Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Christine M. Jung ( ) Interviewed by Susan Wynkoop On June 18, 2009

Transcription

1 Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Christine M. Jung ( ) Interviewed by Susan Wynkoop On Edited for spelling, repetitions etc., by Sandra Robinette on July 20, Edited with Ms. Jung s corrections by Sandra Robinette on August 8, Susan Hi. Today is. And today I m interviewing Chris Jung. And it s spelled, J-u-n-g. Chris was a Special Agent from 1973 to I m sure she was in the first twenty female Agents hired with the FBI; and was our first female Firearms Instructor. And, and we ll talk about this more, was the first female to shoot a possible, which is amazing. But I first want to read into the tape, the Copyright Release form, which states: 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 Worldwide Web and the recordings transferred to an established repository for preservation and research. So, again, Chris, welcome. And how are you today? Christine Fine. Thank you. Great. As I was telling, Chris, I initially just want you to tell me a little bit about your background and education prior to your FBI career. I graduated from the University of Miami, in Florida, in With a Bachelor of English. About two years before I graduated, I actually signed up for the Marine Corps as an officer. So right after graduation, I went up to Quantico, Virginia, and went through The Basic School, which at that time, was separated from the men.

2 Page 2 Now, how did you become interested in the Marines? Well, I realized that I wasn t really qualified out of college to do very much of anything. I ve always loved America and wanted to try to do something for it. I m an only child and my parents had always told me I could do anything I wanted to as long as I wanted to be the best at it. Right. And so I remember calling my father, I had seen an Officer, Recruitment Officer, over at the Student Union, and I called my folks that night. And I was talking to my dad, who was in the Army in World War II as enlisted. I asked him what he thought about the idea. And he said, I think he took about a five second pause, and said it d probably be the smartest thing I d ever done. Wow! That s great. So that, you know, that convinced me to go ahead and, it was a threeyear commitment. I received a Reserve Commission. So, my first office was Cherry Point, North Carolina. I was an Admin Officer and a Non-Lawyer Legal Officer. And went from Cherry Point and was transferred up to Quantico, Virginia. [I] was the Assistant Base Personnel Officer for about a year. And then I was transferred out to The Basic School, and was the Personnel Officer for The Basic School. Which, as you know, is very close to the FBI Academy [on the Marine Corps Base]. Exactly. And that is still, I mean, although the whole base has grown a great deal. And, I guess, that s one reason why some of our offices, the Foundation Office, had to move to Dumfries, and everything. But, I m sure the Marines have grown, I would think. It s huge. Once again, back then it was just the male officers that were out at TBS. Okay. 2

3 Page 3 Now, the female are out there too. It s a joint training facility. Of course, the Academy was a lot smaller back then, too. Exactly. And, I guess, being on the Marine Corps Base, that s how you got interested in the FBI? Or, tell me about that. I had been interested when I first got assigned to Quantico. There was a Senate program, I can t remember the name of it, but all of the Senators had some kind of contest that they would do with high school students. And each Senator would select one high school student from his state to come to Washington for, I think it was ten days. And, so you re talking, you know, a hundred students. And they went around and got volunteers from the, (laughing) quote un-quote volunteers, from the various military units in the area. Uh-huh. So I was one of the military chaperones for the kids to make sure that they re not getting into any trouble. One of the things they did was a tour of FBI Headquarters and we actually walked through Hoover s office and met him. Wow! And, of course, I asked the Tour Guide about the idea of going into, if the FBI was hiring women yet? And I was told absolutely not. Right. So, I had some interest in it. And, actually, what happened was, I was trying to Augment, to go regular in the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington had actually lost my entire personnel file. So the Augment Board wouldn t consider me unless they had a personnel folder. How do they lose a file? How did they lose that, or they just couldn t come up with it? They probably lost it in transfer to the Augment Board. I see. 3

4 Page 4 But they never did find it. Wow. I was probably too stunned, actually, to make a big stink out of it. And then one night somebody broke into my office at The Basic School and peeled open my safe and stole about 60 blank Dependent ID cards, which, back then, were probably going for about $600 each on Okinawa. Wow! So it was a big loss. So Special Agent Oliver Zink came up from the Fredericksburg RA to do a CGR (Crime on a Government Reservation) investigation on the burglary. And in the course of talking to me, he asked me if I was going to make a career out of the Marine Corps? And this was just after Joanne Pierce was hired by the FBI as an Agent. So I knew that the first two females were going through the Academy. And I told them no, that I was trying to augment but they had lost my file. So he asked me, he said, How tall are you? And I said, Five five and a half. And he said, No. You re not. You re five six. And he handed me an application. Oh, that s so funny. Cause I know the height was a The height requirements at the time had not been lowered for the females, so the minimum height was 5 7 tall. that was a requirement. So I went ahead and filled it out and that s how I came into the Bureau, really. I got a call from Bob O Brien who was my Applicant Agent, and he was assigned to the Alexandria Office. And he went over my application with me and things were going, I thought were going well. By this time, I had actually gotten out of the Marine Corps. 4

5 Page 5 Okay. So I was unemployed, living in my little mobile home in Alexandria. And I get this call from O Brien that told me that my application had stopped. They couldn t go any further with it because (laughing), you guessed it. There was no record of me ever having been in the Marine Corps. Ohhh, my gosh! That s a nightmare. So, so I asked him what I should do? And he said, you need to contact your Congressman and see if they can do anything. So, I had a friend of mine who worked for a Congressman. She helped me get an appointment with my Congressman. He said, Well, I ll put somebody on this. And, we ll try to, try to take care of it. As a matter of fact, he tried to hire me himself. And, to make a long story short, I got another call from Bob about two days later. And he said, I don t know who you talked to, or what you said. But I ve got a glowing performance file on you for the entire three years. Wow. So, I mean, we just sat there. I started laughing. I said, There s no question in my mind that they just sat some PFC down and dictated a performance Exactly. What a story. It was good enough for the Bureau. So that s how I got in. Hmmm! That s amazing. That really is. How did you find the training for the FBI as compared to the training you had with the Marine Corps? Or were you, or are you able to compare them? Oh yes. There was no comparison. In the Marine Corps, for the Women Marines back then, they had a 600 yard walk/run. That was their physical fitness. 5

6 Page 6 Oh my goodness. That s all. Six hundred yards. And it was called the Walk/Run. There really wasn t a time on it that I can recall. Wow. And we had no firearms training at all. Women weren t allowed, WMs weren t allowed to fire a weapon. Oh, okay. Wow. So, well, we had an option, while the men were firing their weapons, we could go bowling (laughing). That s amazing! Bowling or play volleyball. So, when I got to Quantico, it was the first time, really, that I ever had to do any amount of real running. It was very difficult for me. As it was for, I think, for most of the women. The University of Miami had no physical fitness program. They didn t even have a gym. That s just sort of the way it was. I know. Right. Right. So, I mean, you know, back in 1973 they didn t even have running shoes! You re right. We were running in Keds. I m sure. The little thing with the one, half inch sole. (Laughing) 6

7 Page 7 Wow. And truth be told, I, I don t think that, I know I wouldn t have graduated had it not been for the work of, we had four female Agents, and four black Agents in the class. And we kind of hung together, at least in the gym. They, they really helped me out. I know one gentleman, Ernie Odom who, every night after class, was out there and he would pace me; run with me, and pace me. That s great. I d have never made it without their help. As a matter of fact, most of the time he was running backwards! Hmmm! Egging me on. Right. (Laughing) So that was a lot of work. That meant a lot. But in firearms, I had no problem with firearms. I had very good eyehand coordination. I have an artistic ability. And so my eye-hand coordination was very good. So that was a piece of cake. A lot of the students were having a lot of problem with firearms. Was that surprising to you? Well, were you surprised at how well you did shoot? But then, again, when you look back on it, we had excellent firearms instructors. 7

8 Page 8 And, you know, once you get the idea of what a sight picture looks like, you know, it s just a matter of having the hand strength. And I ve always been, you know, I m big-boned. So, I didn t have a problem with the recoil with the handgun. A lot of the women did. In 1973, because I know it varies so much, did you shoot during the training with a four inch barrel but you were given, when you left Quantico, a two and a half inch barrel? Right. The, yes, the five shot. Okay. And, actually it was a two inch barrel. The five shot, two inch barrel. And they actually wanted us to fire the PPC with it. Which we did. I mean, and I, I just, I said I don t want this gun. I want the gun that I trained with. But they wouldn t let us have that. That s amazing. Because I think it varied. I think sometimes the women came in and they were given the two inch, and they had to train, they had to qualify with it. And now I m hearing of other years, that you shot with a four inch, but were given the two inch. And so it, really, I think, varied during those first few years. Right. We actually trained the whole time with a four inch weapon. And then, the last time we went out, they actually brought out the two inch, five shot. And, of course, the difference in the scores was dramatic. I mean, here you are going out onto the street with no confidence in your weapon. Or your ability to shoot! I mean, it s not the weapons fault. Right. And, I guess, the only thing you can say about that is that, I suppose, they thought they were doing the right thing. But, in fact, they definitely were not. Yes, hindsight. Hindsight. I mean, you know, they changed all the time. It was different, once again, when I was on the range. Exactly. But, back then, they also issued us purses. Ugly! Ugly! (Laughing) 8

9 Page 9 I can only imagine what those must have looked like. I m surprised it didn t flash on and off FBI. (Laughing) Oh, it would be interesting to actually have one of those purses at the museum. And I ll bet someone has one. Well, not I. (Laughing) But I ll bet you, the faster you could throw that in the garbage, probably the better. Right? I never really liked carrying the weapon in a purse because, at least during our training, we never had it to train with. You know. They just issued it to us. And, all of a sudden, you know, you re in a cross-draw situation. Right. Or, that you actually have to hold your purse down with your weak hand as you draw your weapon. People don t understand that. Right. I carry my shoulder bags on my left side. And I can t carry them, it s weird, but I can t carry them on my right. Right. Oh, it s just very complicated. So either way you re drawing the weapon across either your arm or your hand. Uhm-hmm! Oh, I hadn t thought about that. If you could even get to it, with, you know, all the other stuff that we carry in there! Well, so after, so the training was very demanding as opposed to Marine Corps. See, I would ve thought the Marines would ve been fairly intense. But I m totally incorrect. 9

10 Page 10 No. Back then. I mean, now it s probably much harder, without question. Yes, they put the women through the same training as the men now in the Marine Corps. Now, so, out of Quantico; what was your first office? Newark. You went straight to Newark? Okay. And were there any women there, at that time? No. Okay. So you were the first? It was about 450 male Agents and me. How did you find that? Just being the only woman there. It was challenging. Actually, you know, Newark was a fantastic office. First of all, there s a lot of job security in Newark. We were still in the old Courthouse Building. About a year after I got there, we moved into new quarters; still downtown, just a couple blocks away. But my first Supervisor was a gentleman by the name of Dick Davis. And he had the ITSP, the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property Squad. And we also had Kidnappings and Extortions because there were so few of those. And I was assigned to his squad. And, later on, in talking with Dick, who I m still in touch with, he indicated that they were at an SAC meeting with all the Supervisors. And the SAC, who was Wally LaPrade, J. Wallace LaPrade, he announced that they were getting four new Agents and one of them was a female. He asked if anybody was interested in having her assigned to them? And Dick said he sat there and he s looking at twenty-some-odd guys in the room and not one of them held up their hand. 10

11 Page 11 So he said, I ll take her! He said, Any woman that can get through the Marine Corps and FBI Training has gotta be good. Oh, that s great. So that s how I got on Dick s Squad. I see. And the first day I showed up, Dick had, first of all, he had a great sense of humor. And when I came in, signed in, and he got me into his office and he, in the course of welcoming me, said, Now, you know, next time you come in, you come in through the side door that the Agents use. And he handed me the key to get me in that door. And he said, And it also opens up the, and he stopped. And he just looked at me and started laughing. He goes, Well, I guess you don t need to go into the men s room. (Laughing) I knew that s what you were going to say. Oh, my goodness! He just chuckled. He said, I ll get you a steno key. (Laughing) Will that be okay? (Laughing) And I said, Yes, that ll be fine. He hadn t come across that one yet. Right? Well, it said while you were in, well, while you were an Agent, prior to your supervisory years, that you worked a lot of criminal undercover assignments throughout the U.S. Were they long-term sorts of undercover things? No. Not in my first office. I did have a long-term one out of the Washington Field Office. But most, you know, for the first three months there, they just sort of hung back and watched to see what, what I would do. And whether or not I could take, you know, the tricks and the little rite of passage games that they played. 11

12 Page 12 Exactly. And, I was fine with that. That was kind of fun because they were really waiting for you to, to play it back on them. And I did. You know, little by little, the Agents would come to me and ask me, you know, through Dick, my Supervisor, if I could help them out on a case. So that s how I started working different things. Although, you know, I was ITSP, I also did, you know, organized crime, undercovers, and a lot of surveillances. Nobody ever knew we had female Agents, so I could walk right up to people and they d just keep on talking. Uhm-hnmm. The Bank Robbery Squad had a bank robbery gang going around, hitting specific banks. They had an informant who indicated that they were going to hit this one particular bank. I heard that the Bank Robbery Supervisor had taken all of the tellers off, except for the senior female teller, and had put Agents, male Agents in as tellers. So there are probably two Agents behind the teller cages. Uh-huh. And, as it turned out, they, the robbers didn t show up that day. But I thought strongly about it and I asked Dick if I could talk to the Bank Robbery Supervisor about it. He said that he thought it was a good idea; that I could go ahead and do that. So I walked in and talked to the Supervisor, a lovely gentleman, and I explained to him that I was concerned and very disappointed that rather than put a civilian female in danger, that I wished that in the future he d consider using me in that purpose. And I said, I ve been trained for this. And, he just looked at me and he was, I think he was pretty shocked, and he says, But, you don t understand. I have a daughter your age. You know. And I looked at him and, at least he was honest, and I said, I appreciate that. But, you know, I m not your daughter. I m an FBI Agent. And, we came to, we came to appreciate each other. And he used me in the future. So that was good. Oh, that s great. 12

13 Page 13 But I know it was a hard barrier for a lot of the male Agents to cross, you know. Yes, it was difficult. You re surrounded by all these men and a large portion of them were single. I had no problem with being accepted by the older Agents. The Agents that had been out of the Academy five or more years. I think the younger Agents who had just graduated; one was in my class. I mean, for some reason, I think they probably thought of me, anyway, as a (sigh), I don t know, it s difficult to put Your finger on it. Right. I think that I, by my mere presence, I may have wounded their pride. You know. The macho-ism that, you know, the older guys didn t have any women Agents as an issue. You re right. Now that makes sense. That their club had been sort of changed. The squad was very tight. When you re in a terrible office, like Newark, where there aren t a lot of things to do, you know, (laughing) safe things to do, anyway, at night, you tend to band together. 13

14 Page 14 And so we d have parties at various Agents houses and, of course, they d bring their wives and, and the first one I went to, I tried to sit out in the living room with the women, but I had nothing in common with them. And it was, it was painfully obvious and finally I just, because they were all young and had children and talking about all those things, important things. And I finally said, If you don t mind, I m going to go out in the kitchen. (Laughing) And they just chuckled. They said, That s fine. Oh yes. That s, you re trying to please everyone, but yet, you re not pleasing yourself. I couldn t talk with them, other than to say hi, you know. Right. Right. No, that s understandable. So you were in Newark for five years. Were you in that one office that whole time until 78? No. I went from, I went from Newark, I was in Newark about two years. Okay. And then went to Washington Field Office. Okay. One of the things in Newark that amazed me, and I remember it clearly. We had a case where we went out and arrested a jewelry fence. I m sorry. A jewelry fence? And we went out and executed a search warrant on his house. And we walked in and, the entire floor, on the first floor, this includes the kitchen, was filled with paper bags. Wow. There was just nothing but a little aisle to walk through. And, of course, all the bags were filled with jewelry. And, so we had seized all of them. We put them in a private office. And, my boss put me in there with a camera and sheets of paper. And my job for the next, like three months, was trying to describe each and every one of these pieces and photograph them. Then take them to our jewelry contact, who would take a look at them through his loupe to determine whether they were real. And, I mean, everything in this place was real! 14

15 Page 15 Some of it was the gaudiest things; but what kept striking me was nobody knew what was in there. I was in there all alone. And everybody trusted me explicitly. I mean, it was, I could have stuffed this stuff anywhere. Right. And walked out with it. I mean, it was just amazing. One piece was a beautiful gold charm bracelet. And I managed to identify the owner; a female doctor. And I actually made a phone call to her and was able to tell her that we had her bracelet, which had been stolen from her about three years before. And she just broke down in tears. Aww, that s something. So, I mean, it was, it was a fun office to work in. Wow. So this fence, he must have just had contacts Oh yes. It was just incredible. And you d look at stuff and you d go this is so gaudy, it can t possibly be real diamonds. Wrong! But it was. Oh my gosh. That s something. You don t forget a case like that either. No. Oh, that takes so much time. And, ohhh! Patience, just to get through all of that. But the guys were, the squad members were, you know, by and large, very, very good. They had, they had good senses of humor. And the stuff that they did to me, they did to everybody. Male and female, you mean? Well, I mean all the other guys. I knew that I wasn t being targeted, or anything, because I was a female. So, so that was, that was fine. Great. So then, so you were there about two years. And, like you said, you d get a good overview of criminal work because there s a lot going on in Newark, I would think. 15

16 Page 16 And then, now was it that Agents got changed around within two years? Oh, so you did? Back then, you were generally in your first office two years. Okay. And then were you able to say I would like to be in this or that office? Or you just received a letter saying you re going to this No I just asked for a large office. Okay. Because I much prefer big cities. So I got Washington Field Office. And, and that s again, a great office to learn so much in. Wow. And everybody that went into Washington Field Office went to one of the two Applicant Squads for at least a year. Which was fine. You know, it got you all over the city. So you learned DC. And everybody else in there was just as anxious as you were to get off Applicants. Right. I m sure. So then I went to the Fugitive Squad from there. And that must have been really good work in Washington, I would think? Yes, it was. It was very enjoyable. In Washington, in that it s a fairly large office, and were a few other women? Or not? At this time. At that time, let s see, Christine was there. But she resigned right before, or right after I got there. And went to work up on the Hill. I can t think of her last name. Hansen? Is it? 16

17 Page 17 Hansen. So, once again, I was the only female there. Oh, you were. Okay. Wow! Did you feel as if people were waiting for you to make a mistake? Or was the, it was okay being the only woman, I m sure there were trying times. They, you know, I don t think anybody was waiting for me to make a mistake in, in Newark or WFO. Good. You know, I think that the bottom line was you re an Agent. You know, you went through Quantico. You did that rite of passage. And, you know, that was during the time Chris Hansen brought a class action lawsuit against the Bureau, and I opted out of that. And so one of the Agents, one of the guys asked me what I d [done] and I said I opted out. I ve never been discriminated against. So, I think most of my time in Newark and in WFO, I looked at that as, as people had a lot of good senses of humor. There was a lot of kidding around. But it was good kidding around. It wasn t anything cruel. Exactly. Right. Right. The Principal Firearms Instructor at WFO was Lou Padula. Of course, you have to re-qualify, and I was doing one of the re-qualifications. And he says, You know, you re pretty good with firearms. He said, Would you be interested in going to Firearms Instructor School? And I just looked at him and I said, There aren t any female Firearms Instructors. He said, Well, somebody s gotta be first. Would you like to go? And I said, Yes, right, Lou! Do you think they re going to let me go? Okay, fine. If they do, that ll be good. And next thing I knew, I was down at Quantico for, I think it was a three-week school. That s great. 17

18 Page 18 I bet you enjoyed, I mean, knowing that they wanted you there. And it was time for a woman to step up and do that. And you were the first one to do it. It must have felt great. It did. You know, the guys that were in the class, they weren t out to prove anything. So, they were just guys that were going through the class with me. You know, firearms, it s not something intellectual. By that I mean, you either can shoot or you can t shoot; and everybody standing around you can see that. You know, it s instant feedback. Right. And do you look at it as, say, a learned skill? I mean, it s just something you have to learn. It s like anything. There was a lot of practice. Especially when, years later when I got to Quantico, as an Instructor. I had the opportunity to do a lot of practice. It s a learned skill. It s eye-hand coordination and recognizing what that front sight picture looks like. Uh-huh. And not being afraid of it. Right. And so during this three weeks of instruction, I m sure, you fired many, many weapons? Right. Semi-automatics, rifles, shotguns and we shot the Thompsons. Back then, we still fired the Thompsons. All, we all had them in the office vaults. You re right. I remember I had, I still do, but I had long fingernails. And all the guys were watching me to see, you know, if I was going to break a nail. And getting those bullets out and all that. How quickly can she do this? Oh, I bet. Well, so you finished up that three weeks. And so, did they, at that time, say Can you, or did you know when you went down there that you were going to stay at Quantico as an instructor? 18

19 Page 19 No. No. No, I went back, I went back to the field because I went down as a Field Firearms Instructor. Okay. So, I would go down with Lou and walk the line during the requalification shoots that all the Agents had to go through. And so did WFO shoot at Quantico? Is that where? Okay. I guess I knew that but I had sort of forgotten that. Okay. So you were down there a lot. This wasn t so long after, you know, this was just a few years, two or three years after I had graduated from the Academy. So I knew all of the Firearms Instructors; the full-time guys that were down there. Larry Schmidle was the Unit Chief, and all of the guys. So, I mean, they knew me, and we kibitzed back and forth. And, that was fine. That s great. So then you finally were offered a full-time position there? Yes, I got a call from, I can t remember, I think it was an Assistant Director of the Training Division, and he wanted to know if I would be interested in going full-time at the Academy, as a Firearms Instructor. And I was just ecstatic. I said, Well, yes, I d love to. It s a great opportunity. I lived down in Lake Ridge, I was like halfway between DC and, and Quantico. It was on Friday. I left WFO and Monday I went down and started at the Academy. When I walked in to the Assistant Director s Office, and it had been less than a week, when I talked with him, he said, There s been a change in plans. 19

20 Page 20 Oh, no. That I was no longer going to go the range as a Firearms Instructor; that I would be going to the Unit that teaches the New Agents, you know, Interviewing Techniques, and all of the book-learning stuff. He called it walking the boards. And, I would also be a Counselor, a Class Counselor. And I found out through the grapevine that, I guess, Larry Schmidle and all of the on-board Firearms Instructors had pitched a fit and said that if they had a female over there, that they weren t going to work. Really?! So, I went over to the Training Unit, the New Agents Training Unit; and Bill Gulbicki was my Unit Chief then. And I taught Interviewing Techniques and was a Class Counselor to probably three or four classes. Because I was a qualified Firearms Instructor, whenever one of my New Agent Classes was out on the line, I d go walk the line with them. Try to help them if they were having problems with firearms. That job lasted about a year. Wow. And then I got called in to Bill Gulbicki s office and he said, Well, and this was a Friday, he said, Well, on Monday you re going to report over at the range. You ll be a Firearms Instructor. And I just looked at him and I said, What s going on? And he goes, Well, evidently somebody thinks it s time. I think it was, I don t know exactly when, but I think Chris Hansen had filed her suit back then. And they decided that they wanted a female Agent, over on the range. So, I was sent over there. And I remember I went over that afternoon, Friday afternoon, after lunch, or probably during lunch. Larry Schmidle was in his office but there were no Agents out in the bullpen area. So I walked into Larry s office. Now, I know Larry from way back He looked up and he saw me. And he never said, Come on in, Chris, have a seat. I m just standing there and he looked at me and said, I don t want you here. I didn t ask for you, and I don t think you can do the job. 20

21 Page 21 Wow! He said, We teach National Academy, old salty police officers here, and they re not going to take training from a female. And, he said, But I don t have anything to say about it so go out and pick a desk. Wow! So, after that welcome, I remember that whole weekend, I spent the whole weekend trying to find navy blue slacks that looked good on me typical female! Right. Right. And powder blue shirts; short-sleeve powder blue shirts. And I ended up having to buy a long-sleeve and cut the sleeves off over the weekend. That Monday morning, I drive over, park my car, by the Firearms Unit, and walked in to sign the book and nobody was there; which wasn t unusual. The guys usually signed in and then went over to the cafeteria. And sat up there at one big table, way in the back. I just put my stuff down and went over to the cafeteria; went through the line and got my coffee. And, of course, I m in uniform now, and I walk back to the table and I sit down. All of them, but two, stood up with their trays and went to the next table over. Wow. Imagine what my, your stomach, or, I don t know, what your heart was feeling at this time. Lee Anderson and Rollie Swanson, both stayed at the table with me. Good ol Rollie. And Lee. Lee said to me, he said, Chris, ignore them. They re just little boys; they ll come around. And I said, Okay. I m just here to do a job. So, and that was that. That was my welcome to the range. Wow! That s tough. 21

22 Page 22 That really is. So, over time, did you, you know, did you all mesh and things became great. Once again, you know, they started playing the little tricks that they play on everybody. (Laughing) You know, if you left your whistle on your desk, they d invariably come over and put little balls of paper in it. So when you were up, you know, with your class and getting ready to say, All ready on the line, and blow the whistle, it would come out splattttt. (Laughing) Or they d go up in the tower that I would have to sit in, and turn on the heat in the middle of summer, instead of the air conditioner. If you had an afternoon class, when you opened up the door to go up, you d be hit by, you know, 120 degree heat. But they did that with everybody. Hmmm. And so I just started doing the same things. Lee Anderson and I became Puck s bad boys, and we d go around and play tricks on them, too. Which is yes, the way to go. After awhile I just became one of the guys. But, we had some female trainees that were coming through; this was before they had strength tests. You know, before you had to be able to pull the trigger x number of times before being accepted for training. This was before they did that. And, as a result, we had some very small female Agent Trainees that were coming through, that simply could not pull the trigger more than three or four times without double fingering the trigger. Right. Using both hands. 22

23 Page 23 And their hands were so small that the blow back was hitting the first joint of their thumb instead of the web; because they couldn t seat the weapon properly. So, it was difficult. I remember one young trainee I had, I took her aside because she was just breaking down. She was about, she wasn t even five feet, and she was just crying. And, so I had her holster her gun and I walked her off the line and, and I m talking with her, and I asked her what she did before she came into the Academy. She said she was a schoolteacher. And I said, Well, what made you come in to the FBI? And she said, Well, I thought this would be good. And I said, Why didn t you stay as a teacher? She said, Because the kids were running me ragged, and I couldn t control them. And I said, Well, what grade did you have? She said, Third. Oh wow! So I talked with her some more and, and she DOR d. We had a lot of those. And, a few male trainees that should never have come in too. So, that was, that was part of our job. And you wanted safety, and, not that you ever wanted to see anybody not make it through the Academy, but some people just weren t suited. Exactly. And they had, as you said, and now, boy, you really have to be able to run, etc; do so many things before you can even go through the Academy. Oh yes. And I really think that s a good thing I do too. We had so many, we had almost a whole class of students that were just, that were hold-overs, you know. There were injured, and waiting to heal, and walking on crutches. It s, I m sure much, much better today. Because when I went through in 79, there were some people that just could not make it. And it s unfortunate cause they realized they shouldn t be there, and it s just, you know, it s wasted, I think, time and effort sometimes. So it s a much better system. And I m sure you saw all sorts of folks coming through during those early years. 23

24 Page 24 I know a couple of our classmates were vociferous. I remember one of them said, You shouldn t be here. And I said to him, Why is that? And he said, Well, because you re taking up the spot of a male; of a guy who s going to make this a career. He said, All you re looking for is a husband. Wow! So that was a trainee that said that? That was one of my New Agent classmates. Oh, gosh. I m going to real briefly turn this over, Chris. Hang on just a moment. Okay. I ll go ahead and start Side B. Well, I m sure those are interesting years there, I really am. When you were an instructor there, is that when you shot your possible? I did. Lee Anderson And, of course, I know what that is, but go ahead and explain a little bit about what that was. The Possible is actually, I don t know how it was named possible, it s more like impossible. But it s a course of fire that, back then, required 60 rounds and, actually different shooting positions, starting at, well, you d start at 60 yards and then you d have to run up into the prone position at 50 yards. Fifty yards, right. Yes, 50 yards. And do some shooting and then reloading and then running up to the, I think, it was the 25-yard barricade, and do some kneeling and over the top barricade shots, and weak hand, and, it was just staged. You had to fire a total of 60 rounds under, under a very constrained time limit. 24

25 Page 25 In order to get a Possible, all 60 rounds had to go into the bottle portion of the target, and within the time frame; the limited time frame. One day Lee just took me out there. Because every time I d shoot, I d throw, like one out, you know. And he s saying, Now, today, we re going to just keep shooting until you do it. So it took about four times. Wow. And, and I remember when I finished and we went up and counted all, you know, of course, and he says, he just looked at me and said, Congratulations. He says, You re the first female to fire a Possible. And I just hugged him. I mean, it was, it was very nice of him to take me out there and do that. That s so exciting. That really is. Yes, it was a lot of fun. By the way, teaching those salty old police officers from around the country was no problem at all. I bet. I bet they were thrilled to have a woman teach. You know, the National Academy - I had probably three or four classes while I was down there. And they were just the most polite gentlemen and ladies you could hope for. That s great. And they all left better, better firearms people, too. Hmmm! I ll bet. That s super. So that must have been a great couple of years, I would certainly think. Yes, very much so. You went on to the Alexandria Field Office as a Supervisory Special Agent. That was your next step, I think? Right? 25

26 Page 26 I went into Alexandria and I had the Applicant and FCI Squad. It was mostly Applicant. We had two Applicant Squads. And, at that time, there was very little FCI, Foreign Counterintelligence, because most of it was being handled by the Washington Field Office. Okay. I see. I also had Crime on Government Reservations; which really, for us, was, was mostly the DC prison, at Lorton. So we had to handle some of the cases there. But when I, when I walked in the first day, I came in and, and my SAC, it was like déjà-vu all over again. My SAC, Larry York, just sat there and said, Well, Chris, he said, I didn t, I didn t ask I didn t ask for you? (Laughing) But here you are and, and I hope you do well. And I said, Well, thanks so much. (Laughing) And this was in So you ve been having to deal with this for eight years now. This, I didn t ask for you. Right. And, oh, boy, that must, that gets old. And became dissidents because, at that time, I had translators and ended up with about twice as many Agents as I did originally. Wow. 26

27 Page 27 So that was a huge amount of work but a lot of fun. I don t know if this is going to go through the Security review, but I ll say it anyway. And one night, at home, I get a call from Oliver North (laugh) that had gone through Headquarters switchboard. Wow! So I knew, I knew it was legitimate. From that point on, he called me periodically at work and at home. Because he was getting all of the information that we were, you know, that we were obtaining. And, so as a result, a lot of the information that we obtained went towards the President s decision, finally, to bomb Libya. And when the bombing was going on, we were actually listening to the bombs drop from our listening post because they, all of the Libyans, were calling back and forth. You know, talking to their friends. So it was a very unique time. I will say! And I guess you had to have some training, also, to work this case? In that your work, previously, had not really been involved in, or FCI work. Yes, it was, well, very few of our Agents had any training at all. Okay. I had one Agent Jane Hackmeyer, who had just, well, she was a First Office Agent. She had come in from Defense Language School. At DLS, she had taken Arabic. She was the only Agent that I had that had any background at all in the language and in the mores of the Arab Nations. So I used her extensively, you know, for asset development. And she worked out very well as a matter of fact. But that was another untested item. They didn t know if the Arab males would be interested in being approached by a female Agent. Right. To provide information. Right. 27

28 Page 28 That worked out well. That s great. And then, I see, that you stayed in this Counterterrorism area. I was there for five years and then went to Headquarters. In the International Counterterrorism, right? Right. And you were very responsible for identifying terrorist organizations in the United States, your résumé stated. How did you all go about doing this, at that time? Well, you actually worked very closely with, one of the things that I had was the IRA. And so you worked very closely with the British equivalent of our FBI. They re assigned there at the British Embassy. They liaised with us just like our Legats do over in England. Okay. So it s very much a hands-on learning experience. Obviously, I held onto the Libyan information because I had the background in it. But the IRA and the other terrorist organizations that I dealt with, you just sat down and looked at the cases and tried to bring yourself up to speed as fast as possible. And to what was going on in the country and what had occurred. Did you see the various areas of law enforcement sharing information much, at this time? Or, how did you perceive that? We sure did. The International Terrorism Unit did, for sure. Like I said, we had the Canadians, the British and the French. Back then, there were a lot of bombings of places that our American sailors and soldiers were, you know, in bars and such. And the bars were targeted because of our military s presence. So, we had a lot of Americans getting killed overseas by a variety of terrorist organizations. Wow. 28

29 Page 29 So we really had to have excellent liaison with the various foreign countries. We worked very closely, obviously, with their representatives here in the United States in their respective Embassies. But we also worked very closely with the Legal Attaches, you know, the FBI s Legal Attachés, who were doing the same thing overseas. You know, they were, they were on the ground talking to the local police department and the Federal police departments in those countries. I m sure you were very busy. It would seem to me. Oh, wow! Because, again, you re implementing so many things that had not been done before. And, I guess, that s part of working with the FBI. We continue to react to what s going on in the world. Well, yes. Every day, I mean, I always told people that asked me if that would be a good career; I said, My God, yes. I mean, every day, especially if you re a self-starter. I mean, every day you go in; you don t know what s going to happen. You know, you get called on something; or you get loaned out; or, you interdict a shipment of weapons. I mean, it s just, it s just every day s a new experience. Right. You re so right. And then to go on, and, this is at Headquarters also, the Ombudsman Special Assistant in Personnel. Right. I was interested in reading about, you were responsible for developing the part-time ability, for an Agent to work for part-time for a period of a year. How did that happen? Was that something you came up with? I was, as the Ombudsman, back then the Ombudsman was just working with Special Agents. Okay. And, so Agents would call me with problems. And most of it were things like, my supervisor doesn t understand me, you know. 29

30 Page 30 Uh-huh. And I m not getting good Performance Appraisals. You have to sit with them and talk, and talk to them about leading up ; and, how they need to sit down with the supervisor and ask specific questions. That was a large part of it. But, of course, in this position I got the FBI s statistics all the time about Agents leaving. My office was right down the hallway from the Transfer Unit. They d go to transfer an Agent and then the next thing, the Agent would be on the horn with me trying to see if there s any way that they could stay, or be transferred someplace else Oh wow. Because their mother s were dying or they had a new baby, and so forth. The Bureau had a part-time program for the support employees, that had actually been in operation for many years. It was considered a fantastic success because all of the Office Services Managers, back then, recognized that they would get more than a part-time employee. That these people would come in and they d work without taking breaks because, you know, they were so pleased about being accommodated, that they d actually give them more real work time. In other words, more active time working. And, by and large, were better employees. So, I saw that we were starting to bleed, especially female Agents. By now, we ve had Agents in, I think more than ten years. A lot of them had come in and gotten married and many had married male Agents. And they were really having huge problems with being forced to come right back to work after having a baby. As a result, many of them were saying, Okay, fine. I m going to be a mother and I m going to have to quit. So they were resigning. And it cost, I m remembering reading somewhere that it cost like forty-five thousand dollars, on average, to send an individual through the Academy. 30

31 Page 31 And that s just the Academy. And then you put on the years of experience, and you don t want to lose a lot of these people. It s too costly. So I went to Weldon Kennedy, who was my boss and the Assistant Director of the Administrative Division. I sat with him and I said, What would you think about the idea of seeing if we can come up with a part-time Agent program that might stem some of this personnel loss? He talked to me for awhile and he said, Hey, (he reminded me a lot of my father), he said, Well, I think it s a great idea! Why don t you go for it! Oh, that s great. And, do the groundwork. I went over and spent a lot of time with OPM and, and our Admin people, and, and came up with a program that I wrote. And then, of course, Weldon said, Okay. Fine. This looks good to me. Now go sell it. Exactly. Go sell it to the other ADs and the Director. Uh-huh. So I remember having to sit down with Buck Revell in his big conference room, just he and I. And he, at that time, was the AD of Division 6, Criminal Division, and he was a stickler. And I could tell he wasn t going into this, he wasn t a happy camper. And he started off by saying, You know, I don t want a full-time cadre of part-time Agents. And I said, No, sir. That s not what this is all about. This is part-time for a short time and to get people over either, bonding with their new child or, death or dying spouse, or parents. Even going back to graduate school if it s something that will enhance the Bureau, like language. Right. Right. 31

32 Page 32 And, you know, and just to get them to a place that, that they feel better. And he said, Well, I don t want them working criminal matters. How can they just leave criminal? I said, That s up to, I think that should be left up to the SAC of the Office. And if they re working criminal and if the SAC wants to put them on an Applicant Squad, then that should be allowed. I think that should be up to the SAC wherever he can best use them. And, so he liked that idea; and, ultimately, signed off on it. Great. Wow. Because it was going to be a one-year test process. And, so we put it out there and immediately a couple of the female Agents jumped right on it. And then, little by little, some of the male Agents who were the husbands of the female Agents did too. You know, their wives would take the first six months and they d come back to work, and then the husbands would take the next six months. Right. And what year was this that you, this is now? Is that 1990? Yes, it was It was right before I left as the Ombudsman. Okay. Then, of course, the word got out and then all of the Department of Justice picked it up. And, and then all of the other Series picked it up, as well. And, the last time I heard, I mean, it was available to everybody. I do know that after the first year, they went out to the SACs; and, not one of them didn t like the program. Everyone thought it was a good program; that it accomplished what we were looking for, which was to maintain the Agent complement. And they came up and said the same thing that the Administrative Services Officers did, that they got more work out of these Agents, out of part-time Agents, than they did out of most of the other Agents, because they felt so honored to be able to be in the program. That s great. And they didn t want to screw it up for somebody else. That s great. That really is. Because that gives you a good, and it makes you feel good in that you saw other people copying you. That s always a big compliment. 32

33 Page 33 I got invited a couple of years later to speak at WFLE; one of the Women in Federal Law Enforcement conferences they had there in Washington. Hmmm. And there was a Secret Service Agent on the podium and I think somebody else. And we were all talking about the part-time program. But after the speech, what I will always remember, is that four female Agents had brought their children in. And they came up to me after, all of them, you know, together with all of their little kids. And one of them said, Meet the nice lady, because of her mommy could continue to be an FBI Agent. Oh, that s great. That s must have been meaningful. That s what you want to hear. Well, I ll continue on. So after you got all that through and passed, you got valuable feedback from that whole program, you became an Assistant Special Agent in Charge, an ASAC, in the New York Office in the Administrative Division. And that must have been, again though, you were in Newark. But, still, New York is New York. How did you find this office? And what demands were placed on you as an ASAC? Huge! (Laughing) I know, it is. Actually, it was just a big responsibility. And, the difficulty was that my husband stayed down in Washington. In Old Town Alexandria where we lived at the time. And he stayed there with that house and, I went up there and bought a one-bedroom co-op, and lived up there. He would come up on weekends. Most of the time he d come up, he d drive up, unless I could get a cheap flight or took the train down. So, just being apart from him was difficult. It made it easy to work late. Right. Exactly. You don t feel as guilty. 33