nearly a decade working on the streets and dealing with the bureaucracy (in more detail than I’ve described here—enough is enough), those BuIssues were already pretty clear in my mind. I was where I wanted to be, and where I could be the most benefit to the Bureau. Everyone understood this.

  Every day was a new UC lesson, and I’ll just say it: I was a damned good student. Because I loved it. More than once, simply looking the part—the ponytail, the gel, the bling—created new crime-fighting opportunities for me and my employer back in those heady days. Case in point: One afternoon in 1993, I took the Chrysler Imperial to a body shop in New Rochelle for an estimate after a fender bender caused by the (then) newfangled ABS system. (The seized Mercedes had been retired.) I found it prudent to periodically cycle covert cars.) I had leased this top-of-the-line white Imperial with the black Landau top and Alex’s trademark (and invaluable for image purposes) Metro-Dade plates. The vendor was Bud Feeney, a retired agent in a supervisory role in the New Haven division. After a few stultifying post-retirement years as an accountant, Bud had created this niche business, leasing cars to law enforcement agencies for covert use, UC and/or surveillance. Short-term, long-term, high-end, low-end. It was a jackpot for Bud. The unique service brought in tons of business from throughout the Northeast. Use any name you want on the lease. Provide any information you want. It was all bogus, all part of backstopping a legend. Only Bud would know. A fellow opera fan, he became a good friend and would always set aside the best cars for Alex Perez. The red Cherokee was another one. There was also the Accord, the Nissan Maxima (total
ed on I-684), one or two others, ending the run in ’98 with a new Saab 9000 (also red).

  In the wreck with the Imperial, I had slammed on the brakes while behind a suddenly decelerating sedan on the Westside Highway. I knew the tires would smoke but the car would stop in time—but the ABS kicked in and overruled me and I ran into the back of the sedan. My Imperial needed a couple thousand dollars’ worth of repairs. The shop was practically in sight of the Ramada and the discreet FBI offices therein. As the plates for the Chrysler were covert, I was in character when I drove up in the car. But this was a new character I was developing for use as necessary with people not involved in RUN-DMV: alias Sal Morelli. (I already had two Hispanic IDs in use—the reliable Alex Perez and, for some one-off cameo jobs that were becoming more frequent, Eduardo Dean.) I thought a third alias might come in handy down the line, and why not an Italian American handle? Low-level mob guys might relate better to one of their own, I reasoned.

  The Sal Morelli ID was almost brand-new, and it was also the first in my experience to take advantage of the Bureau’s new Janus Initiative, which was staffed with agents and specialists who could set up virtually any fake background and documentation (AFID, in the now-official parlance: alias and false identification). As I demonstrated in the COMMCORR chapter, creating and backstopping a legend is a painstaking job. In any large-scale UC op, it is essential that the UC have a bulletproof fictitious identity. But because that job was labor and time intensive, in the old days it was not always done right. It is easy to imagine that corners were sometimes cut (but not by me, being somewhat meticulous by nature). In fact, it just didn’t make sense for UCs to be continuously reinventing the wheel, spending a precious half year creating a new persona. Janus solved all those problems. It put an end to those mistakes. These folks are the “backstopping” masters.