The Pretender Read online

  In Puerto Rico, I had a lot more faith in my new guns than in the elaborate defensive tactics I’d just learned at Quantico. In fact, I had no intention of getting into a mano a mano physical confrontation with anyone, be it in San Juan or elsewhere. I made a point, from the very beginning, never to carry a canister of pepper spray or an expanding baton. Some agents, usually young ones, carry as many accoutrements as will fit on their persons. But as a former aggressive prosecutor, I knew that other aggressive prosecutors, anticipating the tactics of aggressive defense attorneys, would challenge the carrier of pepper spray for not having used “less drastic methods” before escalating to the use of deadly force. I’d be able to say, “The gun was the only weapon available. Sorry.” A firearms instructor at Quantico had taught us, “Any confrontation between an agent and someone else is an armed confrontation. There is always, always, at least one gun present.”

  These issues are still pertinent today. The risks to a law enforcement officer of being shot with his or her own weapon are inherent to the job, leading most recently to the devastating events in Ferguson, Missouri, and their aftermath. I want only to point out how “avoidance of deadly force” is not always so easy … or safe.

  * * *

  Now let’s flash-forward to that Friday evening—less than a week after my arrival in San Juan—when I was crashing across the ocean to Vieques on a Navy troop landing craft, the kind one sees in World War II movies transporting soldiers to the Normandy beaches. I had been in-division (to get technical about it) for less than a week. Four others from the Reactive Squad were on board for this adventure: my overall supervisor, John Navarette; my daily (but hands-off) supervisor, Mark Llewellyn; my partner, Lowell Walker; and Mark’s partner, Van Camacho. Van’s official BuName (the one that goes on the paycheck) really was “Van,” and that was the only name the tough, macho, muscular Puerto Rican answered to. It wasn’t until years later that I learned his name at birth: Vanesa. He grew up fast, with such a name. It reminded me of a certain song by Johnny Cash: “A Boy Named Sue.”

  The fugitive we were after on Vieques? He occupied a prominent place on the New Jersey Top-Twelve Most Wanted list, was sought in connection with various homicides and violent assaults, and was indeed worthy of his high standing among his peers in the Pagans, a notorious outlaw biker gang, second only to the Hell’s Angels for brutality and a Neanderthal lifestyle. His name: Alan Shapiro, more suitable to a personal injury lawyer than a chain-wielding chopper jockey. We would be able to identify him by the swastika tattoos. Our landing craft made it safely on the beach at Vieques, where we were met by a friend of Navarette’s, a retired cop. At this friend’s cabin, we planned the arrest and imbibed a couple of Heinekens apiece. (It’s a particularly popular brew in Puerto Rico, second only to the locally produced Medalla.) With the adrenaline racing, it may as well have been ginger ale, at least in my case, but still, this was definitely not something they taught at Quantico.

  An hour later, just after 10:00 p.m., we charged through the door to Shapiro’s ramshackle house with guns drawn, not knowing if he would be alone with his common-law wife, or with a dozen other Pagans, or sitting in his leather recliner enjoying … a Heineken. He jumped off a cot, shouting angrily, rushing forward. One solid punch from Mark took the fight out of him. As Van assisted in the cuffing, the rest of us cleared the house, disregarding the high-pitched verbal abuse from the only other occupant, his (unarmed) girlfriend. An hour later we dropped him off at the local Comisario, with a dirt floor and single bulb dangling from the ceiling, and then headed to the town square for a late dinner and more Heinekens.

  The next morning we picked up Shapiro at the Comisario, banged across the ocean, and returned the trusty landing craft at Rosey Roads (Roosevelt Roads Naval Station). Driving back to San Juan, I sat in back with our prisoner. At one point he said to me, “You know, you and I have something in common.”

  “Really, what’s that?” I had nothing in common with this lunatic biker charter member of the Pagan outlaw motorcycle gang.

  “We’re both members of The Tribe.”

  “The Tribe?”

  “We’re both Jewish.”

  That’s nice, I thought, but I don’t have swastikas tattooed all over my body. I asked my fellow tribesman about his tattoos. He explained that they were simply an essential part of the Pagans’ dress code. Nothing personal. I pursued the small talk. He explained that he and another Pagan had kidnapped a drug dealer who had “disrespected” them with a short count. In order to teach him respect and proper Pagan etiquette, they’d cut him a few times. Sixty or seventy times. We all turned to stare at him, even Mark Llewellyn, who was driving and had seen and heard just about everything in his many years as a police officer and special agent. Noting our reaction, our Pagan captive was quick to mitigate. “They were only thumbnail deep.” (Eleven years later, I ran into Shapiro in federal court in White Plains. He was still having trouble with the law. The decade had taken a heavy toll on this guy, but the ID was easy. I’ll never forget those proud swastikas.)

  Then, a couple of weeks later, in mid-August, came the WELLROB arrests. The crime that had most immediately instigated this bust had been committed almost two years earlier, on September 12, 1983, in West Hartford, Connecticut, when a Wells Fargo armored car had been assaulted and robbed of seven million dollars, with one guard and one police officer killed in the shootout. Most of the money, supposedly intended to fund the envisioned Puerto Rican revolution, had ended up in Cuba instead. The long trail forward had led to this day, when thirty Macheteros were to be arrested simultaneously. This paramilitary cadre was categorized by the U.S. government as domestic terrorists. The entire leadership and core operational players were to be swept up in the one net. All would be well trained and heavily armed. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (the Bureau’s Special Forces), the U.S. Marshals’ Special Arrests Unit, and a dozen FBI SWAT teams had flown in for the operation.

  I had been in San Juan less than a month, had already participated in a high-risk-fugitive arrest, and now the Macheteros. The grass wasn’t growing under the feet of the lawmen on the “Isla del Encanto,” that’s for sure. This was the place to be.

  On a sweltering August morning, the arrest teams had set up well before dawn. Befitting my status as an FOA, I was assigned to securing the entrance to the Federal Building parking lot, where the prisoners would be brought initially before heading to court. The terrorists had all sworn never to be taken alive, but better judgment prevailed and all but one surrendered without resistance. Although my assignment in the busy parking lot seemed to pose limited physical risk, another source of exposure soon arose. A steel-mesh fence was the only barrier to a neighboring public parking lot. As word of the arrests spread, the adjacent lot soon filled with journalists. Arrestees came and went, yet only one FBI agent made for an ongoing perfect photo op featuring his obligatory blue FBI cap snugly in place and FBI raid jacket damp with perspiration. An attractive young woman reporter from the independentista newspaper Clarín must have used several rolls of film capturing my likeness (and later my BuCar’s license plate). As the Macheteros were known to conduct active intelligence-gathering and surveillance of their enemy combatants (us), this did little for my peace of mind. Visions of my photo on a Machetero bulletin board floated through my imagination.

  The one exception to the pattern of peaceful surrender that morning was the Macheteros’ Cuban-trained leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who opened fire with a machine gun outside his rural home. A bullet fragment hit my colleague Abe Alba in the eye. Returning fire, one member of the Hostage Rescue Team nailed Ríos in the hand, causing him to drop the weapon. He was arrested, otherwise unharmed. (This would turn out to be a case of justice delayed: twenty years later the same arrest scenario would be replayed, but this time Ríos would be shot dead.) In fact, I was to work against this organization full-time over the next few years, and the more one knows an enemy, the less fearsome he appears. But as the Machetero Rules of
Engagement became clear to me, I became somewhat infuriated. The way they worked was as follows: They viewed themselves as brave revolutionaries fighting for a free and independent Puerto Rico, with the support of their Cuban fellow idealists. Shooting and killing U.S. military personnel and other symbols of tyranny (FBI agents) was, in their view, fully justifiable—and convenient when it came to uniformed army and navy personnel stationed in Puerto Rico, who were unarmed. (Shooting at Puerto Rico police and FBI agents did pose more risks—we could shoot back—but they did consider us fair game, too.) On the flip side, if we, their imperialist oppressors, busted through the door one morning, these “revolutionary combatants” could shout “Don’t shoot … I’ve got my hands up … Call my lawyer.” And we wouldn’t shoot and they’d get their lawyers.

  With the Machetero operation concluded and most of the bad guys arrested, I was finally in a position to acclimate to the quotidian duties of my Reactive Squad. We made arrests on a weekly basis, which is a lot for the Bureau, and I soon came to know the entire island, the lost corners never seen by tourists nor by most Puerto Ricans. A lawman sees the underbelly of whatever world he protects, and we saw all kinds of crimes. I should point out—and it’s an important point throughout this book—that the federal crimes investigated by federal authorities (the FBI, in my case) are generally more complex and involve bigger—usually smarter—players than those investigated by the local police. The scope of these criminals and their crimes is greater, having as they necessarily do an effect on “interstate commerce”—the broadly interpreted Constitutional language by which federal jurisdiction is granted. Simply put, any activity that involves more than one state (or territory, such as Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands) is used to justify federal investigation of all the related activity that a subject is involved in, whether or not it is “interstate.” If Bad Guy #1 mails an extortion letter using the U.S. mail, it’s a slam-dunk, we have jurisdiction. If he makes a phone call from New York City to Bad Guy #2 in the same city, using lines that are relayed through Newark, New Jersey—bingo: federal jurisdiction. Most of the criminal activity the FBI investigates involves what it is famous for: La Cosa Nostra, Al-Qaeda, TWA 800, Lockerbie, Enron, Bernie Madoff. However, smaller fish would also fall within the net, and therein would come the work of the Reactive Squad in Puerto Rico. Extortion, kidnapping, bank robbery, theft of government property, and more populated our caseload. When Fugitive A traveled from New York to San Juan to avoid arrest—it was Interstate Flight to Avoid Prosecution, an official federal crime. This was the federal charge that had given the Bureau jurisdiction to arrest Pagan Alan Shapiro, to face justice on the underlying New Jersey state charges.

  These flight cases quickly became my favorite work. Never having been much of a team player, I seized these opportunities to work independently. Reminiscent of one of my favorite stories as a boy, The Most Dangerous Game, working a fugitive was truly a hunt, a match of wits. As I got closer to the prey, a second sense would awaken in me, an incorporeal awareness that the confrontation was approaching. For example, a communication would arrive from the Chicago office—a telephone call or a teletype—revealing that an informant in Chicago had spoken to a friend in the remote Puerto Rican town of Jayuya. The friend had seen Luís Guzman (a name I have created for this illustration), who was wanted as a material witness in a gruesome homicide, at the home of a local Jayuya gang boss. A few hours later, driving my old BuCar along two-lane gravel roads winding through the mountainous landscape, I would pull into town. No cell phones then, and radio contact was spotty in the mountainous inland regions. First stop—not the local saloon—the local Comisario. Thanks to my native Spanish, I would quickly establish rapport with the detective in charge. Without fail, I would soon be riding with two local plainclothes detectives who were thrilled to be working an FBI investigation. This was their turf and we would work it together until Guzman was in cuffs.

  For particularly important cases, Navarette would assign a few of us to assist the case agent, and off we’d go, at a moment’s notice. One afternoon, we came upon a one-room wooden hut, alone in an open field, built on stilts to avoid flooding, with a rickety ladder leading to the door. Inside was supposed to be a fugitive from New York. We parked our two vehicles by the treeline. Then my squad-mates Fernando and Ricardo approached the ladder, covered by two veterans. I was fifteen yards back, off to the side, gun pointed at the door, providing cover. Suddenly, an unmistakable sound: someone has just racked a shotgun. I turned my head. It was Oz Tinsley, a fellow rookie and former Sacramento police officer. Along with another agent, he was covering the rear. Oz was grinning as he shouldered the Bureau-issued pump-action and pointed it at the cabin’s rear window. Jesus Christ. This had the makings of a true cluster-fuck. I knew who had loaded the chamber, but our leaders, directly in front of the entrance, didn’t. Neither did the fugitive. Loud shouting followed, barked commands to come out, ¡manos arriba! hands up! a half-dozen revolvers and rifles pointed at the ramshackle structure. Out came the skinny, terrified fugitive from his family home, waving his empty hands and pleading not to be shot. When the older agents found out that it was Oz who had racked the round, their anger, fueled by their recent fear, was something to behold. Oz was about my height but with an additional seventy-five pounds, most of it muscle. He had a real presence, but his expression was a sorry one indeed, with both Fernando and Ricardo shouting at him like a couple of furious drill sergeants in a movie. Even our handcuffed fugitive quaked in fear, uncertain as to whom the vehemence was being directed. Having no desire to incur the wrath of fellow agents—and newbies will make mistakes, it’s inevitable—I resolved to follow my instincts and keep a low profile, working alone or with fellow rookies.

  For the more important cases, Navarette would be out there, in the middle of the action. Highly unusual for an FBI supervisor, all of whom are burdened with a mass of paperwork and administrative tasks. And he knew how to take quick, decisive action. He had first demonstrated this with the Vieques outlaw biker fugitive (though a secondary motivation may have been to observe and evaluate me, the rookie agent, in action). He did it again two months later. A tip had come in from one of the squad’s many paid informants. A hold-up at a suburban bank was planned for the next morning, when the robbers, all experienced, violent felons, would assault an armored car that was scheduled to arrive, thus assuring the presence of large amount of cash. The information was reliable: the tipster had been offered a place on the hold-up team.

  Within hours, the FBI op was set and ready to go the following morning. The armored car would arrive at the bank, on schedule at 11:00 a.m., operated, as usual, by two uniformed guards. With one twist: the guard driving the vehicle would be Navarette, and the other guard would be SA Roger Gomez, a former Illinois State Police undercover agent. On the rooftop of the one-story bank, our local SWAT team would be waiting for the robbers to arrive. The rest of the agents on the squad would be parked in their BuCars within view of the bank, ready to swoop in. I should point out that in the New-Era twenty-first-century FBI, it would be virtually impossible for a supervisor to obtain authorization for such a covert scenario—two undercovers set up as virtual walking targets—with so little time for advance preparation. This is a subject for much future discussion.

  The bank was situated on a corner. The trap called for the SWAT team to climb up the wall on the side street under cover of darkness. At 6:00 a.m. I was parked a half block away, with a direct view of the entrance as well as the street to the side of the bank. Sipping my coffee, all the possible scenarios played out in my imagination, most of them involving some kind of a shootout—it seemed virtually inevitable. Along with my .357, I had a pump-action 12-gauge within reach. The SWAT team did not arrive and did not slither under cover of darkness. Soon enough, it was no longer dark. Well, the streets are still empty, they can still slither up discreetly. By 8:30, there was still no SWAT team, and by now there were plenty of people around. At nine the bank opened. At 9:15, I wat
ched as the SWAT truck finally pulled up on the side street. The team leader, a gray-haired, affable chain-smoker, got out, stretched, and leisurely dragged on the cigarette dangling from his lip as his team in full SWAT gear—uniforms, helmets, tactical hip holsters, machine guns, radio—climbed down from the back of the truck carrying a ladder. Okay, I’m a rookie, but this can’t be right. A crowd of curious onlookers watched the team climb the ladder and assemble on the roof, but they seemed unfazed by what I would have thought was a highly unusual scenario unfolding before them. The minutes ticked by. As the team leader periodically strode across the roof, checking on his dispositions while still smoking, all was business as usual down below. This just cannot be right. Why won’t the robbers see them up there? I was befuddled.

  The armored car, driven by Navarette, arrived on time at 11:00. But the robbers didn’t. To the disappointment of the by-now considerable crowd of bystanders, there was no hold-up. Navarette was livid. Within an hour, we were all on our way back to the office. Postscript: The incredulous tipster from the streets called Navarette that afternoon. The hold-up team had been on the scene at the bank, on time, and ready to rob, but their boss had asked someone in the big crowd what was going on. Espera un ratito, stick around, the local had replied, the FBI is all over the place—pointing at the roof—there’s going to be one hell of a show!

  Unbelievable. The lesson learned would prove to be invaluable throughout my undercover career: take nothing for granted with respect to performance by fellow agents. Even in the FBI, incompetence can make an occasional appearance. In this case, the SWAT team just packed up and left. There were no repercussions.

  * * *

  The entire San Juan Division of the FBI consisted of fewer than seventy agents—covering a territory with a population of more than four million—and a third of those agents were assigned to Squad 4—the Terrorism Squad, the balance being distributed among six other undermanned and overworked squads. The bulk of Squad 4’s caseload was occupied by the Macheteros and splinter groups. The WELLROB arrests previously described resulted in no more than a short pause in the groups’ operational pursuits. Absurdly—or so it seemed to us—most of the arrestees were free on bond. They were being prosecuted as defendants back in the Federal District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, and in order that their status as accused parties to a major federal case not unduly burden their lifestyle, they continued to reside in San Juan. To attend their court appearances, they would receive from the U.S. Marshals vouchers for free flights back to the mainland. Although the prosecutions resulted in convictions and lengthy jail sentences, there followed a bitter footnote. The San Juan agents of my generation, who had worked long hours and often taken huge risks, were stunned when most of those serving time received executive clemency from President Bill Clinton during “Pardongate,” January 20, 2001, hours before he left office. Many of those pardons were based on recommendations from then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.