by Marc Ruskin
ALTERNATE BREACH, an international case featuring corrupt international arms dealers was much more involved and requires and deserves much more attention here, but OXY BLUE had its smaller-scale moments of interest and lessons learned. My alias was a reincarnated Alejandro, organized crime captain controlling a New England drug distribution network from his home base in Danbury, Connecticut. This was a sudden reversion to the Alex Perez–like world of the mid-nineties, of SUNBLOCK and QUEER FIFTIES. In charge of this op (a health-care fraud Group II) were Mimi Forester and her future husband, Bill Shaughnessy. The scenario initially seemed somewhat below my skill set. Mimi and Bill were looking for a UC to visit the offices of predicated doctors (that is, targeted for a good reason, as per AG guidelines) who had been identified by reliable informants, and obtain prescriptions for OxyContin, Percocet, and other pills for which there is a booming market on the streets of our American cities and towns (and farming communities, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn).
A somewhat over-the-hill pill popper? I could do that. Especially as I had few other cases going, and especially as Mimi and her squad of young agents were very professional and enthusiastic—going a long way to rehabilitating my perception of New-Era Bureau special agents. Her operations plans, drafted for each meet, were composed after consultation with the primary UC (that would be me), and incorporated my suggestions for security enhancements, surveillance, communications, all tactical issues. The most successful UC ops are fluid; they evolve to encompass new opportunities. They require flexibility in approach, and the capacity for adaptability by the entire team. This team had these attributes, in sharp contradistinction from the TURKEY CLUB and, as we shall soon see, ALTERNATE BREACH teams.
Most of the targeted quacks operated out of run-down clinics in run-down neighborhoods—and in one case, remarkably enough, out of a home office in Staten Island. That was an octogenarian MD with a few screws loose. I once sat in his waiting room as he chased off a cashless patient with an ancient shotgun. So what “tactical issues” could possibly arise out of visits to such bent MDs? Initially, the term seemed melodramatic for what I took to be a garden-variety health-care fraud. Then I learned better. Take Dr. Diana Williamson, for example. She had been a rising star in the medical profession, treating the needy out of her Harlem clinic, she seemed the role model for the caring physician, mindful of her roots, providing services to the community from which she had arisen. Until she started to sell OxyContin (the brand name for oxycodone), with South Bronx drug-dealer Lenny Hernandez, aka Dominica, as her partner in crime. This duo had devised a system for aggregating quantities of Oxy through the use of fraudulent prescriptions and “straw” patients. Dominica moved the Oxy on the streets the way he knew best—as though it were manteca (heroin) or perico (cocaine).
On the surface, I was all enthusiasm with OXY BLUE. Old enough to be the father of any agent on the squad, except only their supervisor, I had an image to sustain. But I had also married less than a year earlier, and my wife was expecting, and the thought of once again buying illegal whatever—drugs, guns, stolen merchandise, pills—on the streets of Spanish Harlem or the Bronx—Oy vey. This scenario was less than appealing. How to mitigate the risk? A flash of inspiration. What had worked in the nineties would no doubt work again. If—a big if—I could find the right partner. Brash and pretty, Linda Nemeck and I had worked together intermittently over the past few years. She was about fifteen years younger. We would hit the streets together. Linda agreed. Mimi and Bill (and Dorothy, the new co-case agent) agreed. All of their supervisors agreed. Two weeks later, aliases Alejandro and Linda Huertas Vega drove their seized late-model white Benz across the Third Avenue Bridge, northbound into the Bronx. Recording devices activated, weapons secreted, Linda ready to hop into the rear passenger side seat at meet-time, prepped to blow Dominica into eternity if I called her “Honey.” Just like old times, only with a different old lady. And just like those old times, my old lady and I hit a series of home runs. In the parking lot of a South Bronx McDonald’s, we watched as Dominica hopped out of a dark-colored SUV, and walked toward the Benz. Linda jumped in back, he took her place in the plush leather bucket seat, and … forty-five minutes later we were almost old pals. Four or five buys from Dominica led to convictions for both him and the good doctor in Harlem. And for others in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and one in New Jersey, convictions for passing the bad scripts.
The lesson learned: sometimes you can go home again.
* * *
At the opposite end of the operational and “repercussional” spectrum was ALTERNATE BREACH, which overlapped with OXY BLUE. As OXY flourished, BREACH … well, it didn’t flourish. In fact, it went down in flames. Quite a saga. Made the papers. Sabotaged a few careers (not among the subjects—rather, among the good guys in the FBI and the DOJ). And it started so great. The case agents promised me the moon. As initially described, the Group I op had all the elements of a fast-paced action film: those despicable arms dealers; a Third World dictator; and a certain sophisticated, international, globetrotting undercover agent. A role virtually custom-tailored for me, I accepted on the spot. I imagined interacting with targets like Sarkis Soghanalian, the infamous “Merchant of Death” who had supplied arms for three decades to national military forces, as well as rebel troops, in Third World conflicts around the globe. (He was an inspiration for the 2005 film Lord of War.) I was a mite disillusioned when the BREACH targets turned out to be roughly two dozen senior executives, sales managers, agents, consultants, and even a general counsel—U.S., U.K., and Israeli citizens from established military and law enforcement suppliers, small and large companies, privately held and publicly traded, Smith & Wesson among them. It was quite a menagerie of the accused. Important targets, no doubt. But not quite as glamorous as the Lear Jet globe-trotters I had imagined, but no matter. If they were violating federal criminal statutes, I would provide the evidence. And the job would turn out to be unlike any I’d ever undertaken.
First thing first: Who was I? It was not a trivial question. Even though my targets in ALTERNATE BREACH would not be denizens of the street like Mahmoud in RUN-DMV, or drug dealers like Richard in SUNBLOCK, they would be suspected felons with plenty to lose in this operation—their entire businesses, plus federal time. I couldn’t see taking a bullet in the Four Seasons in Washington, but some “payback” elsewhere? Not likely, but not impossible, so I wasn’t taking this matter of an alias lightly.
For a couple of decades, of course, I had maintained three, sometimes four wallets, each fully stocked with aged documents, functioning credit cards, and filler, ready to go at a moment’s notice. (No bogus family photos, however. I haven’t mentioned this: in twenty years, no subject had ever shown me a family picture. It simply isn’t done, not between criminals, not between spies.) However, aliases Alex Perez, certainly, and Sal Morelli didn’t match my new career in the international arms business. The most minor doubt on the part of the targets might initiate a certain degree of due diligence by any of them, and the op would soon be kaput. Daniel Martinez had been an international jewel-thief type, ideal for this new op, but TURKEY CLUB had led to high-profile prosecutions. The AFID would not withstand scrutiny, not since the advent of the Internet. What about Henri Marc Renard, from COMMCORR? Although nearly two decades had elapsed, and the name had never gone public following the Wall Street sting’s infuriating demise, I considered the name jinxed.
My logic was sound, but a brand-new AFID designed and then created from scratch would take four to six months, as I explained to Chris Forvour, the lead case agent. No problem, he replied. Just try and get it moving as soon as possible. I puzzled over my name: something unequivocally, unmistakably, instantly recognizable as French. I reviewed the Paris white pages online. Legrand? Too generic, the French equivalent of Smith. Lafayette—ridiculous. Lasalle—maybe. Latour—perfect. Unusual without being remarkably so. A touch of class without the pretensions of a hyphenated surname. Then, a search of my personal phone book a
nd I found “Pascal.” Thoroughly French. Armed with a new name, I reached out to Val and my other good and invaluable friends at New York Janus to get the ball rolling in the matter of this French fellow approaching fifty (funniest thing, as I grew older, my aliases started growing younger) who would need to have verifiably lived in a variety of venues in and outside France. And complicating everything was the issue mentioned earlier: In the age of Google, it would not do for Pascal Latour to have popped into existence just two months earlier. So in mid-March 2009, I submitted the sheaf of required documents to Janus—FBI authorization memos and assorted bureaucratic paperwork. It was time now to turn to backstopping my brain—to acquire the knowledge and vocabulary consistent with an international financier with experience in the complex international arms trade, as well as high-stakes money laundering on a global level. And a faux personal relationship with Pascal Latour’s close friends and principal source of income, Ali Bongo’s family, the ruling dynasty of Gabon. Many minute details required, ignorance of which would be disastrous. My usual flights between Paris and Libreville, the capital of Gabon. My usual hotel (or did I stay at the palace? At Ali’s compound?). The exchange rate, euro and dollar to CFA francs (Communauté Financiére Africaine). The source of funds to be laundered: Banque Gabonaise de Developpement. I would need a week in Nairobi. I would definitely need a week in Gabon to provide sufficient familiarization for credible conversation on that score. I would need time in Paris to establish the necessary residence, office space, phone lines, bank accounts (all this in addition to the backstopping by Janus).
Case agent Chris and my assigned contact agent, Dave Rauser, promised to meet all of these operational requirements. But none of it happened. Interacting with subjects who would be quite familiar with Nairobi and Gabon, I would have to wing it. I didn’t have to wing it about Paris as a city, but French phone lines for backstopping purposes? An outrageous expense. Real French bank accounts? Non. LEGAT Paris was not even contacted to ascertain the feasibility of backstopping this UC op within its jurisdiction. It was all out because in an operation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not seven figures, they chose to cut costs (and save time) through inadequate backstopping. They were prepared to jeopardize this entire Group I op by failing to address easily avoidable vulnerabilities. My suggestions, later undisguised complaints, were brushed off. Instead, Chris Forvour provided a basic scenario and timetable, and it was now up to me to create the role and the legend, pronto. As for Janus’s backstopping, the BREACH team did not realize, or did not care, that the processes could not be rushed, absent truly exigent circumstances.
The link between the twenty-plus subjects in ALTERNATE BREACH and Pascal Latour was Richard Bistrong, president and co-owner of Point Blank Body Armor, the company on Long Island that had manufactured the Nagra-concealing bulletproof vest used by our informant—the Mount Vernon street cop—back in BLUE SCORE. Since that case, Richard had been arrested and charged with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which makes it illegal to pay foreign officials to get business. Facing a significant prison sentence, he had agreed to be the confidential witness in what would be the largest (there have only been two) FCPA undercover operation since the enactment of the legislation in the mid-seventies. Of course, Richard did not require a new AFID—he would be introducing me to targets he had known for years. He was, however, now president of The Bistrong Group, Inc., a totally bogus firm as deeply rooted in the real world as Latour Conseil, and its Directeur Général … Pascal Latour.
Richard was tall, elegant, fit, every bit the cosmopolitan executive, projecting more of the image of a senior manager at L’Oréal than a vendor of the tools of war. Ironically, he was the most savvy of the individuals I worked with in ALTERNATE BREACH. And he had the most to lose. With a taste for Hermès shirts and ties, Rolex watches, Montblanc accessories, and Cuban cigars, Richard was singularly ill-suited for federal prison. He was therefore highly motivated to make this sting work. Unique in my experience with confidential witnesses, Richard had developed an elaborate legend connecting our two lives. Intertwining his true background with my fictitious one. Dating back to the year I had (supposedly) spent pursuing graduate studies in international affairs at his alma mater, the University of Virginia in the fall of 1984. The dates and details of our early arms transactions after my return to France. Purchases of armaments on behalf of Gabonese President for Life Omar Bongo dating back twenty years. Leaving nothing to chance, Richard coached me in the subtleties of negotiation and execution of arms deals. I learned the vocabulary, the argot of the true insider.
As to the how and the why of Gabon as the unwitting centerpiece of ALTERNATE BREACH—to this day, the question is a mystery to me. Had some friend of my case agent’s at the State Department come up with this African backwater? Perhaps the country’s remoteness, its relative isolation from the mainstream, was believed by the case agents and federal prosecutors to be an impediment to corroboration of the entire scenario. Not that I was complaining. From Pascal Latour’s perspective, Gabon was ideal. As with all African nations with a French colonial history, the Gabonese are francophone and fierce francophiles, proud of their ties to the “homeland.” My homework revealed that the Bongo family had huge property holdings in France. Who better to have arranged the purchases and currently manage the estates than Pascal Latour? As to the initial contacts leading to a relationship of deep trust spanning decades—Minister of Defense Ali Bongo, President Omar’s son, was roughly my age. Bien sûr, Ali and Pascal had met as university students in Paris. As an extroverted, somewhat strapped-for-cash neophyte playboy, Pascal had a large social network—lots of pretty girls, late-night parties. Ali was wealthy. We made a great team. By the time Ali graduated and returned home, we had developed an enduring friendship.
So, yes, from my alias’s perspective, Gabon was great. But from my perspective—Marc Ruskin, UC agent—those same attributes of remoteness could backfire in an instant. If just one of the numerous subjects had an acquaintance with just one member of the internecine ruling elite in Gabon, much less with Ali Bongo, my alias would disintegrate. End of op, certainly. End of a certain UC’s story? Not impossible.
In early April, I received an email from Chris, announcing that he had instructed our confidential witness Richard Bistrong to contact a number of subjects for meetings in mid-May. They would fly into D.C., where we would all have rooms at the Mandarin Oriental or the Four Seasons. Then, following a week of preperation, phase two would be a series of equivalent meets in Miami.
Mid-May? I had joined this op less than three months before this pronouncement. My AFID had been in the works for maybe six weeks. I didn’t have any of the documents back yet, and I knew I wouldn’t have all of them by mid-May. I answered immediately. Chris, what are you doing? I don’t have a driver’s license yet. I don’t have any ID yet. We can’t set up UC meets until after the AFID is in place. This point was so obvious that it would not have occurred to any instructor of UC seminars to even state such a self-evident procedure. (Not that it would have mattered in this op, because the ALTERNATE BREACH team had not bothered to attend these seminars, presented by the good people with the FBIHQ UC and Safeguard Units.) Now I envisioned TURKEY CLUB all over again, with surveillance high-fiving in the parking lot after a meet in the hotel. But Chris and the team had their schedule and they were sticking to it, come hell or high water. To mix the metaphor: it was seemingly etched in stone. Richard, our informant, had been instructed to reach out to the subjects, all of them, who were already booking flights and hotels.
My inclination was to let events take their course, and let the professionals running the show develop a strategy to deal with the fact that their UC alias, Pascal Latour, was unequipped to check into a hotel room or pay for a meal, much less board a plane. (I believe we’re all familiar with Homeland Security and have patiently endured its excesses at the airport. The “security theater” may be absurd, but it is a reality that Pascal would
need to deal with.) Case agent Chris and contact agent Dave called Janus NY directly and begged for special treatment. Which they received, after Janus obtained my concurrence—I didn’t want to facilitate the case agents in sabotaging their op. (As events would reveal, they were fully capable of doing so on their own.) And at the end of the day, inadequate backstopping (resulting from the unnecessarily tight timetable) would have created additional difficulties for me as I sought to finagle my way through the upcoming meets. Maybe I would have ended up riding Amtrak all the way to Miami. But Val from Janus burned some accumulated goodwill at NYS DMV, and I wasted a day on a round-trip drive to Albany, to obtain Pascal Latour driver’s license. I still didn’t have—and I would never have—my French backstopping, the bank accounts, verifiable office, residence, and more.
As a poor substitute to visiting Gabon itself, I received a ninety-minute country-background briefing at State.
But give Richard Bistrong a lot of credit. With his input, Chris and his supervisor had put together an impressive list of subjects, major and not-so-major players in the international arms trade. As noted earlier in my story, the AG guidelines require that the targets of UC ops be “predicated,” thus countering a defense attorney’s potential countercharge of entrapment. Even the body shops—all of them—in INFRACEL had been predicated with reliable source information. At the two or three meetings with the investigative team, held at DOJ in Washington, prior to going operational, I asked pointed questions about targets in BREACH, some of whom appeared to be unlikely candidates for scrutiny. As the UC, the primary, pivotal point of contact with the targets, I, Marc Ruskin, did not want to be ensnaring any who did not belong in the net. With a discomforting lack of specificity, Chris assured me, we have sufficient PC on all of our subjects. The DOJ attorney concurs. And the attorney nodded and smiled in confirmation. In the course of certain meets, my doubts resurfaced and were afterward expressed. To be quickly brushed aside. Fine. It wasn’t my concern. But two years later … I’ll get to that in due course.