The Secrets of the FBI

by Ronald Kessler

  Under the terms of an agreement, the Koechers were barred from ever entering the United States again. They had to surrender their fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship.

  During five days of interviews that began on April 29, 1987, in Prague, Karl Koecher told me that attending the orgies was useful. “Even knowing that somebody attends parties like that—maybe a GS-17 in the CIA—is interesting stuff,” Koecher said. “Or you just pass it on to someone else [another intelligence officer], who takes over. That’s the way it’s done.”

  The group sex was “just the thing to do at that time,” Hana Koecher told me matter-of-factly. “All our friends somehow went to a little club or something. So we went there too, to see how things are.”

  I asked Koecher how he felt about Ogorodnik’s death.

  “I’m deeply sorry about that,” Koecher said. “But the people who did him in were the CIA and he himself. They recruited him in such a clumsy manner.”

  10

  MORE ROAST BEEF

  HOOVER’S NEED FOR CONTROL LED HIM TO MISTRUST UNDERCOVER operations. The idea of an agent blending into a neighborhood where Mafia figures or terrorists lived by sporting a beard and casual clothes horrified him. Agents had to report to the office every day and drive only bureau cars, known as Bu-cars. Easily spotted, they were full-size Ford sedans sprouting antennas for their two-way radios.

  In contrast to that approach, William Webster gave the go-ahead for long-term undercover work and stings.

  “It was after Hoover where this expansion occurred, allowing long-term undercover operations, assigning agents no cases except to develop top-echelon criminal informants, Mafia guys themselves,” says Sean McWeeney, who headed the organized crime section at headquarters from 1979 to 1986.

  In the mid-1990s, the FBI established an undercover group code-named Shortstack just to handle the secret arrangements.

  “We provided agents with everything from phony social security, driver’s licenses, and passports to a business cover,” says Michael Reith, who headed the group for nine years until 2003.

  Now the FBI has gone so far as to tell agents working undercover roles that if they are in a situation where their cover would be blown if they did not participate in taking drugs, they may do so. Once they report taking drugs, they are tested for months to make sure they have not developed a habit. If Hoover knew about that, he would have turned over in his grave.

  To track suspects and conduct surveillance, the FBI in the mid-1970s created the Special Support Group (SSG). Known as Gs, they are lower-paid, unarmed surveillance employees used in counterintelligence cases. They might pose as joggers, derelicts, in-line skaters, priests, ice cream vendors, mail carriers, or secretaries. As they or agents follow suspects on a street, they are in constant communication with one another. When driving, they may pass the suspect or move with him along parallel streets. They may switch vehicles to further trick a suspect. The vehicles may be Corvettes, old rattletraps, bulldozers, buses, or ice cream trucks.

  Long before caller ID was introduced, Reith was instrumental in pushing telephone companies to hand over records of incoming local calls when needed in a pressing case. Such records were the key to solving a number of cases, including the murders of Joseph and Beverly Gibson. On December 24, 1987, the Gibsons were found shot to death in their mobile home in Hazlettville, Delaware. Their son Matthew, born just nine days earlier, was missing.

  Just before the shootings, Joseph Gibson’s parents, who lived near their trailer, received at least two calls from a woman asking for directions to the trailer. The caller said she had met the couple at the hospital where the baby was born and wanted to visit them.

  Reith asked the phone company if it could turn over records of calls made to the grandparents from any phone within the 302 area code.

  “They said, ‘We don’t conduct that kind of a search,’ ” Reith says. “I said, ‘I know you have that information as part of your billing records.’ ”

  After much prodding, the phone company agreed to design a computer program that would spit out the information. Calls to the grandparents had come from the home of Richard W. Lynch and Joyce Lynch. The FBI discovered that Joyce Lynch had told her family she was pregnant when she was not. Just before Christmas, Richard Lynch told friends and family that his wife had given birth to a boy. The Lynches had kidnapped Matthew because they wanted a baby boy.

  Two weeks after the shootings, the Lynches were arrested and charged with the murders. Matthew was given to his grateful grandparents.

  Under Webster, the FBI even went after Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In a two-story house rented in Washington, undercover agents who conducted what was named the Abscam case would tell members of Congress they represented a sheik looking for political favors. Agents then videotaped congressmen receiving cash in exchange for promised legislative goodies. Seven members of Congress, including Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey, were convicted. Instead of threatening members of Congress, as happened under Hoover, the FBI was sending them to jail.

  Besides going after members of Congress, the FBI took on powerful officials in Las Vegas, including Harry E. Claiborne, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Nevada. In December 1983, he was indicted for taking bribes, obstructing justice, and filing false income tax returns. He was eventually convicted of income tax evasion. As the FBI investigation of Claiborne proceeded, Harry Reid, then a congressman from Nevada and later Senate majority leader, demanded to meet with Webster to ask why the FBI was going after Claiborne.

  FBI Agent Walter B. Stowe Jr., who was assigned to Congressional and Public Affairs, handled the request and set up a meeting.

  “The actual meeting was totally anticlimactic, with Reid raising perfunctory questions about the Claiborne investigation and Webster explaining that it would not be appropriate to discuss the details even with a congressman,” Stowe says. “My impression of the meeting is that Webster very subtly gave Reid a lesson in power and made the message crystal clear that the director of the FBI is not subject to political influence.”

  However, when Webster was later nominated to be director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Reid cast the only vote against his confirmation. Claiborne was convicted in 1984 of tax evasion and was sentenced to two years in prison. He became the first sitting federal judge to be removed from office in half a century.

  Webster, who had an ageless face, thin lips, and a high forehead, turned out to be a skilled administrator. He chose exceptionally talented managers and let them run the bureau but always kept them subject to his sharp questioning. Webster made it clear that agents would be in trouble if they kept problems from him. If Webster thought an agent was not giving him the full story or had not done his homework, the tone of his voice became taut and his eyes steely.

  “At one of the first executive conferences, they started to give Webster the dance,” says William A. Gavin, who became an assistant director under Webster. “He didn’t let them dance more than seventeen seconds before he was all over them. He would let you know with a crisp, terse statement with the blue sparks coming out of his eyes. I wouldn’t want that happening to me more than once. It was like your dad when he took you to task. You didn’t want to upset him again. He saw through the bureaucratic horse manure. All of a sudden, people realized, ‘If we don’t know the answer, say we don’t know the answer.’ ”

  Despite the progress under Webster, now that Hoover was no longer around, discipline within the FBI began to break down. According to bureau legend, a New York FBI agent went to lunch at a deli around the corner from the field office, then on Sixty-ninth Street at Third Avenue. The agent thought the deli was an establishment that offered a discount or more food to FBI agents and police officers. He ordered a roast beef sandwich and watched as the counterman piled on the slices. The deli man slid the plate toward the agent. To the agent’s chagrin, the sandwich looked no bigger than any other roast beef sandwich. Showing the deli man his credentials
, the agent said, “FBI! More roast beef.”

  The story soon spread throughout the FBI. No story is more widely known within the bureau. When they are dissatisfied, agents say, “More roast beef!” When they report to their bosses that they showed their credentials, they say, “I roast-beefed him.”

  The story—which is basically true—is appealing to agents because it goes to the heart of what it means to be an agent. FBI agents have awesome power. They are authorized to carry weapons and can shoot to kill. They can deprive a suspect of his freedom and send him to jail for life. They can eavesdrop on private phone conversations, videotape what goes on in bedrooms, subpoena witnesses to testify before a grand jury, open mailboxes and read mail, obtain email and telephone records, and review income tax returns.

  By consulting their files, they can find out the most damaging personal information. By showing their credentials, they can bypass airport security, take their weapons on airplanes, enter movie theaters free of charge, and park illegally without getting a ticket. But unless an agent is on bureau business, has proper authorization, and, in many cases, has a court order, he has no more power than any other citizen. Showing “creds,” as they are called, to obtain more food at the local deli violates the most basic credo of the FBI.

  When deciding whether agents should be fired, Webster had a lenient approach, tending to look for extenuating circumstances. Considering how much trust the public places in agents, it was dismaying that during his tenure falsifying reports of interviews, obtaining information from bureau files for friends, and lying during administrative inquiries were not by themselves firing offenses.

  When it comes to integrity, standards should not be compromised, says Buck Revell, the former associate deputy director under Webster. “There should be a bright line that you simply don’t cross. You don’t make false statements. You do not lie. You do not give false testimony. If you do, you will not be employed.”

  Over time, the more lenient approach had its consequences.

  At 5:30 p.m. on April 16, 1980, Earl Thornton, an FBI janitor, opened the door to the Federal Credit Union on the eighth floor of FBI headquarters. The FBI building is a skewed tetrahedron, not quite a square. To conform to local restrictions, the building is seven stories along Pennsylvania Avenue but, to the rear, rises eleven stories. From the side, the grotesque overhang at the rear gives the impression that the building is poised to topple on pedestrians—no doubt the image Hoover desired when he designed the building.

  Once in the credit union, Thornton turned on the lights. He was about to start vacuuming when he saw a stocky man with brown hair behind the counter in front of an open safe. After a pause, the man behind the counter jumped up.

  “FBI! Freeze!” he said.

  The janitor quickly recognized the intruder as H. Edward Tickel Jr., the FBI’s top break-in artist. Tickel could pick almost any lock, crack any safe, and enter any home or embassy without creating suspicion. Because of his specialty, the bureau entrusted some of its most precious secrets to him.

  Tickel told Thornton he had been called to the credit union, which had $260,000 in cash in the safe, because of a report the door was unlocked. He placed Thornton under arrest. But Tickel’s story unraveled when he could not identify who had called him to the credit union.

  An investigation determined that, aside from his activities in the credit union, Tickel had been selling stolen rings and loose diamonds. He also was involved in selling stolen cars and stealing two-way FBI radios for friends.

  Tickel was acquitted in federal court in Washington of breaking into the credit union. However, he pleaded guilty to having taken the radios. After a nine-day trial, Tickel also was convicted in Alexandria, Virginia, of charges connected with jewelry theft—interstate transportation of stolen goods, making false statements, obstruction of justice, and tax evasion.

  If the Tickel case was bizarre, it was nothing compared with the case of FBI agents Frank and Suzanne Monserrate. Married to each other, the Monserrates were held up at gunpoint after leaving the Playhouse in Perrine, a suburb south of Miami, on January 4, 1987. The Monserrates had left the club just after two in the morning when Chester Williams confronted them and demanded their money.

  Williams, who had an extensive criminal record, began ripping the gold chains off agent Sue Monserrate’s neck. Williams had chosen the wrong victims. Agent Frank Monserrate did not have his gun on him, but he knew his wife carried hers in her purse. When Williams demanded money, Suzanne Monserrate reached into her purse to get her wallet. At that point, her husband grabbed his wife’s .38 caliber revolver and shot Williams several times, fatally wounding him. Meanwhile, Williams had shot and wounded Sue Monserrate in the back.

  As is standard with any shooting, the bureau’s inspectors began an investigation. At first, the couple lied about their activities, but their stories fell apart. Eventually, Frank “disclosed that he and his wife did, in fact, fully participate in sexual activities at [the club], to include swapping spouses,” according to the report by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The swapping was both with another couple who had been interviewed by inspectors the night before and with “several other couples whose identities he does not know and whose names he could not now recall.”

  After several interviews, Suzanne Monserrate, a respected agent who had a fresh midwestern look, admitted for the first time that she and Frank “engaged in sexual intercourse with other people” at the club during their two years of membership. Retracting information she had given previously, she said that she “also participated in oral sex and engaged in sexual activity with other females at the club.”

  In July 1987, the FBI fired both Monserrates. What it came down to was that FBI agents simply don’t go to sex clubs. The Monserrates might have received only suspensions, except that they lied about their activities. Moreover, Suzanne Monserrate had committed a sin almost as bad as going to a sex club—checking her handgun and FBI credentials with a club employee. It would be difficult to have sex while wearing a gun and a badge, but FBI agents are never supposed to relinquish them.

  Many agents believe Hoover, who opposed allowing females to become agents, is lurking in the basement of FBI headquarters, waiting for his chance to return to power. If ever there was a need for him to come back, the Monserrate case was it.

  11

  WACO

  AS A FORMER JUDGE, WILLIAM WEBSTER BROUGHT A SENSE of probity to the FBI. So President Reagan thought when he chose Webster to be director of Central Intelligence in May 1987 that replacing him at the FBI with another judge would be a splendid idea.

  Reagan selected William S. Sessions, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, who became FBI director on November 2, 1987. With white hair that framed his face, Sessions had a wide smile and riveting eyes that looked through glasses with large round lenses. He looked like a country boy, farm-raised, with enough of a Texas twang to make the stories he liked to tell sound authentic.

  Sessions loved the perquisites of his job. He wore his brass FBI badge pinned to his shirt at all times. Even when talking to retired agents, Sessions referred to himself in the third person as “your director.” These idiosyncrasies annoyed some agents, who pointed out that unless agents are going on an arrest, they pin the badge to the inside of their credentials case.

  Sessions quickly developed a reputation among agents as a cheerleader who engaged in what they called “Sessions-speak.”

  “He just babbled,” says Larry Lawler, a special agent in charge under Sessions. “At the SAC conferences, there was the gibberish meter. Sessions would get up, and the meter would start beeping. He thought he was a very good orator. He talked, and everyone looked at each other and said, ‘What the hell is he saying?’ ”

  Agents reported trying to brief him on important subjects in his office, only to find him looking past them to his television set. His most memorable contribution was offering them cookies. When traveling, he would interrupt
a briefing on a spy or Mafia case to ask about the sights.

  Sessions kept a neat office. He was proud of the fact that he emptied his in-box each day. But the way he ran the bureau was frenetic. A fan of technology, he peppered assistant directors with questions by email, requiring them to conduct research that was often pointless because Sessions did not remember having asked the questions.

  At one point, Sessions asked a question of Joe Stehr, the head of Sessions’ security detail. When Stehr came back with the answer, instead of listening, Sessions began whistling “The Yellow Rose of Texas” as he walked away.

  In December 1990, Sessions traveled to Atlantic City to publicly announce, with then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, that based on an FBI investigation, the Justice Department was filing a civil suit against the city’s largest union of casino workers. On the way, Sessions asked agents from the Newark field office to brief him on the case. In the middle of the briefing, he began singing a commercial: “Brylcreem, a little dab will do you. Brylcreem, you’ll look so debonair.”

  Unlike Webster, Sessions saw no reason to learn the details of investigations, and he displayed little interest in them. Instead, he focused on the personnel, technical, and systems aspects of the bureau, trying to improve advancement opportunities for women and minorities and pushing the FBI to become a pioneer in DNA typing. He gave lower-level managers responsibility for investigations.

  In the standoffs at Waco and Ruby Ridge, that proved to be disastrous. Both incidents started with abortive arrests by other agencies. The Ruby Ridge debacle was set in motion on August 21, 1992, when U.S. marshals approached the property of Randall “Randy” Weaver, a self-proclaimed Christian white separatist who lived with his family in a remote mountain cabin near Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho. After his release on bond, Weaver had failed to appear for a pre-trial hearing on a charge of selling unregistered firearms—two sawed-off shotguns he bought for $450 from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) informant.