The Pretender Read online

  The boss of the New York Special Operations empire, which included tech agents, was my old mentor, Mike Pyszczymuka, former head of International Operations at JEH. Mike had counseled me when SECDIV exposed my vulnerabilities as a potential double agent for … France. I suspect, though I have no evidence, that it was Mike who had salvaged my Legat career by arranging the transfer to Buenos Aires. We met in his corner office at 26 Federal Plaza. He’d be more than happy to put me on a tech squad. But it never happened. Unfortunately for me, the Security Unit based in New York was understaffed. That unit works FBI internal investigations, background investigations for the issuance of security clearances, and is responsible for the physical security of the NYO. Andy Arena, the agent in charge of such matters in New York, knew that I wouldn’t be thrilled with this assignment, so he made me a promise: one year with Security and then I could have my pick of assignments. Usually such promises are worth as much as the paper they’re not written on, but I had been in the Bu long enough to know the unwritten rules. If I wanted back in the world of covert ops, as a tech agent or whatever—and I did—I had to do this other thing first. Any saber rattling with the bureaucracy, even with a good guy like Andy Arena, and I would have found myself back on surveillance, shift work, and I hadn’t done that since my early pre-UC days working for Crazy Thom Nicoletti on SO-13.

  The irony that I was now assigned to Security was not lost on me. What had happened to SECDIV’s grudge and accusation, the one that had cost me the full-time posting in Paris? The agent formerly deemed so vulnerable for recruiting by that notoriously hostile intelligence service (the French) was now a member of what amounted to the equivalent of SECDIV in New York. Only in the FBI! Recall Jack Karst, the Superman look-alike who had threatened the subject who had threatened me (“This is personal.”) during the RUN-DMV arrests: he was now Chief Security Officer for New York, my new boss.

  Naturally enough, as word that I was back circulated through the Bureau’s UC community, Safeguard, and the various Janus offices, calls for UC help started coming in, despite my “day job” with the Office of Security. As soon as those first opportunities trickled in, any reticence I might have had about returning to UC went out the window. I stopped trying to fool myself. It was in my blood.

  First in line with an offer was an agent in Chicago, Louise Riley. Would I be able to help out on a terrorism investigation? Finally, my first official terrorism case! Low-key, yet significant, the sting would all take place over the phone. The twist: this wasn’t Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas. No, the targets were from the other end of the spectrum, disciples of Meir Kahane and ultraviolent members of the Jewish Defense League, widely known by its acronym, JDL. Domestic terrorism is a brand of violence utterly anathema to the teachings of the Jewish faith, but for a small number of fanatics, the moral principles that define their very existence can be explained away. Responsible for several bombings and assassination attempts, key members of the JDL were already serving lengthy prison sentences.

  The JDL, and its bloodthirsty successor, Kahane Chai came to be recognized by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. After the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, Kahane Chai chairman David Ha’ivri told Israeli television that Chai had celebrated upon hearing the news. “Every dog has its day,” he said, and toasted the killer. “It wasn’t a Jew who was murdered. It was a traitor who was executed.”

  The group’s high-volume hate speech, punctuated by sporadic attacks, continued to the end of the century and beyond. In April 2002, Kahane Chai operatives planted a trailer loaded with explosives, fuel, and nails in East Jerusalem. Their target: a Palestinian girls’ elementary school. The attack was thwarted by alert police officers. With its blind adherence to violence directed at civilians and its fanatical ideology, Kahane Chai was the mirror image of Al-Qaeda—and, to me, somewhat reminiscent of the Macheteros back in San Juan—tough talk, accompanied by courageous attacks—against unarmed civilians. Targets that don’t shoot back—the thread that runs through all terrorist organizations, left and right.

  On February 12, 2003, JDL’s chairman, Irv Rubin, successor to Meir Kahane, and his top leadership held a secret meeting with other, lower-ranking JDL activists, including a recent convert, Steve Levine. The agenda was to plan the group’s next operation: simultaneous explosions at a New York City mosque and in the office of a U.S. congressman in Chicago. But this murderous ambition was more than Levine had bargained for when he signed on with the JDL. He went to the FBI.

  The plot was derailed, though prosecutors had insufficient evidence for arrests. Levine had agreed to cooperate as a confidential informant, not confidential witness—he would not be testifying. Soon thereafter, Aaron Glick, a Rubin lieutenant, visited Levine’s Evanston synagogue on two occasions, purportedly seeking assistance with a JDL recruitment initiative, but more likely to feel out Levine, searching for the FBI source, suspicious perhaps that Levine was the betrayer.

  Now we move ahead twenty months, to November 2004. As a result of internal bickering (maybe in part a consequence of the intensified FBI investigation), the JDL was in chaos. One morning, Steve Levine attended a Bar Mitzvah with his wife at their Evanston synagogue. Afterward, as they walked through the parking lot to their car, a beige Chevrolet followed slowly, then pulled alongside. Levine recognized the driver: Aaron Glick, the JDL lieutenant who had been snooping around the synagogue a year earlier. As the car came to a stop, the middle-aged man sitting alongside Glick got out and approached Levine. Close, in his face. You fucking traitor, you asshole … You call yourself a fucking Jew? Hey Levine, you’re not going to live very long, motherfucker. You scumbag. Bo-ged! (traitor). The man glared at Levine, then with calm deliberation got back in the car. Glick slammed the accelerator and they were gone, as Levine hurried his terrified wife back to the safety of the synagogue.

  From a photo array, Levine later identified the other man: Ari Ben-David, a Miami-based JDL operative with a military background. His threat had to be taken seriously.

  A few weeks after the confrontation in the parking lot, at case agent Louise Riley’s direction, Levine called Glick’s home and left a message. Louise needed tangible, independent corroboration of the threat. Even without Levine’s testimony, it might be possible to use a recording against Glick and Ben-David. A recording, say, that had been intercepted from an FBI wiretap of JDL operative Steve Levine’s home phone. Alternatively, Louise could try and persuade Levine to agree to testify after entering the Witness Protection Program.

  But Glick had not returned the call. Levine’s stress levels were sky high; he could not make any more calls. Someone else would have to. Thus Louise Riley’s recruitment of me for the job of the disembodied voice. She anticipated that the investigation would be concluded with five or fewer “substantive” contacts, thus not requiring a formal Group II Operation, with the requisite substantial paperwork and approvals. Given this lower-level designation and the likelihood that the covert activity would in all likelihood be conducted entirely over the telephone, I failed to attach to this op the level of significance it merited. Not that my commitment to the role was in any manner diminished—on the contrary—it was simply that there was not the personal risk to myself inherent in face-to-face UC meets. I would accomplish all the UC work as I sat alone in the safety of a dimly lit office in a nearly deserted corridor of the aging Federal Building in Lower Manhattan. Louise, however, understood the importance of this op (as would Aaron Glick and Ari Ben-David). She understood that any failure to respond to episodes of retaliation against informants and potential witnesses in domestic and international terrorism cases would have a disastrous impact on future such investigations. (The crime carries a potential sentence of twenty years.) A swift and certain response was required. In this particular instance, covert intercession was a prerequisite. Over the telephone, it was all the more difficult because of the limitations of contact made over a faceless line. No ruses, no disguises
to deceive, no winks and nods. Just my disembodied voice.

  Because Ben-David had never met Levine except for the parking lot, Louise believed, and I agreed, that he would be unlikely to recognize, much less remember, his voice. Still, I would need to familiarize myself with Levine sufficiently to avoid telltale gaffes. Which I did. Glick’s failure to return Levine’s phone call would be my opening. I dialed Ari Ben-David’s home phone. Louise, who was patched in from Chicago, was taping the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Ben-David?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Steve. Steve Levine. I called Aaron Glick last week and—”

  “—You motherfucker, how did you get this number? How dare you call me, you traitor—”

  No doubt now. We had the right man.

  “Listen, Ari—”

  “—Why should I listen to you, you motherfucker—”

  “… my wife, she was terrified, you have no business frightening her, she has nothing to do—”

  “—Fuck you and fuck your wife. She should have married a real Jew, not a goy.”

  I sensed that Ari Ben-David was about to slam down the receiver. The plan was for me to direct the conversation to the encounter in the parking lot and the threat of retaliation against Steve Levine. We needed actionable threats. I had to improvise.

  “Hey Ben-David, I’m beginning to understand why the JDL is such a chicken-shit outfit, with losers like you—”

  “Traitor! You, you with your friends at the FBI! You’re going to pay for it, we’re coming after you, you—”

  “—You and Glick didn’t scare me in the parking lot”—I had to get that scene in somehow, maybe I would be rewarded with a response—“and I’m not scared now. You can threaten me all you want. You’re out of your mind, Glick knows it, everybody knows it, that’s why the JDL is falling apart.” Keep him on the line. Anything to keep him going.

  “You’re dead … I’m talking to a dead man, you motherfucker. You call yourself a fucking Jew.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you think that I’m afraid of you and Glick, forget about it, just leave my wife out of it, you—”

  “—You’re done, you’re not gonna get one night’s peace or rest you scumbag traitor.”

  “Just keep away from my schul [synagogue], from my wife.”

  “Fuck you!”

  None of that really surprised me. What did surprise me was that he hadn’t followed up on how I had obtained his phone number. If he had, I would have said Glick gave it to me. When Glick denied it—who would Ben-David believe? (More fodder for infighting.) From what I had learned about Ben-David, he may indeed have been a handful as a field operative, with his own ideas on how to serve the cause.

  Louise Riley and the prosecutors were pleased. Ben-David had neither denied the incident in the parking lot, nor Glick’s presence there. The new threats, arguably provoked by yours truly, would not be sufficient on their own, but linked to the parking-lot incident, they would serve to corroborate the testimony of Levine and his wife, should they agree to testify. My instructions were to wait a few weeks, let the dust settle, then call back with a more conciliatory tone. If I got the machine, I would hang up without leaving a message. I didn’t want him to expect my call. I called late one evening when he might be a bit tired, less on edge. In a near-pleading tone I said:

  “Ben-David, please listen to me, this is Steve. You need to know, I didn’t do what you think I did. I promise, please give me a chance to explain.”

  Silence, but at least he didn’t hang up.

  “I had nothing to do with the FBI busting up our plans for the congressman’s office. They set me up. It’s a frame. They want to set me up. Get us fighting against each other.”

  “What bullshit. Now you’re fucking scared. You’re no Jew. You whiny Yitzhak Rabin.” (He was referring to the Israeli Prime Minister’s “betrayal,” the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords. Rabin was murdered days later.)

  “Listen to me, Ari, blame the FBI. Can’t you see what they’re doing? By threatening me you play right into their game!”

  “So why are you calling me, you scared little shit?”

  But I could sense a change of tone. His insults had less conviction.

  “I want—I need to straighten this out, I can’t sleep at night.”

  “Serves you right, scumbag.”

  Click.

  This time, again, there were no denials from Ben-David, no “What the fuck are you talking about?” or “What fucking parking lot?” or “What fucking threat?” or “What fucking Glick?” Practically everything Ben-David said in our every conversation implied confirmation of the Levines’ accounts. Sitting in my office at 26 Federal Plaza, I made two more calls to Ben-David, both featuring more of my whining and his foul-mouthed contempt. He was toast.

  As investigation of Ben-David and Glick continued, the Jewish Defense League continued to come apart, dividing and subdividing like a cancer. Which became a new problem for the rest of us.

  * * *

  Regarding my one-year commitment to the Security department, my supervisor Andy Arena was better than his word. I didn’t have to wait a year to return to face-to-face UC work. After six months (the highlight was vetting Mayor Michael Bloomberg), I got a call from an old friend, Kevin White, a former UC supervisor at headquarters, now supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad working Long Island. Kevin explained that his primary undercover operation, code-named TURKEY CLUB, had become more important and demanding on his personnel than initially anticipated. The targets were “made” members of the Genovese family, one of the Five Families that had controlled organized crime in the Northeast for decades. One of the Lucchese crews, a rival family, was the subject of Wiseguy, Nicholas Pileggi’s gripping book, a true story, adapted by Martin Scorsese as Goodfellas, a very realistic (as I was soon to learn), harrowing movie. Henry Hill, who narrated the story, was a low-level mobster with tainted blood (i.e., not 100-percent Sicilian), so he was free to run his own guys and make a ton of untaxed money, but he could never enjoy all the privileges of being a made member of the family. In the end, every one of Hill’s featured partners, made or otherwise, ended up dead or imprisoned when he flipped on them in open court (“ratted out” is the more pejorative term preferred by the tabloids) and then took cover in the Justice Department’s Witness Protection Program. Those violent events predated my story by several decades, but make no mistake: in 2004, the Genovese, the Lucchese, all the LCN families, they were still a dangerous crowd to run with.

  The initial UC on TURKEY CLUB was a young guy whose name I have changed to Kamal, who was good, no doubt about that, but also a beginner. Kamal had been an agent for only four years, and this was his first big UC op. He had been introduced to Genovese “made man” Nicholas “Nicky” Gruttadauria and had developed good rapport. But as a young UC, he was in somewhat over his head. Aggravating the inherent risks, the case agent, last name Holmes, had only a couple of years’ agent time. Could he possibly have the breadth of experience to manage a complex investigation targeting highly professional, wily, and seasoned mobsters? And other members of the team averaged only two years FBI experience. Kevin White, their supervisor, saw the problems and asked whether I could step in as Kamal’s partner and help out on a case in which I’d have almost as much time on the job as everyone else put together. This would be my first foray into the world of traditional, big-time organized crime, La Cosa Nostra. Andy Arena and the managers in New York had given their consent. What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  I needed an alias. Maybe a new one was called for. Both Alex Perez and Sal Morelli had been out of circulation for several years. They seemed stale, but I checked in with Janus. Valerie O’Connell was still there—felt like old times—good old times. So, Val, can I get away with resuscitating Alex’s AFID? Don’t push your luck, Marc. Alex has way too much history as it is. She knew me all too well. Her seasoned perspective, expressed
with a kind laugh, settled it. Besides, Alex’s background, credit history, etc., wouldn’t provide the best legend for my targets in TURKEY CLUB. Google had gone public the year before, but its search engine was already changing the world, and backstopping in this new era was a whole new and much more complicated ballgame. And I didn’t have the time. The TURKEY CLUB principals wanted me available as soon as possible. Dedicating the six months that it still took (and still takes) to develop an alias from scratch was a luxury I didn’t have. A shelf-ID was called for. Val walked over to her filing cabinets (metaphorically speaking) and pulled out a few possibilities … No, I couldn’t use the one with a date of birth from the seventies (youngish as I may have liked to believe I appeared), not if I wanted to survive … No, the Italian surnames were definitely out. I wasn’t about to try and pass for an Italian among real Italians … Maybe … age midforties, surname could be European … Okay, it’s a deal. Val filled me in on all the paperwork procedures, which were, to my surprise, almost unchanged from fifteen years earlier. I filled out many of the same forms, and within a matter of a few weeks I was a new me. Name: Daniel Martinez, international jewel thief and vendor of stolen jewels—in effect, an upscale fence. In this identity and capacity, my presentation to the targets’ world was just about the opposite of Alex Perez’s. I was now a sophisticated cosmopolite with expensive clothing, manicured nails, and no bling beyond the Rolex Presidential. And no ponytail. And don’t call me Danny. I don’t appreciate that. Where does Daniel Martinez live? Don’t ask. In the underworld, it’s inappropriate. It’s something a cop would ask. Wiseguys are vague with their answers. But when push comes to shove, I enjoyed the comforts of a sweet little pied-à-terre on Manhattan’s East Side, in addition to my cribs in Paris and Buenos Aires. Not backstopped at all, not even crudely. Was that risky? I didn’t think so, they weren’t likely to ask for addresses. If they did, the right (moderately pissed) expression combined with a vague, though polite reference to an affluent neighborhood would have sufficed. Might they check surreptitiously? High-end jewel thieves don’t leave a great many tracks. My local knowledge would be my backstopping.