In order to understand the tensions and territorial jealousies that form a large part of this narrative, you need to consider that, in the aftermath of the Randy Weaver takedown at Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidian debacle at Waco, and other slightly less infamous law enforcement disasters, Attorney General Janet Reno has undertaken an historic reorganization of all federal law enforcement agencies. One immediate consequence of this process has been a corrosive flood of institutional paranoia throughout the federal justice establishment.
For example, in the DEA, most—I repeat most—of the street-level agents I interviewed are convinced that their new director, Thomas Constantine, has been placed in the job with a hidden mandate to dismember the DEA and bring all of its operations under the control of Louis Freeh and the FBI. In the ATF, field agents I spoke with expressed similar fears concerning the fate of their agency and ferocious skepticism regarding Janet Reno and the Clinton administration’s true agenda. The hidden legacy of the J. Edgar Hoover era has been profound, widespread, barely submerged fear and mistrust of the FBI, a sensibility shared—with some reason—by the Clinton administration, as well as the House and Senate. When Janet Reno “relieved” the DEA of its Fugitive Pursuit functions and had them reassigned to the United States Marshals Service, the FBI acted at once to limit the role of the USMS in FBI-connected fugitive operations. In its turn, the Marshals Service has good cause to be wary of the FBI for its internal culture of secrecy and arrogance, a perception shared, in my view, by most other state and local police agencies.
Perhaps as a consequence of this erosion of law enforcement cohesion, the Justice Department’s reliance on paid informants has reached terminal velocity, growing from $25 million nationally in 1985 to $100 million in 1994. Currently, field agents find themselves delivering sums of money to quasi-criminal or actively criminal informants in amounts that are four to five times the size of an agent’s yearly salary. In the World Trade Center investigation, Janet Reno authorized the payment of $1 million in cash to a single informant, Emad Salem.
Many street-level agents I interviewed contend that this growing reliance on paid snitches undermines classic investigative techniques, distorts the accuracy of information developed, and rewards habitual career criminals—some of whom are as bad or far worse than the suspect being investigated—for information that is either blatantly false or skewed to satisfy the evidentiary requirements of ambitious prosecuting attorneys.
There is now a major turf war going on among the DEA, the FBI, the ATF, the Marshals Service, and related enforcement operations. Many street-level agents suspect that this war is, at best, an inadvertent side effect of Janet Reno’s heavy-handed managerial style. This strikes me as partly true and partly sexist paranoia. Whatever the root causes of this turf war, a large majority of field agents I have talked to in all four services agree that this destructive competition for diminishing federal funds, coupled with Reno’s rather Draconian revisions of operational systems, has gravely eroded the effectiveness of serious street-level law enforcement, has left far too many state and local police agencies feeling isolated and ignored, and works to the advantage of only two elements in society: career criminals and defense attorneys.
Deadly Force concerns itself with only one aspect of these disruptive dynamics, the tensions placed upon the United States Marshals Service and its fugitive operations, the pursuit and capture of the nation’s most violent and dangerous felons. The United States Marshals Service, founded in 1789, is the oldest law enforcement agency in America. Current membership in the USMS runs around 3,500 deputy marshals operating under the control of U.S. Marshals and U.S. Attorneys in 94 judicial districts nationwide. Readers looking for the definitive portrait of the Marshals Service are encouraged to read The Lawmen by F.S. Calhoun (Smithsonian 1989).
Carsten Stroud
Thunder Beach, 1996