by David Howard
Phil and the agents had anticipated that Myers and Eggleston would be wary of Jim, which was why Phil had hidden a transmitter in the breast pocket of his blazer. The device provided audio to Brennan to complement the beamed-in images, which was especially important if the men wandered out of the camera’s view.
The RF detector immediately picked up a weak signal, and Myers looked over at Eggleston. Certain household appliances—for instance, microwave ovens—emit signals. They asked Jim to go outside so they could scan him without interference.
They walked out the back door, which loomed over the beach, and encountered blasts of wind and rain. Waves crashed below. The three men turned and headed back inside. The RF detector continued to ping, and Myers and Eggleston paced around, frustrated. Something was triggering it.
J.J. saw where this was going: These men needed some harder assurances. “Look, if you guys are concerned or whatever, here,” he said, opening his shirt. “I’ll even take my pants off.”
As J.J. stripped, Phil seized the moment. He turned and headed toward the front door, murmuring that the room felt stuffy. Jack, watching, intuited what Phil was doing. He bounded out onto the front stoop, then positioned himself against the wall next to Phil’s door.
Phil cracked open his door and, with a flick of his left hand, pulled the transmitter from his pocket and placed it in Jack’s outstretched right hand. The move was unrehearsed—something they’d never even discussed doing. But by now they knew each other’s intonations and gestures. “Phillip was nothing but cool under pressure,” Jack said. “He didn’t get rattled, and if he could start talking, you’d be all right.”
Jack had come to know these gifts well—which was why the U.S. government now employed Phil as a $36,000-a-year informant, working mostly with Jack and his colleagues in Mobile. Over the past four years, Phil had played versions of his old self, talking deals with the same verbal dexterity and salesmanship and exuberant bonhomie. He’d worked on more than a dozen cases with Jack and sometimes J.J., usually targeting con men and corrupt public figures.
Phil returned to where J.J. stood in his underwear. To help his visitors relax, he offered himself up for a scan, pulling off his jacket and shirt, but by then Myers had already noticed that the signal had faded. As J.J. and Phil dressed, they speculated on the source of the enigmatic signal: It could’ve been the TV—we turned that off right before you got here. Or maybe the microwave.
Back next door, Jack fidgeted. He could still see what was going on, but he could no longer hear anything. He was left to read body language—and only if everyone stayed in the living room.
J.J. figured that Phil had unloaded the transmitter. It was a smart move, but he also felt a jag of anxiety, knowing that Jack could no longer hear them. He didn’t like cases with drug guys; they were jittery and prone to violence. And as they’d learned from dealing with the likes of Sonny Santini, violent people made undercover work trickier. Their volatility brought greater pressure to stay calm and avoid saying anything problematic, and as a result, it became harder to do both. He forced himself to focus and breathe easily.
Myers and Eggleston still seemed perturbed about the unexplained RF signal. Eggleston said he wasn’t taking any chances and wouldn’t go back to prison under any circumstances, even if that meant blowing up the lab if the DEA ever found it.
Trying to soften the mood, Phil riffed on some escapades with Fred Pro and Gabe Cicale. J.J. jumped in with his own recollections, he and Phil piling on details, enriching and reinforcing the stories. He knew that Eggleston and Myers had already revealed enough that they didn’t want to believe they were talking to a federal agent. He and Phil just had to give them a little help.
“I bet Phillip told you some good stories about Freddie,” J.J. said.
They nodded and Jim piled on, explaining how ol’ Fred had tried unsuccessfully to manage the wiseguys in New York—especially Sonny Santini.
As the conversation took root, Phil wandered back toward the front door. Myers had stashed the RF detector. Seeing where Phil was going, Jack again leaped up and raced outside, and they executed their handoff in reverse: Phil reached toward where Jack was waiting, took the transmitter from him, and slipped it back into his pocket.
Phil closed the door and returned, saying something about the wind and the crazy weather. By then, Eggleston and Myers were settled enough to talk business. Jim would arrange to have the chemicals stolen from a pharmaceutical warehouse somewhere in the Northeast—he had contacts from the Bronx, where he’d grown up—and delivered to their beach-house lab in Alabama.
They all agreed to this plan, and over the coming weeks, Phil updated Myers and Eggleston on Jim’s progress.
—
No one knew how long he could keep going. Phil was doing well, having altered his life and paid his debt to society, but he smoked and drank and had never lived in a way that promoted longevity. Becky had sat in the backseat of their car once when Phil was in the passenger seat, and she’d noticed his unhealthy pallor. But they knew better than to suggest that Phil change how he lived.
He and J.J. sat in the Mobile Municipal Airport in mid-December, waiting for Myers and Eggleston to land. The would-be drug dealers had altered their plans and had found a location for a lab back in the Northeast, and they were flying south to fetch the chemicals and cook a test batch. They all met in the airport terminal’s minuscule dining area—a few tables wedged in along the margins. Eggleston unfurled a white tablecloth, explaining that they’d all gone without life’s fineries in prison, and these were better days. He pulled out a sheet of paper containing typed notes: his recipe for cooking meth.
Phil told him everything was ready. Then he said, “But there’s one more thing, fellas.”
J.J. glanced at him, trying hard to look nonchalant. One more thing? What was this?
About the crew they’d hired to steal the chemicals up north, Phil said. The men had broken into a warehouse, just as planned—but something unexpected had happened. A night security guard had interrupted the job.
Phil gazed intently at his two former prison mates. J.J. remained expressionless, but his mind was churning. He had no idea what Phil was doing, or where this was going.
The guard had struggled with the burglars and been shot dead, Phil continued. And if that wasn’t bad enough? The security guard was a woman. A single mom, two kids, working a nighttime job, going to school. The newspapers were all over the story. Had they heard about it?
Myers and Eggleston shook their heads.
So, Phil said. Things had gone bad. Myers and Eggleston needed to know this, because there was no sense getting too deep into this deal, investing all this time and effort and resources, only to have them back out. There would be some heat. Phil had been through situations like this, so he didn’t mind, but he needed to hear that his co-conspirators knew exactly where things stood. Phil stared at them, his face cast iron.
Eggleston looked at his partner, who nodded. Then he said, “Well, I didn’t tell that bitch to be there that night.”
“You sure, guys?” Phil said. He held up his hands.
“No problem,” Eggleston answered. He shrugged. “Let’s go cook.”
J.J. was speechless. He was wearing a Nagra recorder, and he knew that Phil fully grasped the nuances of the criminal justice system. If you were a defendant on trial, your best hope was to come across as sympathetic or confused about what you’d done. Phil was doing to Eggleston and Myers what Norman Howard had been unable to do to him nine years earlier: He had lured them into making clear statements that they intended to participate in a crime.
With one conversational flourish, Phil had eliminated any chance for Eggleston and Myers to claim innocence. The federal prosecutor would simply play the tape to the jury.
Decades later, Jack and J.J. would look back on that moment with a sense of awe. There was something almost supernatural about Phil’s ability to peer into a person’s head. As J.J. put it, “He could read
people as good as anybody I’ve ever known.”
“Okay!” Phil said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go.”
Everyone stood. Within a few minutes they would walk out of the terminal into the mild Alabama day, and vans and police cars would barrel up and careen to a halt in front of them, and teams of agents and cops with guns drawn would hurl all four of them to the ground and snap handcuffs on them. A cabdriver would dive into his car yelling, “Holy shit, everybody’s got guns!”
As they strolled toward the exit, J.J. looked around. Over his right shoulder he saw ticket agents conducting their business, clueless regarding what was about to happen, and glimpsed someone from their surveillance team casually following. Then he glanced to his left, at the man he’d taken down and lifted up and learned from and marveled at over the last nine years. The light through the airplane terminal’s windows lit Phil’s face. He sensed J.J. looking at him and shot his friend a sidelong glance.
Phil was careful to always stay in character. But before J.J. looked away, he saw a smile curl at the corners of Phil’s mouth.
Epilogue
Around the time of Phil’s arrest, Myron Fuller and an FBI colleague walked into a theatrical supply house in New York City. They were looking for a specific costume: the flowing robes of an Arab sheikh. OpFoPen was winding down, but Fuller’s work with Mel Weinberg on a spin-off investigation was only just getting started. Over the past few weeks, they’d noticed that con men reflexively grew excited anytime anyone mentioned their fictional Lebanese sheikh, viewing him as the man controlling the spigot on a steady flow of oil revenues. Now they were ready to bring him to life.
Fuller honed his story. Kambir Abdul Rahman became a Lebanese builder who had married into the sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates and had become enormously wealthy. They told the promoters that Rahman had hired Fuller—using the name Myron Wagner—to spend this wealth in the United States through a shell corporation, Abdul Enterprises Limited. Fuller dashed the promoters’ plans to acquire Brookhaven, the mortgage company, but told them that Rahman wanted securities—including stolen or phony ones—as well as casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City and expensive pieces of stolen art.
Even Fuller couldn’t have guessed where that first meeting with Wedick and Brennan in May 1977 would lead. As Abscam grew, Fuller and his colleagues recovered about $1.5 million in stolen securities, making eight arrests that led to six convictions. They also recovered millions of dollars in fraudulent CDs and gold certificates.
Then a contact introduced Fuller and company to Angelo Errichetti, the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, and the focus of Abdul Enterprises pivoted. Errichetti and others dangled offers to help the sheikh gain asylum in the United States, arranging for meetings with members of Congress who could sponsor private legislation to make it happen. For this service, Abdul offered to pay $50,000 up front and $50,000 later.
By the time Fuller, Weinberg, and the others shuttered the operation two years later, they had arrested seven members of Congress—including Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey. Each of the seven was convicted, and the landmark case sent shockwaves across the nation, spawning an effort to further professionalize and institutionalize FBI undercover activities.
A straight line leads from two young undercover agents in Nowhere, Indiana, to that seminal investigation. “If not for those guys,” Fuller said, “Abscam never happens.”
Acknowledgments
Soon after this book came together, I met Jim Wedick (who no longer goes by the nickname J.J.), Jack Brennan, and Myron Fuller in Park City, Utah, for three days of storytelling, laughter, and show-and-tell sessions that featured yellowing newspaper clippings and copies of old court decisions. It was enormously galvanizing, and in the two and a half years that followed, they each collectively gave up many hours of their time answering endless questions, hunting through their basements for photos and other artifacts, piecing together timelines, and generally bending over backward and sideways to help me reach across almost four decades to construct this story. I’m endlessly grateful for their efforts. Much obliged, also, to Jack’s wife, Becky, for trusting me with her story. Also thanks to her and Nancy Wedick for their forbearance, excellent meals, and the use of their spare bedrooms.
Many thanks to my agents Larry Weissman and Sascha Alper, a phenomenal duo for an author to have in his corner. They believed in this book from the first mention and provided invaluable help in lifting it off the ground.
Authors are lucky to have one talented editor; I was wildly fortunate to have two. Domenica Alioto and Claire Potter at Crown fueled my efforts with wisdom, enthusiasm, and good humor. They made the book vastly better, and made the effort fun throughout. Much gratitude.
Also at Crown, Phil Leung, the production manager, and Craig Adams, the production editor, kept the wheels moving in the right direction on every aspect of this book from beginning to end. Copyeditor Bonnie Thompson’s hawk eyes and language skills made me look better on these pages than I ever could manage on my own. A deep bow to Chris Brand for creating the book’s ingenious and striking now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t cover, and to interior designer Songhee Kim, who’s responsible for the elegant yet appropriately jaunty layout. Sarah Grimm and Roxanne Hiatt, the book’s publicist and marketer, respectively, knew exactly the right soapboxes to stand on, and did it with great humor and panache. And, of course, Chasing Phil might still be a waking daydream for me without the steadfast support from the start of publisher Molly Stern and deputy publisher Annsley Rosner. I’m indebted to this team and humbled by their efforts.
Thank you to National Archives facilities in Atlanta, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco for being there. The court records stored in these places were vital to my ability to tell this story. Much appreciation to Charles Miller, Jerry Phares, Arlene Royer, Jeff Sample, John Sparling, and everyone else in the archives and federal court system who helped me track down files from old OpFoPen cases. Thanks to Jim Rice in the Orange County, California, superior court clerk’s office for digging up files from a trial from more than thirty-five years ago.
Kim Horgan, Cathy Miller, and Elizabeth Hansen all provided extra sets of hands and eyes with trial documents and transcripts in the National Archives files when I was stretched too thin.
A big thank-you to John Wareham of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for tracking down files of newspaper clippings on the Kitzers from the 1960s that had been shipped off-site. That was a huge find for me. Thanks to Vicky Weiss at the Bismarck Tribune for digging through the newspaper’s story and photo archives for material from the American Allied trial in the 1960s. Thanks to Joe Slobodzian of the Philadelphia Inquirer for helping track down some key information from federal court.
A number of people helped me at various points, in New York and Pennsylvania, with research and/or transcribing work: Julia Calderone, Lauren Ladoceour, Zoe Schaeffer, Maura Smith, Lara Sorokanich, Becky Straus, and Britt Tagg. All of it was critical in moving me closer to the finish line on a high-wire schedule. Thanks to Carla Lindenmuth and Terah Shelton for their library sleuthing skills, and to Sabine Niemeier for running down details about the Intercontinental Frankfurt from the 1970s.
I’m grateful to Helen Racan, Phil Kitzer’s ex-wife, and their son Richard, for sharing their stories on what was a difficult chapter in their lives.
I benefited immensely from the sage feedback and buoying support of my readers: Lou Cinquino, Claire Dederer, Peter Flax, Jeremy Katz, and Sam Kennedy. Thank you all. And to my longtime friend and co-conspirator, John Murray: Thanks for your ideas and input and comic relief, and for the quiet space.
My wife, Ann, also read the book and provided hugely helpful commentary and suggestions, all while enduring (with our son, Vaughn) my obsessiveness and absences over nearly three years. You both have my gratitude and love.
Notes
A word about direct quotations: All dialogue is taken from a primary source—a party to the relevant conversation—or a court
transcript. In fact, the latter proved to be critical to my reporting efforts with this book. Phillip Kitzer died in 2001 at the age of 68, but his testimony as a government witness and expert witness in more than a half dozen trials was transcribed and is now preserved in various National Archive branches. In researching this book I traveled to Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Orange County, California, where I gathered more than six thousand pages of court records and transcribed testimony. Kitzer’s testimony in particular provides a powerful glimpse into his storytelling style; on the witness stand he furnished details and anecdotes only he could recount. He often told stories using detailed dialogue, to the point that defense lawyers questioned whether he had a photographic memory or was planning to write a book. (He answered no to both.) Direct quotations from others also come from transcripts, as noted below.
Prologue
The material in this section, as with much of the book, is built around interviews with James Wedick and Jack Brennan and their testimony in numerous federal trials that resulted from Operation Fountain Pen. Quotes from them are from these resources unless otherwise noted.
five and a half inches: A detailed description of the Nagra recorder can be found on the Cryptomuseum website: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/rec/nagra/sn/.
“Cocktail fantasies”: For photos and descriptions, see the blog Dutch Girl Chronicle: http://www.dutchgirlchronicle.com/?p=2135. Also see “A Final Farewell to Bloomington’s Iconic Thunderbird Motel,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 10, 2016.
