In February 1985, after less than two years as a uniform cop, I was promoted to detective. If that seems like a quick jump up the ladder, it was for several reasons. One, I had apparently distinguished myself as an aggressive and effective patrolman. Two, Burlington PD in the mid-’80s was short-handed, so competent cops were usually promoted quickly. And, three, I had someone helping me from above in the form of my former FTO, the Chaplain, who had been bumped up to detective a year ahead of me.
The Chaplain recommended me for assignment to the prosecutor’s division of the State Attorney’s Office. There, dressed in plain clothes, I learned how to assemble evidence so that it was airtight and overwhelming when presented in court. As I prepared witnesses and their testimony, I became fascinated with the whole subject of motivation. In other words, why did a particular suspect commit a specific crime? I figured that if I could think like them, I’d have a better chance making a case against them.
The understanding I developed came in handy a few months later as I started investigating cases as a detective. If I had enjoyed being a patrolman, I liked investigating and solving crimes even more.
The cherry on the cake was the fact that I was often teamed up with the Chaplain. We complemented each other perfectly. He was an expert at getting people to talk, and I was the bricks and mortar guy, who built cases slowly and methodically piece by piece.
Together we solved robberies, sexual assaults, drug cases, and the brutal double homicide of two convenience store workers in November 1986—arresting the suspect in five days. We were so successful that one holier-than-thou prosecutor suggested that we must have been getting physical with our suspects because a high number of them were confessing to their crimes.
I was inclined to confront the prosecutor face-to-face and ask him to back up his claim with evidence. Before I could, the Chaplain addressed the situation with his trademark humor, filing the following fictional police report on Burlington PD Detective Bureau letterhead and submitting it to the prosecutor in question. (I’m Detective A):
COMPLAINT #86-19219
DATE: 7/7/86
On 7/7/86 I was present in the Detective Bureau when Detective A brought in two males and told me he had just seen them on Church Street with an amount of what he believed to be cocaine.
Detective A took one of the guys into an interview room and I took the other. Detective A told me to “go fuck with the other guy’s head a little,” so I went into the other interview room to try and fuck with the guy.
I went into the room and the first thing I said was don’t lie to me or I’ll smash my fucking gun across your face. Then I told him that if he touched my coffee I’d fucking kill him.
So I says to the guy “Whatyadoin’ with that coke?” and he says to me “Hey.”
I just kicked back in my chair, put my feet up and looked groovy as usual. I said to the subject “Subject, we can do this my way or we can do it another way.” I think that kinda shook him up a bit, so he says to me, he says “You’re the coolest guy I ever met. Like I said before I’ll tell you everything you need to know, but don’t let that motherfucker Detective A near me, he keeps hitting me.” (The good cop/bad cop routine.)
So then ol’ Detective A comes back in the room and asks if he can talk to me for a minute and I say “Sure.” Outside the room Detective A asks what the guy told me and I said “Nothin,” just like that “nothin.”
And then Detective A says to me “Well then, make something the fuck up, saying something like ‘Yeh, it’s mine, what the fuck do you think pig fucker.’” Then Detective A runs into the interview room and cuffs the guy right in the back of the head, but there wasn’t a whole lot of blood, just about a half a cup full.
As he’s walking out of the interview room I hear Detective A say to the guy “Junior … I’m just doing my job” … and that’s the greatest line I ever heard.
All of us in the detective’s bureau laughed our asses off, and the pompous prosecutor never responded.
* * *
Back when I was a uniformed cop I had become friendly with several FBI Agents who were assisting us in a bank robbery investigation.
One day, one of them asked, “Hey, Mike, have you ever thought of joining the FBI?”
“Not really. No.” Expecting to remain with the BPD for the rest of my career, it had never crossed my mind.
Next time I saw him he handed me an application. Attached to it was a list of qualifications and the pay scale. When I saw that new FBI recruits made double what I earned as a police officer, I asked, “Where do I sign?”
Months later, on February 5, 1987, I received a letter on FBI letterhead that read, “You are hereby appointed a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
I thought it was a joke a first. As I read it a second time, my hands started shaking. Toward the bottom it stated that my starting salary would be $24,732. At the time, it seemed like a million bucks. For the second time in my life, the contents of a sealed envelope was about to change the course of my life.
A few days later, I got a call on a Friday from an FBI Applicant Recruiter, who said, “There’s a slot opening on Sunday. If you don’t take it, it’s going to someone else.”
“You mean two days from now?”
“Two days from now, correct.”
“What happens if I don’t take it?”
“You go to the bottom of the list.”
When I told Sam the news, she wasn’t thrilled, and I couldn’t blame her. Sure, we could use the extra money, but it was the middle of a tough New England winter and she was taking care of two-year-old Russell and was now pregnant with our second child. I quickly arranged for the Chaplain and another of my cop buddies to pack up our belongings and move Sam and Russell to her sister’s house in Massachusetts, then flew to Washington, DC.
On February 9, 1987, I was sworn in as an FBI Special Agent trainee at the age of twenty-nine. The FBI Academy is housed on 547 acres within a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, and reminded me of a college campus. I shared a room with a guy who looked like an accountant, and in fact had been an accountant. We became fast friends.
Our class of fifty—Class #87-7—consisted of ten former cops, ten ex-military, and people from all walks of life, including a veterinarian and music teacher. All but three in our class were male, and we were a mix of white, African American, Asian, and Hispanic. One guy had previously been earning $250,000 a year in the financial sector. Rooming next to me was an ex-NYPD cop and Columbia University graduate who I’ll call McDonald. He also happened to be built like a brick shithouse and looked like a movie star.
For some reason, he was always a nervous wreck, probably because of the insane amount of pressure he put on himself. I took it upon myself to try to lighten his mood, and remember telling him, “Godammit, McDonald, if I had half your shit, I’d be the Director in a week.”
First day of class we all showed up in the best suits, white shirts, and ties. The women wore nice dresses. Everyone appeared scared shitless. I sat relaxed, waiting for someone to tell me that I was there due to some bureaucratic mistake and would soon be headed back to Burlington.
The instructor asked us all to introduce ourselves, relate a little about our backgrounds, and talk about why we had joined the FBI. Recruits stood and spoke with great seriousness about wanting to join the finest law enforcement agency in the world, and how their whole lives had been dedicated to this special moment.
When it was my turn, I said honestly, “I joined because I need the money.” The instructor looked like someone had pissed on his shoes, while the two class counselors and the rest of the class cracked up. That moment set the tone for the rest of my Academy experience.
I was the blue-collar cop who worked hard, told it to you straight, and liked to crack jokes and play pranks to keep the class relaxed. It’s not that I didn’t take the training seriously. I did. At the same time, I liked having fun, and saw humor as an antidote to some of our stick-up-their-ass instructors. The truth was that a lot of the classroom work and physical fitness training we went through over the next four months were things I’d done before either in college, at the police academy, or as a cop.
During the four-month course I discovered I had a talent for mimicking people, and often entertained my classmates with impressions of our instructors minutes before they walked into the classroom. Encountering a classroom of snickering recruits, the instructors would look sternly in my direction, while I appeared angelic and nodded to McDonald sitting next to me.
I was also appointed de facto head of the “beverage committee.” My duties involved summoning my fellow 87-7 recruits to an FBI barroom on campus known as The Boardroom, where we would quaff a few cold ones, crack jokes, and engage one another in conversation. That nighttime ritual helped the fifty of us from diverse backgrounds and walks of life meld into one cohesive unit.
The night before our formal graduation, friends and family members, and FBI instructors and officials gathered for a formal dinner and celebration. Sam and Russell flew in for the occasion. After awards were handed out and we heard from several guest speakers, classmates turned to me and urged me to take the mike. Fortified with a couple of beers, I walked to the dais and did an impromptu set of impersonations of classmates and instructors complete with walks, body language, and voices.
All I remember were the howls of laughter from the audience and the feeling that I was on a roll. Sam’s mortification eased slightly when at the end my classmates gave me a standing ovation.
It was all in good fun, but not apparently to some Quantico bureaucrat who lambasted me the next day as I stood in line to be sworn in by the FBI Director. According to him, I had offended some very important people and had failed to conduct myself properly.
Fuck you for not being able to take a joke, I thought, but wisely kept my mouth shut.
An hour later, I received my official credentials and embarked on my FBI adventure. Luckily, I was assigned to one of the “Top Twelve”—meaning the FBI’s twelve largest field offices, in my case, Philadelphia. Part of that had to do with my experience as a policeman. Other less experienced Agents were dispatched to smaller outposts. My accountant roommate was sent to Shreveport, Louisiana, and had to work his way up.
The downside of being assigned to one of the Top Twelve was that like all new Agents I was put on the Applicant Squad, which meant spending endless hours at a desk calling and interviewing people who had been listed as references on government employment applications. Bored out of my skull, I amused myself by observing the guys in the adjacent Squad who were members of the Bank Robbery/Fugitive Squad. They’d arrive in the morning, insult each other mercilessly, and then hit the streets looking for bad guys.
After several months of grunt work, I was moved to Public Corruption, where my first assignment was to investigate police malfeasance in connection with the infamous MOVE bombing of May 13, 1985, when during an armed standoff with members of the black liberation group MOVE, Philadelphia police dropped two bombs on a MOVE-occupied row house in West Philly. The resulting fire incinerated an entire block, killing 11 people and leaving more than 250 homeless. It was heady stuff for a former cop who had previously been serving warrants and arresting drunk drivers.
After that I was assigned to a police corruption case where I interviewed witnesses who claimed that Philadelphia narcotics cops had ripped them off. Most of the accusers turned out to be drug traffickers. As a former cop who had handled drug cases, I was skeptical of their testimony at first. But mounting evidence convinced me that members of the Narcotics Unit were guilty of serious wrongdoing.
It shattered some of my idealism about law enforcement but taught me how to build a complex RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) case in federal court. After two lengthy trials, all but one of six former members of the Narcotics Unit were convicted or pled guilty, and sentenced to time in prison.
After a year on the Public Corruption Squad, I was given an opportunity to request a transfer. My first choice, the Bank Robbery/Fugitive Squad was staffed with heavy-hitting senior Agents and rarely accepted junior guys like me. Next in order of preference were the two Drug Squads in the Philadelphia office. One handled domestic drug trafficking, and the other Squad worked international, which in 1988 meant the Colombian drug cartels. I chose the latter: Squad 3—aka, the Colombian Drug Squad.
These were the early days of the FBI’s involvement in investigating major international trafficking. Following the brutal drug wars of the early 1980s in Southern Florida, the FBI had been given concurrent jurisdiction with the DEA to work drug cases. The Squad I joined was relatively new and staffed with young, aggressive Agents.
I loved it from the get-go. No longer was I stuck behind a desk working the phones. Now I got to spend most of my time out on the streets, either doing surveillance, executing search warrants, or making arrests. The hours were long, stretching into most nights, and practically every weekend. But I didn’t mind.
My partners were excellent—a very respected senior Agent, pulled me in immediately and mentored me, before leaving for his final assignment. When the senior Agent moved on I teamed up with his former partner, a young Agent I’ll call Saul Johnson, aka “the Counselor,” who had four years more experience than me and went on later to become the right-hand man of FBI Director Robert Mueller and the SAC of several major offices.
Johnson was a soft-spoken, studious former attorney who had the ability to remain calm in any situation and taught me to lead with my head. Our first major case was Operation Bacalao—Spanish for codfish, and named that because the suspects sometimes transported cocaine in refrigerated trucks.
Our main targets were the Aguilar family—a drug-trafficking organization led by husband (Julio Cesar) and his wife (Edith Guiterrez), and including his sister, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and others. On the surface Julio and Edith appeared to be a normal middle-class couple from Colombia in their midthirties, residing and working in the United States on green cards. They lived in a modest Philadelphia row house, and drove an unflashy Nissan Pathfinder.
The Aguilars were being supplied with cocaine from Colombia through New York City. FBI New York was running a parallel drug investigation on the NYC supplier, a kindly fifty-year-old Colombian woman named Stella Mercado.
Initially I was put on physical surveillance, which involved sitting in a car for twelve hours at a stretch, following Julio Aguilar as he moved around town, and keeping track of what he was doing and with whom he was meeting. In the late ’80s, U.S. law enforcement often assumed women didn’t play a major role in drug trafficking. So while we were following Julio around, his wife, Edith, was doing most of the real work.
We became aware of the extent of Edith’s involvement once we obtained Title III approval to conduct electronic surveillance, and listen to the Aguilars’ phones. This was my first Title III application, which turned out to be a time-consuming process that involved getting approval from a federal judge. While I collected the evidence and put it in sequence, the Counselor wrote the affidavits. Then the two of us met with a federal judge in his chambers, and answered his questions. It was by no means automatic that the application would be approved.
Once signed by a federal judge, the Title III had to be renewed every thirty days, which meant assembling new evidence and writing another affidavit. The Title III intercept turned out to be worth the trouble, because once we started listening to the Aguilar’s phones, we quickly developed a clear and comprehensive picture of how their operation worked. Every month or so, Julio would call his supplier in Medellín, Colombia, and say something like, “We need a hundred pillows.” Or he might fly to Colombia to deliver the message in person.
A week later a shipment of cocaine would arrive by boat or plane, usually in Miami, and we would track it from there to New York City and into the hands of Julio Aguilar’s boss, the aforementioned Stella Mercado. Mercado would then make arrangements to truck the cocaine to Philadelphia, or sometimes sent it via couriers on Amtrak trains. She might call ahead and say, “Tomorrow we’re going to be at First Street. Meet us there at three PM.”
We would try to cover the meet and photograph or video the transfer. Once Julio and his family got their hands on the cocaine, they would have people on their staff cut it, bag it, and distribute it to hundreds of smaller dealers, couriers, and kids who would sell it on the streets.
Back in Burlington, I’d been a cop busting small-time dope dealers on street corners. I’d arrest some and watch others take their place the next day. Now as a federal Agent I was trying to build cases against the heads of the organization, so as to dismantle the entire criminal enterprise. The Aguilars, as harmless as they appeared, were major players in an international drug organization moving hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine a year, and destroying countless lives.
Since these were the early days working international narcotic cases we had little or no liaison with officials in Colombia, which meant we had no effective way of going after the big boss in Medellín. Our focus was Stella Mercado in New York and the Aguilar family itself.
In July 1989, after months of collecting evidence, Saul Johnson and I returned to federal court and obtained arrest warrants. In those days, FBI SWAT (which I later joined) conducted the raids and made the arrests. Most of the time they did this at between three and five in morning when the suspects were asleep.
The morning in question, Saul and I parked a few doors down from the Aguilars’ house on North Front Street and observed Julio’s Pathfinder parked in the driveway, and assumed that the suspects were inside. Then we made the call, “Let’s hit the house.”
We watched while SWAT moved in, smashed through the front door, and rushed in, weapons ready. Usually, arrests were over in a few minutes, but on this occasion, it was taking more time. We weren’t allowed to enter until SWAT said, “Clear.” So we waited nervously, hands in our pockets, wondering what the hell was going on.
After fifteen minutes, Saul went into the house. He exited minutes later and said, “They found Edith and the others. But where the fuck is Julio Cesar?”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “His car is here. He has to be here.”
“Well, he isn’t. We checked the house a number of times and can’t find him.”
Meanwhile, Edith Guiterrez was in custody and insisting that we take her to the station right away and book her so she could hire a lawyer to contest the charges.
Saul and I entered the residence—a standard row house with four floors—basement, main floor with living room and kitchen, bedrooms on the second and top floors. We started at the top and descended, searching under beds and inside closets. Julio Cesar happened to be on the heavy side, so there were only a limited number of spaces he could squeeze his big body into. We checked all of them, carefully. No sign of Julio.
We went through the house four more times, methodically. I was starting to panic, thinking, It’s my first big arrest and I screwed up.
Maybe Julio Cesar had been tipped off and had fled. When I reached the basement the third time, I saw an old, grizzled SWAT officer named McQueen standing and measuring one of the walls with his hands.
He turned to me and said, “The dimensions are off.”
“What?” I asked, thinking that maybe he had flipped his lid.
“See how this part of the wall sticks out?”
I looked at it again and realized he was right, but still wasn’t sure what it meant. The SWAT officer put his ear to the drywall, smiled, then gestured to me to do the same. I heard someone breathing inside.
“Holy shit!”
“That’s him,” McQueen exclaimed. “Almost outsmarted us.”
Speaking through the wall, I said, “Julio, you sneaky bastard, we know you’re in there.”
McQueen pointed to an opening above that Julio had slipped through. We waited for one of the SWAT guys to bring a sledgehammer and bust through the wall. Then we slapped the cuffs on Julio Cesar.
According to the story that ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer on July 21, 1989, “Ten Colombia citizens and three Philadelphians have been named in a thirty-nine count cocaine-trafficking indictment released yesterday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
All told, we ended up arresting more than forty suspects, including Stella Mercado in New York. Our search of the Aguilars’ house didn’t yield drugs, but we hadn’t expected it to either as drugs were normally kept in separate stash houses. What we did seize were stacks of cash and ledgers that contained coded, handwritten records of all the Aguilars’ drug transactions.
Even though we had an open-and-shut case, we now began the laborious job of assembling all the evidence, including surveillance logs, ledgers, and phone transcripts, and building a case brick by brick against each suspect to present to the judge and jury. The Aguilars and their associates were charged with multiple serious federal drug offenses to include conspiracy and conspiracy with intent to distribute.
The Counselor and I had actually started working with the federal prosecutors for more than two years before the arrests. Now we coordinated with them on a daily basis for nearly another year before the cases went to trial, making sure every piece in the evidence chain fit tightly together, and leaving no room for a defense attorney to raise doubts.
In the end, most of the suspects pleaded guilty. Julio Cesar, Edith, and Stella were all sentenced to more than twenty years in federal prison.
Under federal forfeiture law, we had seized Julio Cesar’s Nissan Pathfinder. After the case wrapped up, the government assigned the Pathfinder to me for my official use. Now, ironically, I was driving the same vehicle I had tailed for almost a year. It turned out to be a real nice car, which my kids aptly named “Julio’s Ride.”