Chemical Cowboys

by Lisa Sweetingham

  NYFD operations today are aided by high-tech resources, such as audio recording devices the size and shape of shirt buttons. Surveillance teams can slap a GPS device under a target's vehicle in less than five minutes, so an agent can monitor his moves by computer, cell phone, and public surveillance cameras. But when Gagne and his teammates were chasing after drug traffickers in 1995, it was a low-tech era. There was no GPS. The agents shared a green-screen, blinking-cursor-style computer. Report of Investigation forms, or DEA-6s, were done in carbon triplicate on electric typewriters.

  When the agents weren't on the street, they worked at cubicles on the eighth floor. Gagne's cubicle was decorated with photos of missions with his teammates in Peru and the latest shots of him with his D-35 teammates during their annual Columbus Day weekend golf trips.

  Germanowski's cubicle was tidy. He taped his calendar to his desk so it wouldn't slide askew every time someone walked by and nudged it. Tacked to his corkboard was a photo of a half-naked Jennifer Aniston (until Group Supervisor Lou Cardinali made him take it down) and a Pittsburgh Steelers license plate. He kept a photo of his two-year-old son front and center. Germanowski had five rules he tried to live by and would pass on to his children: “Don't lie, cheat, steal, or quit, and be nice when you have a chance, because you never know when it will be the last one.”

  Germanowski was married, but not happily. Gagne could hear the coldness in his partner's voice whenever he called his wife to say he was working late. In marriages that endure, spouses of DEA agents tend to be patient about the long hours, the unexpected calls to duty, the last-minute cancellation of vacation plans, and finding themselves suddenly dateless for graduations, weddings, and recitals.

  In the summer of 1995, Gagne was still single at twenty-nine and living in a tiny apartment next door to the cacophonous Lincoln Tunnel. He paid $300 a month for a small one-bedroom, with a washer and dryer, all utilities included. But he was hardly ever there. NYFD was home, and Germanowski and Flaherty were family. Sometimes in the evenings, after the office emptied out, the agents would set up a golf course around the cubicles for miniature golf tournaments. In the mornings, they'd meet for target practice in the small seventh-floor shooting range or they'd lift weights in the fifth-floor gym.

  The one place at NYFD where Gagne steered clear—perhaps the pain of Snowcap was still too fresh—was the Hall of Honor. At the entrance to the fluorescent-lit hallway is a dedication “to those brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice, lest we forget.” A blue carpet, blue velvet ropes, and plastic flowers line a corridor filled with seventy-five portraits—seventy-five deaths—that date as far back as 1921, when Prohibition agents Charles Wood and Stafford Beckett were killed by whiskey smugglers near the El Paso/Mexico border, and as recently as 2004, when Milwaukee Task Force officer Jay Balchunas was gunned down by assailants as he walked to his car. Six New York agents are among the dead.

  The most famous face in the gallery is number thirty-eight, Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Camarena was born in a poor Mexican barrio and moved to the United States as a boy to pick plums to earn money. Kiki became a naturalized citizen, a Marine Corps officer, a fireman, and a policeman before he devoted his life to DEA, fighting the flow of drugs from his native country into his adopted country. Camarena worked undercover in Guadalajara, Mexico, investigating a multibillion-dollar drug trafficking network that implicated officers of the Mexican army, police, and government. The thirty-seven-year-old father of three was on his way to meet his wife for lunch on February 7, 1985, when masked gunman kidnapped him in broad daylight. Camarena was bludgeoned and subjected to sadistic cruelty over the next twenty-four hours. A physician injected him with stimulants to keep him conscious through the torture. On March 5, his body was found in a shallow grave on a ranch about seventy miles from Guadalajara. His eyes were taped shut, his hands and feet were bound, and his body was wrapped in plastic. His jaw, nose, and cheekbones were broken; his windpipe and skull were crushed.

  Mexican authorities destroyed his clothing and other evidence. The U.S. government, through its own sources, obtained videotapes of the torture session—tapes that Mexican officials denied existed. Camarena could be heard pleading with his abductors, “Don't hurt my family.”

  In 1990, the DEA hired Mexican bounty hunters to kidnap the alleged physician-torturer and extradite him to the States for prosecution. His trial ended in an acquittal. Mexico eventually convicted more than two dozen people, including police and drug kingpins Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintana. Six men were convicted in the United States, but some conspirators were never brought to justice.

  Gagne was a year out of high school when Camarena was murdered. DEA wasn't even on his radar yet, but he knew about the murdered agent. It marked a turning point in the war on drugs and enlightened the nation on the brutality of drug traffickers. TV movies and documentaries dramatized Camarena's hopeful life and brutal death. National Red Ribbon Week in October was instituted in his honor, to educate schoolchildren about the dangers of drugs. An elementary school in La Joya, Texas, bears his name.

  Camarena was the first DEA agent to be tortured and killed as a symbolic gesture to America that the “bad guys” weren't putting up with interference in their business. But instead of turning the agents into shrinking violets, it seemed to embolden them.

  “Bottom line, we will never surrender to the drug traffickers,” New York SAC John Gilbride says. “You will not scare us off. You're gonna hurt us, you may kill some of us, but we're not going away. We'll just come back stronger and harder. We'll keep going. That's why agents raise their hands to go to the jungles of South America. It's a lot more dangerous than any city in the United States, but they'll do it because they want to be as close to that source of supply and those major drug traffickers as possible—to have an impact.”

  On the wall in the Hall of Honor opposite Camarena's photo is a separate memorial for the five agents who perished in the plane crash in Peru during Operation Snowcap. No matter what time of year it is, invariably a prayer card left by a family member can be found tucked under the portrait of Special Agent Frank Fernandez Jr., the Snowcap leader who died without his lucky charm at his side.

  5 THE ECSTASY DEALERS

  IT WAS A HOT August summer night in 1995 when two men named Israel Hazut and Michel Elbaz hailed a livery cab after an evening of club hopping in Manhattan. As the chatty Lebanese driver slowly steered them home toward Queens, he asked the men where they were from and what they did for a living. The tall lanky one said that he and his brother had recently moved to New York from Israel and they were making a fortune selling Ecstasy in the nightclubs. The driver nodded his head coolly, as if he knew what Ecstasy was.

  The dealer handed the driver a fat white tablet that was scored on one side.

  “Try it—on the house,” he said. If he liked it, they were $20 apiece.

  “Anything you need,” he said, “we can get it for you.”

  The driver thanked them for the free sample, took down their beeper number, and dropped the men off at their apartment in Queens. Then he dialed Bob Gagne.

  The next morning, Gagne and Jay Flaherty met with the livery driver, a confidential informant named “Charlie,” to pick up the drug sample. Gagne placed the pill in a clear plastic evidence bag and delivered it to the New York Field Division's on-site Northeast Regional Laboratory, where it was marked exhibit number one, expedited analysis requested.

  Gagne didn't know much about Ecstasy. He had heard vague references to its use at all-night rave parties, but no one at NYFD had ever opened a major case on it. DEA's resources were focused on the action: heroin and cocaine. But when everyone else turned right, Gagne was the type to turn left. He dug into the archives and came across an article about a New Jersey teen who'd died from taking one Ecstasy pill; that was enough to get him worked up. Gagne wondered if Ecstasy was that new path he was looking for—something that seemed solvable. It intrigued him. But he wo
uld still have to convince his partner.

  “Dude, this is the next big thing,” Gagne said with the confidence of a sledgehammer. “We'll go out, we'll make a buy, we'll make another buy—order up and knock ‘em up.”

  “Wait a second,” Germanowski said. “Cocaine's falling out of the sky right now, and you want to go after Ecstasy pills?”

  “It'll be fun,” Gagne said. “No wires, no heavy-duty surveillance—real simple.”

  Germanowski knew it was futile to argue.

  “Listen, Gags, this is sort of bullshit, but it might be something different. Let's try it.”

  “Hey,” Gagne offered, “you can do the undercover.”

  “Yeah, I'll do the undercover.”

  But when the sample pill Charlie had procured came back from the DEA lab analysis as NCSD, or “no controlled substance detected,” the agents had nothing more than a couple of cough syrup peddlers in their sights. The pill was 23.6 grams of pure dextromethorphan hydrobromide—the active ingredient in Robitussin DM.

  “Charlie, I want you to call them back,” Gagne ordered his informant over the phone. “Tell them you're not falling for the banana in the tailpipe trick.”

  6 CONFIDENTIAL INFORMANTS

  AN EASTERN EUROPEAN DRUG trafficker named “Joel” once told Gagne that the only difference between them was the law. Joel took care of his family and plied his trade with passion. But eventually he got caught, and like the guy who baited him, he saved himself by switching teams.

  “He who makes the laws wins,” Joel said of his predicament. Joel became a confidential informant and provided Gagne with valuable information that led to the arrests of several notorious Romanian drug traffickers.

  Confidential informants like Joel and Charlie are the necessary interlopers who walk the line between both worlds. At some point in the late 1990s, DEA started calling informants confidential sources. It was semantics, really. Appeasement of the criminal mind. No snitch wants to be called an informant—but somehow “source” went down easier. Either way, they perform the same role and veteran agents tend to use the old nomenclature.

  Confidential informants can be divided among three main types. There's the regular informant, the kind who wants to keep the law apprised of the crime going down in his or her neighborhood. Everybody is happy with a regular informant, a do-gooder. They hold up nicely on the witness stand. Then there's the defendant informant. This is the guy (sometimes the girl) who's looking at serious charges—the dealer who decides to help the agents reel in a bigger fish in the hopes of receiving a lighter sentence. The restricted use informant is typically someone who is on probation or parole or has a history of violent crime. It takes a criminal to catch a criminal, and a convicted murderer can be a valuable informant—but use him sparingly and keep him away from the witness stand if at all possible.

  A fourth breed, more interesting and rare, is the protected use or protected name informant. Most agents will never encounter them. They tend to be foreign government officials or figures in overseas criminal organizations. For instance, a money launderer for a Colombian cocaine cartel who is in over his head might provide info to derail the cartel, but if it ever came to light that he spoke to DEA, he and his entire family would be slaughtered by the cartel. Protected use informants are never called to testify. New York has had at least one such informant and that person's file was kept in its own separate safe.

  DEA agents have to develop and verify every piece of information they receive to make sure it can stand up in a court of law. And every piece of negative information about an informant must also be reported. The case law—Brady vs. Maryland (1963) and Giglio vs. U.S. (1972)—that Gagne and other agents learn in Basic Agent class says that if you use the CI at trial, the defense must be made aware of any prior convictions, drug or alcohol abuse, failure to pay taxes, or general double-dealing that puts an informant's credibility in question. Same for any benefits the informant receives for his cooperation, including plea agreements, charge bargains, immunity, assistance with immigration, free meals, phone calls, or cash payments for information.

  Depending on their active involvement, informants might collect payments from $250 to $2,000. If they provide information that leads to a major cash seizure, case agents can request that the informant receive anywhere from 2 to 25 percent of the money. DEA is under the purview of the Department of Justice, which oversees the Asset Forfeiture Fund, and is the ultimate decider as to how much an informant receives. While it is extremely rare, there are million-dollar informants. A San Diego CI who helped DEA track down some of the men responsible for the murder of Special Agent Camarena was a million-dollar informant.

  Protecting the source's identity is imperative. At NYFD, the Confidential Source System database is kept in a separately alarmed, combination-protected office. The 250-square-foot room is stacked wall to wall with fireproof steel-gray safes that contain the names, photos, and personal stats of every informant who works for NYFD. Only the confidential source coordinators have the combination to the room, and on any given day they maintain the files of roughly four hundred active informants. (Incidentally, some of the best informants are real estate agents—because who else would be the first to know about a home buyer who wants to build a chemistry lab in the garage or a renter who uses his apartment as a stash house?)

  Charlie was a defendant informant who was arrested for trying to buy five kilos of heroin and flipped to save himself. Gagne thought Charlie was a good guy as far as confidential informants go. He had reliable information and he enjoyed the opportunity to work with the agents. As much as Gagne and Germanowski needed their informants, they could never really trust them. The CI-agent relationship is a psychological land mine. An agent starts spending time with the CI, driving him to deals, meeting for lunch, and after a while he starts to like his informant. The CI is helping to make his case. It's human nature. Even harder if the agent is single and lonely and the CI is an attractive woman.

  A couple of hard-and-fast rules. Rule number one: Agents are forbidden from socializing with informants. Personal relations with confidential informants are grounds for termination. To ensure no lines are crossed, a DEA inspection team makes surprise visits and the informants are rounded up for questioning: Have you accepted or given gifts to your handling agent? It says here you received $250 on March 3; did you actually receive that payment? Have you been seeing the agent socially?

  Rule number two: Use an informant, but do not be used by him. The CI coordinator, like a mother hen, is watchful of the agents’ relationships with their informants, always reminding them of potential pitfalls: Expect that the CI has ulterior motives and that those motives will change frequently. Never discuss your family. Don't leave magazines in your car that have your address on them. Expect that your informant is recording your conversations.

  Gagne and Germanowski worked their informants for all they were worth, an art form that takes patience and a well-tuned bullshit radar. Even experienced agents can get burned, because informants are professional liars.

  Charlie, however, was a buff—the kind of informant who longed to please the agents. Gagne thought he bore a striking resemblance to Al Pacino. He worked out religiously and wore tank tops in the summer that revealed asymmetric pectoral muscles. Charlie was always trying to write himself into the operations. He'd present Gagne and Germanowski with a phone number and a lead on a dealer, then he'd propose a fantastic Mission: Impossible–style scenario, with Charlie in the Tom Cruise role, jetting off to Monaco, deep undercover, to aid DEA in foiling the bad guys. They humored Charlie's ambitiousness but kept him on a short leash.

  7 “JIMMY” MEETS “GHEL”

  ON AUGUST 24, Charlie pulled up to the corner of 97th Street and Queens Boulevard in Rego Park, Queens, at 4:40 p.m. and dialed Israel Hazut from a pay phone. Bob Gagne and a half dozen backups were watching the buy operation from unmarked cars parked on Queens Boulevard. Matt Germanowski waited in the backseat of Charlie's car. He wore
a KEL recorder around his waist, a bulky device that sometimes overheated and burned the bellies of sweaty, nervous informants.

  Hazut arrived by foot in a white T-shirt, red-and-blue checkered shorts, and sandals. He was twenty-eight, six foot one, 165 pounds, and clean-shaven, with close-cropped black hair. Hazut was born in Tel Aviv, just sixteen days after the final battle of the Six-Day War. He was lanky and fierce and had an eagle tattoo on his right shoulder.

  “Who's the guy in the car?” Hazut asked. Charlie, the ambitious buff, led Hazut back to the car to meet his “friend.”

  Germanowski introduced himself as “Jimmy,” a club owner from Pittsburgh. Hazut introduced himself as “Ghel,” a dealer of superb-quality X pills.

  Agents rely on their ability to read people, and Germanowski read Ghel as a car salesman, chasing down the highest bidder, eager to get to the top. It should have been harder for Germanowski to get the introduction. The seasoned dealer plays it slow and coy: he's not interested in meeting the new guy and he doesn't talk money or drugs on the first meet. But Ghel let Charlie pull him in, and now Ghel was on Germanowski like a drunken prom date. It gave Germanowski the opportunity to be the one to play coy, to hold back first.

  “What do you need?” Ghel asked. He had weak pills for $11 or the strong stuff for $22.

  “I'm looking for the strong stuff,” Germanowski said.

  Ghel handed him two capsules filled with white powder.

  “This is the stuff you want. People love this stuff. It's the best stuff in the city. I sell it in all the nightclubs.” Take one, Ghel promised, and in fifteen minutes he'd be flying for the next four hours.