THE COST OF DOING AMERICA’S BUSINESS
Bambi went to a guy to buy some heroin one night, just like any other night. When she met the guy at the door, they started chatting and one of the violators there asked the main violator, “Who’s this?” The main violator was stoned and couldn’t remember. He said, “Tell the man your name, baby.”
Bambi said at that moment it felt like somebody stuck a hot poker through her brain.
“Who am I supposed to be right now?” she wondered. “Am I Bambi, am I Shelly, or am I Michelle? What am I supposed to buy from this guy? Crack? Heroin? Guns?”
This was in the 1990s, and we were all grinding on cases and supporting each other’s cases. Bambi had been working so many buys that she literally forgot who she was. Buying a gun one day, crack another, heroin the next, a murder for hire the next—it was all running together. Bam told me she muttered some bullshit, made the deal as fast as she could, and got the fuck out of Dodge. She was scared at what had happened, and it was time for a vacation.
Our bodies are designed to function under peak stress for short periods of time. So generally, the body’s physical response of producing dopamine and adrenaline, for example, is a healthy reaction to a threat or danger. But if our bodies produce too much of these naturally created chemicals, we build up a tolerance. In other words, our bodies can be conditioned to have to produce more and more of the substances that allow us to continue functioning under intense mental and emotional strain. It’s not unlike the way heroin junkies build up a tolerance and need more dope to get the same high. Bambi and the rest of us were constantly running at red-line capacity. The physical damage alone wore on UCs and could be devastating.
We all know that the mind can be a fragile thing, and there’s no doubt that some agents endured significant and debilitating trauma that prevented them from continuing or returning to UC work. But we RatSnakes did not like UC work used as a catchall excuse for disregarding job responsibilities or otherwise fucking up. One of our female agents chalked up three DUIs, two of which were in government vehicles. According to her, it was not alcoholism that caused her problems, it was her undercover exposure. Another UC operator, a supervisor, responded to a fire scene drunk off his ass and in a government vehicle. Yep, it was the UC work.
We felt that the tendency by some to make UC work a scapegoat for gross misconduct or personal problems gave management the I-told-you-so card. In the late 1980s and ’90s, several of us fell prey to management attacks, I believe as a direct result of being career UCs and not because we did anything specific to warrant a beatdown. ATF’s management structure was heading the way of the FBI, and the newer bosses didn’t seem to like RatSnakes tainting new hires in their own images. White, clean-cut men and women ruled the day. They often could not understand the RatSnakes because most of them were not in the field long enough to begin to relate.
I have been a Catholic and a Christian all of my life. I’ve raised my children with those beliefs. Some of what I have written may have caused you to cringe. I’m guessing you have questioned some of the RatSnakes’ methods and many of our actions. Please know that each and every one of the agents praised in this book have given their all so that others will not have to confront evil face-to-face. Many of these agents did so at great personal expense. Many of us were in our twenties when we entered the UC world. In the early days, there were no hard and fast rules beyond being the good guy and not breaking the laws you enforce.
My personal method of trying to stay grounded was and is by faith in God. I attended Mass on Sundays, sometimes even when on operations. I needed to be reminded that I was one of the good guys. I remember early on being confused about the proposition of using deadly force against another human being. I turned to the church and “Three Our Fathers Jack” for guidance. Father Jack came from a family of seven siblings. Four were cops and three were priests. I met him when I was a young patrol officer in Athens. He eventually helped me find the clarity I needed.
Father Jack held confessions only on Saturdays between 4 and 5 PM. If I was working, I’d call out for ten minutes to go do my confession. Once, while I was in the middle of my confession—conducted with the priest and confessor on either side of a privacy screen—my police radio broke squelch. Father Jack just said, “Please continue, Vince.” I laughed. No matter what my confession was, he always gave me a penance of three Our Fathers, a.k.a. the Lord’s Prayer. When I asked why, he said, “It’s just easier to remember.”
I believe we ultimately will be judged by God. We RatSnakes already have been judged by those we have served, those we served with, and those who had the advantage of knowing what we didn’t know at the time we were asked to do something. Some of us will be judged more harshly than others, I’m sure.
I don’t intend to simplify anyone else’s job, but at the end of the day a sanitation worker knows he must pick up the trash. A firefighter knows his or her job is to put out fires. A UC’s job is essentially defined by mythical duties: seek out evil, dwell among it, and don’t be consumed by it. What does that really mean? In the final analysis, I’m not certain I even know. What I do know is that for nearly three decades, I watched brave men and women do their best to execute a job where “gray area” doesn’t begin to cover it. For their troubles they have been shot, spit on, pissed on, run over, investigated, and attacked by the agency they served. They have been cut out from the glory, transferred for their own safety, and often seen as a necessary evil. Yet they kept going out into the dirtiest parts of our country. After a successful case, they didn’t get to stand in front of a camera or be heralded in front of their family or friends. They were used and then put back in a cage, so to speak, or sometimes discarded altogether.
We all had been warned in the academy what sort of life we were entering. The instructors made it abundantly clear that we were not valued and were always one case away from being discarded if things got shitty. Great pep talk, Charlie and Pat. They told us that in discussions with superiors, we would be referred to simply as “undercover agents,” meaning that aspect of our work was believed to be all we brought to the table. Sure enough, there is one such reference I will never forget. Our deputy director was visiting the field offices in Atlanta. When he got to my office, I was pretty excited to meet the big man. Instead, the first words out of my SAC’s mouth were, “Mr. Director, meet one of our UC agents.” My heart sank. It was all true.
UCs often want to be the quarterback on a case, thereby adding to their responsibilities. As noted earlier, I was trained that, generally speaking, the UC shouldn’t also be the case agent. The case agent really should have the quarterback position, and if the case is going to involve undercover work, there’s lots to do. Open and maintain the paper flow of the investigation. Ensure that the proper approvals are granted and then extended when needed. Account for all funds being used. Manage and acquire manpower. Oversee and run all aspects of surveillances, UC operations, and security. Ultimately, it falls on the case agent to manage the prosecutorial efforts when the case is done. The UC should be laser focused on gathering intel/evidence in a lawful manner and not preoccupied with anything else. It does happen that a UC sometimes acts as his/her own case agent, but those are usually one-or-two-days gigs. In-and-out buys, and done. In any case, as a UC, you definitely want a case agent and a supervisor who have significant UC experience, since they are the shot callers on scene.
A lack of coordinated effort and lack of UC tactics severely hampered a case that popped up while I was assigned to Stockton, California. A detective I knew and had worked with while teaching criminal justice at University of the Pacific called me aside one night. He had a case he thought I might be interested in, so I agreed to meet him the next day. From the beginning, I knew this case was a disaster waiting to happen, but shit, we didn’t turn down hard cases. I wish I had. In short, it had public corruption (which is really FBI jurisdiction), dope, dirty cops, Hells Angels, and an institutional vendetta against one of the targets by the cops presenting the case to me/ATF. The FBI already had declined the case before the PD brought it to ATF. That should have been a clue. Historically, the FBI would jump on about any case to keep it out of ATF hands.
As we formed an ad hoc task force, the power struggles started out of the gate. Our—meaning ATF’s—position was the only position the task force was allowed to have: ATF case, ATF rules. The task force was split down the middle. Half were super happy ATF was there; the other half resented us coming in. Once we got a commitment (which they would later violate) from the local leadership that ATF would steer this train, we put together a plan. The divided allegiances made it hard. As the case agent, I opted for an infiltration. A UC operation would require a time and asset commitment. The other side wanted to go straight to a wiretap. But this was now my circus, so my monkeys. I began scouring the field for potential UCs who weren’t tied up on another case, who could commit the time, and who had the experience. I could not actively participate in this UC operation because of my years of contact with the Hells Angels. I was too well known to them. After reaching out far and wide, I sealed the deal with a UC named Brett. He’d come on when I was in Atlanta, and I’d had a hand in training him. I trusted him. Wanting a female backup for Brett, my supervisor and I vetted a few women for a potential girlfriend role. We decided on DD, a battle-hardened agent who had previous experience in the biker world. She was not optimum for that reason, but after round tabling it with her supervisor, we agreed there probably would not be any overlap from the previous case. This turned out to be a point of contention that the other side would later use, erroneously, to scrap the case and go back to the FBI.
As our UCs made great strides getting close to the bad guys, the other faction on the task force began to undermine me and my side. Every day, the word “wiretap” was mentioned. After I’d explained the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure about a hundred times, the assigned US attorney even made the two-hour trip up from Fresno to meet the task force and explain why a wiretap wasn’t appropriate and why we shouldn’t/couldn’t do it. In plain terms, federal rules state that you must exhaust every other investigative technique before the Department of Justice will sign off on a federal wiretap. Wiretaps are viewed as the most extreme intrusion on an American citizen’s rights. Trust me when I say that the other side wasn’t dissuaded.
During this time, I had little to no help from ATF in the way of manpower. I had two undercovers from out of town, and support was waning on the local PD side of the house. The undercovers were in limbo. Were we continuing? Did we need to establish a UC residence and more permanent backstopping? My supervisor didn’t have a lot of street experience. Before taking the job, he was assigned as a tactical operations officer, meaning one of our electronics geeks. He then moved through a couple office positions before being made a supervisor. From what I saw, he appeared scared of his own shadow when it came to no-shit street work. By the time he was confronted by the local PD bosses regarding the division and animosity between the two sides of the task force, he basically punted and threw me under the bus. At the SAC’s direction, he called me one night to say that I was going to be replaced as the lead by someone with much more experience, but I would stay on to direct the case.
My response was along the lines of: “Fuck you. That’s bullshit and you know it.”
His response was basically: “Yeah, I know, but the SAC said if you don’t go along, he will transfer your ass to North Dakota, and he means it.”
I said, “And you’re gonna lay down and take that shit?”
“Nothing I can do. He’s the SAC. You’re on your own.”
I thought: “Now he isn’t just a bad supervisor, he’s a pussy too.” I ended up being right.
In 2005, after a great deal of soul-searching, I reluctantly blew the whistle on corruption within ATF. Specifically, I spoke out against illegal wiretapping in the racketeering case (US v. Holloway, et al., 2009) described above. I wasn’t a crusader. But there were so many abuses being perpetrated by certain individuals within the bureau that I couldn’t bury my head in the sand. I did initially report the abuses to the San Francisco field division management staff. That ultimately expanded to HQ senior managers, who wanted to shut me up.
My whistle-blowing and complaints to the US Office of Special Counsel were the subject of numerous television and radio interviews. By 2007, I was removed from fieldwork and relegated to a desk job, essentially paid my salary to do next to nothing. No, let me clarify. I was paid full salary and benefits for doing exactly nothing. In 2010, I was featured on a CNN three-part exposé about internal corruption and retaliation, and the floodgates opened. My allegations became small fish compared to some of the reports I was receiving from across the country. My phone rang off the hook with calls of support as well as other agents seeking guidance for how to proceed with their own tales of corruption and mismanagement. In 2012, I was commissioned to write an article for Townhall magazine’s February issue, in which I discussed ATF corruption relating to the by then infamous Fast and Furious operation.* In October 2012, I unceremoniously was served with termination papers in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant near Lake Tahoe, California. I filed a whistle-blower reprisal and retaliation lawsuit against ATF.
Jay Dobyns also had filed significant allegations through the Office of Inspector General.
All of this prompted me to set up a website dedicated to cleaning up corruption inside ATF. In 2009, I launched CleanUpATF.org (CUATF), providing a forum for agents and other personnel to voice their grievances and concerns. ATF management’s response was quick and predictable. Management launched retaliation against many agents who spoke out. Our acting director Kenneth Melson had all ATF computers blocked from accessing CUATF, and the website was heavily monitored by the Department of Justice. I also learned that the bureau sought guidance from main Justice as to whether ATF could take legal action to shut the site down.
CleanUpATF.org offered agents a venue to seek advice and to make their allegations public, with hopes that Congress would take notice. Congress did notice. Thanks to Senator Charles Grassley (Republican from Iowa) and Chairman Darrell Issa (Republican representative from California’s 49th District), several congressional inquiries into ATF activities were started.
“Gunwalking” is cop speak for the concept of allowing criminal suspects to “walk” off with guns without police interdiction. This controversial practice became a hot spot of the growing scandal. In 2006, ATF launched Project Gunrunner, an initiative aimed at curtailing US-Mexico cross-border gun and drug trafficking and violence. An offshoot of Project Gunrunner was Operation Fast and Furious, centered in Arizona, by which ATF allowed more than two thousand weapons, including hundreds of AK-47s and .50-caliber rifles, to illegally enter Mexico as part of a sting operation targeting Mexican drug cartels. It later came out that ATF was not able to track most of these guns, and the Mexican government had not been fully apprised of the case. After Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in December 2010 in Arizona, just north of the Mexican border, ATF insiders started anonymously voicing their concerns about Fast and Furious, including posting on CUATF. Many believed that Brian Terry had been killed by foreign nationals illegally in the country and armed with AK-47 rifles thought to be trafficked by Fast and Furious suspects who had not been arrested by ATF.*
Meanwhile, Darren Gil, my old partner from San Francisco, had risen higher than any of our group. He was named the country attaché for the US embassy in Mexico. Early on, in an attempt to help with my lawsuit with ATF, he offered me a job on his overseas team. All I could think of was defending my actions and my honor, and I declined. That single decision was probably the best one I ever have made. In the months and years to follow, headquarters fuckery would challenge Darren to pick between breaking the oath he took and facing career destruction. He was ordered to defer his decisions regarding guns flowing into Mexico and was advised that SAC William Newell of ATF’s Phoenix field division would have managerial oversight. Darren eventually lost his job as attaché. We later understood why: Operation Fast and Furious was in full swing and its proponents didn’t want Darren muddying the waters.
The problem for Darren was, of course, that Agent Terry had been killed by a gun we/ATF could have intercepted. Darren and I struggled over long telephone conversations to find a reasonable explanation for those guns turning up in Mexico. Neither of us wanted to believe the rumors about the bureau allowing gunwalking across the border. As stories about Operation Fast and Furious popped up on my website, I began conferring with the House and Senate Oversight and Judiciary committees. The scales tipped around March of 2011 when an ATF agent posted on the site under the username Desert Rat. That post opened a Pandora’s box. Desert Rat stated that ATF knowingly allowed firearms to cross the US border—guns that ended up in the hands of Mexican narcoterrorists. The shit hit the fan, and the media had a heyday. As the main guy in charge of CUATF, journalists, lawyers, and congressional aides wanted to talk to me. In turn I brokered introductions of agents to these people and encouraged the agents to tell their stories. It was a very scary time.
When Arizona-based ATF Agent John Dodson went public on the network news in March 2011, speaking out about Fast and Furious, Darren knew the cross-border gunwalking rumors were true. He’d been kept in the dark about the operation and didn’t like it. That same month, Director Melson announced a panel was being formed to review firearms trafficking strategies used by field division managers and special agents. A month later, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena for ATF documents. US Attorney General Eric Holder testified that he had only heard of Fast and Furious over recent weeks. He rejected Republican calls for his resignation and ultimately was cited with contempt for failing to turn over documents relating to the failed operation.
One by one, agents and supervisors stepped up and testified before Congress about the gunwalking debacle. When requested, Darren decided to testify and became a voice against the disastrous operation. That was the kiss of death for his career with ATF. He was summoned back to Washington, DC. He called me the night he received word from Director Melson’s minions that he had eight days to relocate stateside. That was unheard of but consistent with the corrupt behavior of the bosses running the agency at that time.
In August 2011, the Department of Justice removed Melson as acting director of ATF and assigned him to the Office of Legal Policy. He retired in September 2012.*
I was contacted by the Terry family, who appreciated the sunlight we were lending to the murder of their loved one. There was little comfort for the fact that our worst fears had come to pass. ATF’s ridiculous plan had cost a fellow law enforcement officer his life.
I’ve had years to reflect on whether I made the right choice to speak out against the agency I served and loved. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I took an oath to defend this country’s Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I’ve tried to be fair in my account of what happened. The events discussed above do not reflect on the field agents but on a broken system. I am hopeful but not convinced that the Bureau of ATF will endure and regain its former greatness.
In 2010, Darren Gil made the decision to retire. He and his wife headed for a coastal area. He went on to finish his PhD and now teaches criminal justice and international affairs.
Bird retired, still mired in a lawsuit the government refused to settle. He won his case, but ATF appealed. The presiding judge was so disgusted by the government’s conduct toward Jay that he ordered a Special Master to investigate corrupt actions by Department of Justice officials. Unfortunately for Jay, before the investigation could be conducted under the judge’s watchful eye, the judge passed away and so did the Special Master’s investigation.
Jay came away from his time in ATF banged up and bitter, no doubt. Our conversations these days are less and less about ATF. Honestly, it is hard to find a RatSnake who hasn’t suffered some form of retribution at the hands of ATF management. But to a man, or a woman, they will say that if they had it to do all over again, they would.
In my twenty-seven years of service to ATF, I had compiled eleven Special Act or Service Awards and dozens of letters of commendation. I was awarded Special Agent of the Quarter for two consecutive quarters and received the second-highest evaluation possible for twenty consecutive years.* My greatest achievement from a personal standpoint was a 100 percent conviction rate on every case I brought to court during my tenure.
After I reported corruption within my field division and within the bureau, I was transferred six times, suspended three times, and reprimanded three times. There were two failed attempts to terminate me over the course of my lawsuit. Fortunately for me, my allegations were reviewed by the Office of Special Counsel, which ultimately defended me in concert with private counsel. It is extremely significant that the OSC took on my case. The government was fighting the government on this one. My lawsuit dragged on for approximately eight years, spanning two US presidents, five attorneys general, and three ATF directors. It consumed taxpayer resources to the tune of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars. I hold the retaliatory approach of ATF leadership responsible. The most depressing part was that one of the judges involved in my lawsuit advised me to abandon hope for accountability. She said that almost never happens. She was a wise judge.
I never left my house for even one of the transfers. Four of my last six years in the bureau were spent sitting in a ten-by-ten-foot office with no duties other than to sit in that office. My last two years were spent at my residence in Lake Tahoe, California, still with no duties, but receiving full pay and benefits. If any of that leisure time sounds great, please remember that I was a RatSnake, built for speed and the deep desire to actively serve my country. Those years of forced downtime were tortuous.
My old “friend” Steve M. had jumped on the Hate Vince bandwagon without ever bothering to directly ask me why I’d spoken out to begin with. In my opinion, he deceived and lied and did the agency’s dirty work. I resented this showboat having any say-so over my career, especially since I and many others thought he’d been a train wreck in the field.* ATF just kept promoting him. One of the last times we clashed was when he was the SAC in San Francisco, and he went after my job, using the guise of an on-the-job injury I’d suffered as a reason to transfer me to a non-agent position in DC, expecting me to quit or retire. He manipulated the system through the ASAC to effect that reassignment. After deposing the ATF bosses in my whistle-blower lawsuit, the government attorney came back after lunch and said that Steve had consented to settle the case and place me back in the field. My attorney and I agreed, only to find out it was merely a stalling tactic and Steve, not for the first time, went back on his word.
In October 2014, ATF settled my lawsuit out of court. I received a significant monetary settlement, my fucking Denny’s parking lot termination notice was rescinded, and my official record was cleared. I formally retired that same year. Although prevailing in the grueling lawsuit was a huge victory, I am more gratified knowing that by speaking out perhaps I helped change the world, if only for a minute. This was not how I planned to leave the bureau, but it was what God had planned for me. I learned a long time ago that it is not a perfect world.
I am not bitter. I am proud.
* See excerpt from “Diary of an ATF Whistleblower.” Townhall, January 30, 2012. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/elisabethmeinecke/2012/01/30/diary-of-an-atf-whistleblower-and-the-corruption-that-led-to-fast-and-furious-n684826
* There was widespread news coverage of the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious. For example, see Sharyl Attkisson, “A primer on the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal.” CBS News, February 12, 2013. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-primer-on-the-fast-and-furious-scandal/
* For a summary of the congressional case, see “Operation Fast and Furious Fast Facts.” CNN Library, September 18, 2017. https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/world/americas/operation-fast-and-furious-fast-facts/index.html
* Well, you know me. I got that one penalty day at the beach for sending the off-color joke over the email system.
* Steve M. loved to show off a braided ponytail he had worn decades earlier and kept on his credenza. I took every chance when he was with somebody in his office to point out that this probably was an OSHA violation. Steve’s self-serving style and agent disputes while he was in charge of the San Francisco field division got him a trip back to HQ where he would retire from ATF in obscurity.