Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Natalie S. Gore ( ) Interviewed by Susan Wynkoop On March 2, 2009

Transcription

1 Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Natalie S. Gore ( ) Interviewed by Susan Wynkoop On Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on April 2, Final corrections from Ms. Gore made by Sandra Robinette on June 27, Susan Today is. My name is Susan Wynkoop and I am in Westport, Connecticut. I am conducting a telephonic interview with Natalie Gore who is in San Diego, California. I forgot to mention, I m sure her weather is a lot better than the foot of snow we are getting on the ground here. I m envious. Natalie was an Agent with the FBI from 1976 until 1986; so, again, one of our pioneer Agents having joined early on in I want to first read into the tape the Copyright Release form, which states that: We, the undersigned, convey the rights to the intellectual content of our interview, on this date, being, to the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. This transfer is in exchange for the Society s efforts to preserve the historical legacy of the FBI and its members. We understand that portions of this interview may be deleted for security purposes. Unless otherwise restricted, we agree that acceptable sections can be published on the Worldwide Web and the recordings transferred to an established repository for preservation and research. So that s the end of that and, as I said, I m speaking today with Natalie Gore. Hi, Natalie. Natalie S. Hello. Thank you again for your time. And as I said, Natalie was an Agent from 1976 to And if you could first just tell me a little bit about your background and your educational background, and growing up before joining the FBI. Okay. I was born and raised in northern California, up in the lumber country in the Sierras; a very small town, 1600 people. I went to college at UC - Davis and my major was Zoology. Interesting.

2 Page 2 I ended up teaching school, elementary school. I married a man that I met in college and he was in medical school in San Francisco. I taught elementary school in San Francisco for six years. We split up and I returned to the Sacramento area. My sister lived over there, this was in 1974, around there. And I had been on leave of absence from teaching in San Francisco, when I looked around about taking up teaching again in Sacramento. They had a terrible glut of teachers at the time, if you can imagine such a thing. Hmmm! Anyway. They weren t even really taking substitutes, which I didn t like to do anyway. So I just started thinking of what I might find as a job. I actually talked to my father about it, too. And, due to my science background, came up with the idea to call the FBI to inquire about the Lab. I see. Because at that time, Agents, first of all, I never even thought about female Agents. Secondly, it was pretty much lawyers and accountants as requirements to get into the FBI. So the position of Agent really didn t even occur to me. So I called about the Lab and they had a hiring freeze for a year. And said call back in a year and talk to us. So, in the interim, I worked as a legal secretary, without much training, I might add (chuckling). By the time I decided to call back, I wondered if they d said lawyers and accountants just to keep out people that were not seriously inquiring. So I thought it s worth it, a chance to just talk about this. So I called That s smart. the recruiter in Sacramento to just chat with him. And unbeknownst to me, I didn t really know this at the time. that was a time that the Bureau really was actively trying to recruit women into the FBI. And this would be about 1975, or so? Yes. And finding qualified women, evidently, was not an easy task, because there s just so much entailed in it, as you well know. 2

3 Page 3 In talking to me on the telephone, he asked me to [come] down to meet with him at the office, which I did. And he was very supportive and excited about my possibilities. And, so, it went from there. And actually it didn t take all that long. It was probably, maybe six or seven months from that inquiry to when I was given a class back in DC, which was in April of And I had really wanted the job. It appealed to me for various reasons and the most important ones were that women and men were paid the same salary for the same job. And that has always been an important issue with me because that wasn t always the case. And it still isn t, as a matter of fact. But back in those days, [there was] really a serious dichotomy, oftentimes, between what men and women were being paid. Exactly. So that was a big thing for me. And I wanted to get a job that I was trained to do, that would move me to someplace where I could start, basically, start over. And have a job and know what it was I was doing. And the FBI provided that. Besides the fact it sounded incredibly interesting. I was single at the time; I could move around. That was no problem. So, all in all, it looked really good to me. I didn t find anything romantic about it. That was always a worry with some of the recruiters at the time who wondered just exactly what you thought it was going to be about. I just felt it would be very challenging and would hold, every day could hold something new to do, which is pretty exciting. How many jobs offer you that? You re right. So going to Quantico, I have to say, was probably one of the best things I ever did in my entire life because you test yourself in ways that you would never have to in regular society as a woman. You find out that you can do amazing things, physically. And as a result of that, my self-confidence soared and, you know, just never feeling like I ever had to be afraid to travel by myself again. It just really freed me up to meet the world headon as they say. And, I am forever grateful for that. A wonderful thing. Umm-hmm. Did you find one portion of the training more difficult? Or, what was challenging to you? 3

4 Page 4 The Firearms was challenging to me because I had never done it before. I had never fired any sort of guns. And I knew that I would do well in the academic aspect of it. And, in fact, in my class, we lost five men out of our class, and it was all on academics. And they had been losing women in firearms and physical, prior to our class. At a great rate, I should say. And we just knew, we were just determined that that was not going to happen to us on the physical. There were four women in my class. There were four? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So we just worked very hard and managed to I knew that with enough practice, enough training and enough will, that could be done. I was in good physical condition. I just never had been a jogger so that was the only aspect of the physical training that really got to me, I was just training to do that run in the time that I needed to do it in. But I knew I could do it. It was something I knew I could do. But the firearms wasn t something I knew I could do because I had no experience in it. Right, you didn t have. Although my counselor told me that I didn t have anything to worry about, I still did. And I would just be very close when I would do my TRCs. I would just be close but not quite make it. So that was really a worry to me, until, finally, you do it one time and then after that you just get better. Now let me add something to that, at the time, because it s sort of interesting. There was a woman who had sued the Bureau, at the time, Christine Hansen. Hansen, exactly. Uh-huh. 4

5 Page 5 Because of the Firearms at Quantico. And when we started our class, the women were issued a which was the smaller one with a two and a half inch barrel. Really? Yeah. And the men had a four inch barrel revolver. I did not know that. So we are, you know, doing our training with this - the difference in these guns - when all of a sudden this lawsuit comes to fruition and it becomes apparent that she has prevailed in this lawsuit; that the shorter the barrel of the gun is Right. So, in the midst of our training they took away our two and a half inch barrel, which we had actually now gotten used to, and issued us a four inch barrel. Wow! Now we have to retrain, the four of us, with the four inch because it is different. There s a different feel to it. There are a whole lot of things different about it. And this would be about halfway through training? Yeah, probably. Uh-huh. So then we had to qualify with that. And then, because they were issuing the two and a half inch barrel to women at the time because it could be concealed in this Bureau purse that they also issued. I don t know if you ever got one of those? Yeah. I ve heard of that. Probably not. We did not get that. 5

6 Page 6 They gave the 30-6 back to us and we had to re-qualify with that. So, because of the lawsuit, we actually ended up having a much greater burden on us than had been before. Not that I, you know, I think that she, honestly, did the right thing because it wasn t fair. But it made it more difficult for us. So that added a little bit of drama to that stressful situation. I bet. Well, that s interesting because I didn t know that that was the main part of the suit was the firearms. Well, there was more to it, too. Okay. There was also the attitude that went on down there. And I have to say that in the Firearms, the attitude of the Firearms Instructors, and certainly not all of them, but some of them, who ran, also, the tactical problems that we did, had a negative effect on the women. They weren t all that happy to have women down there. And I can honestly say that during the Firearms Training they tended to hover around the women to the point where it became distracting. And I would never be able to tell you exactly what the motivation there was because I don t know. I never asked one of them what it was. But it didn t feel, it didn t feel that it came from an interest level, that they were just trying to help. And the men, in fact, were very upset at the time, in my class, because they felt they weren t (word is stressed) getting enough help on the Firearms Range because the instructors always seemed to be all around the women. The women were feeling nervous because they had so much attention they could hardly even think. Exactly. 6

7 Page 7 So I went to my main Firearms Instructor and told him I didn t want anybody but my fellow Agent spotter, you know, your buddy that is in your class, to go down the line with me anymore. Because they were just making it harder for me to concentrate and do what I needed to do. And I still hadn t passed my TRC yet. And he said that he couldn t really do that but what he would do was he would go down the line with me and they wouldn t. Did I think that would, maybe, be alright? And so I said yes. And guess what. I passed. And that s great. Now, I know what you mean. When they d be standing right behind you and just almost like breathing down your neck. It makes you very nervous. And, in fact, one time I was prone on the 60-yard line firing off my first round when the guy kicked my feet together because my feet were not right together. Well, you know right where that round went. Somewhere into the stratosphere, I have no idea. But you didn t need to lose any of them, you know. Exactly. It made a huge difference on the score. So I actually became a New Agents Counselor in And one of the things I told my class was if they ever felt, for any reason, that was happening to them on the Firearms Range - the women in my class - that they had the right to request that that, you know, end. And they could go to their Firearms Instructor or they could come to me and I would make sure I backed them. Because I didn t want it to go as far as it went with us. And, by then, in 1982, things were certainly better in that regard. But even the tactical problems, you know, they could get attitude. You had to just know that there were aspects that were going to test whether you could deal with that sort of feeling by some of the people. You know, there s always going to be some people in the organization that weren t happy that women became Agents. 7

8 Page 8 Most of them did. And the men in the, the amazing thing is the men in the class, however they felt when we started, by the time we finished pretty much had changed their minds by just watching us work so hard. Yeah. And if you worked really hard and you did your job and they could rely on you, then, I think, most of them were okay with it. Exactly. But unfortunately, you know, of course, men don t have to go through that whole I can show you, I m going to show you, et cetera. So that part of training was tough. And, you know, making sure that you didn t ever show any weakness, as a woman, was tough. And then that took away all your femininity, and that was tough. So there were a lot of things that were difficult, as you well know, when you went through training school. You lose your identity as a woman because it doesn t really fly in so many cases. And, yet, you still find yourself responding to certain things like getting hit in the face while boxing. Right. You know, in a way, who s ever been hit in the face before? Not many of us have before that. That was an interesting exercise. Also, I thought I just felt that this was part of the deal. If I was going to work a job that was basically a man s profession, I better be able to deal with whatever came my way. And, I must say, that I had a very good experience in the FBI with the men that I worked with. My first office was Seattle and that SAC there was very much in favor of me being there. And that made a huge difference in how the entire office dealt with women in the field. And that s great because you were the first woman in the I was. in that office. 8

9 Page 9 Yes, in that office. And, at the same time, the women, from my understanding, that went to the Portland Office that wasn t the case down there. And, in fact, I think they might have lost some of their first ones out of the Portland Office due to the fact that the environment just wasn t all that friendly to them. Now, that would be something that we d have to check on before you would ever want to, you know, if that was of interest. But that was just something that I had heard at the time. I actually wasn t in contact with any of the women that were in the Portland Office. I m not even sure, to tell you the truth, if there was a woman in the Portland Office when I was in Seattle. Because I did do a case where I was just sort of this undercover girlfriend for a guy that was working undercover out of Portland. So it makes me wonder if maybe there weren t any females at the time. But my SAC, who was John Reed, was wonderful. And he liked to involve me in just about anything that was going on. So I m very grateful to him. He remains a good friend of my husband and myself. We still exchange Christmas cards every year. He lives in Sacramento. He s a wonderful guy. But, during your time in Seattle, you found yourself working mainly general criminal work? Well, the first Squad I went to was the Applicant. (They d had FCI on that squad). It was FCI Applicants. And it had some things like passport violation and, I think, civil rights might have been on that one. Just some odds and ends. You know how everybody does applicant backgrounds when they first go to an office. But my first big case turned out to be a passport violation case where it actually ended up resulting in an arrest of a guy with a false passport. It was my case and I just, you know, as new Agents tend to do, just work something to death till they, you know, actually make something happen. So that turned out to be pretty exciting for my realm of experience. That s great. Then I went to basically the ge0neral criminal, Property Crimes Squad. Okay. 9

10 Page 10 My husband, we got married near the end of my time in Seattle, was a supervisor on the Bank Robbery Reactive Squad. And our Federal Building, we re on two floors, and he was on the upper floor. He was on the floor above the one I was on. So he was not my direct supervisor so I never was assigned to that squad because of that. But I did, there were cases you, everybody in the office would work cases because, by virtue of the numbers. I mean, we always responded to bank robberies, you know. Anything that required bodies, we all worked it. So there were many cases that I actually did work. About how many Agents were in that office? Let me think. Sixty, I think only sixty-something. Yep. So that s a small office. And I have to thank my husband, too. We weren t married at the time but I knew him. Because there were a lot of single Agents in the office and we would, actually, go out after work and we d just, you know, talk about things and whatever. And I was on that FCI Applicant Squad and one day one of the Agents was talking to another Agent and wanting to go on an overnight trip to do something. And the other Agent couldn t go. So I said, I can go. And I was ignored, right. And so this went on and I said it about three times and I was still ignored. So finally I said to the guy, Why are you ignoring me? I can go on this trip. And he looked at me and he said, You can t go on the trip, June would kill me. That was his wife. Right. So a case came up off of - my husband s name is Bill - Bill s squad, with a possible homicide on a Lummi Indian Reservation in Bellingham, which is north of Seattle. And he was sending an Agent up there to do the interviews and investigation. And so he sent me on that, purposely, to just break that ice in the office, that I could actually go on an overnight trip away, do my job and it would be fine. So, I have to thank him again for that. (unintel) That s great. 10

11 Page 11 He had a lot of sensitivity about those kinds of issues and helped me out on that. So that was nice. And then there was another Agent, Jack Cusack, that I really am very grateful to. I was still on the Applicant Squad and he was Property Crimes. Well, those squads had a lot of different things. Like the Property Crimes Squad also had fugitives, parole/probation violators, escaped federal prisoners, things like that. I m sure. Yeah. They were all mixed together. Anyway, he had an escaped federal prisoner case that he was working and I was out with my partner doing, you know, running down applicant leads one day, when he radioed and asked me to meet up with him and help him, which turned into an arrest. So it was my first arrest of that type of a case and he did that because he just wanted to lend a hand to a female Agent that needed to show other Agents in the office that the job could be done. So there were things like that happened in that office, certain people that really, I think, made a huge difference. You re so right. And, in fact, by the end of the time I left, there was a guy who I always felt, you always knew who the guys were that really weren t happy that you were there. But they were professional enough not to really say anything and I figured the way you dealt with that was you just didn t, you just stayed out of everybody s face. You went and did your work with the people that felt that they wanted to work with you. And if you didn t have to work with the other ones, then fine, you didn t. And I pretty much just handled it that way by not making an issue out of it. And he actually called me up and asked me to go do something and help him on a lead one time. So I thought, Whoa! You know, things have changed He turned around. around here. That s great. 11

12 Page 12 I felt that my, honestly, I felt that what I needed to accomplish in that office, if I could, was to leave that office leaving the idea in the minds of the men that were still there, that a female could do the job and that the next one coming in should be given a chance and that, you know, the attitudes would hopefully, be better. And that s what I really always believed in any office that I went to was that each of us could strengthen the credibility by virtue of how we performed our jobs in quiet ways. And that s in 1979? And when I went to Washington Field Office, there were only four, maybe five women in the Washington Field Office when I got there. Seventy-nine. And I think that there were 300 Agents, over 300 Agents in that office. And the Christine Hansen suit was still not sitting well with them at all. Hmmm. Because she had been in that office. Okay. And so the atmosphere was really, there was an, the atmosphere of not being accepted was certainly more palpable there. In Seattle, I really had a wonderful experience. And enjoyed working, I really enjoyed working with all those men. So that was another good thing that I enjoyed working with men and enjoyed kidding around and all that stuff that you do. I enjoyed all of that. And grew up in a small town and had guys as friends all my life. Which I think makes a big difference. Which is good. Yes. It wasn t, it wasn t weird for me, at all, to be around all those guys and to work with them and all of that. Actually, I really did enjoy it. And so when I got to Washington Field Office And, again, the reason you probably would have stayed in Seattle, except you did marry, I guess, and your husband was transferred. Is that correct? 12

13 Page 13 I went on his transfer. Yes. Yes. But I was going to be transferred because I was in the top, at the time where you did a Top Ten [office]. Okay. And so I had gotten there in 76 and it was now three, a little over three years later. And my time was coming up anyway. So I would not have been able to stay in Seattle. That wasn t going to happen. Everybody was being transferred after about three years. Normally around three, three and a half years. Okay. So it would have happened one way or the other. But, yes, I did go to Washington Field because he went to Headquarters as a Supervisor. That s right. But you work Applicants when you go to the Washington Field Office. Everybody does, just about, with rare exceptions. And at the time, the SAC actually had a policy that women were not allowed to work criminal work in the Washington Field Office. Hmmm! That s amazing. So, FCI was the only option, other than applicants to work. And he would liked to have seen that females would have stayed on those squads through their whole careers? Yeah, basically. Wow! But luckily, I mean, at that time, he d been in that office a long time and then after that SACs did not stay all that long in the Washington Field Office. Uh-huh. 13

14 Page 14 It was sort of a doorway through, back and forth, through Headquarters. It was a way that they could bring SACs in and out of there without making moves to other field divisions. While I was there, in six years, I probably had four or five SACs in that amount of time; which was quite a bit. So things changed, obviously, as different men came in to run that office. I would like to mention one of the most wonderful SACs I ever had the pleasure of working for, Tom DuHadway. Oh, that s good to hear. That was definitely the policy in the office when I was there. And applicant work is just deadly in the Washington Field Office. I can t imagine. It is. And you have so many cases you can t possibly get them done. And with the deadlines awhhh. The deadlines are, oftentimes, past by the time you get them and some of them are incredibly dangerous investigations because the DOJ hires people as guards and different things before their backgrounds are completed. Uh-huh. And in many cases, they have the backgrounds applicants whose [applications] do not bear out their hiring and take you into some areas in Washington, DC that are pretty scary. I m sure. And I ll have to say, actually, some of my applicant investigations in Washington, DC, were probably scarier than any ones I ever did working criminal matters. Uhmm. 14

15 Page 15 Because you were more prepared. In fact, there were two Agents killed in Washington, out of Washington Field Office, before I got there, who were running an applicant lead and went and knocked on somebody s door who had a fugitive in the house and thought they were there for that reason and shot them on the porch. Yes. So it was just very hard work, those applicant cases. Nobody, I can t imagine anybody enjoyed doing it. We were all just very, very harried most of the time. Hmmm! I am sure. And then you d get a change in Administration and you d have all of those Presidential appointments, judgeships and Exactly. It just went on and on. So it was tough. So I wanted off that as you can well imagine, as everybody did. So I got to a Soviet Counterintelligence Squad, which ended up being very interesting. I loved it. And I was the only woman on that squad for most of the time that I was there. But, really, the guys, they are still friends of mine to this day. In fact, a bunch of them were out here for a wedding and my old partner and his wife stayed here with us. And they are just the dearest friends I ve got back there. That s great. So, I have to say that was a great experience. But (word is stressed) I will have to add something to that too. I never would say that I had any sort of discrimination occur toward me, as far as, you know, sexual discrimination or anything like that. However, there was case discrimination. But it wasn t just to women, it was also to new male Agents. It could apply to them too. The good cases went to certain people and they just did. The supervisors would assign the more important cases to, you know, whom they considered, their lead Agents or whatever. And so my case assignments, on that squad they did it by alpha designation. A cases being of import, down to D or something, I m not quite sure. And so, you got a lot of cases that were of lower importance. You d never get an espionage case, for example, that you would be the lead Agent on. I guess, what, did you find that you d have to stay there for a number of years before you would start receiving? 15

16 Page 16 I don t even know if it would ve happened then. Okay. I really do feel that had a I mean, actually, I had confrontations about that with my supervisor. I got the opportunity to go down to Quantico. I was called and asked if I would come down as a New Agents Counselor because they needed a role model of a female for the women that were going through. Uh-huh. And it sounded wonderful to me because it would just give me a break and it was becoming aware to me that I was never going to get any good case assignments on the squad. I would work all the cases with the guys that were running the other cases and all of that. But as far as getting any on my own Uh-huh. it wasn t going to happen. I had already talked to a supervisor on another squad who wanted to see if I could get a transfer to his squad. He wanted me to come over there. So it was a situation on my squad. And it wasn t just me, you know it would have been any woman, I think. I don t think it was a personal thing. I think it was just a matter of being a woman. But nothing that I would have taken anywhere, you know. You just didn t do that. Right. And you figured out a way to work either through it or around it or something. In fact, this supervisor would not recommend me to go down to Quantico and I really wanted to go do that. I needed a break and it sounded like something that I knew I could really, you know, have the impact that they needed. I could do something that they needed me for. It sounded good to me. 16

17 Page 17 And so he didn t recommend it. And so the Agent at Quantico who called me up asked me if I wanted them to pursue it more. And I said yes, please do. So they did and, over his head, I was given permission to go. Oh good. And during our exit Interview, which was a File Review he wanted to know because I wrote the little letter that I was when I came back from Quantico, I was also going to be going to this other squad. And I just wrote in my letter you know, how you do that that I just wanted the experience of working on another, another squad, just to broaden my FCI experiences. The other squad was a GRU Military Soviet Military Squad. And the one I was on was the Scientific Officers Squad. And so he asked me, during this, if there was any other reason I was leaving the squad. And so I thought (chuckle) well, you asked. So I said yeah. I said I really felt like oh, he had said that he didn t want me to go to Quantico because it was a waste of my time and talents. And I said, Well, it really bothers me that you wouldn t allow me to go to Quantico. And based on your assessment saying that it was a waste of my time and talent, I said, then I would like you to show me on this File Review, by the virtue of the cases you ve assigned me, that you have any confidence in my time or talents. Because they were all those low ranking cases. And he really didn t have too much to say about that. Well, that s interesting. So when I came back from Quantico, I went to the other squad. And that supervisor there was entirely different about these situations. That s great. 17

18 Page 18 So, it was just the times. I mean, this was I mean, that was still the way I look at it now when women, and I know this is sort of a sarcastic way of putting it, but I always say when women finally were able to sustain mediocrity, then that means that they no longer are being thought of as that different. And I know that s a pretty sarcastic thing to say but when I was going through and you were going through, if you didn t shine you had to just it was that whole thing where you had to work harder, and longer, and better to be considered almost as good. Right. And I figure now, if women can just be average Agents then we ve come a long way. Because now, a woman is allowed You re right. to be an average Agent. Like a man can be an average Agent. And, you know, you ve always had the people that are exceptional. But there are exceptions and they call them exceptional for a reason. And to be able to just be considered average and that s okay, I think is a huge gain. (Chuckling) You re right. The women don t seem to feel any of, if they re having any problems it would probably just be the ones that you always have in life where there s personality conflicts or whatever. But as far as like case assignment discrimination going on out there. I can t imagine, really, that there s any of that going on out there. Now I think that it s just the way it is and it s not considered different anymore. Which is wonderful. Yep. You re right. I mean, I know women that have been SACs and all of that. You know. Quite a few. Kathleen McChesney. Did you interview her? She has been interviewed. I did not interview her but she has been. 18

19 Page 19 I did her background when she came into the Bureau. She came in through Seattle. And I ve known Kathleen since, obviously, since she came in. And, I m trying to think. Ellen Knowlton, who retired as SAC in Las Vegas, is a friend. She was in training school during the time same year I was. Ohh, Burdie Pasanelli. She was, of course, pretty well known as an early, she was one of the first women in the Bureau. Burdie Pasanelli. You know, she probably came in in, might be like in 1973 or something like that. I think I actually met Joanne Pierce, who was one of the first two women, the nun, that came in. Oh. Okay. Have you ever talked to any, has anybody interviewed the two women that were the first two? One had been a Marine, a former Marine; and the other one was a former nun. Well, I d always heard that. Yes. Life in Washington Field Office, I enjoyed my time there, I really did. The cases were interesting. I mean, that whole aspect of the Bureau s work is pretty fascinating. And I actually worked on some very good cases; which, of course, I can t talk about. But it was very interesting work. And the thing I really liked about it, I think too, is that the men that worked on FCI, at that time, had mostly all done their time on criminal work, chasing down bank robbers and doing all of that. And they d come to a point in their careers, I think they wanted to do something that required more thinking, or whatever. I m not quite sure but their egos seemed to be in a different place. And, as a result of that, they weren t threatened really by women doing the job. And that made things so much nicer. That s great, huh. Yes. 19

20 Page 20 Because I never worked FCI. I did take a class, I took a class through training in 85. So you were there in 82 and I m sure you could see a difference in the, well, in the men and women going through and how they were treated and handled. Right. Right. Well, actually there were some things (laughing). When I was a counselor, I actually did have a situation where I had a woman in the class who I could tell was not going to be a successful Agent. She just wasn t going to be. And when I would talk about that with the people that had the wherewithal to do anything, to make any evaluations, or whatever, if you couldn t, you know, if there wasn t a reason by flunking things, there is really no way to get somebody [out]. Difficult. Unfortunate. Very difficult. And it s interesting that when you counsel down there, you honestly can see right from the beginning, really, where there s going to be problems with certain people. It s very evident. And when I was a New Agent and my counselor told me not to worry about my firearms because he could tell by watching me that I was going to be fine, I wouldn t believe him But it was true. You could, it was true. You could tell. Yes. One of the things that s apparent. Just certain aspects of how you fire your weapon or whatever. The fact that you re not making the score, it s just a matter of practice, because you have control or whatever. They can tell. Exactly. Uh-huh. 20

21 Page 21 You know. They can tell. And you can tell a lot of things by observing people as they re going through there. And some of them will have problems in the field. Hopefully when they get to the field and their Training Agent can try to address that. But I don t think that s addressed I don t know how they d do that now. I was a Training Agent, also, in the field when I was in Honolulu and I took that pretty seriously too, based on my experience as being a counselor and just seeing how some mentoring in the field could maybe have, meant the difference between success and failure. There s so much more to being Agent than just being able to pass firearms and physicals and (unintel) It s so multi-dimensional. Right? So the NARBs, what I was getting back to was they do that New Agent s Review Board thing when I was a counselor, which they didn t do when I was in New Agents Training. When I was there, if you failed two tests you were out on the third one and that was it. The counselor would come to the classroom and Call a name. call a name and the person would come out and they d be gone. (Chuckling) Did that happen to you when you were there? Yes. That was still the way it was in 79. Yep. Yeah. When I went as a counselor, I told them, I said, You ve got to come up with a better way of doing this. I said, That is so horrifying to everybody. Not just the one that gets sent out of there, but for everybody else too. It s just really bad. There s got to be a better way of doing this. To where they re not just dragged out of class and they disappear over the lunch hour and you go back and their room is And it s empty. 21

22 Page 22 Yes! This isn t good. This doesn t give anybody a chance to say goodbye. And there s nothing wrong with being able to say goodbye to somebody if they want to. And so, I really worked hard to see if there wasn t a better way of accomplishing where, at least, the person didn t leave until the end of the day. Or something. Or had a chance to say goodbye to people, you know, something! And a little closure, a little tiny bit of closure. Anyway, it s hard to know how to do that. But the way they did it when we went through was just awful. In fact, a counselor came one time to the door of the room and wanted me to come outside (laughing) and I wouldn t go. And he said, I want you to come out here. I need to talk to you. I said, I will not go unless you tell me (laughing) what s happening. That s funny. That I m going to be able to come back once I get out there. And so he insisted it would be fine; that I would be able to come back (unintel) Oh, that s funny. But I thought, Oh, my God! I can t stand this. No, it happened numerous (word is stressed) times in my group. Yeah. Yeah. And five times we had that happen in our class. I m trying to think of the one I counseled, if anybody ended up having to leave. I can t really remember. I know we had to work pretty hard at getting some to be able to make it. But you know who they are too and you know when they shouldn t. Exactly. Because every effort should be made to keep them. You know, some people don t test well. It doesn t mean they re not going to be a good Agent. You re right. Yep. Very subjective things that go on there. But there were some that, you know, counselors and people would really go to bat for because they know they re going to be good once they get out of that environment. 22

23 Page 23 Uh-huh. You re exactly right. It s interesting and it seems to hold true. I don t know if it s still that way. But the men do not do as well academically. That seems to be the place where they ll freeze up. Because every one of the guys we lost out of my New Agents Class, five of them flunked out on tests. The women, on the other hand, rarely ever had that to be the problem. You re right. But in my class, again, we had a man not make it through firearms. And the rest were academic. Yeah. And it s just an interesting gender difference to me. You re right. Uh-huh. I m not exactly sure how to explain it. I don t know if women just seem to be confident that that s the area they have more confidence in so they they re able to deal with it better or something. Whereas, physical and firearms they don t, because we ve never had to do that stuff before. How was it for you regarding the physical and firearms? Again, I was in very good shape so the physical was fine. And the firearms, again, I would always be just sort of like right under the qualification. And I d be, I would be so inconsistent it would seem. That s what bothered me. And then just one week or one day it all just sort of clicked and I became more confident and was just able to qualify and continue to qualify. But it just, I had to go through weeks of weeks of inconsistency and I didn t think I was going to make it. And just, you know, never having done that. And it wasn t that my hands weren t strong, I just had to get put it all together. One of my problems was I wore contact lenses. So did I. Yeah. They would slip around when you re looking, you know, sighting. They rotate. 23

24 Page 24 Mine did not. And I think that was part of my problem was because that would happen and it would sort of blur the sight some. But then once you get good at it, you don t even really need it. I mean, you don t need to have it perfect in the sight anymore. Once you realize how to do it. You need to get it in there but you don t have to see it perfectly. Right. Do you know what I mean? Oh exactly. You know where it is or something. I don t know. Because then I got to where I could shoot in the 90s, you know. That s great. Whatever. It all worked out. But then, again, I see your husband was transferred to Honolulu so that s a nice transfer. Yes. It was. So we went to Honolulu. Okay. And you know what, I m going to turn this over real quickly. Just a moment. Okay. Now I have that turned over. You were transferred to Honolulu, I guess, in 1985? We went there in, I think, February of Right. And in August of 1984 we adopted our son. So he was six months old when we went there. So I was on maternity leave when we first got there. Didn t go back to work, I think, until June of that [year]. 24

25 Page 25 Uh-huh. Right from the get-go there was a problem in the fact that there weren t any nanny organizations in Honolulu like people find in many American cities, where you actually can go to a service for a nanny. And so I had to find somebody to be a live-in nanny, starting from nowhere, really. So that was hard from the start. Ended up finding somebody so off I went back to work. I went to the, they did, basically Chinese Counterintelligence there. And I was a Grade 13 by this time with, I m trying to think how many years experience, probably five years of FCI experience. Uh-huh. And so it was pretty much a done deal I d go there. In addition to the fact we were the first couple that went out in the Bureau as an Agent/ASAC married combination. And, I have to say that my husband didn t get an ASAC position for some time because the powers that be worried so much about how that was going to work when you had an Agent and an ASAC, or an Agent and whatever, married, in the same office. They were very worried about it. Thinking, I guess, from what I could gather, that somehow the Agent would be taking personal difficulties or whatever to the ASAC. I don t know what they thought. But whatever it was, the way I looked at it was we were both two professional people. They needed to have faith that we would handle our jobs professionally. Right. Right. And luckily the SAC there, who was Bill Ervin, had met Bill and I both before and the way he looked at it is he was getting an ASAC and a Grade 13 Agent. And he thought that was great. So he was happy with the married situation. That s great. So, of course, again, there you go. It matters. That matters so much. Because, again, we were breaking new ground. Exactly. So, it was the second time to break new ground. 25

26 Page 26 And going into an office as the wife of a manager presents another whole realm of difficulties, you might say, perceptions, whatever it might be. So Bill could not be my rating official, obviously. Right. And so I could not work under anything that he directly was over, which was, basically, all the criminal stuff. So my direct rating supervisor, then we bypassed Bill, and the SAC was my direct reviewing official. So Bill was never brought into that rating route. However, we knew right away that I would never get a QSI. I would never get there just would be things I wouldn t even be able to be considered for because the perception would be I got it for the wrong reasons. Right. So I had to know that up front too, which was fine. I was cool about that. It s always been a matter of people just getting, I think, getting to know you and if you do your job well and they learn about you, they find out that I wasn t going to, number one, use him to get any kind of favors. In fact, I knew that I wasn t going to get any kind of favors at all. And they found out, also, that I would not take things to him. Which was another aspect of it because there are enough people who will come to you and whisper in your ear hoping that you re going to take that information somewhere, on their behalf; which I wasn t about to do. And once they really finally figured that out, that isn t going to happen, and pretty soon, they just forget about it. We ended up having a lovely time there, I must say. That s great. It was wonderful. Great. Which was a very interesting experience just in the whole lifestyle over there and the way people get together. The whole office. It s not a matter of Agents and clerical personnel differences at all because when social events take place, it s everybody. 26

27 Page 27 Uh-huh. And, again, that office, what size is it? Oh, it was small. It was very small. I would think. I m trying to think, I would say, maybe, thirty some Agents in that office. Wow! Huh! And then there s Guam. Guam, of course, was only the only Resident Agency out of Hawaii. And they might have had ten. I don t know. Agent-wise, they probably only had about four to six Agents there, or something. So it s pretty small. I m trying to think. You know, it s hard to remember when you think about what the whole State, you ll hear about a State complement but that doesn t count your RAs. I m trying to think in Seattle, for sure, we had five Squads, so there could have been closer to 60 Agents. It s possible. You know. Okay. Because most Squads would have ten to twelve Agents on a Squad in that size office. So there could have been close to sixty Agents in Seattle and forty Agents or something in Hawaii. It was pretty small. Small. But there were other women in that office. So percentage-wise I m trying to think how many there were. Most of the time I was there, there were three of us. There was Sheri Farrar. Did you ever know her? No. Okay. I ve not met her. She recently retired and she ended up being an Assistant Director. I m trying to think if she was ever an SAC somewhere. She may have been to. Anyway, she was leaving. Sara Pickard had also been there. I don t know if you remember her. Anyway, they were leaving shortly after I got there. And there had been women in that office. Which is great. Uh-huh. Yep. 27

28 Page 28 (unintel). And when I left there were probably five women there. So, that s a pretty big difference, percentage-wise of the complement. You re right. And that s in just, what? Nine years. So that was pretty good. Because when I came in, there were still many offices that didn t have any women. I m sure. Especially in the Resident Agencies. Just so many to spread around throughout the U.S. Oh yeah. Wasn t going to happen for awhile. Because they did a hundred year anniversary thing here, as we did everywhere. Yeah. And they had it on the board, the chronology of women coming in to Bureau. And the four of us in our class were right at that 50 thing. It s just that, it was like 48, 49, 50, 51, we were right there. So, I always figure I was in the first 50. You know, because we were in that group. So you figure (laughing), fiftynine Field Offices, obviously, you re not going to have enough to go around. (Laughing) Exactly. And that s just Field Offices, when you start thinking about RAs RAs and everything else. Exactly. But you, again, though, worked FCI the entire time in Honolulu? And I had a very interesting case, which I mentioned to you when I ed you. The Jerry Whitworth 28

29 Page 29 The John Walker case. it was. He was the one that people really heard about because he was the one that was, of course, arrested (unintel) Exactly. and all of that. But he had a cohort that was involved with him in the Western Pacific. He was in the Eastern Atlantic Eastern Fleet or however they call that they had names for their Fleets Eastern, whatever Anyway, Jerry Whitworth was his name. And he s the one that I ended up having a case on that side of the world. So you were the case agent for that? I was the case agent on that because I happened to be in the Office when a guy from the Coast Guard called in and said, when this came to light about John Walker, I guess, the question was raised did anybody know of anybody they thought could possibly have been involved with him. And he immediately thinks of this guy, Jerry Whitworth, and calls us up. Well, the poor guy, because he immediately thought of Jerry Whitworth, we needed to find out why he immediately thought of Jerry Whitworth, to eliminate him. Because, at the time, the fear was that there were more, many more people involved. And this was a very, very detrimental case and what was done to our national security as a result of what these guys did. So the thought that there could still be some other people involved, continuing, was really of major importance to us. And so, to eliminate, make sure we knew who it was and there weren t any more out there. It was, you know, it was pretty intense. So this poor guy was put through the wringer, I might add. And, again, you made a general request of the Coast Guard? No, no, no, no, no. I think the military probably did. I think whenever something like that happens, I think it was even said in the press or something, about, you know, there could be more people involved or whatever. That idea is just out there. Okay. We didn t even call the Coast Guard. We didn t call the Coast Guard. 29

30 Page 30 Okay. I didn t know if you discussed with them? He had known this guy. How did he know him? I can t remember, to tell you the truth. But I do really, for some reason, believe that he was in the Coast Guard and not the Navy. But I could be wrong about that. It would make more sense that he was in the Navy. But, for some reason, the Coast Guard rings a bell with me. But you received a phone call? Yes. The phone call came in. I just happened to be the only one on the FCI Squad in the office because it was lunch time. And so I took the call. And so, when you take the call, you get the case. Okay. If you re at all capable of having it, right. Okay. Uh-huh. So that s how I got that, serendipity. But it turned out to be a very significant case. So that was probably, as far as number of interviews, and polygraphs, and things that had to be done, definitely, I would say the biggest case I ever handled considering the import of it, et cetera, in my Bureau career. As a new Agent, I got a case of double homicide, Crime on the High Seas, which I think I also mentioned in my to you. Did I? No, you didn t mention that one. Oh! Okay. That was interesting. That was not quite, it didn t turn out quite so well. But if you want me to digress on that, I will. But anyway, it was just two people, a mom and dad were killed, well, died on their boat. And there were kids involved, teenagers, that were all along on the trip. And, to make a long story short, the suspect in the case was the son. But there was never any evidence and, by the time they sent Agents from Hawaii to Tahiti to go over the boat, it was completely washed down clean. And DNA wasn t what it is today and no witnesses, and the bodies were buried at sea. The two girls that were on-board were lousy witnesses, or were scared to say anything, or whatever (unintel). 30