The Pretender Page 4

  Typically, a Squad 4 agent would be assigned one or more known (or suspected) terrorists to investigate. Veteran agents would be assigned veteran terrorists, such as Ojeda Ríos. Rookies would be assigned rookie and low-level Macheteros. The substance of the cases varied significantly, as the Machetero foot soldiers were a mix of academic university intellectuals and hardcore common criminals. A senior agent would coordinate all the intelligence that was being developed on large sheets of paper, stitching it together to create a unified database. There were no computers and no electronic spreadsheets.

  Additionally, the large-scale cases—a machine-gun attack on a Navy bus resulting in several fatalities (1979), the assassination of an off-duty Navy sailor (also ’79), the blowing-up of eleven National Guard fighter jets (1981), the firing of a shoulder-launched missile at the FBI office in the Federal Building (1983, six weeks after the Wells Fargo robbery in Connecticut), the attempted murder of an Army major as he drove his motor scooter to work at Fort Buchanan in the heart of San Juan (1986—being close by, I was one of the first agents on the scene), and the ambush-murders of various officers of the local Puerto Rican constabulary (shooting a poorly trained cop in the back, at night, being an exception to the Machetero policy of only killing unarmed victims)—would be assigned to teams with a veteran case agent in charge.

  International terrorism had its place in Puerto Rico as well. In the pre–Twin Towers world of 1985, Middle Eastern operatives had yet to earn a place of prominence in the assessments of the FBI. Domestic organizations posed the immediate threat. Hezbollah did have a presence in Puerto Rico, consisting primarily of “sleepers,” agents put in place over a long term, operating as ordinary merchants, awaiting the call to duty, many providing operational support—false documentation, transport, and lodging—to active operational terrorists transiting through San Juan en route to the mainland. Squad 4, generally with the assistance of the Special Operations Group (the covert surveillance team), monitored and reported on the Hezbollah presence. But FBIHQ demanded that the focus be on the independentistas.

  A few months after the WELLROB arrests, the Squad 4 supervisor called the case agent, Art Balizan, into his office. “Art, the SAC is very impressed with the job you did. It was exceptional. And he wants you to know just how much this means to the FBI, and to the San Juan Division. Here are the keys to his BuCar. It’s yours.” Art proudly drove that large late-model luxury sedan with tinted windows. For about two weeks. Then, Art learned, as we all did, that an informant had reported that the Macheteros had planned a revenge killing, specifically the assassination of … the SAC! Art’s torrent of loud invective, a skillful blend of Spanish and English, emanated from his supervisor’s office as Art slammed the car keys onto the desk.

  A couple of months later, there was new informant info. The assassination target was now an FBI agent whose residence the Macheteros had ascertained. They were working out the plan, but the source could not find out who the targeted agent was, or where he or she lived. It could be any one of us. The already high level of paranoia in the office now became intolerable. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. The old refrain took on added meaning. Raul Fernandez, a friendly, broad-faced Texan on the Terrorism Squad, told me that his commute home to the suburbs of Rio Piedras was taking an additional forty-five minutes as a result of the “dry-cleaning” (spy talk for counter-surveillance) he employed as a precaution: surprise U-turns (just like the one on the bridge in The Godfather), backing-up on exit ramps, driving through red traffic lights—all calculated to identify vehicles attempting to follow you unnoticed. I didn’t have the heart to point out that all the dry-cleaning in the world wouldn’t be of much use if they already had Raul’s address. The feared assassins would already be parked across the street when he got home.

  In my building lived five FBI agents. It was a new condo, across the street from the beach in Ocean Park. In back was the notorious casario (housing project) of Lorenz Torres. One of the building’s security guards told us that, on several mornings, he had noticed a car parked near the entrance to our building, with two men inside. Just sitting there. His counterpart on the evening shift had made the same observation. These two guards were unaware of the informant’s information concerning the planned hit, so we had no reason to believe they were indulging in imagined threats or fanciful observations. Their intel had a chilling credibility. The condo parking lot, in the rear, housed my trusty navy-blue, personally owned Bronco II. As I had no spot for my BuCar, I typically parked it in back, in a cul-de-sac ending in a locked mesh-gate rear door to the lot. Driving home on the first Thursday evening after the alert was issued, I approached the building. The quiet, narrow street was already dark. As I made the left turn into the dimly lit cul-de-sac, I observed to my right a parked car. With two men sitting in the front seat. No lights, inside or out. I parked the BuCar on the left side of the street, at the end of the cul-de-sac, a few feet from the gate. I looked at the gate, then up at my rearview mirror. I waited, but after two or three minutes, I decided it was time to put this to an end. I got out of the car, walked around the front then turned toward the entrance of the cul-de-sac. As I walked toward their car, I drew my massive .357 Smith & Wesson. I held it pointed at the ground, my arm slightly angled away from my hip, so they would be sure to see it—it’s a psychologically heart-stopping Dirty Harry weapon. My eyes fixed on the two silhouettes and the car windows. No movement at all inside the car. As the distance closed to a few yards, the engine coughed to life. Without lights, and without haste, the car backed away. As I stood, in the middle of the street, following with my eyes, the car turned, stopped, shifted into drive, and calmly drove away. After that night, there were no more observations of suspect behavior made by the security guards at the condo across the street from Ocean Park.

  It was a threshold moment for me, though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. Walking toward a hostile confrontation. Solo, determined, calm. Concerns about my physical well-being, self-doubts regarding my capacity for being a lawman, reservations as to the wisdom of having abandoned my “normal world” career—all had evaporated. The foundation had been set for the next three decades.

  * * *

  After eighteen months in Puerto Rico, I shifted from the Reactive Squad into the covert Special Operations Group (SOG), five agents primarily working surveillance on the two main terrorist groups on the island. From time to time, we’d also work a narcotics dealer or an organized crime figure, of whom there were plenty on the island. Thus, less than two years after arriving at Quantico for basic training, my career as a street agent had come to an end. For the next twenty-five years, I would work in the shadows, never using my true name, always hiding my true purposes. In the beginning with SOG, I considered it relatively safe work, because unlike the undercover work in my future, we generally had no intentional direct interaction with the targets. But in my time in the Bu, there were three SOG fatalities that I know of, one killed by a subject in Newark, one by “friendly fire” (also in Newark), and one in a car crash. And there were a few spectacular firefights.

  In San Juan, our little surveillance group of five, led by Ed Bejerano, leased, under a fictitious company name, a warehouse in an industrial district. It had storage space for our cars and equipment and an office area for doing paperwork, of which there wasn’t too much. No longer were we permitted in the office in Hato Rey. We were cut off from Bureau life and culture, and were essentially on our own, virtually free of management oversight (what a shame). We would on occasion meet with a case agent in an isolated area, to pass on information or discuss strategy; otherwise we just had each other. First order of business for me was cultivating a non–law enforcement look—in my case, a surfer expat’s heedless nonchalance. I let my hair grow, developed a deep tan, and routinely wore shorts, sneakers, and a baggy T-shirt—to conceal my .357 Smith, of course. The Puerto Rico driver’s license, credit cards, and wallet filler (health insurance/f
requent flyer/Blockbuster/etc. cards) all told the watching world that my name was Jean-Marc Haddock. My first alias.

  “Dave to Marc, Dave to Marc.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got a white SUV pulling out of Roach’s marquesina (carport). Appears to be his vehicle.” In those days, the nicknames did not have to be politically correct. “Headed west toward General La Paz.”

  “Got him, thanks.”

  At night, in remote areas when discreet surveillance of a target’s car by our cars was much more difficult, when the potential for being burned was significant, the ground forces would sometimes pull back as a team, leaving the job entirely to the Cessna—a tricky business for the co-pilot/observer, keeping track of the correct auto, then relaying its position to us on the ground at critical moments. An involuntary blink of the eye up in the sky, and down below we might spend an hour or two following the wrong car.

  These were the “secret spy planes” that became the subject of a flurry of political and media attention in 2015. In response to real privacy concerns raised by the Patriot Act and Edward Snowden’s infamous revelations about the National Security Agency’s domestic and international spying, legislators predictably overreacted. The purple prose concerning mysterious FBI airlines registered to shell corporations owned by people who did not exist—fantasy images of the Bureau’s very own Men In Black operating ultra-sophisticated aircraft, bristling with antennas and super-long-distance video lenses, was harrowing indeed. In fact, the use of these planes—whose most sophisticated technology might have been a GPS—for surveillance was sanctioned by the Supreme Court long ago (California v. Ciraolo being the seminal case, decided in 1986). Yet this did not interfere with the hysteria, nor impede the legislators from seeking to prohibit the use of the old-fashioned surveillance planes.

  My surveillance work in Puerto Rico was not technically undercover work, but the experience turned out to be valuable training for my official UC career. In that trial run as a “ghost,” I needed about six months to get the hang of being invisible. One develops a sixth sense, an intuition, an awareness that someone may be lurking in the shadows, which can be life-saving, before, during, and after a covert encounter. I was also beginning to understand the telltale markers for behavior that just doesn’t fit. For example, one night, standing in the checkout line at my neighborhood supermarket, something almost “implicit” about the body language of the guy right in front of me triggered closer inspection and consideration. Lo and behold, he was the dangerous narcotics dealer we’d had under surveillance for months. There we were, our shopping carts full of foodstuffs.

  The other vital skill I acquired on Special Ops: patience. Sitting quietly, two or three hours, in a darkened car parked in a quiet alley in a high-crime caserio, waiting for a gang chieftain to adjourn a meeting with his lieutenants—initially this was not easy for a big-city boy. However, it became etched into my character and proved invaluable over the following two-plus decades. Late one night I needed a different kind of patience when two off-duty San Juan cops mistook me and my partner for hoods intent on robbery. Looking back, I wonder how all four of us paused for that vital split-second before firing our drawn .357s. According to the book, maybe we shouldn’t have. There’s an example of split-second patience. Both kinds come in handy. That night, it undoubtedly saved lives.

  During my surveillance work, my new home-away-from-home was a silver Mazda 626 which inexplicably still had that distinctive new-car odor. Prior to the start of each shift, I would bring down my gear from my tenth-floor beachside condo, crowding into the elevator with a folding luggage rack: large nylon camera case with Nikon and a variety of lenses; nylon gear bag with high-power binoculars, handi-talkie, miscellaneous high-tech surveillance equipment, insulated food case with sufficient nourishment and beverages, no Heinekens, nylon shotgun case (rectangular, so as to not look like a gun case) with a Remington 12-gauge and extra shells. The shotgun, a pump-action short-barreled law enforcement model, I would usually place within easy reach in the rear right passenger foot well, covered by a beach towel. Then, I would drive off to meet the rest of the team at a prearranged spot, often a parking lot at a BK or Mickey D’s not too far from a target’s home or workplace.

  In the cop films, conducting a moving surveillance is a piece of cake. Subject pulls out of driveway or garage, cop pulls out of parking space and falls into place right behind the subject’s car. Both cars then proceed for however long through crowded urban streets and deserted country roads, the cop always one car-length behind. Whenever one of the cops needs to communicate by radio, he holds the mic up to his mouth, rather than keeping it below dashboard level and out of sight. In the movies, the bad guys don’t use rearview mirrors. Eventually the subject pulls into the driveway of Mr. Big’s mansion, and the cop car pulls over, twenty-five yards back from the gate. Douse the engine. The bad guy having no idea that he was tailed.

  Following terrorists, cocaine dealers, or organized crime characters is a bit different. Using the Hollywood surveillance technique, the lawmen would be “burned” in five minutes. Under the most benign scenario, the target then might decide to not proceed to his true destination, drive around for a bit, do a little shopping, return to where he started. Or the target might lead the burned surveillers into a deserted warehouse area for an unpleasant confrontation with a malevolent reception party.

  Here’s a typical scenario: At the BK parking lot in San Juan, we SOG operatives lean against a couple of cars, sip at a soda, and chat. We’re working a major target, the number two in the Machetero chain of command who had been trained in Cuba.

  Me, on our encrypted radio, to the guys in the Cessna: “I did a drive-by on the way over, Toad’s car is in the marquesina, as usual, nose in. Didn’t see any movement.” They all had similarly flattering nicknames. Toad was driving his late-model Toyota SUV.

  Red Cap (Ed Bejerano; we all had nicknames): “Okay, I’ll take the first eye, on the cross street with a view of his house.” With his droopy mustache, easy smile, and mischievous, slow eyes, Ed could have been typecast as a Mexican bandolero. He was so laid-back, he hardly appeared to be breathing. And sometimes with such folks you might mistakenly wonder if what’s happening between the ears is equally slow. Not the case with Ed. You knew the brain was razor-sharp, working at lightning pace.

  The rest of us would take up positions covering the different directions Toad could travel in. Once his car pulled out, the “eye” would not move. Instead:

  Marc (no suitable nickname managed to stick): “He’s headed toward you eastbound on Godoy y Cruz.”

  “Got him.” I pull out, half a block in front of Toad, with one eye on my rearview mirror. All the cars are moving now, fast. “He just made a right turn onto Ortega toward the on-ramp for the Panamericana Southbound.”

  Carmen (the only woman on the team): “I’m getting onto the Panamericana now … I’ll pick him up … got him.”

  Oso: “Let me know when you’re getting warm, I’m about number ten [cars] behind, on your left.”

  Five minutes later, Carmen: “Okay, Oso, I’ll take the next exit.” She signals the turn, exits, as Oso takes the eye. She pulls over at the bottom of the ramp, acts like she’s searching in her purse, waits to see what other cars might be getting off, satisfied that she’s clean, takes the next ramp back on and rejoins the pack. And so it goes.

  One night Toad led us to an apartment building in a quiet section of Santurce, arriving there after ten. He had been driving for over an hour, apparently aimlessly, therefore clearly dry-cleaning. As this dry-cleaning maneuver—conducted fairly well, I have to admit—was a significant change from his routine, we were particularly careful that night. Any sign of something out of the ordinary and he would have scrubbed his meet. At the nonluxury building, with open parking lot and darkened lobby, Carmen set up with an eye.

  “He’s inside.”

  Quickly I parked around the corner and slowly walked toward the entrance. H
ad I seen him, I would have walked past, without entering. Instead, the lobby was empty. Above the single elevator, the numeral 5 was illuminated. We noted many license plate numbers. Some we recognized as belonging to other Macheteros. Others would be cross-checked by Squad 4 office agents. The next day we learned from one of those agents that a suspected safe house was situated on that fifth floor of the Santurce building. A good night’s work and a good survival lesson: It became routine for me never to take an elevator directly to the floor of my destination. I would always push two or three buttons (if alone), and I would always have it come to a stop on another floor. Should there be someone surveilling me, they would not know at which I had gotten off.