As I write this in July 2017, I’m still a member of the FBI after three one-year extensions beyond the FBI mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven. They must like me, or have just grown used to having me around, or think I have compromising photos of someone, because three one-year extensions are extremely rare. A month from now, I’m finally going to retire, turn in the badge and gun, and move on to the next chapter in my life.
I’ll be going kicking and screaming. The truth is, I’ve loved being an FBI Agent, and especially a UCA. To my mind it’s the best, most exciting, and challenging job in the world. I’d continue doing it into my nineties, if I could.
Not long ago, I got a call for a Violent Crimes supervisor asking for a female UCA to pose as an employee of a bank that was being targeted for a takeover. Bank takeovers are one of the most violent crimes we deal with. Heavily armed criminals force their way into a bank and take it over, disarming guards, threatening employees, and sometimes taking customers hostage.
None of the female UCAs available had much violent crime experience. So as the UC Coordinator, I suggested maybe an older, less nimble male UCA instead.
The supervisor, who knows me well, burst out laughing and said, “I know where you’re going with this.”
You might think that nearing the age of sixty with a bum knee and other aches and pains, I might want to kick back and recommend someone else. Nope. I was excited to get back into the ring one more time and experience the adrenaline rush I get from going against dangerous criminals, the coordination and camaraderie with SWAT and the guys on the Violent Crimes Squad, and the “go-live” moment when anything can happen.
We had information that two experienced bank robbers were planning to bum-rush a bank employee as he or she arrived at work prior to the opening of the bank. After putting a gun to the employee’s head, they planned to force the bank employee to let them in the bank, and then open the vault and safe-deposit boxes.
When I say these guys were experienced, one of the criminals had served twenty-three years in federal prison for sixteen bank robberies. These guys knew what they were doing.
We met with the managers of one of the target banks, explained the situation, and they gave us their permission to swap their workers with two FBI UCAs to protect the public. I would play the role of the manager/victim who would be bum-rushed and possibly held hostage. Fun job, right?
We knew that the robbers would be conducting surveillance on the target banks, so we spent days working with the real bank employees, learning codes and procedures and mimicking their behaviors. As the fake manager/target, I had to appear soft. In other words, an older man who wasn’t going to put up much resistance.
My age and baldness worked in my favor. And to sell my weakness further, I borrowed a walking cane from the prop department of our local high school theater. It was a crooked masterpiece that looked like it once belonged to Ebenezer Scrooge.
When we moved into position the first day, we knew we were being watched. Like us, the criminals had employed disguises and props, and were pretending to be construction workers complete with a van, hard hats, and reflective vests. They’d set up twenty yards from my designated parking spot on the side of the bank.
The second UCA, a woman I’ll call Natasha, entered the lot ahead of me. I drove in five minutes later, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. It was a feeling I was familiar with from twenty-five years of UCOs. It meant: I’m on full alert and ready for anything.
First thing I noticed as I parked was that the two bank robbers were sitting in their van exactly where we had expected them to be. But there was a third guy standing behind a dumpster, wearing a red baseball cap and white latex gloves.
WTF?
Who wears a pair of latex gloves in a bank parking lot before the bank is open? What the hell is this guy up to? Is he with the robbers or operating on his own, and maybe planning to rob the bank before they do?
All these thoughts rushed through my head as I used the Ebenezer Scrooge cane to slowly get out of the car. FBI SWAT wasn’t on the scene. Since this was supposed to be a surveillance run, I was more or less on my own. The pistol hidden in the small of my back offered some protection, but hardly enough should all three guys pounce at once.
As I hobbled to the front door with cane in one hand and a brown lunch bag in the other, I glanced at the robbers in the van, and then at the guy with the latex gloves behind the dumpster. I expected them to charge any second.
Fortunately for me, they didn’t. We later learned that when the robbers saw my car pull into the lot, one of them remarked, “That’s either an employee or a cop.” He said that because the car I was driving had tinted windows.
When they saw me get out with the cane, both robbers burst out laughing. Then one of them said, “I guess he ain’t no cop.”
Natasha and I entered the bank and went through the opening procedures we had learned. The two robbers sat in their van watching our every move. The guy in the latex gloves didn’t seem interested. We found out later that he was employed at a nearby cement factory and was taking an unauthorized smoke break.
The next day we repeated the same protocol. This time as I wobbled across the parking lot, the van with the two bank robbers passed within five feet of me. I shot the guy in the passenger seat a neighborly smile. He smirked back.
I remember thinking: Smirk now, motherfucker. Your time is coming.
This game of cat and mouse between the robbers and us continued another week during which we observed them purchasing a pellet gun, ski masks, fake beards, and other disguises. They ended up being arrested as they approached another bank in full disguise.
Earlier this year, I completed my final UCO. The subject this time was a knucklehead who had smashed a sleeping roommate in the head with a hammer, twice, and when he didn’t die, stabbed him with a knife two more times. He then fled from Massachusetts to Brazil. After securing a UFAP (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution) warrant, we found him, and during the UCO, lured him out of Brazil into Panama where we could arrest him on an Interpol warrant and extradite him back to the United States. He now sits in jail awaiting trial.
It was my last FBI arrest. My first took place in 1987. A neat, exciting, and rewarding thirty years!
As I get ready to retire this summer, I can’t help looking back at all the fun, anxiety, nervous jitters, exhaustion, laughter, and exultation. Two things stand out: love of my job and my total admiration for certain colleagues. I’m talking about people like my mentors Jarhead, Chris Brady, and WFO (Washington Field Office) Mark D; contemporaries including Mike Sullivan, Stork, BPD Eddie; NDURE brothers Gonzo, Patricio, Ron, Steph, EJ, and Atlanta Mike; and my protégés Tanner and Liquita. All are dedicated civil servants who represent the best our country has to offer and have risked their lives to defend and protect people like you and me. They did so (and some continue to serve) not for the accolades or the money, which isn’t going to get anyone rich, but out of duty and pride.
As I write this, Tanner is currently deep undercover on a very dangerous assignment. Liquita, El Viejo’s Florida girlfriend, recently completed a UCO in which she played a female drug baron in a Mexican cartel. That UCO, dubbed “Rural Scarface” by the media, resulted in the conviction of fourteen corrupt police officers on the East Coast. The beat goes on.
Certain of my colleagues, especially Brady, taught me how to become a successful UCA by leading by example and correcting me before I made a fatal mistake. I hope I’ve paid their wisdom and knowledge forward.
Speaking of learning to become a successful UCA, I should point out the process is a whole lot different than it was when I started out. No longer are untrained FBI recruits sent into Italian Mob social clubs and told to “find shit out.” In today’s FBI, an Agent must be certified to work undercover and pass three separate phases of training, which include a brutal two-week undercover school from which only about 50 percent of Agents pass.
In Boston, I take it a step further, assigning any newly certified UCA to partner with a more experienced UCA, so they can learn firsthand to operate in that difficult environment without having the pressure and responsibility of being a primary UCA.
I’ve trained some great new UCAs myself. Upon hearing about my upcoming retirement, one young female Agent I mentored as a UCA wrote the following:
The FBI is losing its best. You have [been] and continue to be my inspiration to do this job well. Thank you so much for everything you’ve taught me. You have no idea how often (daily) I refer back to the lessons and insights you provided me.
A senior male Agent said in an email:
Wilford.… [He calls me Wilford because I resemble the TV actor and pitchman Wilford Brimley.] You will always be one of the very few people on this job that I truly respect, admire, and have tried to emulate. One of the greatest things you taught me was not to give a shit what anyone else thinks, if you know what you are doing is the right thing.
Words like that from colleagues I respect mean more to me than any awards. In 2007, my Division selected me as the recipient of their highest award. It was special, because it was given to me by my peers—fellow Agents who worked beside me every day. The SAC who presented it described me as an Agent who “continually goes into the belly of the beast … against the worst of the worst.”
I stood at the podium and addressed my fellow Agents with my wife and daughter in the audience, (my oldest son was overseas with the Marines, and my youngest son was away in college), and said:
I work in a specialty area within the FBI, which by its very nature is secretive and whose success is recognized by the ability to remain unrecognized as an FBI Agent. I’m not comfortable being recognized. I much prefer to remain a ghost—a shadow hiding in the background.
In closing, I want to acknowledge the only things in my life more important than the FBI: my family. My wife and three children are the ones deserving of an award for putting up with my sorry ass. To my oldest son, proudly serving his country as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps; to my other son away in college and spending every last dime we have ever made and having a helluva time doing it; to my sweet daughter whose first reaction to being invited was a massive shopping spree…; and most of all to my wife … from the bottom of my heart, thank you for letting me play cops and robbers for the last twenty-five years, while you took care of everything else, and all the important stuff, you are incredible, thank you!
Finally to the FBI, and all my FBI friends for the opportunity to do what I believe is the greatest job on earth. It’s been an honor. Godspeed.