-Caveat Lector- Insight on the News - National Issue: 07/22/02
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terror Witnesses May Be Left in Cold By Timothy W. Maier Members of the elite team of federal witness-protection specialists are quitting in unprecedented numbers. The dwindling of the force that protects those in the witness-security program (WITSEC) has been a well-kept secret within the U.S. Marshals Service, which would prefer that Congress not ask too many questions about what happened to some $60 million earmarked for WITSEC. But past and current inspectors are standing by waiting to spill their guts to Congress about a program that they say was eviscerated in the Janet Reno era at the Department of Justice. "WITSEC security is stretched so thin that at times there is nobody there to handle emergencies or answer phones," says one frustrated inspector who recently called it quits and is pushing for the Senate Judiciary Committee to call for hearings. "These witnesses have no one to call when they see an alligator in the bed or the bogeyman in the closet. Inspectors are leaving in droves to become U.S. sky marshals and others are retiring." Worse yet, they are not being replaced, according to a series of interviews with current and former WITSEC inspectors. Inspectors' offices in Buffalo, N.Y., and other major metropolitan cities are being closed. Others are operating as one-man shops. Insight estimated in its June 3 cover story, "Breaking Omert�," that there are less than 200 inspectors and administrative assistants left in the program to coordinate and handle about 21,000 witnesses and relatives who have been put under the protection of WITSEC in the last three decades. But even that already-disturbing estimate now appears to be inflated. Once you subtract the safe sites, such as those in Washington where witnesses initially are placed before being transferred to their secret destinations, and the administrative staff, there are only about 85 inspectors to handle the caseload. Sources say about 115 inspector positions have been eliminated during the last decade. Far from being enough to handle current needs, the United States soon might be faced with a planeload of terrorists seeking new lives as prosecutors use their testimony to break up al-Qaeda networks. More alarming is the fact that specialists in the program right now aren't trained in either culture or language to handle turncoat Middle East terrorists entering the program. While the former terrorists who testified in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial had to be relocated after Sept. 11, there have been serious problems dealing with these witnesses because of language and cultural barriers, according to sources familiar with their cases. "None of the inspectors speak Arabic," explains a WITSEC inspector. "In fact, there was one situation where an inspector who was in charge of one of the terrorists in the program placed his coffee mug on the Koran." Funds supposedly allocated to the WITSEC program never seem to make it to the inspectors in the field, say past and current inspectors. The money is eaten up by management in politically appointed positions, or goes elsewhere in the U.S. Marshals Service, say these specialists. The situation has become so bad that inspectors are complaining that they don't even have money to fuel their vehicles. The cars themselves � mostly Ford Crown Victorias, which are used by many police departments � often have more than 100,000 miles on them and only rarely are replaced. This can create security risks, as the cars can be identified by would-be contract killers. Naturally the budget cuts have forced the WITSEC agents to cover more ground and more witnesses. Sources tell Insight that management even has sent out an e-mail instructing inspectors to try to find reasons to leave witnesses as close to home as possible. Some fear that such a trend will create dangerous situations in which protected witnesses will be discovered and murdered. Inspectors fear such memos and the lack of financial and administrative support will jeopardize their record of never having had a protected witness killed who followed the rules. Says one well- respected inspector who retired three years ago, "I am damn surprised no one has gotten killed. The thing is out of control." Poor working conditions and too much travel certainly are some of the key reasons that so many WITSEC specialists have called it quits. But money also is becoming a lure for those seeking better- paying jobs as sky marshals. Even though many of the witness- security inspectors are earning $80,000 a year, they are reaching into their own pockets to pay for travel costs associated with their job. "They don't even have a budget to pay for a phone call," says an 18- year veteran inspector who retired recently. "When you are away from your family for so long, and don't have the money to pay for the things you need to do your job, you start thinking about all these other things. And then you can't take care of business and then security starts to slip." Many of the past and current inspectors who spoke to Insight on the condition of anonymity say that management no longer believes protecting witnesses should be their top priority � instead they have been assigned to handle numerous U.N. functions, Drug Enforcement Administration cases and White House activities. A retired inspector living in the South puts it squarely on the shoulders of management. "If you ask old-timers what the problem is with WITSEC today, you will probably get this answer: No one at the top gives a shit about witnesses; few in the middle give a shit about witnesses; and those at the bottom are on the road so much doing non-WITSEC-related duties they cannot dedicate themselves to assisting witnesses, so why should they give a shit?" Another inspector says these officers now are the ones being forgotten and abandoned like field trash � a name he says the dejected officers frequently use to describe themselves. For example, he says when he was sent in 1995 to provide support in the Oklahoma City bombing, supervisors never even bothered to check on inspectors working daily in the stench of burned bodies rotting in the rubble. "I could smell the bodies rotting away every day," recalls the inspector. "I sat watching the recovery. And then one day they sent me home. I didn't get any debriefing like cops or firefighters got [they received psychological counseling]. When they finally asked how am I doing, I said, 'Funny, you should ask. I'm having fricking nightmares! I can't get the smell out of my head!' Nobody did anything � they didn't care. We are nothing but field trash to them." Mike Prout, acting director of WITSEC, acknowledged to Insight last month that there indeed are manpower and funding problems, but couched his words carefully to avoid potential backlash as he seeks the permanent position as WITSEC director. And inspectors don't blame Prout for a problem that existed long before his tenure. They say Prout would like nothing more than for Congress to beef up the program to handle the expected influx of terrorists, as well as perhaps Mafia figures of the kind they recently nabbed in their continuing efforts against the organized-crime families in New York. Congress has been down this road before. In the last three decades there have been congressional hearings, General Accounting Office probes and inspector-general investigations, but these agents say Congress has been deliberately misled in recent times about the number of WITSEC inspectors in the field � and where the money has gone. When funds have been appropriated for the U.S. Marshals Service, Congress has been told a bulk of the funds would go to support and build this elite force to 300 inspectors. But that never happened. "Congress was lied to," charges another recent retiree. Some also charge that in the Information Age, in which people can be located via the Internet, there has been no advanced training for inspectors. In fact, Insight has discovered a Holland-based Website that proposes to "offer criminals the opportunity to find the witness" in the witness-protection program. This magazine asked a veteran of more than a dozen years of protecting witnesses when was the last time management provided advanced technical training. "None in 12 years," he replied. "I got seven days of it when I started." WITSEC management has scheduled an upcoming technical seminar for inspectors, but sources tell Insight those running the program don't have the respect or experience of the inspectors who ran such training sessions years ago. What should be done? "We would like headquarters to support the field," says the inspector who went to Oklahoma City. "When we call headquarters, too often we get an answering machine. We need vehicles, laptop computers and better contacts with the Federal Aviation Administration. We would like advanced training." In fact, those conducting initial training sessions have discovered that budget reductions mean even introductory classes were being sliced up and slowly eliminated. "Today the expertise is lost," says the retired inspector in the South, "not because of the individuals joining witness security as inspectors but rather from a lack of training and dedication. In the 1980s, joining WITSEC was a promotion. Individuals had to compete for the few positions being announced. Today WITSEC is just a job. Any deputy U.S. Marshal can apply for a lateral transfer into a WITSEC position." The father of the program, Gerald Shur, now retired, tells Insight he would like the entire program to be reviewed immediately by Attorney General John Ashcroft, with an eye toward removing it from the jurisdiction of the U.S. Marshals Service and placing it under the direct supervision of the Justice Department. For that to happen, it might mean the Senate Judiciary Committee would have to hold hearings. Since Insight's initial story about the program, there have been informal discussions about the possibility of doing just that, but so far no date has been set. "If Congress doesn't talk to the guy in the field, and just talks to management, they won't accomplish anything," says a current inspector. Inspectors interviewed for this report point to administrative decisions that caused the program to fall from its elite standing to its now apparent disarray. One of them was vice president Al Gore's reinventing of government, which streamlined and cut positions that put inexperienced U.S. Marshals with little or no training into witness protection while also placing more burdens on current inspectors by creating additional workload such as protecting officials at U.N. conferences. Others blame former attorney general Janet Reno for engaging in vengeful tactics to settle scores from her days as a state's attorney in Miami. According to Miami sources familiar with Reno, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida, WITSEC refused to foot a bill for a state drug case. That story is well-remembered among WITSEC inspectors, though it was not included in the explosive book by Shur and coauthor Pete Earley, WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program. According to those who were in Miami law enforcement, Reno was prosecuting a Mafia case concerning a Miami shipyard. She had a state witness in protective custody whom they wanted to dump in WITSEC. Reno and Ray Havens, who was then chief of the criminal-investigations division for the state attorney's office, met with WITSEC officials who denied Reno's request. The reason was that if a state witness were placed in WITSEC, then Reno's agency would have to reimburse the U.S. Marshals Service for all costs associated with protecting the witness. Reno was told in no uncertain terms she couldn't afford it. The brassy Reno was livid, but eventually a compromise was struck under which at least one state charge was turned into a federal charge, creating a federal witness and allowing the U.S. Marshals to pick up the tab. Havens then asked to be put on a federal payroll but was turned down. Years later, when Reno became the U.S. attorney general, she selected Havens to be the next director of the U.S. Marshals Service. A white heterosexual male, Havens didn't fit the Clintons' strong affirmative-action plan. Faced with this political reality, he suggested to Reno that she appoint former Metro-Dade police officer and Tampa police chief Eduardo Gonzalez. He became director while Havens became the deputy director. "This is when Havens and Reno got their revenge on the entire witness-security program," says a current inspector. "The WITSEC budget was slashed, and promotion opportunities were taken away. Senior managers were selected not for their experience or knowledge but for their willingness to fall in step with the Reno/Havens agenda for dismantling the WITSEC division of the U.S. Marshals Service. And all this with the promise of reaching that holy grail of federal promotion to Senior Executive Status. Those senior managers elected other managers of like-mind, and now this agency continues to run on the Reno/Havens principle, with no experience or special knowledge at the top." Timothy W. Maier is a writer for Insight. email the author -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Outgoing mail is certified virus free Scanned by Norton AntiVirus Political correctness is the last refuge of the incompetent. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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