Ghost

by Michael R. McGowan

  One of the UCAs reached in and retrieved a white plastic bag that looked like a take-out order, while the other UCA stood guard. The exchange had taken no more than sixty seconds and not one single word had been exchanged.

  The two UCAs then drove five minutes to a nearby hotel where Tanner, the other guys from the Boston office, and I were waiting. We gave Tanner the honor of opening the bag. Hands trembling with excitement, he carefully pulled apart the plastic opening and removed nine individually wrapped packages of crystal meth (1.76 kilograms) and heroin (3.56 kilograms). All of us collectively sighed with relief.

  We’d done it! We no longer had a dry conspiracy. The expression of joy on Tanner’s face was priceless.

  The strange exchange outside the Mexican restaurant remains the largest seizure of methamphetamine and one of the largest seizures of heroin in Detroit law enforcement history. More importantly, we now had illegal drugs in our possession supplied by the Sinaloa Cartel, which strengthened our legal case by leaps and bounds.

  The dramatic shift in momentum buoyed the spirits of everyone on our team. With the Italian criminal organization back on board, we pressed the cartel hard to finally deliver on their promise of cocaine. On July 2 they informed us that a shipment of cocaine sent through a Brazilian front company named Cristerlia Celta would be arriving at the port of Algeciras, Spain, on the 27.

  On the night of July 27, FBI and SNP officials carefully opened the container from Cristerlia Celta in a police compound in Algerciras, Spain. Inside we found 346 kilograms (762 pounds) of cocaine in the form of bricks wrapped in bright blue, yellow, and pink plastic. It was the big score all of us had been waiting for more than three years.

  In a little more than a month, we had seized $15 million worth of drugs from the Sinaloa Cartel without fronting a penny. Now, with the evidence we needed, we decided to summon the Mexicans to Spain and arrest them there. We did this for two reasons: One, if any of them ended up cooperating with the FBI, we wanted them in Europe so we could use them to go further up the chain of command, and, two, we wanted them as far away from Mexico and any other UC activity we might launch in the future.

  In early August, Gonzo, Vargas, the other UCAs, case personnel on the Boston team, and I traveled to Madrid, Spain, and arrived before the Mexicans to coordinate with the SNP. The Sinaloans thought they were there to meet El Viejo and discuss a South American–European cocaine pipeline we were going to run for many years into the future.

  We had other plans. First thing we did was to rent a massive eight-room suite in one of the city’s finest luxury hotels. I took photos of myself standing in the elegant marble bathroom with gold fixtures to show my kids how far I’d traveled from the boy who grew up with one pair of dungarees and two T-shirts.

  I had developed superstitions that went all the back to my days of playing high school baseball, including secretly wearing a St. Michael’s medal—representing the patron saint of policemen—around my neck. Throughout my FBI career, I made it a habit to wear some subtle piece of law enforcement paraphernalia on my body the day of an arrest. The morning of August 7, 2012, I dressed in my best suit and tie, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of FBI cufflinks.

  When Jesus Manuel Gutierrez-Guzman entered the hotel suite, I rose and embraced him. Reviewing the videotape later, the FBI cufflinks were clearly visible. I directed Gutierrez-Guzman to the suite’s luxurious library, and with Gonzo at my side translating, we began what would be our last meeting.

  With the video and audiotape running, I carefully reviewed every aspect of the case step-by-step. And I made sure that Gutierrez-Guzman confirmed that El Chapo had been the final decision maker in every overt act, including the planning and the shipping of the cocaine. After three hours of getting Gutierrez-Guzman to recount every act in the criminal conspiracy, I received a text message from members of the Boston team monitoring the meeting from another area of the hotel that read: “No mas” (No more.)

  Next, I beckoned Zazueta Valenzuela, Celaya Valenzuela, and Jesus Gonzalo Palazuelas Soto—who had been sent by the cartel to Brazil to supervise the initial shipment of cocaine—up to my suite and went through their individual roles and responsibilities in the drug-trafficking conspiracy.

  More than four hours after the FBI recorders had been activated, I thanked all the cartel members individually and asked them to wait for me in the lobby before I took them out to celebrate. Instead, when the four men reached the lobby they were discreetly arrested by members of the SNP and taken off in handcuffs.

  Three years after the start of the case nobody thought we could make, we had four high-level Sinaloa Cartel members in custody, and enough evidence to arrest other members of the cartel, including Chapo Guzmán himself.

  We were well aware that the cartel had a system in place whereby if one of their officials didn’t report back in thirty-six hours, a red flag would go up. So we knew we had to work fast. One of the cartel members we had arrested agreed to cooperate and immediately started feeding us information. Some of what he told us pointed to corruption at the very highest levels of the Mexican government. He not only provided evidence that top Mexican government officials were in the pocket of the cartel, he claimed that some of those officials and potential coconspirators had played a role in the shipment of our cocaine to Spain.

  When we quickly relayed this very important news to FBIHQ in Washington, we were told to “stand down” because what we were pursuing—namely the links between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Mexican government—were in HQ’s words “outside the scope of your original objective.” All of us were incredulous. What the hell did that mean? Additionally, we were ordered to conclude the UC portion of the case and return to the States immediately.

  The whole thing stunk to high heaven. For one thing, the FBIHQ supervisor who ordered us to “stand down” was not the NDURE supervisor, and had never played any role in the case.

  I argued strenuously with FBIHQ that we had a golden opportunity to identify and collect timely evidence against other coconspirators in this massive and now airtight drug conspiracy. If they happened to be powerful Mexican government officials, so be it. We’d simply done what we were trained by the FBI to do—follow the trail of evidence. Where it led had never been a problem in the past.

  FBIHQ argued back that we had inadvertently stepped into another evidentiary realm—namely, international Public Corruption. They were out-of-their-minds wrong. We hadn’t stepped into anything new. The case was what it had been all along, an international drug-trafficking conspiracy.

  Those of us who had spent the last three years working on Dark Water were shocked and pissed off. Did the FBI not want to know about the collusion between high Mexican government officials and the Sinaloa Cartel? Had someone higher up in our government told the FBI to suspend that part of the investigation?

  We never found out. What we did learn is that soon after we were told to conclude our investigation, the Justice Department announced that it had issued criminal indictments against Chapo Guzmán and eight other members of his organization. The story appeared on the front page of The New York Times and was the lead story on NBC Nightly News.

  Meanwhile, Gonzo, other UCAs, case personnel, and I returned to Boston fuming that we hadn’t been allowed to pursue the new leads we’d developed. We now began the very onerous extradition process with Spain. After that it took us two years to prepare evidence against all four defendants.

  Three of them, including Gutierrez-Guzman, pled guilty and received sentences from ten to more than twenty years in federal prison.

  The lawyer, Rafael Humberto Celaya Valenzuela, who had always thought of himself as the smartest in the group, was the only one who decided to go to trial despite the fact that the evidence against him was overwhelming. My cross-examination lasted a mere fifteen minutes. After a five-day trial, the jury deliberated only five hours before finding him guilty on all counts. On October 14, 2014, more than five years after Tanner first poked his head in my offic
e Celaya was convicted and later sentenced to seventeen years in the can.

  All of the Dark Water defendants had been arrested and convicted except one. January 7, 2016, I was roused from my sleep one morning by the sound of my pinging phone. I leaned out of bed and read the text message: “We got him!” I knew immediately who the message was referring to: El Chapo. He’d been arrested in Mexico. A year later he was extradited to the United States, and is now in U.S. custody awaiting trial in a U.S. federal court. I stand ready to do my part.

  Shortly after Celaya Valenzuela’s trial ended in October 2014, FBI Director James Comey traveled up to Boston to present awards to the team that had worked on Dark Water. At first, I didn’t want to attend, because I’m not a fan of awards or ceremonies. But when I thought about how proud I was of Tanner, the other UCAs, and the rest of the team, and how hard they had worked, I changed my mind.

  In front of five hundred FBI Agents and employees, Director Comey spoke about the case and our remarkable accomplishment. When it was my turn to go up to the podium, I remember looking at the Director and thinking, What the fuck does “outside the scope of your original objective” mean?

  That’s how my demented mind works. On that occasion, I rubbed some dirt on it, kept my mouth shut, and shook his hand.

  18

  MURDER FOR HIRE

  One unexpected result of Operation Dark Water was the death of NDURE. Yes, you read that right. On the heels of one of the most spectacular undercover operations in FBI history, FBIHQ disbanded the unit that was largely responsible for its success.

  I got my first hint that trouble was brewing shortly after me and other members of our Dark Water UCO team were ordered home from Spain in mid-August 2012 and told not to pursue time-sensitive leads into drug trafficking at the highest levels of the Mexican government because they were “outside the scope of your original objective”—which was complete bullshit.

  As we boarded the train to take us to the Madrid airport, all NDURE members received emails from the new regime in the Undercover Unit at FBIHQ telling us that changes were coming and that “we needed to remember what it is like to be a regular UCA.”

  What the hell does that mean? I remember thinking.

  There was no question in any of our minds that the new system of managing and executing UCOs introduced under NDURE had been hugely successful. From 2007, when the system was first introduced, to 2012, we had made a series of very tough cases, especially in the areas of Public Corruption and Violent Crime, topped off with Dark Water and the indictment of El Chapo and top members of the Sinaloa Cartel. For the last five years we had been treated as FBI undercover rock stars, who could do no wrong and were loved in the field by hardworking street Agents who needed undercover help.

  The dramatic swing in the perception of NDURE coincided directly with a change in Undercover Unit leadership at FBIHQ. Gone were the experienced and successful supervisors, Unit Chiefs, Section Chiefs, and my old Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director who supported us. Replacing them were a group of supervisors who had been disasters in their prior Field Divisions and were clearly jealous of NDURE’s success and popularity.

  According to FBI policy, you now don’t have to have UCA experience to become a supervisor in the FBIHQ Undercover Unit—which is ridiculous. And that’s exactly what we got in 2012. NDURE was now being supervised by Agents who had never worked undercover and had no clue what it was like to be in the same room with a bad guy where one mistake could result in a bullet in your head.

  George Bernard Shaw once wrote: “Those that can do; those that can’t teach.”

  The FBI Undercover Unit version of that was: “Those that can make cases. Those that can’t go to FBIHQ and obstruct Agents in the field.”

  By 2012, the new Undercover Unit at FBIHQ consisted of the following management personnel with decision-making authority over NDURE:

  1.  A high-ranking senior official who was so inept that he/she was assigned to “Special Projects” only—a euphemism for sitting in an empty room all day and doing no harm.

  2.  A senior official who was so intimidated by the experience level of NDURE personnel that he/she was afraid to talk to them directly and would only communicate through a secretary.

  3.  An official who was later forced to retire from the FBI for failing multiple FBI security polygraphs.

  4.  An official who had been the subject of multiple OPR (Internal Affairs) investigations, and once quit an FBI UCO after being threatened—by voicemail.

  5.  An official who had the reputation for being one of the most incompetent UCAs to ever serve in the FBI and was loathed by the entire FBI undercover community. This doofus once ordered an $800 bottle of wine for subjects who did not drink alcohol, and a seafood buffet for other subjects who were allergic to seafood.

  From the perspective of this new FBIHQ Undercover Unit, NDURE had become too successful and had to be destroyed. Since they didn’t have the balls to tell us that to our faces, they did what many weak managers at FBIHQ do: They started a smear campaign. For more than five years NDURE Agents had been the pride of the FBI undercover world. Suddenly, we became the most reckless, out-of-control, and dishonest UCAs in FBI history. It would have been laughable if it weren’t so sad.

  Shortly after we received the email in Spain telling us “to remember what it is like to be a regular UCA,” the new members of the FBIHQ Undercover Unit fired their first shot, accusing an NDURE member of financial impropriety. His egregious crime in their opinion: the purchase of a $39.00 umbrella. He did so when it started to rain while he was playing golf with a target in a Public Corruption UCO. Despite the fact that it was perfectly normal and appropriate to buy an umbrella in those circumstances, he was accused of using government funds “for personal gain.”

  Only weeks earlier, this same NDURE Agent had been summoned to FBIHQ to act as a subject matter expert in a very sensitive Public Corruption investigative matter that was being briefed at the top levels of the FBI, DOJ, and the White House.

  Days later, another member of NDURE was told by someone at FBIHQ that we “had become too big for our britches,” and needed to be brought under control. The last time I’d heard that expression was forty years earlier on a grade-school playground.

  They knew they had to be careful with me because I still had friends in high places, including a former Director. So they delivered their message to me indirectly—denying a request I made for $149.50 to travel to another city where we were investigating a suspected serial killer. Don’t worry, I found another way to secure the funds.

  Weeks later, when I returned a five-year-old laptop and the return receipt was one serial number off in a seventeen-digit sequence, they alleged I had stolen government property and referred the matter to OPR (Internal Affairs) for investigation. One digit off! OPR laughed in their faces, refused to accept the complaint, and told them not to waste their time over what was obviously a typographical mistake.

  Every day brought another allegation, each one more ridiculous and petty than the one before. Meanwhile, NDURE members in the field were being pulled from important cases and summoned back to FBIHQ to conduct inventory assignments—like counting gadgets. I kid you not!

  The sole purpose of these bureaucratic maneuvers was to humiliate some of the best and most successful UCAs in the FBI. Why? The monster was determined to eat its own, not in the interest of protecting the public or making the Undercover Unit better, but solely out of jealousy and spite.

  Disgusted by what FBIHQ Undercover Unit leadership was doing and hoping to draw attention to the situation, I submitted my resignation from NDURE on November 13, 2012. My letter stated that I was leaving “due to the overall lack of support … lack of professionalism … and lack of respect … the recent FBIHQ treatment and character assassination of Agents XXX and XXX is deplorable … our experience and success level apparently frustrates certain personnel at FBIHQ … and recent edicts have been caustic in tone
… bordering on adversarial in nature … and not productive … we have been regularly undermined by USOU personnel offering baseless allegations and inflammatory remarks … with no repercussions.…”

  I ended by saying: “The current system is seriously flawed, if not broken, and needs serious repair.” Then sent it off to the new Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director.

  The Criminal Investigation Division Assistant Director rejected my resignation letter and told my SAC that he wanted me to remain in NDURE to help fix the problems. What he didn’t understand, or didn’t want to admit, was that the problems weren’t fixable as long as the current Unit “managers” remained in place.

  A few weeks later all NDURE members were summoned via email to a meeting at FBIHQ for “training involving a new financial accounting system.” Having spent a lot of time rubbing shoulders with members of Italian Organized Crime, the meeting in my mind had all the hallmarks of a “two in the hat”—aka, a Mob hit. My SAC, a good guy who was petrified of FBIHQ, asked me to attend to see if things could be smoothed out. I went in deference to him.

  The destruction of NDURE on December 12, 2012, took less than five minutes. Undercover Unit leadership sat on one side of the room, and all us members of NDURE sat silently on the other. Leadership delivered the coup de grace without once looking anyone of us in the eye.

  As we got up to leave, Gonzo sarcastically asked, “What about the new financial accounting training?”

  Leadership didn’t react. Those goofs didn’t even get a joke.

  As we left, the most inept of the leadership officials actually invited us to the Undercover Unit’s Christmas Party scheduled for later that day. I kid you not! We laughed in his face and repaired to a nearby joint for lunch.

  We drank beer and reminisced about UCOs, great cases, and great friends, and how we’d kicked ass as an undercover group across FBI field offices all over the country, only to be administratively castrated by a bunch of inept fools. And I laughed harder than I had in years.