Interview with Former Special Agent of the FBI Beverly S. Wright ( ) Interviewed on August 11, 2009 By Susan Wynkoop

Transcription

1 Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc Interview with Former Special Agent of the FBI Beverly S. Wright ( ) Interviewed on By Susan Wynkoop Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on October 28, Final edit with Ms. Wright s corrections made by Sandra Robinette on January 23, Susan Wynkoop/ Hi. Today is Tuesday,, and I m interviewing Beverly Wright. I m going to be calling her Bev, who presently resides in Maryland. We re talking today telephonically. And I just want to at this time read the Copyright Release Form into the tape which states that: We the undersigned convey the rights to the intellectual content of our interview on this date,, 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 World-Wide-Web and the recordings transferred to an established repository for preservation and research. So again, I want to thank Bev for her time. And Bev was an Agent from the years 1980 to So that s quite an amazing amount of years and an amazing career. So thank you, Bev, again for joining me. Beverly Wright/ You re welcome. I just thought we could start with information about your background and your college career. Things of that sort. Okay. I was born in Washington, DC, and attended public schools in Maryland. I attended the University of Maryland. That s really where my career ended up coming from because I was in the Elementary Education Program. After a couple of years, they decided they had too many people in the program, and they started rejecting people who had switched majors midstream, which I had. So I was left without a major. My parents were very accommodating and said, Do anything you want. So I looked at all the classes that I had As in and they were in the field of sociology and psychology, so I ended up pursuing a degree, a Bachelor of Science in Sociology. And from there my intent was to actually be a ski bum.

2 Page 2 (chuckle) My father would hear none of that since he had paid for part of my education. So he said, No, you re going to get a job. Across the street from us was an FBI Agent. Oh, so that s how you got interested? An Agent by the name of Phil Muollo. Phil was assigned to the Baltimore Division. Big burly guy, very gregarious. He said, Well, you re a little bit young, I suggest that you perhaps pursue a career in corrections. You see, I thought maybe I was interested in parole and probation work actually. But he was kind of a career advisor. And the FBI, I was too young for that really. So he said, In order to work in probation and parole, I suggest you talk to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And I know a guy in the Director s office. Why don t you talk to him? So this was Women had just started to come in the Bureau (FBI). Right. I said to him, You mean women are now Agents? Because my recollection was from sixth grade that there were no female Agents. Exactly. At that rate I met with the Bureau of Prisons and Detentions, because I was one of the few college graduates at that time coming to them, they offered me a unique opportunity to work in New York City at the Federal Detention Headquarters, which at that time was an all-male facility and they were trying to go co-correctional to put female correctional officers in all-male prisons. So I bit the bullet. I took a girlfriend up for the interview. They encouraged me to do that. I said I had nothing to lose. The only other women were secretaries. I ended up working for the Bureau of Prisons for three years. A year after I started as a Correctional Officer we moved the prisoners from the rickety old garage warehouse-type building to the new Metropolitan Correctional Center, and at that time I became a Case Manager. But after three years, that was kind of a tough career for a young female, and I was judged pretty hard actually. I did it, but the time had come that even my parents thought I should leave. So I then -- 2

3 Page 3 I m sorry, when you mentioned it became, did you say the Metropolitan Correctional Center which is downtown? Yes, I did. You were there when that started. I was there when that building, -- Wow! -- when that building opened. We moved the prisoners from the gray Federal Detention Headquarters on 14 th Street under the West Side Highway, to the Metropolitan Correctional Center. And, again, for the next year there were only male prisoners there. And then I was selected to transport eight women from Alderson, West Virginia, with one other person. We took a van down to Alderson, West Virginia, and we proceeded to integrate the prison with female prisoners. So we took the top eight who were low-flight risk on their way to parole and brought them into a housing unit at which point I became their caseworker. That was the part of the job I actually loved, working with the women. But it still became very difficult. I had done it for more than three years. I said at that point I was going to become a ski bum. So my parents were actually all in favor of it. ( chuckle) That s funny. So I moved myself up to Stowe, Vermont, and spent a couple of winters there. I loved it. But, you know, I was getting to be ten years out of college and I did not want to go to my high school reunion as a ski bum. And so I talked to Phil Muollo again and he said, Oh, my goodness, of course you can re-apply. Because I had actually applied before I left the Bureau of Prisons, but I was not in one of the top categories. And they weren t taking a lot of women back in 77. Right. You re right. So that s when I became a ski bum. I said, Well, if the FBI is not going to come through, I m going to go become a ski bum. Then back in 79, I said, Phil, can I try again? And he said, Absolutely, but this is the last time. Only twice. So I went back to the Baltimore Field Office and met a woman who I know to this day and we talked. I took the test again and I scored very, very well. Because I was a different person then. A little bit older, a little bit wiser. Right. And you were thinking differently. Yeah. 3

4 Page 4 Yeah, I was thinking differently and I was selected right away. In the meantime I had gone back to the Bureau of Prisons. They welcomed me with open arms. At that point even the Director of the Bureau of Prisons wished me well in my FBI career because he could think of no better career than to send his employees off to the FBI. Norm Carkon was a phenomenal man. Anyway I left the Bureau of Prisons again with good tidings to report to Quantico in January of 1980, and had no idea what I would be facing. Right. So that process for your application took six or seven months or --? Only took six or seven months the second time around. They popped me right into a class. By that time I was twenty-eight. I was a good age. And, of course, we got to Quantico and I did not have any trouble with the academics or firearms. I had been around guns in the Bureau of Prisons. I was wondering if you had to train there. Yeah. Not so much, but a little bit. I mean, they stick a shotgun in your hand and they put you on the roof of the prison and they say, Shoot if anybody comes out. Just pull the trigger and shoot. That was pretty much it, but I had gone through firearms familiarization if you would have it. So I wasn t afraid of a gun. Well, that s great. The PT training was the hardest for me. But everyone was very supportive. My PT coach was a guy by the name of Chin-Ho Lee. He was not messing around and that was what he used to say. We re not messing around here. So he got me through the PT training, and off to Washington Field I went. I already knew that I wanted to work Counterintelligence. Just from the class work at Quantico, that s where you felt you would fit in? No, from my Bureau of Prisons work. Oh, okay. Okay. 4

5 Page 5 I didn t really want to deal with bank robbers or organized crime. I sort of had had my fill of those kinds of folks. Okay. When they presented the opportunity to work Counterintelligence, we had only like a couple of hours of introduction to it, I said, This is fascinating. This is great. And, of course, back then they were pretty much putting women on Counterintelligence squads anyway. Back in 1980 there were only about five or six women in Washington Field. And they were all -- Right. -- on the Counterintelligence Squad. But I didn t see that as a bad thing. I thought it was much more intriguing to conduct a surveillance and eat at the fabulous Dominique s Restaurant than it was to eat at McDonald s. (chuckle) You re right. So they didn t have to convince me to work counterintelligence. It was just a pretty good challenge. I worked with some very great people. I was assigned to different countries and worked cases and found not a whole lot going on in the early part of my career except for there was a guy at the State Department --. Believe it or not, his name I can t even remember, but he was accused of spying for China, I think. And we conducted quite a few surveillances on his place. He was spying for Russia I think was what it was. But anyway, he lived up near the Russian establishment so --. And again, when you were in the Washington Field Office, now where is that office? Is that in [or] right outside of Washington? I was at Buzzard s Point. Okay. I had the misfortune to always to be stuck in the oldest possible building. (chuckle) Started in the Bureau of Prisons in the --. 5

6 Page 6 Under the West Side Highway. Under the West Side Highway. The warehouse environment, which by the way I was told that prisoners were being housed in cages. Actually the Vietnam War - after the war was over, the cages that housed the prisoners in Vietnam were brought into the United States and that s where they were used -- Wow! -- in the prison. Washington Field was located at Buzzard s Point which was not a great location in Southwest. We didn t even have the whole building I don t think. And from the day I walked in there, they were talking about building a new building. And they never moved in there until after I was long gone at Headquarters. That s something. It was over fifteen years they talked about the new building. I worked what I would consider second-tier countries pretty much the early part of my career and then I decided I had to do something. I wanted to work where the money was, where the Bureau was putting its money which at time was Russia, you know, the Soviet Union. So I went to Russian Language School. Did you ask to go to the Language School? Yes, I did. Yeah, I threw my name in the hat. They always have a couple of openings. It was a local school and then we did a stint at Middlebury College, which is a live-in program, a summer, full-immersion program. You learn a language quick when you re going every day and that s all you re focusing on. Why did you not go to Monterey? The Bureau had a reciprocal arrangement with a sister agency to provide -- 6

7 Page 7 -- training at no cost to the Bureau in exchange for the Bureau providing training to the sister agency. And so that s what we did. Right. We had a reciprocal agreement and it was great. It was far less academic. It was more like talk faster even if your grammar is limping. Huh. We don t need you to be able to read the language. We need you to be able to speak it. Monterey is very academic. Highly academic. I see. You do a lot of writing. So students in my class were all operatives. There were no outsiders. It was a closed class. There were maybe four of us. We were all Government employees with one goal in mind. It was kind of cool. Being local, I didn t have to leave home. Then I came back and I knew, of course, I would be assigned to a Soviet Squad. Right, right. I felt very lucky I got assigned to the squad that handled Soviet military intelligence which was obviously very active. Right around that time it was discovered that John Walker was a spy. His wife had called in. Finally after many years of her being drunk and nobody listening, somebody decided to listen. I think early in February --. I got to this squad, say in the fall of 84 I think I think they d already begun to work the case because it was shortly thereafter that we started to have a lot of evidence coming in. A lot of technical coverage. I was assigned to, of course, translate. At that point, now I m reading. Not speaking but reading. I m thinking, oh, boy! (chuckle) 7

8 Page 8 Yeah. Yeah, you have your dictionary and you can figure it out. But the John Walker case broke somewhere between 85 and 86. And I was in charge of evidence. I remember very clearly being handed a bag with his hairpiece in it. Huh. I thought, What the heck am I supposed to do with that? Exactly. There s no Russian language involved in that. But, you know, logging it in; making sure all the records were kept; and got a lot of documents, evidence. That case unfolded there and simultaneously another Agent came across a case involving a courier, a young black guy, who was couriering documents to the Soviet Military Office. The guy wasn t too bright, but solving that case required good old detective work on the part of the Agents because the guy came in a cab and it was night and we had a partial tag on the cab. Uh. The Agent tracked down the cabbie who didn t really have a formal address. So those type of cases! The Soviet Military Office was the real hotbed of espionage activity. But, I m sorry, going back to the John Walker spy case, who was the main Case Agent on that? The main Case Agent in Norfolk was a woman by the name of Beverly Andress. Okay. And she eventually came up to Washington Field. I m sorry, how do you spell her last name? A-n-d-r-e-s-s. Beverly rose to become a Deputy Assistant Director in the Counterintelligence Division prior to her retirement. Great. 8

9 Page 9 She was a very young Agent, but obviously very bright and they handed her the John Walker case in Norfolk. I m sure she didn t know what she had. She found out very quickly and ran the case down there. That s great. And then she was married to an Agent and they got transferred up to Washington Field. I had the good fortune to work with her several years later around So here we are in the mid- 80s and the Year of the Spy. Ronald Pelton, John Walker, they re all on the --. It was the year of the spy basically. It was 86. And we were very busy. BW I can imagine. At that point an ASAC by the name of Nick Walsh, who s deceased now, realized that we did not have good surveillance coverage on these Soviet establishments. People did not want to sit in cars all day long in the days gone before them. They used to call us the bucket or the bogey squad meaning identifying people going in and out of these establishments. He decided it was time to get that going again. We had too many spies. Too many people walking in. That s how a lot of these guys made contact back then. We didn t have the computers. We didn t have --. You know, they weren t going to write a letter and wait for somebody to read it, although one guy did. And they contacted him. So they reestablished this Agents Surveillance Team. Which of course we have the special surveillance with the SSG, which are the non-agents. Right. But their specialty is totally covert. An Agent surveillance team is not necessarily designed to be covert. It s almost designed to be overt to the bad guys, to dissuade them and prevent them from accepting offers of people who might want to come in and sell secrets. So our job was to identify potentially those people who were contacting them even if they had been turned away. And so most Americans were not thinking that they would be under surveillance, even people contemplating a crime. So our ability to be covert was not that great although we learned. We learned from the SSG. 9

10 Page 10 So, our goal was to identify people. So we had a very busy life. I was accepted with one of the guys to establish the surveillance team which ultimately became the fifteenmember bogey team. Boy, we were running around crazy trying to spot people. Needle in a haystack. Coming out of the Embassy or some other location and try to identify them. Maybe they got in a car. Maybe they went to a business location. And to try to determine if they had a legitimate reason for business, or if they were potentially a threat. I did that for three years. Had a blast. I bet that was interesting. I mean it was, it was fast Counterintelligence. If you can imagine, Counterintelligence is a very slow type of investigation. It takes years to solve these cases usually. Right. Not like a bank robbery. Not like a white collar crime. It, it takes years. You need to have slow twitch muscles. (chuckle) In some respects, I was not a slow twitch muscle person. This was for fast twitch, this surveillance team, it was great. But after three years, enough. You know, it was a long enough time to be on the street. And I came back into the office, and at that point started to become more of a program manager. Started to have the responsibility for the overall effort directed at a certain foreign establishment, whether it was technical coverage or surveillance. You know, to manage the whole thing. And mainly dealing with Russia still? Yes, definitely dealing - at that point it was Russia. At that point it became Russia. It was Berlin Wall had fallen. It became Russia. 10

11 Page 11 Every establishment has a Case Agent and I was a Case Agent for one of the establishments. And, you know, here was a new day and new era. Were the Russians friends or were they not friends? Well, spying is never something that goes away, so it was, it was a hard couple of years there in the early 90s figuring out how many resources to devote to a country that was theoretically no longer, you know, the enemy. Right. But, the establishments and the diplomats who potentially were conducting espionage activities had to be watched. The same guys were still there the day after the Berlin Wall fell, so they weren t going home any time soon. As we know from the Hanssen case, there were spies out there. Right. But that wasn t discovered until ten years later. Exactly. But Hanssen became inactive after the Soviet Union fell. That s another whole long story, but --. So I continued to work the Russian program at the field office until 1994, at which point I had now married an Agent and he was at Headquarters and getting ready to be transferred to New York City as an ASAC. So we began a commuting marriage and I figured that was just as good a time for me to move to Headquarters. (chuckle) (chuckle) And, you know, move myself up in the Bureau not really knowing how much longer I wanted to move up. But during those years in the field office, I used my Russian language as a matter of fact. While I was on the bogey team, I was still going to maintenance classes. I d get out of the car and go to my little maintenance class which was not far from the Soviet Embassy, and then I was able to use that on surveillance. It was very cool. That s great. You know, to be able to hear people talk if they were walking with one of the Russians or whatever. It was fascinating. Anyway, over time I lost my Russian language ability. I was going to ask you about that. 11

12 Page 12 Not much more about that. Right. I did get selected to go to Headquarters in 94 and I was back to my old stomping grounds of the China group. The China group. I felt I d had enough of Russia. But there was kind of --. It was a hard couple of years because shortly after I got there, to the China Group, it was noted that John Huang was a Cabinet Secretary, and it was believed that he was involved in campaign finance scandal in the Clinton Administration. I m sorry, what is his last name? John, what? I don t remember. H-u-a-n-g. John Huang. He was a Cabinet, a Cabinet Secretary for Clinton. Okay. Yeah. I don t want to misstate which, Education or something. But anyway, somehow he became involved in, became accused of campaign finance scandal. Okay. Yeah. He was under investigation by the Criminal Division. Well, of course, we were working the China program and we knew, Hey, we ve got Chinese assets. Chinese sources. Maybe we could help the Criminal Division in their investigation. So we had somewhat of another investigation going regarding China and I can tell you all of this because it became very public. We had an investigation going on the Chinese attempts to influence Congress which is much more logical than trying to influence the White House because China had an open door to the White House. They did not need to manufacture influence. But the Chinese realized that it was Congress that made the laws and allowed people to enter this country or not enter this country. And when the leader from Taiwan was allowed to enter this country, the People s Republic of China Embassy went crazy because they were the recognized diplomatic presence for China. So they began an influence campaign to those Congressmen and women who were most affected, you know, foreign service committees and those things. 12

13 Page 13 There was some speculation that the Chinese were improperly influencing. So we had this counterintelligence influence investigation going on and the Criminal Division had the criminal investigation on campaign finance. And the two cases became inextricably entwined, and kind of messed up. (chuckle) In other words, people started to think that the Counterintelligence investigation was actually attempts to influence the Clinton White House. And it wasn t. So here we were, heavily embroiled in this kind of entwined case of campaign finance and Congressional influence by the Chinese. They were into everything. It was obviously a very politically charged topic. Unfortunately the Counterintelligence Division was accused of withholding information from the Criminal Division. Huh. But not so much accused. We were prohibited by law from sharing. Well, that s what I was thinking as you were talking about this is that they re supposed to be separate. Right. We were able to pass down information on what s known as a Letterhead Memorandum, but it was filtered. They were not going to meet any sources. They were going to have to trust what we were telling them. They managed to misinterpret what we were telling them, and it was making the front pages of The Washington Post about five minutes after we were telling them things. So it became a -- Huh. -- case that was investigated in the newspapers. In fact, I was on a ski vacation when I was told that I had to come home right away because the case had made the Sunday papers and mixing the two cases. It was pretty much very nightmarish after that time to convince the Administration, particularly Janet Reno and the Department of Justice, that our case didn t have anything to do with their case. We were only trying to help them, by asking our sources what they knew about campaign finance scandal. 13

14 Page 14 We did uncover some influence in finance scandal. We did uncover some local campaign influencing money, foreign monies. But it got to be very, very argumentative that the Justice Department attorneys even then did not have direct access to our source files. My boss, a veteran FBI Agent, knew exactly what he was doing by refusing them access because he needed to push it all the way up to Janet Reno for a Government-wide decision on the sharing of information. So even though he wanted to share, we were prohibited from doing so. We would have lost quite a few sources. Right, right. And he needed the Government to mandate --. We needed to fight it. We needed to basically take it to the Supreme Court. So he did that. It was a very stressful time, working till eleven o clock at night. My husband was in New York, so it didn t matter to me. And I survived on chocolate and that kind of thing. We were all there late at night pushing out information. I had a number of support people who were volunteering to work overtime to put together notebooks and copies of documents. But at one point after the decision was made to share the information, they proceeded to tell my boss that it was time for him to retire. He had already been extended twice, and he was okay with that. But I was the only one left. Wow! You know, the other people in the unit at Headquarters were not working this case. It was pretty much me and my boss. Then the Department of Justice started looking literally, and I m not saying this with any malice, for anyone else who potentially had done something wrong to withhold information. And they had actually asked me to pull any documents I felt contributed to their case, and I said, Well, that doesn t make any sense. You can t say you don t trust me and then ask me to pull documents that you think will incriminate me. Right. 14

15 Page 15 I said, That can t be allowed. I said, I need to get another job. You need to have someone else do this. And they went, Oh, yeah, I guess you re right. I was able to secure a position in the Counterterrorism Division and, you know, by that time my boss had retired and I had done whatever I could to help them through. So other people stepped in and proceeded. And ultimately no one was ever thought to have done any wrong. The most that happened was a major report was written, and we were criticized for being recalcitrant in not sharing information. Huh. Which as I said before was actually our goal. Right, right. So, I mean, we needed to do it and it was hard. But I went to the Counterterrorism Division and I was assigned a job as supervisor in an analytical unit for Domestic Terrorism. I loved working with analysts. These were bright young people, most of them from the outside, not people who had worked their way up through the Bureau. Is this 1994? I m sorry. That s okay. Now we re talking Oh, okay. So for three years I was in the China program, about half of that time working the case that was code named XXXXX. Right. And I moved up in the Counterterrorism Division supervising about fifteen analysts. Twenty-five at one point. There were two Agents. We were hiring new analysts from the outside. Very bright, involved, who were responsible for taking investigative information on Domestic Terrorism groups such as the Klan, the Christian Identity, the militia groups, the anti-government groups, the environmental terrorists. Those people who were actually preaching violence. 15

16 Page 16 So I was there. I loved that work. It was quite a change. Didn t require that I knew anything about Counterterrorism, it only required that I was able to edit work done by non-bureau employees basically to make it readable to an Agent on the street. I see. So that s really where the value of having an Agent was. The analysts can supervise themselves. But they needed a reader. They needed a dose of reality so an Agent can understand what they re saying. So about a year and a half into that, they came to me and they said, We need someone to take over, on a part-time basis, the Civil Aviation Security Program. That was in another unit in the Domestic Terrorism Preparedness Section. Because there was a mandate from Congress that we cooperate with the FAA to do vulnerability assessments at airports. I see. Which no one had thought much about previously. It wasn t getting done and the deadline was only a year away. The Agent who was in charge was transferred. It was just always a part-time job for people. So I think we re talking probably May of Within a few weeks of going to that job, I had agents from some airports calling me saying, Are you going to be here six weeks, six months, or six years? Because we ve been here a long time and we don t even know who you are. Now, bearing in mind I didn t know anything more than the front end from the back end of a plane -- (chuckle) -- as a passenger. I didn t know anything about the work that went on the airports. That it was mostly criminal work. Disruptive passengers. Back in the 90s there was only an inkling of airport and aviation terrorism. It was always overseas. So, I said, No, I ll be here for a while. We proceeded to have a conference, the first interagency FBI-airport police conference, to establish good working relationships. 16

17 Page 17 That was in Chicago in December of all times. Probably in 98 I think it was. Cause 97 I went to Domestic Terrorism, so by December of 98 we were meeting in Chicago. There went forty of us - twenty Agents and twenty airport police. From all over the country, but who would come to Chicago in December? Right. So, it was actually quite successful. And by May of 99, I insisted on taking the program over full-time and not working with the analytical program anymore. So I became the first full-time National Program Manager for this Civil Aviation Security Program, and by now these assessments had to be moved forward. We were looming on the deadline. The FAA was having a hard time getting organized and so we did our part. We handed over a report and we let them finish it out. And they did. But in the meantime, so now we re getting into 2000, and we re running more conferences and I m starting to push up prevention information on terrorism. At that point, more conferences. We re getting more Agents out at airports. It s really --. I was going to ask, were there --? I mean, I know in the New York Office we had someone at the various airports. Right. Well, New York was one of the few offices that had a full-time presence -- Exactly. -- at Kennedy, LaGuardia. But most places didn t. Dulles, we finally got someone out there full time. Reagan had somebody. LA had people, but not San Francisco. Dallas was one of the major airports that had full-time presence for a long time. But Miami didn t. Huh. 17

18 Page 18 The numbers started to grow. I would put out, you know, a nationwide call for Agents who had anything to do with airports to come to these conferences. They d get there and hear that other offices were establishing full-time presence, like Atlanta which didn t have one, and getting started. They began to become jealous and they felt that their offices were just as important as those other offices. So with personnel resources being what they were, the SACs were actually establishing temporary full-time presence. Couldn t establish a Resident Agency, but you could establish a temporary full-time presence. I see. So we were growing. Obviously the relationship with the airport police became phenomenal, with the FAA people. It was rather exciting. So in 2001, the confluence of events. In the year 2000 I started dealing with the Office of Foreign Missions where Robert Hanssen was working, because the Israelis started to come to our conferences. We had other international presence as well, but, you know, security representatives from El Al would come to our conferences. Huh. There were representatives from British Air. All the airports and the airlines that were major in this country were coming to our conferences. So it became not just interagency, but international. Wow! The Israelis started explaining to us back in 2000 that they, of course, were not allowed to carry guns in the airport. They were very afraid of what was going to happen at the El Al counters. They had had terrorism in Israel. And that we clearly didn t understand the terrorism threat. We didn t, we didn t live it like they did. So I spent a lot of time with the El Al representatives and meeting with Robert Hanssen trying to get the Office of Foreign Missions to find a way for the Israelis to carry guns in the airports. And the FBI Criminal Division was totally opposed to the El Al agents carrying guns. So we established rules. The guns had to be locked up. There would only be one person authorized to wear a firearm. 18

19 Page 19 But these rules came about through the cooperation, really, and the good offices of Robert Hanssen. The efforts that he engaged in as well as the Criminal Division, reluctantly, you know. So he dealt a lot and as you said, he was in the Office of Foreign Missions at that time at Headquarters. Right, right. Right. I had known Robert Hanssen for a long time from WFO. We weren t best buddies, but when he got to OFM, you know, we said, Hey, Bob, you know. We got reps here. We ve got to talk. And he did. He was very bright. He knew what the issues were. And, did the best he could. But anyway, so 2000 rolls into early 2001, and my husband at that time was actually running the Hanssen investigation at WFO. He was the SAC. Who is your husband? Or former? I m sorry. My former husband. We re divorced now, but we re okay. We re good friends, very good friends. Tim Caruso. Okay. He came to me one Sunday morning. It was President s weekend, and he said, I ve got to tell you something. And of course I talked to him about my work all the time. He said, There s going to be an arrest today. You won t believe who it is. And we were on our way to a family function. He said, Sit down. And he told me. Robert Hanssen. Of course, I was speechless. I m sure. He told me what the evidence was and how they had acquired --. Not only how they acquired the evidence but how they were able to trap him. You know, and I said to him, You know I ve been on the phone with Hanssen for months. Is this going to affect me? And he said, Actually not. Obviously they had his lines tapped. But as soon as they heard legitimate business, they shut the lines down. So they were not keeping any records of his contacts with other FBI Agents who had legitimate business or whatever. 19

20 Page 20 So he knew I was on his lines. But can you imagine living in a house with a man who knew that for months? Wow! Who was going after a guy that I used to come home and talk about? That s amazing. And I would say I m amazed you even saw your husband. I would think he just worked that whole year. Well, he did work a lot. He did work a lot. When you hear this, you don t know what to --. A million things run through your mind. What have I done? What have I said? What about the Israelis? You know, all of it. So we actually went to the family function and he left at two o clock because the meet was happening at four. You know, the supposed drop. He was on site when the arrest was made. And it was frightening, you know. This was now early That was February. I remember. February, Yeah. Right. Well, around that time I also went to the retirement conference because I was theoretically eligible a year after that. I get to the retirement conference, actually I went to the retirement conference say in May or June of 01. So a few more months had gone by. May or June of 01, I go to the retirement conference and I find out that I had actually been eligible six months prior. That the Bureau had made a mistake with my retirement eligibility date. This was my Bureau of Prisons experience and because I had switched retirement plans. I see. So I come back from the retirement conference eligible which does not happen to most people. I had always vowed that I would leave the Bureau when I was eligible and move on. 20

21 Page 21 So I started putting in applications with the airlines. I thought I loved this aviation security stuff. I m sure I can get a job, you know. Prepared a resume. The summer went by and not much was happening and by August I said, You know, people are away. I think I ll just wait until September. Right, right. And, then on the morning of 9/11, I was having a meeting at FAA. We had walked in just about 8:55. Everyone huddled around the TVs; saw the first plane go in the building. Horrible accident. Exactly. By the time we got up to the third floor, the second plane was going in and we said, Not an accident. And so we immediately left. In the fifteen minutes that it took for me to get back to FBI Headquarters -- I went straight to the Strategic Information Operations Center, the SIOC. They had already identified the perpetrators. They had already had their seats, you know, who was on what plane. These obviously had unfolded, you know, many minutes before that. And me being in charge of Civil Aviation Security, I just sat there. I m thinking, What did I miss? Was there threat information sitting on my desk that I was too busy to see? And it ultimately was determined not. Thank God. That there was like, for instance, the Phoenix Memo. I never saw that. Never saw anything that went to the Terrorism Division but the operational information. There wasn t great communication between some units and sections in Headquarters. Those people were in a different unit and section. And so, yeah, you think to yourself, Well, suppose someone s seen a memo and sends it over to the Civil Aviation Program since we have Agents there. You could think it out. And you can say, Well, what would we have done differently than they did? Probably not a hell of a lot. Not a whole lot. Right. Because, again, we were dealing with the perception of discrimination. You know, can t just go after Arabs. Exactly. I m going to just pause for just one minute. I m going to flip this cassette over. 21

22 Page 22 Sure. Just a moment. Go ahead, Bev. There we were in a very small room which began to get to be a bigger and bigger room. And people asking me what I could do. I said, Well, I ve got all the contacts with the airlines. Of course, the airplanes were being brought down to the ground. It took about three hours. How long after what did you hear of the attack on the Pentagon? I m just forgetting. I was already at Headquarters. We were already at Headquarters when we heard there was an explosion. At the Pentagon? The Pentagon. Then we heard about the plane in Pennsylvania. It was frightening because people were starting to talk about the Sears Tower. Talking about, you know, what else was going down. What other tall buildings? Yeah. What, what s going on here? Nobody really knew the objective of the Pentagon versus the Capitol or, you know, the Pennsylvania plane. Only later did we find out what happened on the plane to Pennsylvania. You know, that it might have been intended for the Capitol or the White House. Right. So, you know, theoretically. Nobody can say that for sure. But, you know, that s the supposition. So, it was really pandemonium, and yet it was very organized. All I was doing was multiple phone lines. We already had evidence coming in within I think twenty-four hours about potential cohorts of these guys. So we were getting that information to the airlines. 22

23 Page 23 It was the actual genesis of the No Fly list. Meaning you generate names of cohorts and you worry about them later. You just don t let anybody with this remote name get on a plane. And we ll worry about it later. It was kind of a hectic time obviously. So I was really stationed in SIOC and managing all the efforts. Airport agents were calling in. What do we do? Of course, by that point Now, my program had already identified an Agent who would be responsible for every airport. Four hundred and twenty-nine airports were regulated by FAA. So even if there wasn t a full-time presence at the airport, every airport had the card of an FBI Agent. I see. It wasn t the case before. From small to large. So naturally those Agents knew what they were doing. When they heard, they all high-tailed it out to their airports. Their SACs were obviously very cooperative. So they stayed there for weeks at their airports. Those guys that had more than one airport spent a lot of time in the car. Going around to the airports. Getting from one to the other. Getting information of all --. Any unusual activities. Any --. And all that was being run out of Headquarters, which doesn t usually run an investigation. But we were not really running an investigation of the plane crashes, we were running the prevention effort. We were running the case, the part of the case that involved making sure nothing else bad happened. And where can we go? Where do we try now to connect the dots? Does anybody know anything about any flight students or anything? But we have that network established. Which is great. 23

24 Page 24 If anything good came out of what I did before 9/11, I ll always be proud of that fact that we pushed hard to impress upon these small and large offices that you need to have somebody. And it can t be a handshake once a year. The guys had to go out to the airport at least once a month, because those guys are not going to think to pick up the phone and call him or her. And we had many women out at the airports which is fabulous. Now that s a great program. And as you said, thank goodness you had done that. Right. And I just look back on all the work we d put into establishing it ahead of time, that it really, really paid off. Even the Agents were just stunned that they were able to kick into gear so quickly. And, you know, shortly I would say, probably by the middle of October, the anthrax case arose. Now people were seeing white powders everywhere. For the first time I had contact with the Airline Dispatchers Federation. Because I didn t really know how the system worked, but airlines are not really run by the FAA. The FAA maintains space between airplanes, but airline dispatchers tell the planes where to go. So, you know, if you have a disruptive passenger you go to this airport. They call in and they say, We ve got white powder floating down from the baggage racks. What do we do? So we established a system at that point for the dispatchers to have direct contact with FBI Headquarters. Huh. Wow! There was just a lot going on during the investigations. You know, the military, at that point, what are we sharing with the military? We had Pentagon representatives wanting to know about Domestic Terrorist activities, you know, flights. They were following these planes if these planes went off course. If the plane entered a no-fly zone the military was scrambling planes. They were ready to shoot planes down. So there I was meeting with the military. I was assigned to a task force. The acronym was JTAMDO. It s probably not even in existence anymore, but it was designed to increase the cooperation between the military and the FBI over air space security. 24

25 Page 25 They were based out of Crystal City, so we would have all these meetings. The military is just an unbelievable organization, putting together PowerPoint presentations of pictures of air zones and how the planes are going to --. The civilian planes are going to fly, and the military planes are going to chase after them. Oh, my God! I can t imagine. Those meetings, I would think they would have just gone on forever and ever. Well, they did. Ultimately the reason I ended up retiring, I had by then brought in four Agents from the field, all of whom had vast aviation or airplane experience which is not that prevalent in the Bureau, that somebody wants to come to Headquarters and has that experience. But there was a woman from Newark who had been helping me from Newark write documents. She was one of the four Agents that I promoted into the Headquarters unit. The Iraq War was ginning up around the end of 2002, and they were starting to yank people from different programs. Believe it or not, they were yanking people from the Civil Aviation Security Program because by now TSA was up and running, and the Bureau just was not sure what its role was. This woman took over the program and, I just said, I m going to retire. It s time. I m tired. This woman had ten years left in her career. She can run this program. She took the darn thing to new heights and ended up resigning from the Bureau because TSA offered her an SES position in the Federal Air Marshal Program because of the work she had done in the FBI. Ummm. So, all s well that ends well as far as the end of my career was concerned. It got pretty stepped up between the China case and moving right into counterterrorism. To this day, I still can t believe that even my career was entwined with Hanssen. Yeah, it s funny that people say a lot of bad things about him. He was a very strange fellow. But even my husband said that he could tell that he did the right thing by me for the Civil Aviation Security Program. There were good parts of his work. There was good work that he did. He didn t get any money for that work. There was no one to pay him for that work. It wasn t stealing secrets, but it really was something he did. And we accomplished that. Other than the fact that he was a terrible person because of what he did. People died. People lost their lives because of him. 25

26 Page 26 Right. The one area where my life crossed his, I have to say that it was okay. I even don t know if he remembers it, you know. You re right. You wonder. Right. You wonder. But, but he knew. He really had, really, really knew what he was doing there. Only later did I hear stories of Agents who were traveling on 395 when the plane went into the Pentagon and they diverted. They just --. They didn t even wait for directions. They immediately took the Pentagon exit and were there for days, you know, sorting through things. It took a long time for all of that to come out about what individual efforts people made, you know, to help solve this case. Exactly. You know, being a former Agent I just was thinking, I just said, These Agents must be working just non-stop for many, many, many months. They were, and you d have thought you would have heard the explosion at the Washington Field Office at the Pentagon, but we didn t. We, we only heard about it. No one knew what it was. People thought maybe there was a bomb inside. You know, when the word came through that a plane hit, it was very devastating. Because this wasn t now just New York. This wasn t just two crazy, you know, planes. It was bad. The whole future of the Bureau s role in civil aviation security started to just expand dramatically. Until TSA got on its feet. FAA was not really well suited to managing the effort that TSA manages today. It was more of an administrative organization which it remains today. And it did that part very well. It was only after I retired that I went back to the Bureau after about eighteen months. Back to the Counterintelligence Division. Eventually left Virginia to come to Maryland where I have a boat and where I love to sail. Yes. And so you re still presently working as a retired Special Agent. 26

27 Page 27 No, I just retired from the contract after five years. Almost five years I was on contract with the Counterintelligence Division, working with performance measures and performance metrics and case related information. But we set the Bureau up to report its performance. The whole goal at that point was to hire a contractor until it could be transitioned to an employee. I pretty much took it as far as I could take it. And then, the Government s looking to downsize on contractors and I was a personal service contractor along with about seventy other people, but I was one of the first ones. So five years, I had gotten the program really off its feet. They knew what they were doing and were ready to transition it. Well, was this contractual work that you did, was that part of an afterthought of, you know, of 9/11, trying to determine and measure performance to have more information? Actually the Performance Review Act from the mid-90s was, was --. We, we had just not participated in it, but the 9/11, what 9/11 did was demonstrate that there were people out there who could come back to help the Bureau -- Right. -- if there were a mechanism to do so. In any capacity, whether it was to work the case, whether it was to work interviews. They were just debating the issue of short-term, longterm --. Do they have to become an employee? Will they lose their retirement money? And once those logistics were worked out -- Right, right. -- they were able to -- the Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Divisions were granted the authority to hire personal service contractors. And then ultimately it expanded because we just really weren t able to hire enough people and bring them on board with experience. What happened was we were losing a lot of experience. And those guys that retired in June and July of 01, they were waiting to come back and no one made --. Couldn t do it. Exactly. There was no mechanism to allow them to come back. Very frustrating to them. 27

28 Page 28 I was just going to say, very frustrating. As opposed to my Israeli friend who had retired from El Al, when 9/11 hit, his government called him back into service. Huh. And, they didn t mess around and he did it. He did whatever he could to help. And ultimately went into the private sector. But we just didn t really have a mechanism for bringing people back on board and so it took two years or more than that, three years actually. And, of course, contractors cost a little bit less than employees. Well, exactly. It was really win-win for everybody. We were not getting the going contractor rate by any stretch. And there was no middle man. So it was great. You worked directly for the Bureau. Right, yeah. And then, don t have to worry about the benefits and all of that. Right. I look back on a career of very funny instances working with some fabulous guys who I still see through the retired Agents association. But I remember when I was first in the office in WFO many years ago, again, there weren t many women. We didn t know how to dress. For instance, do you dress down? Do you dress up? Right. And do you wear a skirt? Do you wear pants? What you do with a gun? Where you put it? (chuckle) Right, right. And, especially on surveillance, what do you do? Exactly. So, I remember coming in and I was still young and no one told me the nature of the surveillance was we were supposed to be dressed up. So, of course, I was dressed very down. Okay, first mistake. So they knew I wasn t getting out of the car. (chuckle) 28