Criminals & Presidents: The Adventures of a Secret Service Agent

by Tim Wood

  Credit card fraud was a new jurisdiction for the Secret Service, and at the LAFO we were gradually becoming the experts on working these cases. We were breaking new investigative ground for the Secret Service and establishing policy as we went. It was not unusual to get a call from an agent in a smaller office asking how we worked this or that type of fraud case. The conversation would start out with, “Fraud Division [at Secret Service headquarters] said you guys have worked this type of case before in L.A. and maybe you could give me some insight. What I’ve got here in Topeka is…”

  We attacked a fraud case the only way we knew how to investigate, as agents had handled counterfeit cases for decades: develop a snitch, do some surveillance, make an undercover buy, and make an arrest.

  * * *

  One morning I read a message from headquarters notifying an agent at the Las Vegas RA that he had been transferred. Now was my chance, so I walked straight to Earl’s office and let him know I was interested in moving to the Las Vegas RA. I went into his office thinking this is going to be a quick, short conversation. I just wanted to plant the seed. I was a little surprised when he asked me to have a seat and told me that he thought I would be an excellent candidate for that position, and what with my work ethic, I’d be a good addition to the Las Vegas RA. Then he picked up the telephone and called the special agent in charge. All I heard was Earl’s side of the conversation; he had a good candidate to send to Las Vegas and he wanted to know if the SAIC had a few minutes to discuss this with him. I was trying to remain calm, but I was so excited my heart was beating out of my chest. After he hung up with the SAIC, Earl talked almost nonstop about how much I would love working in Las Vegas and when he finished our conversation with the old “I know a good real estate agent in Las Vegas” line, I knew this transfer was going to happen.

  Within a couple of days I was called in to see the SAIC. As a young agent, I didn’t have much interaction with the SAIC. He was the frickin’ boss, for Pete’s sake, and I think the most I ever said to him was “Good morning, sir” when we passed in the hallway. When I walked into his huge wood-paneled office he looked at me and asked, “Do you like to gamble?”

  Gamble? “No, I don’t gamble, sir,” I replied. That thought never even crossed my mind.

  The SAIC looked at me and said, “That’s good, because gambling has ruined many a man.” And the meeting was over. I was on my way to Las Vegas.

  The Redhead was less than thrilled. She was a Southern California girl and her family was in Orange County. I’d been a little worried that she would balk at this move. She was well aware I wanted to get an assignment in Las Vegas. We’d only been married a couple of years and we were living in a beachfront studio apartment in Laguna Beach. I could roll over in the morning and look out the picture window by our bed directly at the waves rolling up the beach, just a few feet below that window…and now I was taking her to the desert; the hot, windy desert of the American Southwest and Glitter Gulch.

  Chapter 3

  “I Have a High-Powered Rifle”

  It seemed like Tammy was getting to be a regular at our office. Donnie had her come in almost every day to make phone calls on our undercover telephone line. He had given her strict instructions to not call Roland’s telephone number on her own, and if she ran into him (or Paul for that matter) not to initiate any meets or new check-cashing deals. Do nothing but say hello and then immediately call Donnie.

  Donnie was doing everything possible to identify Roland and Paul. He’d obtained a grand jury subpoena for the telephone number Roland had written on the cocktail napkin when he met Tammy at the Four Queens. Donnie made contact with ATF, DEA, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and even Freddie, Bernie, and Irving to see if any of these agencies knew these guys. He was coming up empty on all fronts. Without a last name it was next to impossible to positively identify Roland or Paul. The telephone company was his best bet to get Roland’s real full name and some personal identifiers, like his social security number and date of birth—if he didn’t lie on his telephone application, which was always a possibility. Tammy had done a decent job as an informant during the meeting at the Four Queens, especially the way she segued his romantic advances to get his telephone number, but she’d failed to get him to tell her his last name or address. Unfortunately, “Ma Bell” was taking her good old sweet time in replying to Donnie’s subpoena.

  * * *

  As we were knee-deep in trying to pull the case together against Roland and Paul and gather some background on the two of them, we got a phone call from the LVMPD dispatch one morning reporting that a male caller had called a local telephone operator and threatened to kill President Reagan. The male caller had told an operator he had a high-powered rifle and he was going to Washington, DC, to kill the President. Before he hung up, he was kind enough to tell the operator that his name was William Lee.

  Protective intelligence cases, what we referred to as threat cases, were our number one criminal investigative priority. When the Secret Service became aware of a threat against the President, everything stopped and all our attention was devoted to those investigations. Roland and Paul would have to wait; William Lee was about to take up a lot of my time.

  LVMPD said the call had originated from a pay phone in a local bar on Maryland Parkway, not far from downtown Vegas. I grabbed Donnie and we headed to the address the PD dispatcher gave us.

  The bar was a typical Las Vegas neighborhood watering hole; it was dark and smelled of cigarettes. When we arrived it was mid-morning and the place was pretty much empty. There was an old guy sitting at the bar playing video poker and some gal that looked close to eighty, sitting at a slot machine by the front door, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she robotically pulled the handle.

  William was easy to spot. He was the drunk sitting all alone at a table against the wall. He had on a dirty, powder blue sport coat with a yellowish shirt that had at one time probably been white. He looked like a down-and-out banker, like someone who had once actually known how to dress himself properly at some point in his past. I noticed he didn’t have on socks, but what appeared to be nylons under his pants. Pantyhose.

  He was a white male, a very white male; he could have used a few hours sitting in the sun. He was about thirty-five, red hair, clean-shaven, and stank of bourbon. His fingers were stained with nicotine and his fingernails were painted with flesh-colored nail polish. It was what the Redhead would have referred to as a “very poor manicure”; to me it looked like he had one too many Jack Daniel’s before he put the polish on.

  It wasn’t hard to convince William to come with us to our office. Once we told him he wasn’t under arrest and that we just wanted to talk to him about the telephone call, he willingly got up from the table and walked out to Donnie’s sedan with us.

  Secret Service agents are given a huge responsibly. If you are the case agent on a criminal investigation, you are in charge, you take the case where it needs to go, make the arrest, and get a conviction. If you are given an advance assignment for a “protectee,” you come up with a plan to secure the venue. Of course, supervisors are involved in all of this, but believe me, US Secret Service agents are leaders and self-starters and agents are expected to get it right without much input from a supervisor. Bosses don’t have time to hold your hand.

  One of the biggest responsibilities is making a determination if a person is really a threat to the President of the United States. And that is one call that you have to get right, because believe me, there is a lot of scrutiny of a Protective Intelligence investigative report by every agent up the chain, through the chain, and near the chain of command.

  Donnie and I interviewed the crap out of William; we were trying our best to get inside his head and see what he was really thinking. Would he really try to kill the President of the United States? We spent a few hours in the interview room with him and it became apparent that William had an issue, that’s fo
r sure. He had what we’d call a gender identification issue these days.

  William was cooperative during our interview, a little drunk, no doubt, but he was cooperative nonetheless. He waived his Miranda rights and admitted right up front that he made the phone call to the operator and told her he had a high-powered rifle and he was going to DC to kill Reagan. He told us he wasn’t really going to do it, it just seemed like something to say at the time.

  He consented to a search of his apartment and we took him home. Donnie and I searched the place and found nothing of investigative interest. It appeared he lived with a woman—dresses and high heels in the closet and makeup on the dresser. But he didn’t; he lived alone.

  I called over to the US Attorney’s office and they declined to prosecute William for threatening to kill the President due to his inebriated state of mind when he made the call.

  I wrote my investigative report and sent it up the chain. I made the preliminary determination that William was not a threat to the President, at the time. I wasn’t sure if he was crazy or just an alcoholic; but he definitely had some mental issues. During the course of my investigation, I learned he was originally from Los Angeles and he had once worked for an insurance company. Inquiries with the mental health facilities in Nevada and California proved to be negative—he had never been admitted or treated for mental illness.

  The problem with some of these guys who were teetering between the sane world and the insane world was that they craved attention. And it was no different for William. Now I was his best friend, or at least someone who would come and have a conversation with him when he was lonely. Within three weeks, he felt the need to talk with me again. In William’s alcohol-fueled brain, he figured the best way for me to show up at his doorstep would be to pick up the phone, dial “0,” and tell the operator he was going to kill President Reagan.

  William upped the ante this time. He told the operator he had an airline ticket, 158 rounds of ammunition, and he was going to Washington, DC, to kill the President.

  The Beaver went with me to William’s apartment and we interviewed him once again. William was drunk and dressed exactly the same as the first day I met him. His fingernails still had the shitty manicure of flesh-colored nail polish and he wore the pantyhose under his trousers.

  But William was a just another drunk craving attention. I read him the riot act and told him to sober up, stop calling the operator and threatening the President. The US Attorney once again declined to prosecute him and I didn’t have an issue with that decision. I updated my investigative report for headquarters and continued looking into his background for any signs he actually might make good on his threat.

  William behaved himself for a few months and I kept tabs on him, while continuing the investigation into his background and mental history. I had to send requests to other field offices in cities where he’d previously lived and worked. I interviewed some folks who knew him in Las Vegas. His neighbors said he was very quiet, but they didn’t know him well. The landlord said he paid his rent on time and never caused any trouble. All of this background information was extremely important in order for me to make a final recommendation to headquarters as to whether or not William was a genuine threat to the life of the President.

  Unfortunately, William’s mental state continued to deteriorate. After about sixty days he completely flipped his lid. This time he dialed 9-1-1 and said he was going to do it…he was going to kill President Reagan. After getting the call from LVMPD dispatch, Donnie and I went over to his apartment. It was time for William to visit the psychiatric ward at University Hospital and it was time for him to go to jail.

  William answered our knock on his apartment door and invited us in; he was in pretty bad shape. He’d been hitting the Jim Beam hard and reeked of bourbon. He wore the same outfit; dirty sport coat, tie, and pantyhose under his trousers. Who sits around their frickin’ apartment in that get-up all day? His fingernails were still painted with the flesh-colored nail polish, but now he wore red lipstick, a drunken outline of his lips and way too much red rouge on his cheeks.

  We took him to the psychiatric ward and dropped him off for a forty-eight-hour mental health examination. I went to the US Attorney’s office and wrote out a complaint for his arrest.

  I ended up indicting William for three counts of violation of Title 18 United States Code Section 871, Threats Against the President. I had just made my first arrest of someone threatening to kill the President of the United States.

  William was held without bail and the psychiatric report by the doctor at University Hospital wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. William wasn’t “insane”; the psychiatrist stated William exhibited “paranoid schizophrenic” tendencies due to alcohol abuse. No shit, I could have come up with that diagnosis.

  William pleaded guilty to one count of the three-count indictment. A federal judge sentenced William to six months confinement at a federal treatment facility to provide him the opportunity to conquer his alcoholism and five years probation. William was unable to conquer his demons and within three years his probation was revoked and the judge sentenced him to eighteen months in a federal medical treatment facility in Springfield, Missouri.

  I always wondered about William…did he get drunk and dress up like a woman, or did he dress up like a woman and then get drunk? And I’m sure the answer to that question was the reason he ended up in Springfield.

  * * *

  In between my waltzing around with William and working on his background information, Tammy finally made contact with Roland and he graciously put her in direct contact with Paul. I was listening in on her recorded telephone call placed from our undercover telephone. Roland acted as if he and Tammy were old friends. This was odd, but I guess that’s what drugs do to your mind, and it was a big mistake by Roland. We couldn’t have hoped for a better break in this case, because now Tammy would be dealing directly with the suspect who’d made the counterfeit driver’s license, and we wouldn’t have to work through Roland hoping he’d make an introduction.

  Donnie immediately had Tammy place a recorded telephone call to the number Roland gave her for Paul. She told Paul her boyfriend had a check to cash but he didn’t have identification to match the name on the check. Paul said he wanted to speak to the boyfriend and Tammy handed me the telephone. Paul didn’t suspect a thing and offered to alter my driver’s license to match the name on the check. Under the Federal False Identification Statute, an altered driver’s license is considered a counterfeit driver’s license. We were hoping Paul would manufacture a new counterfeit driver’s license like he’d done for Tammy the night she was arrested, but Donnie, who was listening in, gave me the thumbs-up and he had that look on his face like “let’s get this case over with.”

  I asked Paul how much this altered driver’s license would cost me and he said, “One hundred bucks, kiddo. What’s the amount on the check?”

  We had “spurious” US Treasury checks in the office safe. Headquarters issued these checks specifically for this type of undercover deal. The only problem was I didn’t know what the amounts of the “spurious” checks were. I said to Paul, “Well, uh,” and I looked up at Donnie and kind of shrugged my shoulders. Donnie was holding up eight fingers and nodding. “Eight hundred bucks,” I said and Donnie smiled real big.

  “Okay…a hundred bucks up front and a hundred bucks when we cash the check.” Perfect incriminating verbal evidence right out from the crook’s mouth!

  “I live over near Twain and Swenson,” he said, and he gave me his address. “Come on over, kiddo, and we’ll get this going.”

  I looked at Donnie for some direction. We needed time to get the surveillance teams set up to provide cover for me. Donnie pointed to his watch and held up four fingers. I glanced at my watch; it was a little after two in he afternoon. “I’ll swing by about four o’clock,” I said.

  “Bring the check and don’t forge
t your driver’s license,” Paul said.

  We’d had undercover Nevada driver’s licenses issued to all three of us, so I had a Nevada driver’s license he could alter. And the “spurious” checks were all made out with gender-neutral names. The only problem was of the five “spurious” checks in the evidence vault; none of them were in the amount of eight hundred dollars. The closest was seven hundred and seventy-five dollars and it would have to do.

  Donnie got the surveillance team together with Beaver and two ATF agents. I wore a tape recorder to record my conversations with Paul and a UHF transmitter so Donnie could monitor the conversation while I was in the apartment. Paul’s apartment complex was behind the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino, and while I was getting wired up, Beaver and one of the ATF agents went over to keep tabs on Paul.

  Donnie and I tested all the recording equipment and the transmitter. I grabbed my Smith and Wesson Model 60, off-duty revolver and stuck it in my left cowboy boot. I had the tape recorder taped to my right ankle, with the microphone wire running up my leg. We taped the microphone to my chest and I secured the UHF transmitter to my lower stomach, that no-man’s-land between your belt line and your pecker, the UHF transmitter’s microphone was taped under my beltline. I felt like a frickin’ walking sound studio; but Donnie looked me over and did a quick pat down and said he couldn’t see or feel the wires or equipment. Off I went in my IROC-Z to meet Paul. Donnie and the second ATF agent headed over to the apartment complex and set up where Donnie could see the front door of the apartment, while Beaver watched the back.