ALSO BY RONALD KESSLER
IN THE PRESIDENT’S SECRET SERVICE
Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect
THE TERRORIST WATCH
Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack
LAURA BUSH
An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady
A MATTER OF CHARACTER
Inside the White House of George W. Bush
THE CIA AT WAR
Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror
THE BUREAU
The Secret History of the FBI
THE SEASON
Inside Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society
INSIDE CONGRESS
The Shocking Scandals, Corruption, and Abuse of Power Behind the Scenes on Capitol Hill
THE SINS OF THE FATHER
Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded
INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE
The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Institution
THE FBI
Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency
INSIDE THE CIA
Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency
ESCAPE FROM THE CIA
How the CIA Won and Lost the Most Important KGB Spy Ever to Defect to the U.S.
THE SPY IN THE RUSSIAN CLUB
How Glenn Souther Stole America’s Nuclear War Plans and Escaped to Moscow
MOSCOW STATION
How the KGB Penetrated the American Embassy
SPY VS. SPY
Stalking Soviet Spies in America
THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD
The Story of Adnan Khashoggi
THE LIFE INSURANCE GAME
Copyright © 2011 by Ronald Kessler
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kessler, Ronald, 1943–
The secrets of the FBI / Ronald Kessler.
p. cm.
1. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2. Official secrets—
United States. I. Title.
HV8144.F43K475 2011
363.250973—dc22 2011012179
eISBN: 978-0-307-71971-3
Jacket design by David Tran
v3.1
For Pam, Rachel, and Greg Kessler
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
1 TACOPS
2 OMERTA
3 RED DRESS
4 SECRET FILES
5 BREAK-IN AT THE WATERGATE
6 DEEP THROAT
7 PROFILING
8 THREESOMES
9 MOLE IN THE CIA
10 MORE ROAST BEEF
11 WACO
12 THE CO-DIRECTOR WIFE
13 BEHIND VINCE FOSTER’S SUICIDE
14 BRICK AGENT
15 CATCHING HANSSEN
16 “BREACH”
17 UNEXPLAINED CASH
18 “MUELLER, HOMICIDE”
19 INTELLIGENCE MIND-SET
20 THE CENTER
21 THE HUNT
22 ARMED AND DANGEROUS
23 PREACHING JIHAD
24 YEAR OF THE PONZI SCHEME
25 TRIP WIRES
26 YACHT PARTY
27 CHRISTMAS DAY
28 SUITCASE NUKE
29 CSI
30 SPY SWAP
31 GERONIMO
32 THE BIGGEST THREAT
Acknowledgments
Photo Insert
PROLOGUE
IT WAS CHRISTMAS DAY, JUST BEFORE NOON. THE TURKEY was in the oven, and the aroma was beginning to fill the house, when Arthur M. “Art” Cummings II received a call on his BlackBerry.
The FBI command center told him to call back on his secure phone. When he did, he learned that a passenger aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which was on its final approach to Detroit from Amsterdam, had tried to detonate explosives as the airliner entered U.S. airspace.
As the FBI’s executive assistant director for national security, Cummings, fifty, ran both counterterrorism and counterintelligence for the bureau. He was the official directly responsible for detecting and thwarting terrorist plots and espionage by other countries. Few in the U.S. government knew as many secrets.
For Cummings, hunting terrorists was a battle of wits. He was the predator, the terrorists his prey. Had a terrorist eluded him? Could he trust the information he was getting? Had he missed a clue? These were the things that kept him awake at night as he directed the FBI’s transformation from an agency that emphasizes prosecutions to one that focuses on prevention of plots before they happen.
To ping in on terrorists, Cummings talked daily with Tactical Operations, a supersecret unit of FBI break-in artists who conduct court-authorized burglaries in homes, offices, and embassies to plant hidden microphones and video cameras and snoop into computers. Besides terrorists, the targets may be Mafia figures, corrupt members of Congress, spies, or intelligence officers of Russia and China.
When conducting covert entries, TacOps tranquilizes guard dogs and may stage fake traffic accidents, traffic stops, or utility breakdowns to waylay occupants and security personnel. To conceal agents as they defeat locks and alarm systems, it creates false fronts to houses and fake bushes that hide agents. If caught breaking in, TacOps agents are in danger of being shot by occupants who think they are burglars.
Besides hunting down al Qaeda, Cummings had to contend with bureaucratic rivalries. The New York City police broke a promise to the FBI and jumped the gun in the case of Najibullah Zazi, who had plotted to blow up New York City subways for al Qaeda. The Department of Homeland Security could not manage its own immigration responsibilities, yet it tried to become involved in a range of counterterrorism decisions that were the purview of the FBI. Then there was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an agency that often got in the way and produced little of value to the FBI.
In addition to bureaucratic infighting, Cummings had to deal with requests that could compromise the independence of the FBI. After announcing its decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, the Justice Department asked Cummings to prepare an assessment of the security threat that such a trial would pose there. Cummings resisted. He figured such an assessment from the FBI would be used for political purposes by both Democrats and Republicans. In any case, he thought the New York idea, which he believed was irresponsible, would never be carried out.
The effort by Obama administration officials to publicly use euphemisms such as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism or to avoid the terms “Islamists” or “jihadists” in describing the enemy galled Cummings. “Terrible, terrible” is the way Cummings described those ideas. “Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says.
On the other hand, Cummings had no problem with the desire of both the Obama and Bush administrations to read terrorists their rights. He believed that in most cases, the FBI could obtain the intelligence it needed to stop future plots by remaining within the framework of the legal system, including by administering Miranda warnings. The trick was to confront suspects before they were in custody, give them incentives to talk, and establish rapport.
Cummings himself was a genius at getting bad people to incriminate themselves
. A master of eye contact, Cummings has a receding hairline that emphasizes the intensity of his gaze. His magnetic blue eyes direct energy toward his listener.
“It’s all about parrying with the adversary,” Cummings says. “How many crumbs did he leave, and how many can I pick up? How do I get to the answer, how do I get to what’s really happening? There are so many different ways to do it, but the best way by far is sitting across the table from someone. The best thing is when you’re sinking your fangs into his neck, and he’s smiling while you do it because you convince him that what he’s doing is in his best interest—when in fact it absolutely is not.”
Having been told about the Christmas Day bomber, Cummings grabbed a Snickers bar and a Coke. That would be his Christmas dinner in 2009. His wife, Ellen, and three teenagers would enjoy turkey and cranberry sauce by themselves.
Cummings was now in charge of the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, one of the FBI’s most controversial and potentially most damaging terrorist cases.
Cummings jumped in his FBI car, a Dodge Charger. He turned on the sirens and the flashing blue and red lights and raced toward FBI headquarters.
1
TACOPS
WHEN BREAKING INTO HOMES AND OFFICES TO PLANT bugging devices, TacOps agents try to avoid using rear doors. Since they are rarely used, rear doors could be booby-trapped. So when TacOps agents needed to plant bugs in a Philadelphia electronics supply company that was a front for an organized crime drug gang’s hangout, they decided to walk in through the front door.
Agents decided the best time for entry would be between midnight and two in the morning. After that, trash collectors began their pickups and could see agents breaking in. The only problem was that across the street was a bar with outside seating. Patrons of the bar would spot the FBI team defeating the locks and disarming the alarm system at the front door.
So TacOps agents borrowed a city bus and rode to the electronics supply company. They parked the bus at the front door and pretended that the bus had broken down. As the FBI agent who was driving the bus lifted the hood, agents scrambled out to work on the locks and break in. Onlookers across the street could not see them behind the bus.
Once the agents were in the target building, the bus drove off. When the agents had finished installing electronic bugs, the bus returned to pick them up. But the bus whizzed past two inebriated customers from the bar who were waiting at a nearby bus stop. When the bus stopped in front of the business, the two angry patrons ran for the bus and jumped in. Since many of the agents were from different offices, everyone assumed at first that the two men were part of their operation.
“We get a couple blocks away, we start peeling off our equipment,” says FBI agent Louis E. Grever, who was on the TacOps teams for twelve years. “We’ve all got weapons on and radio gear, and these two guys are kind of sitting there going, ‘What the hell?’ They start ringing the bell. Ding, ding! They want to get off. Ding, ding! Now the bus driver, who was from the local office, was not a very good bus driver. I think he practiced for like twenty minutes driving this bus. He was knocking over garbage cans when he made turns. He yells back, ‘Hey, quit playing with the bell! I’m having a hard enough time driving the bus!’ ”
Other agents on the bus began to realize that the two men ringing to get off were not with the FBI after all. Before each job, all the agents meet each other, and now it seemed clear that these two were unwitting imposters.
“One of our guys got up, and he just happened to have a shotgun hanging on the strap on his back,” Grever says. “He walks over to them and goes, ‘Do we know you?’ ”
Now, Grever says, “They’re really ringing that bell. Ding ding ding ding ding! And we realize these guys are not with us. So we yell up, ‘Hey Phil, stop the bus! We’ve got a couple of riders here!’ ”
The driver turned around, took one look at the patrons, and realized they were not agents. Swearing, he pulled over and opened the doors.
“They get out, and we never hear a word from them,” Grever says. “They had no clue what was going on. They just happened to get on the wrong bus.”
Back in 1992, Grever, who has blue eyes and a reddish buzz cut, had never heard of the Tactical Operations Section. But his supervisor in the Jackson, Mississippi, field office, Billups “Bill” Allen, asked if he would like to join it. At the time, Grever had been in the FBI four years. He was expecting to be transferred to New York or Los Angeles.
About what TacOps does, Allen was cagey. Instead, he put him in touch with Mike McDevitt, a fellow former Marine, who was already on the team.
“How’s your family life?” McDevitt asked him.
Surprised by the question, Grever answered, “Fine.”
“You have any kids?”
“Yes.”
“You mind spending time away from them on the road?” McDevitt asked.
“No,” Grever said. “Anything for the mission.”
“Good, we already got the book on you,” McDevitt said. “If you are willing, can stand up to the demands, and can beat out the competition, you might have a future here in TacOps.”
When Grever met with the TacOps team on the FBI Academy grounds in Quantico, Virginia, he learned that it conducts supersecret, court-authorized burglaries to implant hidden microphones and video cameras and to snoop into computers and desks in homes, offices, cars, yachts, airplanes, and embassies. In any given year, TacOps conducts as many as four hundred of what the FBI calls covert entries. Eighty percent are conducted in national security cases relating to terrorism or counterintelligence. The rest are carried out in criminal cases involving organized crime, white-collar fraud, and political corruption.
As it turned out, Grever had been recruited in part because during college he worked for an engineering company on access control and electronic security. A member of the field office’s SWAT team, he had once been a police officer. Before recruiting him through Allen, TacOps had checked him out thoroughly.
“Above all, they wanted to find out if I would be able to work as part of a team,” Grever says. “When you spend most of your life with a very close-knit crew like TacOps, they want to make sure you can stand up to the challenges. You may be confined with them for extended periods, locked inside storage containers or on the top of an elevator. You lead a double life and are required to not talk work with family and friends. You do what might best be described as crazy.”
Working as what he calls a “government-sanctioned burglar,” Grever was on one of seven teams of about ten agents each that travel around the country conducting court-authorized break-ins. He conducted or supervised about a thousand covert entries.
Because of his background, Grever initially became a supervisory agent focusing on defeating alarm systems. He rose to head Tactical Operations, an FBI section with a purposely vague name. In his bio on the FBI website, the section is described only as “a deployment team chartered to provide technical support to national priority programs.” In October 2008, FBI director Robert S. Mueller III named Grever the FBI’s executive assistant director for the Science and Technology Branch. That put him in charge of the FBI Laboratory, fingerprints and biometrics, and the Operational Technology Division.
Consisting of a thousand people, including contract employees, the Operational Technology Division includes both TacOps and the Engineering Research Facility at Quantico. There, the FBI makes custom-designed bugging devices, tracking devices, sensors, and surveillance cameras to watch and record the bad guys. It also develops ways to penetrate computers and defeat locks, surveillance cameras, and alarm and access control systems.
On a daily basis, Art Cummings consulted with the fifty-year-old Grever to discuss innovative ways to intercept the conversations of tough targets and to lay out his priorities in national security cases.
“Before he is going to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a solution, I let him know we have a court order, and I help him prioritize based on our needs,” Cummings says.
Cummings considered TacOps critical to preventing terrorism. “TacOps collects against terrorists while they are in the planning stages, while they have their guard down, allowing us to see what’s really going on,” Cummings says. “Combined with other collection techniques like the development of sources, scrutiny of other records, and physical surveillance, TacOps is a critical piece of an integrated collection plan that allows for a deep, multidimensional understanding of the threat.”
If the FBI needs a simple wiretap of a landline phone or cell phone, or an intercept of an email account, Grever’s technicians in the Operational Technology Division deal directly with the provider. Usually, the phone company can install a court-ordered wiretap within minutes by entering the target number in its computers and transmitting the conversation over an encrypted broadband link to any FBI field office. But if a physical entry is required, TacOps takes over.
In interviews with Grever and other agents currently and formerly assigned to TacOps, the FBI revealed for the first time in its history how it conducts covert entries, the bureau’s most secret, most closely guarded technique. Even to members of Congress and administration officials with top-secret clearances, the operation is off-limits.
In some cases, the FBI can eavesdrop on conversations without breaking in, using parabolic microphones or laser beams to pick up sound vibrations off windows. To guard against similar intrusions, Grever’s office on the seventh floor of FBI headquarters faces an inner courtyard so that no one outside can pick up his conversations. Such a remote effort to eavesdrop is referred to as a “standoff” collection. Both that technique and covert entries to plant bugs and snoop into computers and records are called “close-access attacks.”
The Secrets of the FBI Page 1