The Pretender Read online

  After receiving the green light from Mark and his supervisor, Geoff, I told Gil the Armstrong initiative was a go. He then expressed his interest in expansion to Armstrong, who had a complex and effective transport system in place that involved cargo ships, secret ports, and specially adapted tractor-trailers. You have the infrastructure. We have the pot. We need you.

  Armstrong bought it. Gil’s trusted nephew Alex Perez would handle the day-to-day operations. Just as RUN-DMV had spawned spin-off UC cases that remained under the same umbrella, SUNBLOCK had begun to beget offspring. Armstrong was the new Santiago Kuris.

  Like Gong, Armstrong was paranoid and a lunatic in his own way. (To improve his health, he bought into a prison-specific urban legend and for a while was drinking his own urine, a practice that Gil politely declined to follow.) Armstrong maintained contact with his chief lieutenant on the outside through (incredibly) his mother. A cool professional, she also handled much of the cash. Armstrong instructed her to accept calls from Alex, and set up an introduction with his right-hand man. Now we had the Jewish white guy working UC as both a Mexican cocaine dealer and as a marijuana dealer in league with middle-aged white hippies with a violent bent. It was a new twist. With Gong and his frequent calls, preparing for and executing the heroin buys, the nightly calls with Gil, and now Armstrong and a few others, SUNBLOCK had evolved into a full-time job and more, despite the now-forgotten assurances from Mark’s supervisor to Craig Dotlo that I was on part-time loan from Squad C-21—just a few UC meets, now and again.

  However, I was always available for a cameo, pursuant to my still-in-place, never-say-no policy, and one evening while I was duping tapes of a call with Gong, an agent from the Organized Crime Squad stopped by my cubicle in New Rochelle. He was the case agent on a long-term investigation of one of the La Cosa Nostra (LCN) families in the Bronx. Their primary meeting place was a social club/restaurant in the Bronx. The agent had an unlikely confidential informant for a mob case, a Puerto Rican guy named Angelo, aka Angel. He knew all the players, having insinuated himself as a compliant and reliable errand boy. What the sting now required was a perch for him to sit in on Arthur Avenue, with a direct view of the club. This neighborhood was a colony of Little Italy in Lower Manhattan: all inbred Italian, a closed society. Today, of course, Manhattan’s Little Italy is now a pitiful remnant of the thriving community of the good old days. Chinatown has fared better. The agents on the case had been trying to rent an apartment, answering classifieds from neighborhood papers, equipped with their AFID driver’s licenses and credit cards. And they had been met with blank expressions. It’s no longer available … I’ve rented it … I’ve changed my mind … Followed by a slamming door.

  What we had here was clearly a task for Sal Morelli. I needed a few hours break from SUNBLOCK to clear my head and was grateful for the low-stress cameo role—UC Lite. I drove to the informant Angel’s apartment building on the Grand Concourse. And was truly surprised. In the midst of the still devastated, graffiti-ridden South Bronx, his apartment was pristine. Behind the deceptively battered front door with the obligatory multiple locks was a sanded and polished parquet floor displaying antiques that had been carefully, lovingly restored. Angel also proudly showed me his collection of classic watches. (I still take my watches to the then-already-old Dominican watch repairer Angel recommended.)

  We took a drive down Arthur Avenue, in order to get a feel for the area. The old style delis were filled with imported foods. I bought some excellent, hard-to-find Sicilian cheeses and olives, value added to the expedition. Angel pointed out the pertinent sites, the LCN families’ boundary lines, the gathering places. Then it was a matter of minutes for Sal Morelli to talk up the landlord of a walk-up studio apartment unearthed by Angel, virtually across the street from the social club, and make the down payment. Happy to do it. As New Rochelle’s resident UC, performing such small favors kept me in good graces with the various supervisors and agents. Consequently, little attention was paid to my comings and goings, and I led a remarkably unstructured work life. The public perception of the FBI as a highly regimented, nearly paramilitary organization is a fiction to begin with, particularly so for the full-time UC.

  No sooner was I back in the New Rochelle office from Arthur Avenue when Gong checked in. After the usual indecipherable exchange and menus, half-menus, and maybe unions (they occasionally still came up), we reached accord, such as it was. As usual, Gil and I required forty-five minutes to decipher what I had just agreed to. As it turned out, the next meet would be one of my last ones with the Malaysian heroin distributors. My role in SUNBLOCK had been running for a year and a half; soon it would be time for the last curtain call. Mark Calnan’s net was nearly ready to be gathered and pulled in. For one thing, he was just about out of buy money. And the case was ripe, ready to be taken down. Assembling all the pieces, the UC buys, the telephone intercepts, the CI information, a solid prosecution of the entire organization was nearly ready to initiate. The full-court press had worked almost to perfection.

  The final, final negotiation took place in Lewisburg. My uncle says you’re good with four dollars a menu, with us buying twenty-four Chinese menus. Gong had made it clear that $96,000 was a special price for his Mexican friend. White clients, black clients, never paid less than one ten, one twenty, regardless. Richard and Chang both showed up to the LaGuardia Marriott, this time accompanied by a new Grand Street Dragon. Knowing there might not be a future opportunity, Mark and the AUSA who would be handling the SUNBLOCK prosecutions had asked that I push the envelope as far as I comfortably could. After the cash and heroin had been exchanged, Richard and I puffed on our obligatory Marlboros and discussed future transactions, expanded delivery sites. I turned the conversation to Canada, to sources, to ways in which our organization and networks could facilitate those used by the Chinese. Discretion being the better part of valor, I exercised restraint. With the criminal case complete—the conversations taped, the buys on video, the heroin in evidence vaults—I still wasn’t eager to be on the receiving end of a flying sidekick from the aloof Dragon hovering in the background. And there was Gil’s well-being to think about. By this time, it was very important to me.

  Leaving the hotel, I felt the oncoming blues, the end-of-story lassitude that accompanied the end of every long-term undercover operation. Starting with RUN-DMV, the anticipated elation at the end of a successful case seemed to elude me. The adrenaline rushes were over, replaced by a cold-turkey, low-level depression and thoughts focused on the missed opportunities: the buys never consummated, the subjects who had not been developed, and, in this op, the travel to the Far East that never materialized. (But like a junkie looking for his next fix, I already had the groundwork set for my next UC op.)

  As soon as the prosecutors had drawn up the warrants, Mark, his squad-mates, the NYPD Task Force, and four SWAT teams swept up Gong’s entire organization. Mark had arranged for Special Operation Group surveillance teams to maintain observation of all the subjects, guaranteeing that their whereabouts would be confirmed on the scheduled arrest date. Thanks to Mark’s elaborate preparations, none slipped through the net. Gong was “arrested” in prison and escorted (politely, of course, because this was the BOP!) to solitary.

  A few day later, Mark called me at my desk in New Rochelle. The Canadians had successfully rounded up Paul Kwok and his organization, at least those they had identified and built cases on. Our excellent neighbor’s PROJECT ORDAIN was not as rock solid as SUNBLOCK. For one thing, they hadn’t been able to introduce a UC. After reneging on their assurances to me, ready and eager to work both sides of the border … whom did they have to blame for that?

  Of course, Gong’s people—Richard, Chang, Denise Wei, Kevin Mong, Peter Li, and on and on, eighteen targets altogether—all categorically denied any involvement in businesses other than Chinese restaurants and karaoke clubs. Until they were shown a few videos and listened to a few phone recordings. The guy you’re talking to there. With the ponytail? He’s an
FBI agent. Guilty pleas followed shortly thereafter. As to those who were arrested, there were no trials. I never testified. Gong got an additional twenty-seven years, to run consecutively with his current life sentence. The judge ordered that he be delivered to INS for deportation upon completion of his sentence … Gong will be well over a hundred years old before he’s eligible for parole. Richard, Peter Li, Kevin Mong—the top lieutenants—received sentences ranging from twenty-two to twenty-eight years. They’re still in prison. (Most states lop off one third of the time for good behavior. Not so in federal prisons, where 85 percent of the sentence must be served before parole eligibility.)

  Among Gong’s minions, Chang, with no priors, received the shortest sentence, ten years. When the time came for his release, ten years later—no reduction for good behavior—hound-dog case agent Mark Calnan gave me the heads-up. Marc, beware, the SUNBLOCK subjects are beginning to hit the streets. This was the only such courtesy heads-up I have ever received in my two-plus decades’ career as a UC. Yes, I’m a big Mark Calnan fan.

  But what could I do, really? Not live in a cave in Timbuktu. If Gong’s men found me, they found me. At that time, I was back working UC ops in New York, after a seven-year hiatus managing undercover operations nationwide from FBIHQ, and tracking down terrorists, fugitives, and others on the ground in South America.

  As for our play with Armstrong and marijuana, communication with that target rapidly decelerated due to an unexpected development. Following a request to be lodged closer to his family, Armstrong was transferred to a federal prison in Texas. The routine conversations with Gil were replaced by infrequent, coded telephone calls. As a result, progress toward a meet was now at a snail’s pace. With the arrests of the Gong gang, the Armstrong spin-off case was reassigned to Los Angeles, where his top lieutenant resided. The investigation was in an early stage, to say the least. Other than the initial intel developed by Gil and a few contacts by me with Armstrong’s mother and one of his henchmen, no concrete steps had been taken. Los Angeles would have to start from scratch. Inevitably, Gong would learn that Alex was an FBI agent, Uncle Gil was no uncle at all, and the word would spread throughout the penitentiary, and then throughout the entire chain of federal prisons.

  Gil Sandoval was moved to the Bureau of Prison’s own internal Witness Protection Plan at an undisclosed facility—segregated incarceration for cooperators and convicted law enforcement officers, inmates whose longevity in the general prison population would be rather limited. He was alive and relatively safe, but Mark Calnan and I wanted more. We pushed hard for a resentencing hearing for Gil. Rick Getty, Gil’s original contact agent in El Paso, had retired, with the file assigned to a rookie two years out of the academy. While very pleasant, she had really nothing to gain from what promised to be a significant amount of work. The El Paso U.S. Attorney’s office had no interest in conducting the legal research and drafting the requisite affidavits and motions requesting a resentencing hearing. They ultimately agreed, grudgingly, to file the documents—if someone else prepared them. In the end, it was two grunts in New York, a busy undercover guy—fortunately for Gil, a former assistant district attorney—and a narcotics investigator who put it all together. When, after many years, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, presiding in El Paso, granted a motion for a resentencing hearing, Mark Calnan and I took the highly unusual step of testifying on his behalf—in El Paso, at the Bureau’s expense. To any readers who may still question the FBI’s commitment to its informants and the extraordinary investigative results that this commitment yields, this passage is self-evident in its significance.

  Eight years after the Gong gang’s indictments came down, Gil was finally released from Lewisburg into the U.S. Marshals Service Witness Protection Program. He was no longer serving a natural life term in a federal prison. He was now serving a different kind of natural life term, the same one as yours and mine. Before disappearing over the horizon, Gil called to thank me and say good-bye. Now he was headed undercover, in a way. I hope and believe that he has made a good life for himself, somewhere out there.

  9

  Starlight Lounge

  The Rastafarian stood in front of the dingy social club, his dreads bundled into the traditional multicolored knit cap, his shirt half unbuttoned to reveal the taut muscles beneath. Drinking a beer, the Rastaman was deep in conversation with a middle-aged stocky wiseguy, with silver hair brushed straight back, a cigar in his thick right hand next to the oversized jeweled ring, his suit sharkskin—nothing but the best. Out of the shadows slipped an outlaw biker, muscular tattooed arms exposed by the sleeveless black leather vest. The cruel smile on his bearded face exposed stained teeth. This odd trio turned together to greet the banker, elegant in his finely tailored suit, his silver hair carefully groomed, his manicured hands holding a leather portfolio. By his side, a blond, blue-eyed man with an icy stare—he would have been the perfect poster boy for the Hitler Youth—stood guard with an insidious smile and military bearing, the twin lightning bolts pinned to his shirt collar betraying his neo-Nazi affiliations.

  As I approached, those ten eyes, even the Nazi’s, fixed on mine: an intimidating crew, to all appearances—but they were only appearances, because I was in on the deal. All of us were simpatico, part of the FBI team, the UC team, enjoying a few beers in the Starlight Lounge after an evening of practical exercises in Hogan’s Alley, the simulated city at Quantico utilized by all manner of agents, including SWAT teams perfecting their hostage-rescue skills, surveillance teams, and us undercover specialists. (The neo-Nazi was Mike German, the key guy for working the Aryan Nation and white supremacist militias. Five years prior to German’s whistle-blowing and departure from the Bu.)

  At the Starlight, I was Marc Ruskin, not H. Marc Renard on Wall Street, not Alex Perez buying fraudulent government documents and kilos of dope, not Sal Morelli scamming the insurance companies. Gone were my long ponytail, the gel job, the T-shirt, the bling. I was in “business casual” mode, because I was now management—yes, management, of all things—but a different kind of management, I hasten to add (considering the prior discussion). This was 1999, and I was assigned to the Undercover Safeguard Unit, which had been created in the early nineties to “address the needs of UCEs … throughout the six phases (selection, training, operational planning, deployment, decompression, and reintegration) of covert activity” (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, August 2008, p. 2). It was an anomaly within the BUREAUcracy—an HQ entity dedicated to cutting through red tape, rather than adding to it. More recently, the formal training curriculum for wannabe undercover agents had been initiated, replacing the OJT (on-the-job training) that had sufficed for the older generation of undercovers. As we have seen in some detail, for my first decade working undercover, everything had been OJT (trial and error, monkey-see-monkey-do, learn-or-leave-or-worse). Now, finally, the undercover craft as practiced by the FBI was being codified, and not just the paperwork, in the field as well. We were actually changing the conditions for undercover work with major consequences.

  This was all to the good, but my decision to get deeply involved in the new program had not been an easy call. One of the hardest, in fact. Being a street agent was in my blood. I’d had real doubts about leaving it behind as I stared at the FD-638, the form to submit to management in order to compete for a slot in that management. It was still blank. After fourteen years of disparaging managers and management, ten of those years almost exclusively undercover, I was having a hard time pulling this trigger. Did I really want to go over to what amounted to the Bureau’s own dark side? Because that’s how I thought of it. That’s how many special agents in the field thought of management in general, and Headquarters in particular. Since BuTime immemorial, field agents have viewed FBIHQ, as it is known to all who have never served there, as an unfathomable source of aggravation and interference with ongoing and proposed investigations. An incomprehensible zombie factory, from where once-normal agents emerge somehow altered: remot
e, aloof, rule-driven, obsequious to those higher up. There is much truth in the perception. And also some exaggeration, the suspicions naturally bred by ignorance—an ignorance that agents are more than happy to maintain, if the cost of enlightenment is an indeterminate sentence within the concrete walls of JEH, as it is known to its denizens and to all who have ever served there, the J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., in our nation’s capital.

  The big building had always evoked images of an oversized military bunker, a large blot to the landscape, particularly hideous since situated in a city of majestic monuments and landmarks. And what’s with those hideous concrete walls? The explanation is an interesting and not irrelevant story. In the cavernous garage, spanning an entire city block, I had observed (years before) ceiling-high stacks of unknown content, draped in dust-imbued old canvas. Many, many stacks. What were the mysterious contents? From friends in Facilities Management, sitting in their windowless offices in the basement of JEH, I now finally learned the story (or perhaps the urban legend) behind the concrete walls—and the mysterious stacks of … white marble panels. Huge panels of beautiful, valuable marble. Marble that had been destined to cloak the new headquarters, provide the finishing architectural touch, and allow the building to take its rightful place in the panoply of Washington’s awe-inspiring structures. And then came ABSCAM, a group I mentioned earlier. It had been a big deal in the years when my desire to join the FBI was germinating. The large-scale public corruption investigation had rooted out some bribe-takers from within the ranks of Congress. A laudable, inspiring event, only possible in a true democracy. Unfortunately for the FBI, however, it later emerged that there would be a price to pay for unearthing the rotten apples from among those who control the purse strings. And among the budget disasters that followed, an initiative that fell victim to ABSCAM was the marble-ization of JEH. The marble is still stacked down there, unused, and in the nearly forty years since the stone was first delivered, there have been no further investigations seeking to uproot corruption on Capitol Hill. (American Hustle, the mega-popular movie disliked by many of my retired colleagues for its wildly inaccurate depiction of FBI agents, missed an opportunity to capitalize on Congress’s notorious double standard: exempting themselves from the rules applied to all others.)