The Pretender Page 28
The first break: Denise Wong, a senior analyst at International Operations Section, had learned the identity of the anonymous complainant who had accused me of “divided loyalties” and sparked the ensuing SECDIV investigation that had resulted in the revocation of my already-cut orders to LEGAT Paris. One condition, Denise said. I could not disclose my knowledge of the anonymous complainant’s identity, as the information was “singular in nature,” that is, my possession of the knowledge would lead SECDIV investigators directly back to Denise. I agreed. (She is now retired—the story can be told.)
The complainant was … Marc Beauchemin. The little rat! I was stunned. And not simply by the betrayal. I would never have expected true camaraderie from an FBIHQ supervisor assigned to the Finance Division with virtually no time on the street. But not this. Not a dagger between my shoulder blades. And it was my naïveté that angered me. How had I managed to let my defenses down? Where was my UC-honed sixth sense about people?
The Section Chief at the International Operations Section was burly and gruff Mike Pyszczmuka, former Legat Moscow. Mike was supportive and said, “The big stumbling block at SECDIV is Alan Levy. He is the Unit Chief overseeing this mess, and is adamant. Why don’t you go talk to him? Can’t hurt.” Why not indeed? Hoping to catch Levy off guard, I arrived at his nest unannounced. Though a special agent, he was permanent staff at JEH, part of the subculture of managers who had never managed their way upward and out to management jobs in the field. Short, chubby, face shiny with perspiration—the mutual animosity was instant. He agreed to discuss the allegations. As I sat there, he read aloud from the complaint. Apparently you have plans to retire in southern France. This confirmed to my satisfaction the anonymous author’s identity. I had told Beauchemin of this dream of mine. Levy continued. Having been born in France, with family and friends there, I would be a ripe target for recruitment. By the French Intelligence Services. The French. Not the Russians, not the Cubans, and certainly not the Iranians. The French: A friend would ask me for something innocent, maybe to write an essay on the U.S. legal system, which might be followed by a request for something a bit less innocent, perhaps the phone directory for the embassy.
I’ve been an FBI agent for over fifteen years. You don’t think I might recognize a recruitment attempt?
Aldrich Ames didn’t start until late in his career.
Kafkaesque.
Remember Steve Kim, the Seoul native who had served one day as my client at Holyland and froze up and almost got us both killed? The Bu posted his ass back to Korea. No divided loyalties there. Mexicans in Mexico? Not unheard of. Legat Warsaw was Polish. But Marc Ruskin in Paris? A security risk for America. Sitting in Levy’s office I saw red. Clenched fists. I had “divided loyalties”? While I had risked my life buying heroin in Queens and counterfeit on the streets of the Lower East Side, this fat slug had been flying a desk at Headquarters. And he dared to compare me to Aldrich Ames? And wait a minute—last name Levy—Alan, dude, aren’t you a fellow tribesman? Thanks for nothing, schmuck. The mounting urge to punch his greasy nose, to hear it crunch and for the blood to spurt across his desk, was barely suppressible. There was nothing further to be gained here. The instantaneous decision to be made: break Levy’s face and throw away my career, or not. I walked away.
With the battle lines drawn, I sought allies. FBI Director Robert Mueller’s right hand, Mike Mason (now Chief of Security for Verizon), lobbied on my behalf. As did the Executive Assistant Director, Kathleen McChesney. But the fix was in. A few long weeks later, McChesney called me in. There was a vacancy in Buenos Aires. My lucky day. I guess SECDIV didn’t know that my mother, as well as most of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and a host of nefarious friends, in and out of government, were Argentine. Levy would have had conniptions at the thought of recruitment attempts by those vaunted, insidious, Argentine intelligence services. I could take Buenos Aires now or wait for the inevitable cancellation of Paris and—and what? Back to Safeguard?
* * *
As my flight and personal effects winged southward to the land of Tierra Del Fuego and grass-fed beef, rather than eastward toward the land of Provence and haute cuisine, I reflected on the fortuitous timing of my departure. As a result of internal forces, such as the Hanssen embarrassment, and external forces, most significantly the WTC attack, the huge cogs of the BUREAUcracy’s grinding machinery were at a crossroads (if I may be allowed a mixed metaphor). Is there anyone on the globe not aware of the FBI, who does not respond (maybe with admiration, maybe with loathing), to the three-upper-case-letter “brand” (in the old sense, a mark burned on the side of a cow, not marketing newspeak)? Well, this world’s premier law enforcement entity could now either sharpen its focus and mission and become an enhanced FBI, or it could meander aimlessly in a vain attempt to “redefine” itself.
The earlier discussion of the Bureau hierarchy provides clues as to which path it chose, although “chose” isn’t quite right, because there wasn’t much volition going on. Mostly political buffeting and inertia. Despite the well-meaning Director’s best intentions, the political pressures were enormous. What happened next may have been inevitable: It wasn’t just SECDIV that was being transformed. The policy makers in upper management commenced relinquishing FBI jurisdiction over key areas of criminal activity to other agencies, much to the chagrin of agents in the field, the world’s foremost experts in investigating those domains. Much of the work corralling fugitives was farmed out (forever) to the U.S. Marshals. (Think “FBI Ten Most Wanted List” to gauge the significance of this move. The phrase won’t have quite the import in a few years.) Credit card fraud went to the Secret Service (yes, the Secret Service), narcotics to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The FBI, though by necessity very strong in intelligence gathering, had been, both by definition and in J. Edgar’s realized vision, a law enforcement agency. The law enforcement agency. The CIA is the intelligence-gathering agency. (Its initials are pretty well recognized as well. So far as professionalism is concerned, it is in steep competition with the Mossad, French DGSE, and Russian FIS, formerly the KGB.) But fearing that the politicians would create a new and independent domestic security agency, à la British MI-5, the post-9/11 Bureau immediately initiated a shift. Mirroring the CIA’s twin hierarchies—Case Officer and Intelligence Analyst—the Bu converted its old analyst position (previously a stepping stone to Special Agent) into a career-path Intelligence Analyst, with its own distinct course of training at Quantico. Following the true bureaucrat’s intuitive belief that additional levels of administration and complexity create a more effective organization.
And of course there’s the inevitable drift toward bureaucracy and paperwork. I have already explained Hoover’s TIO (time-in-office) rule, aka the 10% Rule: TIO should never to exceed 10 percent. Today’s ratio is 53 percent, and this does not include supplementing fieldwork with online or telephone or database investigation, but simply complying with administrative requirements. Just doing paperwork. Precisely what Hoover had sought to avoid, presciently aware of the inevitable consequences.
As to the implications for individual privacy rights arising from shifting a law enforcement agency with police power into domestic intelligence-gathering … initially not a concern. Critics will no doubt snicker and make reference to the 1950s blacklists, disregarding the lead role played by the U.S. Congress, Senator (not FBI Director) Joe McCarthy, the House (not Bureau) Un-American Activities Committee. Virtually all FBI special agents I have known over three decades have had significantly more respect for the Constitution (that we are sworn to uphold) than politicians, prosecutors, and journalists. But as the vulnerability to political (particularly executive) pressure increases, and as the institution evolves, so does the culture, and so do the hiring criteria. The old-school agents retire, and the stage is set for an Orwellian shift. Or not. Taking into account the voluminous data-gathering of the NSA, the shift across the board appears inexorable. However, long service does reveal the cycl
ical nature of government agencies and political entities, similar to booms and busts in the economy. If the will is there, the pendulum will swing back toward the Bill of Rights. Meanwhile, here’s a public-service tip learned from many hours of listening to telephone intercepts as a young agent, and from subsequent reliance on all variety of eavesdropping in my UC ops: Never utter a word or compose a phrase, over the phone or in a digital message, that you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing in your local newspaper the next morning. And you’ll be fine.
Postscript: The ex-congressman Anthony Weiner sexting scandals, the Clinton server debacle, the WikiLeaks email disclosures, and resultant high-profile publicly and/or privately shattered careers all serve to confirm the worth of my admonition.
* * *
All in all, 2002 was a good time for me to leave JEH behind. To go OCONUS. To try to forget what I knew would be the case: The mutual suspicion between myself and SECDIV would be a leitmotif until my BuRetirement in 2012.
11
But First, That Shootout in Buenos Aires
The tires squeal—really, they do—as I spin my gray Ford Focus hatchback in a hard U-turn, putting the front of the car between me and the Honda speed bike up ahead, using my engine block for cover. The wheel is in my right hand, my gun (in Buenos Aires, the .40 caliber Glock M27) in my left. Why the precaution? Moments before, the bright red bike has screamed into my story. The passenger with shoulder-length black hair and no helmet has dismounted and aimed his large-frame pistol at the head of the driver of the car directly in front. When I react to this threat, the gunner shifts focus and aims his weapon at me.
I am on my way home from a late Sunday brunch with my cousin Eduardo, followed by some casual shopping in downtown Buenos Aires. Driving up four-lane Libertador Avenue in the heavy evening traffic, I’m thinking about which movie to put on the VCR, which excellent Argentine wine to uncork. Suddenly, there is a gun pointing at me. Holy shit. This is for real. In my seventeen years with the FBI, routinely hanging out with all manner of criminals, pretending to be one of them, never have I been face-to-face with the wrong end of a firearm barrel—not in Puerto Rico, not undercover. Nor have I ever fired my weapon except on the range. In the field, I’ve drawn it many times, mostly during those years in San Juan, on raids and while making arrests, but I’ve never shot anyone, or tried to. And now here I am, off duty on a crowded avenue in this cosmopolitan foreign capital, with this armed robbery or attempted murder, possibly an assassination, happening right in front of me.
Glock in hand, I throw open the door, using it and the windshield frame for cover. Then … what?… what happened?… It’s a blank in my mind, a hole as my synapses fast-forward, leaving three, four, five seconds unaccounted for. Until my car is spinning, barely in control. After the emergency spin, my right tires are on the sidewalk. Now the gunman is seated on the Honda, his back is to me, the bike just yards ahead of the Ford. His upper torso twisted to the right, his face twisted in fury, eyes glaring. Right arm outstretched, a flash from the muzzle as he fires a single shot right into my windshield. I hear nothing but have the truly idiotic thought that this isn’t fair. I still have the distinct memory. He’s shooting at me! Why? I return fire, the Honda’s engine screams from the immediate application of throttle, and the bike tears off. The driver of the other car, the original target for the crime, also speeds off. Total elapsed time, thirty seconds, maybe less.
Then time slowed back down. Within minutes, the police were on hand. On the tarmac fifteen yards in front of my car, they found a fully loaded magazine for a Glock 9mm—not my .40 caliber, therefore the shooter’s pistol. He had not properly seated the magazine. In my mind (still operating a bit below capacity), I reasoned that this find would corroborate my account that the guys on the Honda bike were in fact armed. And that prints might be lifted. But the all-important, overriding significance of this gift from fate, from our Father, from my father looking out for me, did not surface until the next day as I recounted the incident to a couple of the DEA agents at the embassy. This magazine on the tarmac was the explanation for the inexplicable single shot from the shooter. He could fire only the one round that was initially chambered. If the magazine had worked, he would have sprayed my windshield and I probably wouldn’t be typing these words right now.
I had fired one shot, or at least that’s what I remembered, but a couple of weeks later, when I picked up my weapon from the Policia Federal de Argentina forensics shop, it had only eight rounds remaining. Interesting, because the fully loaded capacity of the Glock is ten shots. Had I fired the second bullet during my memory blank-out? Perhaps. Had the thug fired a round when he first saw me? Vast experience (not mine; law enforcers’ in general) has proved that when the bullets are flying, eyewitness testimony from the immediate vicinity is often contradictory and pretty worthless. Sensory perceptions are distorted in a variety of forms: everything happening in slow-motion, tunnel vision, flashes of amnesia, high volume or no volume (but I know the tires on my Ford were squealing). Aim is also seriously affected. Bullets fly everywhere, even those shot by trained officers. This time in Buenos Aires, thank goodness, no bystanders were hurt. I don’t know about the shooter or his driver. They were never found. Neither was the driver of the other car. The motive for the original confrontation was never established.
The rest of that evening was spent not watching the movie with the glass of fine wine but sitting in the dingy police station, answering questions and signing paperwork. However, the process was courteous, thanks to the presence of the number-four man in the Argentine federal police, Director of Counterterrorism, my friend Jorge Alberto “Fino” Palacios, the first person I called after the shooting. No, the hassles came later. Any shooting incident, in any law enforcement agency, is always considered a major event with potential legal repercussions. (In reality, gunfire is not that frequent. Most law enforcers of any kind go through their entire careers without firing a shot outside the range.) My incident in Buenos Aires had other exacerbating circumstances as well. I was a foreign national with diplomatic status in a sovereign nation. In the history of the FBI, no agent OCONUS—on assignment outside the United States in any capacity—had ever fired his or her gun, on or off duty. Hard to believe, but true. It’s still true. (Not officially, at least. It’s not too difficult to envision this scenario: FBI special agent, after firing the fatal rounds in a remote area in a foreign land, hands the weapon to his partner in the local constabulary, the National Police of Wherever, with a comment to the effect of “nice shooting, Jose” (or Tadej, or Hassan), and a wink.)
* * *
It would be only a slight exaggeration to state that FBI agents have nearly superhero status overseas—in sharp contradistinction to the perception domestically, particularly in New York and on the West Coast. With every introduction overseas, you can see—you can feel—the eyes on you, hoping to be impressed by your authoritative FBI presence, your implicit FBI confidence, your penetrating FBI sagacity. You do not want to let the team down. At least I didn’t. At the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, my transition from UC meets with heroin dealers (although it had been close to four years since those days on the streets) to ALAT meets with cabinet ministers and provincial governors had been smooth enough. Two agents in my office, assisted by the spectacular raven-haired Nilaya Vargas, the three of us responsible for all liaison and investigations in Argentina and two of its neighbors, Uruguay and Paraguay. All the agencies that handle information no one else was supposed to know about—the ones referred to by their initials in upper case—were bunched together in a special area in the embassy. The FBI team was cramped, with less privacy than a cubicle would have provided. Access to this redoubt was reminiscent of the clanging steel doors and secret passageways utilized by Agent 86 in the old Get Smart television show. We didn’t have the Cone of Silence but came close.
FBI agents from throughout the United States would contact us directly with requests for local investigation on cases they were conductin
g in the States.
“Setting leads,” in BuSpeak. The leads covered any and all domains. A suspected Hezbollah operative in Minneapolis is believed to have lived for ten-plus years in Argentina, please provide all available intel: more than a third of the leads were terrorism-related. A New York financier is being investigated for a complex Ponzi scheme, swindling millions of dollars. Eight potential victims have been identified as Buenos Aires residents, please interview. The leads flowed in both directions. Miguel Angel Galassi, Subcomisario, in Delitos Economicos would give me a call. Marc, we have a case against Julio Jimenez for mortgage fraud. We have source information that he has a secret bank account in Miami. Can you help? I—we—could sure try.
Interpol was of substantial assistance, but not as the general public would expect. There is, in fact, no single law enforcement agency named Interpol. Rather, almost every national police agency in the world has an office dedicated to international cooperation, staffed by its own officers. These offices are coordinated by a purely administrative (not operational) agency in Lyon, France—the Interpol General Secretariat. The Interpol office in the United States, situated in Washington, D.C., is made up primarily of FBI Agents. The Interpol office in Paraguay is manned by Policia Nacional de Paraguay officers. There is no such thing as an agent of Interpol.
The way it worked, if I did not already know a certain agency’s chief regarding a certain subject matter—extortion, say, or blackmail, two popular choices—I would stop by the office of Luis Fuensalida, Comisario Inspector with the PFA, the Policia Federal de Argentina, and therefore—Jefe, Interpol. Tall and lanky, with a close-cropped gray beard, Luis would sit back, slowly draw on his pipe, and listen carefully. After I had filled him in on the case, he would either assign one of his officers to assist or call the jefe of the relevant division, and we would all work the matter together. Fuensalida’s boss, overseeing Interpol, as well as Kidnapping, Complex Crimes, Terrorism, SWAT, and more, was Jorge Alberto “Fino” Palacios, introduced above as the friend whom I called immediately after the shooting, and who raced to the scene. (Not many years later, after I had returned to the States, my old San Juan era friend Will Godoy, now Legat Buenos Aires, informed me that Fino had been jailed on orders of First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. He had refused orders to arrest judges and politicians from opposing political parties. In the end, after a year and a half, he was released but is still being dragged through the courts on spurious charges.)