In addition to undercover work, agents perform a wide variety of investigative duties that can give rise to some crazy shit. My second-favorite duty was “executing search and/or arrest warrants.” We called it “kicking in doors,” because that’s exactly what we did. In the 1980s, we probably had one battering ram for all eleven San Francisco ATF offices. So, we kicked the doors open. Or tried to.
Back then, we served most search warrants under the cover of darkness, using stealth approaches. You had to stack up a team at the door, breach (break down) the door, and make entry quickly to surprise the violator(s). Kicking in a door is an art. Failing on your first try would definitely get your balls busted when you got back to the office. Failing on a second or third try brought serious ridicule. My first attempt at kicking a door didn’t go so well. With everybody stacked at the door, literally lined up nut to butt, I gave the go signal, drew back, and with all my strength, I kicked it.
Effectively kicking a door requires you to target the lock and physically break it away from the door frame. What you don’t want to do is kick at the dead middle of the door. Yes, that’s the weakest part, but kicking the center generally doesn’t defeat the lock. I learned that the hard way. My foot went all the way through the door up to my knee. The violator started screaming and ran toward the door. The team all crashed into me, thinking the door was going to be broken open. I didn’t know what else to do, so standing there on one foot, the other still firmly stuck in the door, I pushed my revolver through the hole I’d made and ordered the violator to get on the floor. Thankfully, he complied. My team helped me extract my foot from the door and proceeded to execute the search warrant. I heard about that one for a long time.
My skills improved over time, but even that didn’t ensure smooth sailing. The very next time I was the breaching agent, I nailed it, first try. I hit it so perfectly that the door flew open with a crash. The crash was the result of the inside doorknob smashing through a one-hundred-gallon glass tank, spilling exotic tropical fish all over the entranceway. Due to agent safety, we couldn’t stop, and about nine agents flowed into the house, with no choice but to stomp over very expensive fish as we went. I’m sorry about the fish, but you really can’t make this shit up.
Every undercover assignment could be equated to kicking in a door and not knowing what awaited on the other side. All the training and planning in the world can get you only so far before that door eventually has to be flung open and you have milliseconds to react to an unforeseen scenario. You probably won’t be surprised when I say that the greatest day in a UC operator’s life is when he or she is turned loose to do just that: kick open the door and get out of the cage to show the UC world what they’ve got.
It’s potentially also the worst day in a UC operator’s life. All the talking is over; time to produce.
Imagine, if you will, being twenty-something years old, having a buttload of authority, and then given the freedom to go out and hunt down bad guys. When she became an instructor, Bambi was famous for encouraging students to be scared to death. She felt that was a healthy way to approach undercover. Bambi was attracted to UC work early on. It helped that her ATF partner, Randy Beach, was a high-strung ex-cop who loved putting bad guys in jail. Bambi had confided in me that whenever she did UC, she was scared shitless. That’s when I knew she took this shit seriously. Up to and including my very last undercover deal, I was petrified each and every time. Over the years, I learned to overcome and manage that fear, but I used to laugh when Bambi would say, “I’m not like all you guys who seem to handle this stuff without ever being scared.” It didn’t help that during basic academy and any subsequent advanced training, we were constantly reminded of some of the tragic failures in our agency’s history. Ariel Rios, Alex D’Atri, Eddie Benitez—among others, those names stayed with us. All three agents had been shot in the line of duty, and in the cases of Ariel and Eddie, killed, in Florida in the early 1980s during the drug wars.
One of Bambi’s earliest solo buys could have gone south very quickly. She was purchasing heroin from a guy known as Crippled Joey. They called him that because he had one leg longer than the other and walked funny. He didn’t like the name, but it stuck. The normal deal was, Bambi would roll up in her wired-up UC pickup truck, and Joey would jump in. They would chat for a couple minutes, exchange money for dope, and Bambi would leave. Complete with crystal-clear video and audio recordings. We call that a slam-dunk guilty plea.
On one of her buys, she arrived at the house Joey was dealing out of, but this time instead of Joey, the main bad guy that Joey sold for came out to the truck. It was hard for Bam to conceal her excitement. Going hand-to-hand with the big guy was a godsend. He walked up to the truck, and asked, “You Shelly?” She said, “Yeah. Where’s Crippled Joey?” The dealer said something like, “He’s out doing shit for me. He told me you were coming. Come on in.”
As operators we have the leeway to go off script, but we try not to. Mostly because the cover team has a list of possible responses based on the op plan, and when you go off script, they have to adjust.* Bambi made a quick judgment call to go inside the house to do the deal. She could have refused and said she didn’t have time, or any other number of excuses, but she saw the opportunity to get inside the house, wander around. She could identify all of the players in the house, get eyes on where the dealer kept his dope, and maybe see if the people inside were armed. All of this would lend itself to securing a search warrant after the buy.
Immediately upon entering the house, Mr. Big locked the front door behind them. Red flags went up; Bambi’s mind was racing. In a nanosecond, she had to assess a potential escape avenue as well as the increased threat of personal harm. She quickly wondered how the cover team would get in if she gave the distress signal.
Operational planning often covers specific tactics to be used during an agent extraction and/or the execution of a buy bust. Everything a UC does when in proximity to a violator can have consequences. Something as simple as making sure the door is unlocked so that the team easily can make entry may factor in. The lighting in a room or background noise or music can be a factor. Each encounter holds its own specific challenges. Things that most people don’t normally think about or pay attention to can be critical to a UC.
(When Alex was shot and Ariel was killed in a Miami hotel room, one of the last things to happen was that the door was locked behind them.)
Bambi protested to the violator: “I ain’t planning on being here that long.”
He said: “I just didn’t want anybody just walking in on us.”
Bambi accepted his response and followed him down the hall. She stayed on alert because there were other people in the house. Lots of them. Babies, babies’ mamas, stoned dudes, and chicks sprawled everywhere. Bambi kept her wits about her and was in and out in minutes.
Speaking from a personal perspective, I never liked going into the violator’s house. It’s his world, and I could have no idea what was going on inside, but I, too, have pushed the envelope. In this case, because Bambi kept her cool, did the deal and got out, ATF scored. Instead of just being able to arrest Crippled Joey, and maybe or maybe not getting enough probable cause (PC) to hit the house, we got it all. We secured a warrant for the house and arrest warrants for the main guy as well as Dipshit Joey or whatever they called him. There were multiple violators in the house, and thanks to Bambi, the search warrant team knew the exact layout of the house and where the dope was kept. Bam took some pretty evil players off the street.
One of my most prideful and memorable experiences when I finally got cut loose happened close to home, in Marin County, California. During my first tour with the San Francisco division office, Joe Stafford asked me if I wanted to cut my teeth and get a little UC experience. Of course, I jumped at the chance. Joe was one of the most senior, respected, and experienced agents in my squad. Although he wasn’t officially my training officer, he took me under his wing. He told me I’d be doing the UC for the Marin County drug task force. The task force was made up of cops from all over the county, including from my hometown, Novato.
We met at the San Rafael Police Department for the briefing, and Joe introduced me around as people arrived. I was sitting with my cowboy boots propped on a desk when Novato Police Sgt. Mike Poole entered the room. He shook the hands of Joe and the other ATF agents, and started to walk by me. I could tell he recognized me, but he didn’t know from where. He kicked my boots off the desk and asked the others, “Why is the snitch sitting in on our briefing?”
The entire place erupted into laughter, and Mike was confused.
I stood up and said, “Fuck you, Poole. You want me to do this deal or not?”
He spun around to find himself staring straight at my US Treasury badge and credentials. He was seriously slack-jawed and stuttering. When it hit him, he threw a huge bear hug on me and we caught up. See, Mike had been a patrolman when I was running around Novato being a juvenile dickhead. He not only had arrested me several times but also had one occasion to arrest my father for DUI, which included a pretty good beating. Rest assured, my father earned it, took it, and never held a grudge. In fact, Mike Poole, my dad, and I had cocktails on several occasions long after all of that.
But now I had joined the “A” team. My parents and friends were so proud of me. There was only one problem confronting me. Being assigned to the San Francisco field division put me back in my old stomping grounds. I’d been able to keep my childhood indiscretions secret because California law allowed me to. My mother had been smart enough at the time to have my records sealed, so legally I could deny any of it had ever happened. What I couldn’t do was hide my past from people I’d known and the friends I’d run with back in those days.
There were some awkward moments that couldn’t be anticipated but had to be dealt with. While in a bar meeting with a fairly violent violator in Santa Rosa, I had one such experience. I had gone to a Catholic high school. My former vice principal/priest walked into the bar with a couple other people. He was in civilian clothes, but I recognized him and turned away so hopefully he wouldn’t recognize me.*
When the violator went to the bathroom, I decided to defuse the potential for compromise right then and there. I walked over to Father Finn. He looked up and immediately hugged me, which means he wrapped his arms around the 9 mm pistol in my shoulder holster, which caused him to lurch. While still in the hug, I whispered quietly but clearly, “I’m a police officer, and I’m undercover right now.” He looked puzzled but nodded and turned back to his table.
After the violator left, I went back over to Father Finn and his group, showed him my big-time federal credentials and said, “Thanks, Padre. Yah done good.” I said. “See, I’m not a bad guy anymore.” He replied, “Good, because I’m not a priest anymore.”
From the stories he told to his friends that evening as we visited, I could tell the ex-padre was proud of who I’d become. But seeing him again highlighted the issues that arise when any agent works in his or her hometown. What do you do when you run into old friends? Are they good guys, or are they bad guys? Do you tell them what you do for a living or give them the canned story? Do you pursue a case vigorously against a good friend and childhood buddy? Can he or she blow your cover? I knew a whole lot of people from my childhood, and most of them were fuckheads. I never gave any of it much thought until shortly after I went into the field working and also started getting my name known among local law enforcement. Actually, most of the old-timers in local law enforcement already knew me—just not as an ATF agent.
Having terrorized Marin and Sonoma counties as a kid, my name was quite well known by the local constabulary. As word got out and I reestablished my name as a cop, my ATF agent partners and I would find ourselves in a tavern now and again, where I would have to sit and listen to the local cops tell story after story to my fellow agents about what a total asshole I was as a kid. One such night, I was with Joe and Larry, and we were going to the Hilltop to meet some cop for drinks on the way home. I never thought to ask, and they never thought to tell me who we were meeting. We walked in, and sitting at the bar was Novato Police Officer Yugo Innocenti. The same Yugo Innocenti who had a dozen years earlier shoved a shotgun in my face and threatened to blow my head off. Joe and Larry walked up and shook his hand, and then stepped aside and said, “Here’s our new agent.” Yugo stared. I stared. After a pause, he threw a kind of bear hug on me. He said he couldn’t believe this shit, and went on to tell me that he had always liked me and hoped I would grow out of my bullshit. He asked about my mom and dad, and then began the nonstop stories to Joe and Larry, all of which started with: “Let me tell you how fucked up this kid was.”
I admit that I felt a sense of pride: number one, that I had, in fact, grown out of my bullshit, and number two, that these senior agents were seeing me as somewhat of a local celebrity. The four of us drank and laughed until another party known to me entered the bar.
There were only two open seats, both close to where we sat. The guy in a shirt and tie who sat down a few spots away from our group was none other than Joel Thomas. Back in the day, Thomas and his brother were a couple of the biggest dope dealers, burglars, and strong-armed robbers in town. What made it worse is that Thomas was one of my old running mates.
He didn’t pay us much attention and ordered a drink. I thought: “What the fuck do I do?” I was sitting with a cop who had busted him and his brother at least half a dozen times. Joe and Larry, both senior agents having worked this area for a dozen years, also knew the brothers and had investigated them on federal firearms charges. I just sat there and tried to get small, but Thomas eventually looked up, noticed Joe and Larry, and muttered something like, “Lovely, of all the bars, I have to come to the one with not one but two ATF fucking assholes.” I think it was Joe who shot back, “Go fuck yourself, Thomas, and where’s your faggot brother? In prison?”
Now I really wanted to get small. As a side note, it always was suspected that Thomas and his brother had burglarized my parents’ house and stolen my mom’s antique jewelry. For many years, because I was running around with these types of people, my parents believed I had something to do with it. I did, but only by association. Needless to say, we hadn’t remained friends after the burglary. I’d fantasized about this very moment, coming face-to-face with Thomas or his brother and either beating their asses or arresting them. Now here I was with a badge, and I didn’t have a clue what to say or do, so I just sat there. It wasn’t a minute or two longer before Thomas noticed Yugo and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He said something like, “I didn’t know ATF guys hung out with punk-ass patrolman, because best I recall you can’t catch shit.”
Yugo stood up and in his thick-ass Italian accent, not using his indoor voice, said, “I knowa thisa, you and youa fuckin’ brother are justa fuckin’ burgalers.”
Thomas stood up as if he was going to do something, which he wasn’t, and looked over and finally saw me. I could tell his mind was reaching, and it finally clicked. He said, “What are you doing with these assholes, Cefalu? Snitching on your friends, I guess?”
I pulled my credentials out of my pocket, flipped the wallet open so my badge hung down, and said, “Well, kinda.”
He looked at my badge and then back at me. “Bullshit.”
“Nope, fact,” I told him. “And I promise I’ll be seeing your ass again.”
He drank down his drink, threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar, and muttered, “Fuck all you motherfuckers,” and walked out.
We laughed about the irony, and Joe and Larry proceeded to name all of my childhood friends as past targets of their investigations over the years. Thank you, Lord, and thank you, US Marines, for getting me the hell out of there, or my name would have been in that group.
All the way across the country, other “out of the cage” scenarios were playing out with friends of mine. In Savannah, Georgia, on any given day you could find Dino, Bambi, and her partner Randy running the streets. Dino had lined up a guy in his sights for a pipe bomb purchase, so he asked Randy to come along. This particular violator also had a contact for a machine gun. As is often the case, they met the violator at a trailer. Not a mobile home trailer but a pull-behind-your-car trailer.
Upon entering the trailer, they saw materials for making bombs. They also observed black powder spilled all over the floor and the violator with a lit cigarette. This was all they needed to excuse themselves to avoid blowing up with the violator. They walked out and sat in the Ford Ranger pickup truck they had driven to the deal. After a few minutes had passed and no explosion, the violator walked out to the truck carrying a gym bag containing several pipe bombs.
There were only two seats in the truck, and Randy was driving. Therefore, he was wearing the wire. Dino jumped in the truck bed. The plan was to drive the violator to another guy’s house to try to secure the machine gun. They were trying to make it a two-deal day. (I think the most deals I have ever done in one day was three.)
As they were driving down a rural road out in the country, the violator said, “Hey, watch how good this works.” Before Randy could respond, the violator lit the fuse on a pipe bomb and attempted to throw it out the window—except the window glass was shut all the way, and the bomb bounced onto the floor of the truck. The violator quickly grabbed it, rolled down the widow, and chucked the bomb out. Meanwhile, Dino was sitting in the truck bed looking toward the tailgate, clueless to what was happening in the cab. He saw something shiny fly past his head, followed by a huge explosion. The fuse had burned down quickly. Another second or two, and that bomb could have exploded right next to Dino’s melon.
The agents decided to be satisfied with the one deal on that day and to arrange for the machine gun deal at a later date. After they went back to the office and cleaned themselves.
Some agents would be let out of the cage only to turn and run right back in. Mark was one such agent. After a couple of years in the field, he figured out he was not the best suited to prowl in the nasty underbelly of the criminal world. His plan became to do anything and everything to be the one handling the snakes rather than to be one of them. This probably was good for him and good for the field, and it was often said that if the boss stopped too quickly, Mark’s head would go right up his ass.
In the 1980s, California’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) was in full swing. It was a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana fields in Northern California, with most law enforcement divisions dedicating a few officers/agents to the effort for several months. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work. Marijuana fields were identified prior to the harvest season and then visited during CAMP raids, when we were dispatched in teams to the locations and either helicoptered in or dropped as close to the field as possible. We had to hike in, cut the plants, and drag them out. We were faced with terrain, snakes, and bugs. Occasionally, we sat on an active site to arrest the growers, who protected their crops with booby traps and, often, armed guards. Overnight teams had to hump their provisions in for an extended stay.
Mark was assigned to one such team. We were staying at one of the hotels rented out to just cops for weeks on end.* We would meet early in the morning, and get assigned to teams and briefed on our locations. Mark showed up to the morning briefing where we all were in camo and raid gear, bulletproof vests, and hiking boots. His attire: collared polo shirt, silk slacks, shiny dress shoes. He was assigned to a small team that couldn’t spare even one man, so he had to hump it that day in all his finery. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw. Since he did have the boss’s ear, he was replaced by a no-shit street agent within a day.
During those early days, my mom and dad were beside themselves that I had risen to such a prominent position after the hell I put them through as a kid. They showed me off like an organ-grinder monkey, and I was good with that. They loved all the agents.
One night a bunch of us were out drinking, and I apparently had too much. The crew drove me to my mom’s home, where I was staying until I closed on my first house. They came in to say hi to my mom, and she offered to make food for everybody. It was midnight and they respectfully declined, but she was having none of it. There was my mom, a tiny 105 pounds, “ordering” some serious old-school special agents to park their cars and not to leave her house until they put something in their stomachs. The agents complied.
* Operation plans always have been a part of any field op. We used to just throw something together to keep the bosses off our asses. Dates, times, locations, manpower assignments, and bust/distress signals. After the Waco report came out and ATF was flogged for substandard ops planning, every operation was required to have a detailed op plan approved beforehand, including UC, search and arrest warrants, and sometimes surveillances. In practice, it’s a pain in the ass and slows agents down considerably. That’s why UCs sometimes draw outside the lines.
* Father Finn once suspended me for smoking weed in the parking lot at lunchtime. My punishment was detention on the weekend and to clean the school office. While cleaning his office, I found the pipe he had taken from me in his desk, still filled with weed. It wasn’t the worst detention I ever did.
* We weren’t very well liked in the Emerald Triangle, as evidenced by all of our tires being slashed one night.