by Marc Ruskin
We would be meeting with representatives of each company in Bistrong’s suite at the Mandarin Oriental. Back-to-back UC meets, all day, every day, for an entire week. A schedule developed with no concept of the reality of undercover operations: At a UC meet, adrenaline is pumping full force, every word a calculated lie, a minor gesture capable of revealing the truth. There would be no opportunities for fine-tuning, for damage control—the next client would already be knocking at the door. I have emphasized time and again that the first UC meet with a subject is always the most important, and the most difficult. Without preexisting rapport, first impressions are key. This schedule, devised without my input, promised to be exhausting. Several months’ worth of meetings crammed into two weeks. Whoever heard of such a thing? In the UC world, no one, believe me. This was new.
The pitch had all the trappings of an elaborate confidence scheme, reminiscent of a David Mamet scenario in House of Games or The Spanish Prisoner. Undercovers and con men are mirror images of each other. An undercover takes on the appearance of a criminal in order to gain a criminal’s trust and cause him to take actions that are ultimately not in his interest—leading to a criminal conviction. A confidence man takes on the appearance of an honest person, in order to gain an honest person’s trust and cause him to take actions that are ultimately not in his interest—leading to significant financial loss. In the process, the UC and the con man use the same tools—ruses, props, lies. For ALTERNATE BREACH, current events had fortuitously provided me a perfect opportunity to employ a panoply of ruses, props, and lies. While researching my legend. I’d learned that a few months earlier, there had been an assault on the president of Equatorial Guinea, one of Gabon’s neighbors. This attempted assassination provided Pascal Latour with the perfect bogus story: For President Bongo, this had been the tipping point. Vague plans to enhance his military capabilities needed to be translated into concrete action. Defense Minister and presidential son Ali Bongo got the ticket: Refurbish the elite Presidential Guard. Money was no object for this oil-rich, mineral-rich nation. The refurbishment might require a temporary diversion of national treasury funds from their principal purpose—funding the Bongo family’s overseas accounts and holdings—but so be it. Some sacrifice would be required to protect the nation and the family’s vast wealth—and to maintain power.
* * *
Richard Bistrong’s Presidential Suites at the Mandarin Orientals (D.C. and Miami) were wired for video and sound, with Chris, Dave, and company in the adjoining room monitoring the proceedings. I had asked Dave to call Pascal Latour’s cell about ten or fifteen minutes into each meet, giving me an excuse to chatter a bit in my native French. The ruse had worked to enhance many of my aliases for nearly twenty years, and was still as effective as ever. For the benefit of those targets with some understanding of the language, I would throw around some numbers (mon vieux, it’s twelve million as agreed, or we’ll have to walk away).
By Sunday evening before the arduous week ahead, we would all be in place. Monday morning I would take a cab from the Four Seasons, elegantly decked out in my James Smart (a high-end Argentine haberdasher) suit and Hermès tie. There was no money budgeted for case-appropriate clothing, I ended up borrowing from Richard—from the CI—a Montblanc wallet and portfolio. My handgun was back in my desk at the New York office. Pascal could not board a plane with a bottle of water, much less with a pistol. In the past, when traveling covertly, I would borrow a gun from the local case agent. For ALTERNATE BREACH, I judged it to be unnecessary. It was unlikely that the targets, most of whom were flying in themselves, would be carrying weapons.
Richard’s suite periodically received well-stocked trays from room service (primarily for the benefit of the subjects). We would help ourselves to breakfast as we waited for the first targets to arrive. And then the show would begin. All day long, throughout the week.
As Richard and I established in the opening of our dialogue with every subject, the entire one-thousand-man Presidential Guard in Gabon was to be re-equipped, from head to toe, literally. New boots, uniforms, body armor, holsters, gloves, and insignia-bearing black berets. Machine pistols (a translation of the German term maschinenpistole, a handheld automatic firing pistol cartridges, fully automatic or in burst fire, such as the MAC-10, a favorite of gangbangers for use in drive-by shootings), handguns, sniper rifles, scopes, night-vision goggles, armored vehicles, missile launchers, ammunition. Lots of ammunition. Every vendor would get their respective slice of the project.
On one condition. With the completion of the negotiation phase of each meeting, after the price had been established, Pascal raised “one last point.” In order for Ali Bongo to sign off on this deal, he required a 10-percent commission. So did I. Richard and I had our own private arrangement (no one asked for details). Therefore it would be necessary to enhance the negotiated sale price by 20 percent. The illicit nature of this “commission” was clear enough to frighten exactly one team of vendors. No sooner had I completed my pitch than these citizens pulled out. Too risky, a violation of the FCPA, not worth the aggravation just to make a few dollars. Unfortunate, as they were by far the most obnoxious of the targets I dealt with. And they were the only targets to walk away. The others were fine with the “commission,” though some agreed in terms that were not utterly damning. A manufacturer of military-grade goggles, with whom Richard and I “met” via Skype, said that as long as his price was met, he wasn’t interested in what happened to the money. Such statements were arguably “complicit,” implying assent to the illicit payment, but before a jury they might detract from many of the stronger clear-cut cases. They were prosecuted nonetheless. (Due to the high number of indictments, the prosecution was broken down into four or five separate trials. By what criteria, I was never made privy.)
We explained to the subjects that the project would be concluded in two stages. Initially, there would be a “First Article,” an initial phase in which one hundred members of the guard would be equipped. This would allow for inspection of the products, assure that all export mechanisms were working, and as I articulated clearly to each subject, confirm to Defense Minister Ali that he was receiving his agreed-upon percentage. From an operational perspective, this first phase would be the only phase of the op. Larger bribes would not be needed for prosecution under FCPA, but the prospect of the much larger sales—ten times larger—was intended to whet the appetites of the targets. They would not have flown in from points all over the United States and Western Europe in order to equip a paltry one hundred soldiers in Gabon.
On the first night of the first week of meetings, Richard and his “assistant” Raul (actually a young UC on his first Group I) invited the assembled subjects to an upscale D.C. steak house. The community of international arms dealers is not large; they all knew each other. Many would inevitably be dining together anyway, and it was better to know what was being discussed. Certainly the deal with Gabon would be a prime topic. No doubt, they would want to build on the new acquaintance with the elegant French financier—a useful contact for future business. There was no concern as to Pascal being a new player on their stage. I was a money manager of sorts, so there was no reason for any of them to have run across me in the past. Pascal was not an arms merchant—that was the reason I had enlisted my old friend Richard Bistrong to bring the project to a successful (and profitable) conclusion.
The original plan had called for me to be present at the dinner, but Chris announced late in the afternoon, after the last meet had come to a (successful) conclusion, that I didn’t need to be at the dinner. I could order room service at the Four Seasons. Fine with me. In my view, Pascal might have been able to elicit conversation about past “commissions” paid by these businessmen (and they were all men, with one exception), corroborating the probable cause for the prosecutors and further deflecting future entrapment defenses. On the other hand, from Chris’s perspective, Richard and Raul would be easier to micromanage, more compliant. With a Mark Calnan (SUNBLOCK) or a
Dave Clark (RUN-DMV), I would have discussed the strategy. Not here. This put a lot of pressure on Bistrong, an amateur, and Raul, a raw rookie. Not my call. I was relieved to have the evening free. I’d rarely been able to enjoy meals with active subjects, regardless of the degree of luxury. A workout, hot shower, an excellent dinner on the balcony wearing my plush Four Seasons terry-cloth bathrobe, some TV, followed by a good night’s sleep. Much more relaxing. Then, for the remainder of the week, evenings were free time. I would either stay “home alone” or, after a little dry-cleaning, have dinner with local friends.
Living at the Four Seasons was fine, but by Friday morning of the first week in Washington, I was spent. I had lost count of the meets, all blending in my drained mind. I think the reader can understand. We had two meets scheduled for that morning, be done by lunch, then the shuttle back to LaGuardia. When my taxi pulled up to the Mandarin, the doorman opened the car door, smiling.
“Good morning, Mr. Latour.”
How the blazes does he know my name? Does the concierge at the Four Seasons call ahead to the Mandarin? Is this how the other 0.01 percent live?
“Good morning to you!”
The noon meet was for tactical vests—more tactical vests, we already had plenty. But Richard was confident that these subjects, local vendors who had not been at the dinner, would not be aware of the deal with one of their competitors. The owner of the company, J.M. Consulting, a family business, called Richard. He couldn’t make it, but his sister, Magdi, would represent the company and had his authority to commit.
Shortly before she arrived, Chris and Dave came into the meet suite from the adjoining surveillance room.
“Marc, when Magdi Habesha arrives, you don’t need to lay it on so thick … the Latour shtick. Let’s just get it over.” (Was this what Monday’s dinner cancellation had been about?)
So now Chris was a movie director. He was going to teach me how to play an undercover role. After all the Gabon study, the drive to Albany, the past week of successful meets. Any response would have necessitated the use of crude vocabulary, so I kept quiet. And when this woman arrived, she enjoyed the same performance as her predecessors, with the same result. Agreement to the felonious cut for Ali. (Her brother was implicated through subsequent communications.)
Before the flight to New York, I turned in my receipts to contact agent Dave. The next Monday, he called.
“Hey, Marc, we’ve got a problem … the dinner in your room Monday night. It was over a hundred dollars.”
Was he pulling my leg? Not likely. To date, he hadn’t displayed a capacity for humor.
“For an appetizer, main course, and three beers. Nonalcoholic beers. It’s the Four Seasons, not the Courtyard.”
“Right. But the per diem for D.C. is forty-three dollars. That’s all we can pay. I checked with my supervisor.”
Un-fucking-believable.
“This was operational travel, Dave. I was there as Pascal Latour. Should I have taken a cab from the Four Seasons to find a McDonald’s? That might appear a bit odd. I paid with the Latour credit card. If you want me in Miami next week, you figure it out.” A week earlier, it had been Marc Ruskin who had entered the cab headed to LaGuardia Airport. It was Pascal Latour who paid the driver upon arrival in Washington. From check-in prior to the flight through luggage retrieval upon return, I was Latour. Twenty-four/seven. Wiser case personnel would have written it up thus, and it would have been approved, all expenses paid, no question. I was not used to dealing with a contact agent in such dismissive terms … but after TURKEY CLUB … and now BREACH … Was this today’s New-Era Bureau the one that another old-time UC turned tech agent had warned me about? Was the excellent OXY BLUE team the aberration? Did I still belong in the FBI’s UC world? I was beginning to have real doubts.
The following week, Pascal Latour kept his reservation at the Four Seasons, Miami. I never inquired as to the resolution of the per diem issue—perhaps they took up a collection on the squad to cover the balance. A little research, including calls to fellow old-time UCs—primarily intended to elicit sympathy and concurrence—had revealed that technically, reading the rules as narrowly as possible, my contact agent’s interpretation was defensible. Idiotic, but defensible. So long as budgeted, all UC operational costs are paid for by the Bureau, no problem. A suite at a luxury hotel to project a big-money image while entertaining subjects—done. A few thousand dollars for dinner with high-roller targets—done. The parameters of “operational” are a gray area where the meeting of minds between bean counters, no-street-sense office agents, and UCs can be impossible to reach.
Predictably, Miami proved to be a repeat of D.C., with the addition of palm trees. The extensive white sand beaches and alluring bikini-clad volleyball players were visible from the balconies. The BREACH staff had packed our schedule so as to guarantee that there would be no need to unpack bathing suits and flip-flops. No precious minutes wasted on beach time. On Friday, having firmly set the hook on an additional baker’s dozen of subjects, the Group I team—about eight agents from the squad, Richard, Raul, and myself—boarded our return flights to D.C. and New York. Further evidence of the “operational” nature of my travel: as Pascal, I passed through the interminable and intrusive security checks. Meanwhile, Dave and Chris and Co., traveling overtly, sailed past these crack units at the airport.
Back home, tensions within the team continued to escalate. In furtherance of one of the crooked transactions, Dave sent me an “Agent Agreement” to sign as Pascal Latour, in my capacity as Directeur Général of Latour Conseil, along with instructions to mail the originals to Protective Products International (PPI), one of the subjects in the sting. Those executives would in turn sign and mail an original to Latour Conseil’s P.O. box in New York. Of the many C.Y.A. BuLessons learned over the decades, one of the foremost was to never sign a legal document, under true name or covert name, creating a legally binding agreement, without review by the appropriate BuLawyer (in this case the Chief Division Counsel (CDC)) and approval by management. Otherwise—in this specific case—should the day arrive that PPI sued the Bureau for loss of millions as a result of its reasonable reliance on a contract signed by an FBI employee, I would be in a highly unenviable position. I dropped in on the NYO CDC, an old acquaintance.
Make sure the D.C. agents send you documentation that their CDC has signed off. Otherwise, of course you don’t sign it.
I called Dave.
Hey, Dave, did your CDC approve the contract?… cough, cough on the other end. Did anyone approve it?
The AUSA said it was okay for you to sign.
The AUSA isn’t going to defend me when I get sued. Let me know, when you’ve got all the approvals.
Which they never did. I found out later that one of them had just made up a name and signed as an employee of Pascal Latour.
In the course of my accelerated backstopping of Pascal, I had created a .fr Yahoo account and Janus had obtained a French cell-phone number that forwarded to the covert New York number on Pascal’s BlackBerry. Two weeks after Miami, I sat alone, at night, in my black UC Jeep Cherokee on the rooftop of a garage in Jamaica, Queens. This was a cameo gig, a few meets to be followed by a buy-bust. (Not OXY BLUE, another short-term op I was squeezing in.) At about nine, waiting for the target to pull up, the ALTERNATE BREACH BlackBerry rang. (Whenever feasible, I have always carried all my covert communications devices (beepers, then cell phones, then smartphones), maximizing my accessibility. Active professionals—journalists, lawyers, financiers—often carry a BlackBerry for email, an iPhone for Web-browsing, maybe a flip phone for that arcane practice, phone calls. Criminals may also carry several. In one recent case on which I provided a bit of assistance, a kidnapper in San Juan carried a knapsack-full, rotating between phones to elude tracking (yet another consideration for the UC as well). This was not an unusual hour for BREACH-related calls, particularly for the West Coast–based arms dealers. But the screen displayed a 202 number—Washington, D.C.—and it seeme
d vaguely familiar. Not familiar enough, however. Otherwise I would have turned off the phone (just declining the call would not have sufficed, because a “missed call” would have hit the log).
“Hi, Marc? Couple of quick questions.” A cheery Dave was calling.
“Hey, Dave. Say, what phone are you using to call me?”
A long pause. Then with a hesitant, questioning tone, “My BlackBerry.”
“Your Bureau BlackBerry?”
“Yeah, why, is that a problem?”
It was TURKEY CLUB all over again. I have laid out the added difficulties the Internet imposes on backstopping a new AFID. (In the mid-1990s, there was little risk that Yong Bing Gong’s henchmen in SUNBLOCK would Google Alex Perez. Google didn’t exist, and none of the predecessor search engines were worth a damn.) The unforeseen and newly evolved risks of exposure necessitate a heightened awareness, caution, and some common sense. If something compromising is on the Web, the UC has to assume that it can be found. If we can find it, then they can also. The current generation of jihadists, cartel traffickers, and La Cosa Nostra soldiers have grown up in this techno-savvy environment. There are websites that will, for a modest fee, provide a ninety-day log of incoming and outgoing calls for any “private” cell-phone number. Illegal though these services may be, the sites that provide them are accessible to anyone willing to conduct a fifteen-minute search. My covert BREACH BlackBerry was now compromised. Burnt. Toast.
* * *
Right in the middle of ALTERNATE BREACH (and OXY BLUE), I crashed the Honda Valkyrie in Connecticut. That first night, when the flurry of activity in the hospital had subsided—it appeared that I would survive—I became aware that Phil Romano (my boss’s boss) and another supervisor were by my bedside. Seeing the familiar faces … the sense of relief was beyond words. They remained with me until well past midnight, when family arrived.