The Last Undercover

by Bob Hamer

  Once the initial shock of losing Darrel’s case wore off, I was livid over the decision, as was the Strike Force. The government appealed the ruling. In the meantime, I was investigated by our Office of Professional Responsibility—the FBI’s equivalent to a police department’s Internal Affairs—because the judge had criticized my investigative techniques.

  The local papers covered the story of Darrel’s trial, especially the part about how the bad ol’ FBI had exploited Heather and used sex to ensnare a wide-eyed, unsuspecting heroin distributor. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page feature article in which they named me over twenty-five times, emphasizing my “outrageous” conduct and printing the story without benefit of even seeking comment from the FBI or the Strike Force. The Orange County Register misstated the facts and the evidence in their apparent haste to paint the worst possible picture of my actions. Not my best PR outing, for sure.

  In 1987, three years after the dismissal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court judge’s ruling, stating that my conduct did not violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Even though Heather and I specifically denied that she engaged in sex with the defendant, the court still allowed that characterization of her relationship with Darrel. However, the court ruled that “the deceptive creation and/or exploitation of an intimate relationship does not exceed the boundary of permissible law enforcement tactics.” Specifically, the court found nothing wrong in the recruitment of Heather as an informant. In words never reported in any newspaper that covered the story in 1984, the court said, “We hold that the FBI’s conduct was not shocking to the universal sense of justice.”

  We still weren’t out of the woods, though. When the case was remanded to the district court, the original judge dismissed the case a second time, using his “supervisory authority.” The government again appealed and again the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court judge. In language that strikes at the heart of the argument about an “activist judiciary,” the Ninth Circuit ruling said,

  Under the supervisory power, courts have substantial authority to oversee their own affairs to ensure that justice is done. They do not, however, have a license to intrude into the authority, powers, and functions of the coordinate branches. Judges are not legislators, free to make laws . . . nor are they executive officers, vested with discretion over law enforcement policy and decisions.

  As expected, the defense appealed and sought redress at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to hear the issue. By the time the case returned to the district court, Darrel had died of cancer. Since the arrests took place prior to legislatively imposed mandatory minimum sentencing, the judge, in an obvious attempt to punish the government and send a message to the FBI, sentenced Darrel’s two co-conspirators to ninety days in prison. The judge sent a message, all right—but what was it?

  Think about it: The same undercover agent (me), working with the same informant (Heather), investigating the same federal violation, brought about six arrests and five convictions. (Darrel died before his two associates pleaded guilty.) All six defendants had their cases heard in the same federal courthouse, presented to two different judges by the same prosecutor. Three of those defendants, guilty of distributing four to five ounces of heroin, received sentences ranging from ten to fifteen years. Three other defendants, guilty of distributing approximately 115 ounces of heroin, received sentences of ninety days.

  There must be a message in there somewhere.

  8

  MEET THE PREDATORS

  New York NAMBLA Conference

  Peter Herman invited everyone in the circle to introduce himself and tell why he chose to attend. Prior to the actual introductions, he stated that no one need give his true name, and no one was forced to participate.

  The men began, some using real names, some only first names, and some admitting to using aliases. Five or six of us were attending our first conference, but the others were veteran members.

  Robin, an organist and youth minister from Georgia, began. He was tall and thin, with a thick Southern accent. A longtime member, he first learned about the organization from a Reader’s Digest article. He spoke, as did others, about the need to recruit younger men with similar interests to join the ranks: “new blood with a new enthusiasm.” He also talked about “young people who need our guidance. . . . When you have a child who is not ready for a certain thing, you don’t teach it to them. If you have a kid who is ready and is advanced, deal with him on a little higher level.”

  The group included Todd Calvin, a dentist who referred to himself as “Triple D . . . divorced dentist from Dallas”; numerous teachers; two ministers (Jeff Devore and Robin); and Bob, an attorney from Atlanta.

  With a large girth and white beard, Bob could have easily passed for the real Santa Claus. A member for twenty years, he spoke with a closing-argument passion about what NAMBLA meant to him.

  [The organization] fills me up. Helps me not feel bad about myself. Gives me confidence to understand this is what flavor was bestowed upon me. Coming to conferences like these and by knowing members, it has enabled me to see the way I am as a blessing, not a curse. . . . [Being here] is about filling my tank with self-worth.

  Chris from Chicago described himself as a socialist seeking “to overthrow the capitalist system.” His wild, unkempt hair and ragged clothes were reminiscent of a campus radical from the sixties.

  One member complained that his father and brother were both BLs who were “doing” his friends but never came on to him. Joe P., a convicted sex offender and editor of the Bulletin , represented the Bay Area along with David M. and Floyd C., all three of whom were named in the Jeffrey Curley wrongful death civil lawsuit. But more about that later. In referring to NAMBLA, David made a remarkable but confusing comparison that would surely have made our forefathers proud: “Our ideas spring from the most basic ideas of the founding of the United States.”

  Mike came from Cleveland. Ian from Vermont sported a long ponytail and, despite the November cold, wore shorts the entire weekend. Tomas, who at twenty-five was the youngest, came from Denmark. Ray joined when he heard that “NAMBLA was a meeting about pedophiles.” Joe, who was my dinner partner the night before and had been a member nineteen years, said, “I’m a boy lover. . . . It’s a universal impulse. . . . The impulse to love the young is not immoral. It’s an impulse to nurture, not something I’m ashamed of.”

  When it came time for me to speak, I had no idea what to say and was still apprehensive that anything I said might give away my true identity. I began by discussing my fear in joining the group the previous night at the dining concourse, and within a few sentences, as if on cue, began crying. It was perfect, an Academy Award–winning performance. Men on my right and left comforted me, and throughout the meeting, various members approached, telling of how scared they were at their first conference. They believed the tears and they believed me.

  Tim B. arrived late. He wore a Green Party T-shirt and was a former NAMBLA membership chairman. Throughout the two days, he was one of the most vocal, bragging of his participation at the Stonewall riots of 1969 and challenging the membership to a more public stance. At one point in the meeting, Tim told me that in the nineties there were more than twelve hundred members, but many had dropped out since the filing of the Jeffrey Curley lawsuit.

  I had little interest in the content of the meeting, either day. As I had been warned, it was boring, with no formal discussion that bordered on criminal admissions. The established agenda was only loosely followed, and Peter allowed the discussion to wander all over the map.

  I heard lots of rehashing of old rallies, some discussion about NAMBLA having been ostracized by the International Lesbian and Gay Association, and volleys back and forth about whether it was better to be “out” or “closeted.” The vast majority feared that acknowledged membership in NAMBLA would have dire consequences.

  The rhetoric flew thick and fast: “Ours is a liberation movement c
onfronting the inequities of the system.” Prison and state hospitals were referred to as “America’s Gulag.” Rock Thatcher stated that Atascadero [California] State Prison existed to “warehouse boy lovers.” When Joe from Ann Arbor praised longtime active members who played such a pivotal role in the history of the organization and referred to them as “heroes,” the room burst into applause. In yet another interesting historical interpretation, Joe compared the current day’s boy lover activists to pre–Civil War abolitionists. He noted that every liberation movement went through three stages: ridicule, opposition, and acceptance. He was in the majority present who believed the boy lover movement was where the gay movement was in the early sixties: “It is only a matter of time before it is accepted by society.” Tim hailed this period as a time when NAMBLA is on “the cusp of a new awakening.”

  Bob, the attorney, again made some interesting observations.

  We’re about consensual relationships. We’re about people whose physical and sexual attraction take them in a certain direction. . . . Look, I’ve never been in the sack with anyone who didn’t want to be in the sack with me. End of story. You know I’m not going after your son. . . . If he’s not interested in being in a relationship with me, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If he is interested in me, then introduce us. . . . If your son wants a fifty-year-old, how are you going to stop him from finding another fifty-year-old on the Internet who may not be as decent as I am?

  Bob’s next comment was a bit less high-flown, but summoned a loud laugh:

  The Internet is incredible. My big hobby now, I sit around in my boxer shorts . . . words come across the screen and the person typing says he’s twelve; I get an erection.

  Jeff Devore spoke up.

  What can I do? I’m a gay minister, and I have access to a pulpit, and so I can begin to or continue to . . . support the kind of values that we uphold without necessarily coming out and labeling it as, “Ooh, your son’s looking really good today, Mrs. Smith, sitting back there in the pew.”

  Several members got my attention with no need for prompting. Jim and Rowan, both from New Jersey, were retired teachers, as was Ted, who taught for thirty-two years and was then sponsoring a school in the Philippines. Jim’s hobby was photography, a subject that definitely needed exploration, I thought. Ted’s school sponsorship was also troubling, since I knew that Peter Melzer, aka Peter Herman, admitted to an undercover police officer he molested a boy in the Philippines. I was also aware of the problems with child sex tourism in that country. I hoped to learn more about Ted’s involvement as the investigation progressed. But I was fearful of probing too deeply—yet.

  One asset to working an FBI-sanctioned undercover operation is the ability to be patient. Although progress must be shown during the course of the approved period of the operation, the need to “put powder on the table” or “bodies in cuffs” isn’t as urgent as it might be with some departments or agencies. If we were to be successful in this operation, I needed to work without the pressure of developing a prosecutable case while at the conference. I had that leeway, and it proved invaluable as the investigation progressed.

  Ted organized the conference and clearly had a leadership role at one time in NAMBLA. He was personable, charming, and radiated sincerity. He described himself as a “lover of boy lovers,” and I believed him. He worked the room like a politician needing a few more votes. He was there in 1979 when the organization was founded and represented NAMBLA in the International Lesbian and Gay Association, where he wrote various position papers. Of all the members, he was one I would have wanted to invite to lunch. He was charismatic and lacked the paranoia I sensed in many of the members—but were these also the traits that allowed him to gain the necessary confidence of boys and their parents? In the black-is-white world of the pedophile, it was hard to know what to approve and what to distrust. The need to keep my own categories intact while maintaining my undercover persona was a major stress and challenge that only intensified as the investigation continued.

  Although I had long ago learned as an undercover agent the absolute necessity of deferred gratification and emotional postponement, I realized to be successful in this assignment I was going to have to detach myself from my real feelings in a way I never had before. Posing as a drug dealer was child’s play compared to the emotional and psychological roller coaster ride I was experiencing as I sat at the conference. I had to absorb all they were saying, yet at the same time, block it from my mind. To focus on the content of the conversation stirred in me emotions of rage, disgust, and hatred for the philosophy the members espoused. I could ill afford to allow those feelings to show. I had to smile, laugh, and offer positive reinforcement to ideas diametrically opposed to my personal belief system.

  I began to play games to maintain my sanity. I knew I would have to view these men through the eyes of an unsuspecting boy or his parents. Like Ted, many of the members had positive qualities that made them interesting, endearing people. Although, those very qualities likely were what enabled them to gain access to their victims. Still, as long as I focused on the positive, I knew I could succeed.

  Break time on Saturday was delightful for my fellow attendees. The “one-holer” provided them with a chance to stand in line with the boys who were also on break from rehearsing and waiting to use the restroom. Several of the men hovered around the boys, giggling and chatting. One member remarked to me, “Look at those chicken hawks swarming.” I tried my best to watch the restroom to insure that no man went in with a boy. I saw no such incident and heard of no one bragging about a conquest.

  The limited room in which I had to maneuver made it difficult to communicate with the Los Angeles case agent who accompanied me to New York and was the liaison with the New York surveillance agents. I used the brief time I had in the tiny bathroom with paper-thin walls to make hushed calls to her on the cell phone—multitasking as I spoke. The NAMBLA members were forced to eat lunch as a group in the meeting room—cold cuts and sandwiches. There was just no way to communicate safely with the outside.

  The general tone of the meetings disgusted me. Although there was no direct criminal discussion, the BL philosophy permeating each speaker’s presentation was more than I could take for an entire day. I was still nervous about being discovered and chose not to go out to dinner with my new friends that evening. To put it simply, I needed a break. My cover story was I was a financial advisor and was in New York to meet with a client, so I was “having dinner with her” that evening.

  The Saturday session broke around five o’clock, and I welcomed the opportunity for fresh air—in fact, I had to exercise control to keep myself from bolting for the nearest door, using my arm crutch as a bludgeon along the way. I took a cab back to the hotel, where my case agent debriefed me. Even though I was recording the sessions, I wanted to give a detailed account of the activities that transpired that day. Recording equipment has been known to fail, and although I doubted I would soon forget my first day attending the NAMBLA conference, I wanted to get my observations on paper. After the debriefing, I went to dinner and used the time to decompress and prepare myself emotionally for the next day’s fun and games.

  9

  WORKING THE HOOD

  Los Angeles, 1988

  One day in 1988, just after the noon hour, I got a call at my desk on the fifteenth floor of the Los Angeles Federal Building. Larry Lawlor, the Special Agent in Charge of the L.A. office, wanted to see me.

  Visits to the SAC’s office were nothing new for me. Trying hard to remember what rules I’d broken or which administrator’s toes I’d stepped on most recently, I slowly climbed the two flights of stairs separating my floor from the seventeenth, where management was housed.

  Larry Lawlor was one of the finest Bureau administrators under whom I served. He was a strong, articulate manager who wasn’t afraid to admit to his mistakes or seek the advice of a street agent more familiar with the nuances of the investigation. His retirement party was one of the few I
attended. He died of cancer not long after his retirement. The FBI lost a great leader when he retired, and the world lost a great human being when he died.

  But I still couldn’t figure out, as I climbed the stairs that day, if I was in for a commendation or a butt chewing. The Boss, as we called him, was equally skilled in both.

  I walked into his office, he greeted me, and asked me to sit down. “I was having lunch with the chief of police today, Bob, and do you know what we talked about?”

  I admitted I had no idea what he and Daryl Gates discussed over salad.

  “He wants to attack the gang problem in South Central the same way we go after organized crime—like the LCN [La Cosa Nostra] case we just tied up.”

  Our office had recently successfully concluded an investigation of the L.A. Mafia crime family. I was the undercover agent, and fifteen members of the L.A. family were convicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and various other federal statutes. The investigation generated a great deal of positive publicity for the Los Angeles office and obviously caught the attention and accolades of HQ. Even the attorney general recognized our success in a press conference.

  “Is that so?”

  The Boss nodded. Always one to encourage cooperation among different branches of law enforcement, he told me he and Chief Gates discussed the possibility of a joint operation in South Central. “How do you feel about that, Bob?”

  “Sounds like a good idea, I guess.”

  “Wonderful. Because I told Chief Gates I’d send him a couple of agents to help get things going, and I want you to lead the effort.”

  “No kidding?”

  The Boss proceeded to tell me how much he needed someone with my qualities on this new joint operation: someone with innovative ideas, a self-starter, highly motivated —