On Wednesday, July 1st, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/4:00 p.m. Pacific, Fox News Channel's "Fox Report" with Shepard Smith will feature ATF's deliberate failure to protect one of its own decorated undercover Special Agents from criminal death threats and actual violence, including the actual arson of the agent's home while his family was sleeping inside. This is one of cable TV's most watched programs...please don't miss it.
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Undercover No More, Jay Dobyns Revs Up For a Different Fight
The Washington Post
June 21st, 2009
By Neely Tucker, Washington Post Staff Writer
Former All-American Supercop Jay Dobyns, the federal agent who went undercover to infiltrate the Hells Angels, leaves his Georgetown hotel on a recent hot afternoon. Shoves his pistol into his waistband at the small of his back, lights a Marlboro and crosses M Street NW.
"I'm the good guy," he says, as if reminding you to keep your eye on the ball.
He's still employed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in an Arizona office job, but it's clear the agency has had enough of his Serpico bit, the whole Donnie Brasco thing. Dobyns is the best-selling author of this year's "No Angel," a taut, profane tome about how he worked his way into the Arizona chapter of the world's most notorious motorcycle gang, and sure, the movie rights have already sold.
But more important, he's filed two suits against the ATF, charging the agency with failing to protect him from years of death threats from bad men on big bikes.
The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General issued a report last year that said he was right -- that the agency had failed to move him and his family with their identities protected, that the ATF's response to one death threat was "inadequate, incomplete and needlessly delayed," that they had reached dismissive conclusions about the threats "without adequate investigation," and so on. The report recommended the ATF "amend its written procedures" to better protect all agents.
He's moved his family more than 10 times in four years, sometimes at government expense, sometimes at his own. He's changed his names on official records. And still, an unknown arsonist found and torched his Tucson house one night last August, while he was traveling, sending his wife and two teenage children sprinting into the darkness. An Angel in prison was caught writing a letter to another gang member, saying they should arrange for the gang rape of Dobyns's wife, Gweneth.
"Doesn't sound like a fun evening, does it?" she says, by phone. They've been married 20 years. She sounds great, like Sondra Locke in those Clint Eastwood flicks from the 1970s, a nice girl with good hair who's handy with a pump-action shotgun.
Here comes her husband now, stepping into an Italian restaurant: Shaved head, goatee, shades, jeans, embroidered white silk shirt (untucked), flip-flops, baseball cap, biceps, blue eyes, 47. About 6-1, 220, former honorable-mention all-Pac-10 wide receiver at the University of Arizona. He is "fully sleeved," as they say in the world of skin ink, tattoos covering both arms, shoulder to wrist. Silver rings on almost every finger. Espresso addict, chain smoker. He's stopped doing handfuls of Hydroxycut, the diet pills, the legal uppers, that kept him stoked when he was riding with the Angels, hands thrown up on the ape hangers, but he still looks like if he hit you, you'd stay hit.
"I'm not anybody's knight in shining armor," he's saying, explaining why he's committing career suicide, filing suits like this, alerting members of Congress of his claims, "but there's a greater good here. Nobody has ever stood up to these guys before."
He digs into the pasta and flips through the shorthand notes he penned in all capital letters, in red ink, for today's interview: "Only people who hate me more than the Hells Angels are ATF's shot-callers." And: "I have God and a gun on my side -- I will be OK." And: "U.S. gov't left me alone to defend my family from an international crime syndicate."
He's no longer in hiding; he's full-bore into the lawsuits. He'll go on for two minutes or two hours, it's up to you, about how the ATF accused him of burning his own house down and said he was "mentally unfit" to work. He says a recent mediation hearing produced this offer from the agency: Quit or be fired.
One suit was filed last October in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in D.C.; the ATF is contesting the venue. The other suit, filed in federal court in Arizona in March, is not yet due for a response from the agency. A spokesman declined to comment on Dobyns's allegations. More on that in a minute.
First, let's go back to the beginning. The Hells Angels case was supposed to be a career capper.
Dobyns, an undercover agent with ATF for 15 years, was a highly regarded pro working a case in Bullhead City, Ariz., in 2001, with the covert identity of Jay "Bird" Davis. He was posing as a gun-runner and collections-agent thug for the fictional business Imperial Financial.
He was in mid-investigation in April 2002 when the Angels and the Mongols, another rough-hewn cycle gang, fell into a riot at Harrah's casino in Laughlin, Nev. Two Angels and one Mongol were killed and dozens injured. The ATF decided to go after the 2,500-member Angels, with the theory that the gang constituted a racketeering organization.
To do this, Dobyns and another agent put together a "gang," composed of two other undercover agents and two paid informants. The lead informant, Rudy Kramer, was a longtime biker and meth dealer, and an inactive member of a Tijuana-based cycle gang called the Solo Angeles. Their gang had Kramer as president, Dobyns as vice president. They would tool around Arizona, profess their love and admiration for the Hells Angels and ask for permission to set up a formal nomad chapter of the Solo Angeles in their area. From there, they'd try to worm their way into the Angels' good graces and alleged criminal doings, thereby laying the groundwork for a massive conspiracy indictment.
Dobyns's group worked for nearly two years. They rode thousands of miles with the Angels. He learned things; he could wave off drinks by always having a smoke in hand. "I sacrificed my lungs to save my liver." He could pass on hits of cocaine, weed and meth by saying that he worked for a Mafia boss who kept him on call every hour of every day. He enlisted a female agent to pose as his girlfriend, to give him a plausible excuse to pass on the offers of sex from female hangers-on.
He went so deeply into being Bird that he says he became "obsessed," all but forgetting his wife and children. It took a toll on his marriage. He got a lot of tattoos, mainly from an Angel named Robert "Mac" McKay, and hammered down caffeine, Red Bulls and diet pills to get that eyes-glazed gonzo look.
He and a colleague staged an execution of a Mongol (actually, another cop) to impress the Angels brass. They dressed the cop in Mongols gear, tied his hands behind his back, put him face down in the desert, then mussed cow brains through his hair and spattered his clothes with blood. They took a happy snap of the gore and brought back the bloody Mongol vest. That earned Dobyns an invitation to join the club, and then the net swooped in for the arrests.
"I felt like Lewis and Clark when they laid eyes on the Pacific, or Neil Armstrong when his boot hit moon dirt," he writes in the book.
Not afraid of publicity, he went on cable television documentaries, even wearing a cowboy hat in one, describing his exploits. Two true-crime books were written about the investigation before his own memoir. He set up a slick Web site, showcasing his college football heroics, his bad-ass biker persona (scowl, bandanna, tats, bulging biceps, the obligatory wife-beater) and his motivational speaking gigs.
This is all great . . . except for the unhappy fact that the case collapsed before trial. No Angel did time for anything much more serious than being in possession of a firearm. Most of them walked. Dobyns says it was due to infighting between ATF higher-ups and the local prosecutor's office.
Then came the threats. He and his family went on the run, his suit maintains, and the ATF mishandled the moves, delayed investigating the threats and came to regard him as a showboating pain in the rear.
"In nearly every respect, [the Angels] won," he writes in the book. Let's talk to some Hells Angels. Let's see what they make of Jay Dobyns. Let's start at the top, the godfather of the band, Sonny Barger.
We've got his attorney Fritz Clapp on the line, and we're explaining about Dobyns and death threats and we'd like to see what Mr. Barg -- "We're not giving him any publicity to sell his book," Clapp interrupts, amicably. "No comment."
Fine. We ask for his official title with the Angels, and Clapp says, "I'm the guy who says, 'No comment.' " He went on to trade bike stories, about this time he was injured and several bikers were killed in a collision with a runaway pulpwood truck -- "It was raining logs" -- but we digress.
Let's talk to an Angel who allegedly threatened to kill Dobyns.
"The man's a sociopath." This is Robert "Mac" McKay on the line -- an Angel calling a cop a sociopath, what are the odds -- from his tattoo shop, the Black Rose, in Tucson. McKay spent 17 months in jail awaiting trial on a variety of charges after Dobyns's investigation. He eventually took a plea to a single misdemeanor for threatening Dobyns in a bar.
"The whole investigation thing, the government spent millions of dollars on what turned out to be a publicity stunt for Jay Dobyns," McKay says. He adds that the alleged threat was "a total fabrication."
So, do the Angels want Dobyns dead? Did they cause his house to burn down?
"Absolutely not. He is not under any threat from us and never has been. He's got this thing in his mind about who he is. . . . Even the ATF says he's useless."
McKay's court-appointed lawyer, Barbara Hull, says, "The whole case went south quickly, and it was pretty clear it had to do with Agent Dobyns."
The assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, Tim Duax, now based in Iowa, says that's nonsense.
"Jay's undercover work was solid," Duax says. The allegation that he did something unethical that deep-sixed the case? "Absolutely untrue." The reason the case disintegrated? "Had nothing to do with Agent Dobyns."
So how did it come to this, sitting in a restaurant, giving a postmortem on his career? Dobyns says it's simple: The threats came in, were mishandled, he complained in high-octane fashion and alienated people high up in the organization. His suit is filled with allegations that superiors have told him he'll be ending his career in "a postage stamp in the middle of nowhere," that they think he burned down his own house.
"They took three days to send anybody out to look at the house," he says. "And when I complained about their offered solution -- to move us again -- within two hours they told me I was the chief suspect."
This does not strike some veteran agents as unusual. William "Billy" Queen is a legendary ATF agent who infiltrated the Mongols in California several years ago, netting dozens of felony convictions for serious crimes. His reward, he says, was that "the ATF ruined my life."
He says that when the agency moved him out of the area to protect him from death threats, he was needlessly split from his ex-wife and children (who lived nearby, and wanted to relocate with him). They were shipped to Miami. He was shipped to Plano, Tex. He cites a personal vendetta from a high-ranking (now retired) ATF administrator as the cause. It was so bad, Queen says, that he retired.
"What they did to me was worse than what they've done to Jay," he says, in a telephone interview from his home in California. He never sued but "looking back on it now, I wish I would have."
Charlie Fuller, the executive director of the International Association of Undercover Officers, spent 23 years with the ATF. He trained undercover agents for the agency for years, including Dobyns. He says that while he loves his former employer, it has an "institutional suspicion" of its undercover agents.
"ATF considers undercovers a necessary evil," Fuller says. "They don't fit the mold. They don't look like the chief of police. Jay didn't do dope, didn't cheat, didn't beat people up. That's actually hard to do, in those operations, with those type of people, but ATF can't believe that. They can't believe you work guys like that and not do all that stuff. That's what they visualize."
Still, he says, when he heard the agency was saying that Dobyns set fire to his own house, "it sent me over the edge. I can't tell you how this is eating at me."
The ATF was asked about these and other statements. Here is the response:
"ATF is aware of the recent publication of Mr. Dobyns' book. The book is not an ATF publication, and as such, ATF will not comment on its content. Further, ATF does not, as a matter of policy, comment on personnel matters or pending litigation." It's attributed to W. Larry Ford, the assistant director for public and governmental affairs.
Jay Dobyns finishes his lunch and heads back out into the sunshine. He's got another meeting, something to do with the lawsuit, before catching a flight back home. Shades and baseball cap back on. He's hurrying. He's got a sense of purpose. He's not happy. Blue-eyed crime fighters with prominent jaws aren't supposed to end up like this.
Watching him go, you wonder how it's all going to end, the jilted agent now fighting his own agency, and it doesn't look good for anybody. Maybe he was right. Maybe the Angels, still riding, still the most powerful motorcycle gang on the planet, really did run over him.
Former All-American Supercop Jay Dobyns, the federal agent who went undercover to infiltrate the Hells Angels, leaves his Georgetown hotel on a recent hot afternoon. Shoves his pistol into his waistband at the small of his back, lights a Marlboro and crosses M Street NW.
"I'm the good guy," he says, as if reminding you to keep your eye on the ball.
He's still employed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in an Arizona office job, but it's clear the agency has had enough of his Serpico bit, the whole Donnie Brasco thing. Dobyns is the best-selling author of this year's "No Angel," a taut, profane tome about how he worked his way into the Arizona chapter of the world's most notorious motorcycle gang, and sure, the movie rights have already sold.
But more important, he's filed two suits against the ATF, charging the agency with failing to protect him from years of death threats from bad men on big bikes.
The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General issued a report last year that said he was right -- that the agency had failed to move him and his family with their identities protected, that the ATF's response to one death threat was "inadequate, incomplete and needlessly delayed," that they had reached dismissive conclusions about the threats "without adequate investigation," and so on. The report recommended the ATF "amend its written procedures" to better protect all agents.
He's moved his family more than 10 times in four years, sometimes at government expense, sometimes at his own. He's changed his names on official records. And still, an unknown arsonist found and torched his Tucson house one night last August, while he was traveling, sending his wife and two teenage children sprinting into the darkness. An Angel in prison was caught writing a letter to another gang member, saying they should arrange for the gang rape of Dobyns's wife, Gweneth.
"Doesn't sound like a fun evening, does it?" she says, by phone. They've been married 20 years. She sounds great, like Sondra Locke in those Clint Eastwood flicks from the 1970s, a nice girl with good hair who's handy with a pump-action shotgun.
Here comes her husband now, stepping into an Italian restaurant: Shaved head, goatee, shades, jeans, embroidered white silk shirt (untucked), flip-flops, baseball cap, biceps, blue eyes, 47. About 6-1, 220, former honorable-mention all-Pac-10 wide receiver at the University of Arizona. He is "fully sleeved," as they say in the world of skin ink, tattoos covering both arms, shoulder to wrist. Silver rings on almost every finger. Espresso addict, chain smoker. He's stopped doing handfuls of Hydroxycut, the diet pills, the legal uppers, that kept him stoked when he was riding with the Angels, hands thrown up on the ape hangers, but he still looks like if he hit you, you'd stay hit.
"I'm not anybody's knight in shining armor," he's saying, explaining why he's committing career suicide, filing suits like this, alerting members of Congress of his claims, "but there's a greater good here. Nobody has ever stood up to these guys before."
He digs into the pasta and flips through the shorthand notes he penned in all capital letters, in red ink, for today's interview: "Only people who hate me more than the Hells Angels are ATF's shot-callers." And: "I have God and a gun on my side -- I will be OK." And: "U.S. gov't left me alone to defend my family from an international crime syndicate."
He's no longer in hiding; he's full-bore into the lawsuits. He'll go on for two minutes or two hours, it's up to you, about how the ATF accused him of burning his own house down and said he was "mentally unfit" to work. He says a recent mediation hearing produced this offer from the agency: Quit or be fired.
One suit was filed last October in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in D.C.; the ATF is contesting the venue. The other suit, filed in federal court in Arizona in March, is not yet due for a response from the agency. A spokesman declined to comment on Dobyns's allegations. More on that in a minute.
First, let's go back to the beginning. The Hells Angels case was supposed to be a career capper.
Dobyns, an undercover agent with ATF for 15 years, was a highly regarded pro working a case in Bullhead City, Ariz., in 2001, with the covert identity of Jay "Bird" Davis. He was posing as a gun-runner and collections-agent thug for the fictional business Imperial Financial.
He was in mid-investigation in April 2002 when the Angels and the Mongols, another rough-hewn cycle gang, fell into a riot at Harrah's casino in Laughlin, Nev. Two Angels and one Mongol were killed and dozens injured. The ATF decided to go after the 2,500-member Angels, with the theory that the gang constituted a racketeering organization.
To do this, Dobyns and another agent put together a "gang," composed of two other undercover agents and two paid informants. The lead informant, Rudy Kramer, was a longtime biker and meth dealer, and an inactive member of a Tijuana-based cycle gang called the Solo Angeles. Their gang had Kramer as president, Dobyns as vice president. They would tool around Arizona, profess their love and admiration for the Hells Angels and ask for permission to set up a formal nomad chapter of the Solo Angeles in their area. From there, they'd try to worm their way into the Angels' good graces and alleged criminal doings, thereby laying the groundwork for a massive conspiracy indictment.
Dobyns's group worked for nearly two years. They rode thousands of miles with the Angels. He learned things; he could wave off drinks by always having a smoke in hand. "I sacrificed my lungs to save my liver." He could pass on hits of cocaine, weed and meth by saying that he worked for a Mafia boss who kept him on call every hour of every day. He enlisted a female agent to pose as his girlfriend, to give him a plausible excuse to pass on the offers of sex from female hangers-on.
He went so deeply into being Bird that he says he became "obsessed," all but forgetting his wife and children. It took a toll on his marriage. He got a lot of tattoos, mainly from an Angel named Robert "Mac" McKay, and hammered down caffeine, Red Bulls and diet pills to get that eyes-glazed gonzo look.
He and a colleague staged an execution of a Mongol (actually, another cop) to impress the Angels brass. They dressed the cop in Mongols gear, tied his hands behind his back, put him face down in the desert, then mussed cow brains through his hair and spattered his clothes with blood. They took a happy snap of the gore and brought back the bloody Mongol vest. That earned Dobyns an invitation to join the club, and then the net swooped in for the arrests.
"I felt like Lewis and Clark when they laid eyes on the Pacific, or Neil Armstrong when his boot hit moon dirt," he writes in the book.
Not afraid of publicity, he went on cable television documentaries, even wearing a cowboy hat in one, describing his exploits. Two true-crime books were written about the investigation before his own memoir. He set up a slick Web site, showcasing his college football heroics, his bad-ass biker persona (scowl, bandanna, tats, bulging biceps, the obligatory wife-beater) and his motivational speaking gigs.
This is all great . . . except for the unhappy fact that the case collapsed before trial. No Angel did time for anything much more serious than being in possession of a firearm. Most of them walked. Dobyns says it was due to infighting between ATF higher-ups and the local prosecutor's office.
Then came the threats. He and his family went on the run, his suit maintains, and the ATF mishandled the moves, delayed investigating the threats and came to regard him as a showboating pain in the rear.
"In nearly every respect, [the Angels] won," he writes in the book. Let's talk to some Hells Angels. Let's see what they make of Jay Dobyns. Let's start at the top, the godfather of the band, Sonny Barger.
We've got his attorney Fritz Clapp on the line, and we're explaining about Dobyns and death threats and we'd like to see what Mr. Barg -- "We're not giving him any publicity to sell his book," Clapp interrupts, amicably. "No comment."
Fine. We ask for his official title with the Angels, and Clapp says, "I'm the guy who says, 'No comment.' " He went on to trade bike stories, about this time he was injured and several bikers were killed in a collision with a runaway pulpwood truck -- "It was raining logs" -- but we digress.
Let's talk to an Angel who allegedly threatened to kill Dobyns.
"The man's a sociopath." This is Robert "Mac" McKay on the line -- an Angel calling a cop a sociopath, what are the odds -- from his tattoo shop, the Black Rose, in Tucson. McKay spent 17 months in jail awaiting trial on a variety of charges after Dobyns's investigation. He eventually took a plea to a single misdemeanor for threatening Dobyns in a bar.
"The whole investigation thing, the government spent millions of dollars on what turned out to be a publicity stunt for Jay Dobyns," McKay says. He adds that the alleged threat was "a total fabrication."
So, do the Angels want Dobyns dead? Did they cause his house to burn down?
"Absolutely not. He is not under any threat from us and never has been. He's got this thing in his mind about who he is. . . . Even the ATF says he's useless."
McKay's court-appointed lawyer, Barbara Hull, says, "The whole case went south quickly, and it was pretty clear it had to do with Agent Dobyns."
The assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, Tim Duax, now based in Iowa, says that's nonsense.
"Jay's undercover work was solid," Duax says. The allegation that he did something unethical that deep-sixed the case? "Absolutely untrue." The reason the case disintegrated? "Had nothing to do with Agent Dobyns."
So how did it come to this, sitting in a restaurant, giving a postmortem on his career? Dobyns says it's simple: The threats came in, were mishandled, he complained in high-octane fashion and alienated people high up in the organization. His suit is filled with allegations that superiors have told him he'll be ending his career in "a postage stamp in the middle of nowhere," that they think he burned down his own house.
"They took three days to send anybody out to look at the house," he says. "And when I complained about their offered solution -- to move us again -- within two hours they told me I was the chief suspect."
This does not strike some veteran agents as unusual. William "Billy" Queen is a legendary ATF agent who infiltrated the Mongols in California several years ago, netting dozens of felony convictions for serious crimes. His reward, he says, was that "the ATF ruined my life."
He says that when the agency moved him out of the area to protect him from death threats, he was needlessly split from his ex-wife and children (who lived nearby, and wanted to relocate with him). They were shipped to Miami. He was shipped to Plano, Tex. He cites a personal vendetta from a high-ranking (now retired) ATF administrator as the cause. It was so bad, Queen says, that he retired.
"What they did to me was worse than what they've done to Jay," he says, in a telephone interview from his home in California. He never sued but "looking back on it now, I wish I would have."
Charlie Fuller, the executive director of the International Association of Undercover Officers, spent 23 years with the ATF. He trained undercover agents for the agency for years, including Dobyns. He says that while he loves his former employer, it has an "institutional suspicion" of its undercover agents.
"ATF considers undercovers a necessary evil," Fuller says. "They don't fit the mold. They don't look like the chief of police. Jay didn't do dope, didn't cheat, didn't beat people up. That's actually hard to do, in those operations, with those type of people, but ATF can't believe that. They can't believe you work guys like that and not do all that stuff. That's what they visualize."
Still, he says, when he heard the agency was saying that Dobyns set fire to his own house, "it sent me over the edge. I can't tell you how this is eating at me."
The ATF was asked about these and other statements. Here is the response:
"ATF is aware of the recent publication of Mr. Dobyns' book. The book is not an ATF publication, and as such, ATF will not comment on its content. Further, ATF does not, as a matter of policy, comment on personnel matters or pending litigation." It's attributed to W. Larry Ford, the assistant director for public and governmental affairs.
Jay Dobyns finishes his lunch and heads back out into the sunshine. He's got another meeting, something to do with the lawsuit, before catching a flight back home. Shades and baseball cap back on. He's hurrying. He's got a sense of purpose. He's not happy. Blue-eyed crime fighters with prominent jaws aren't supposed to end up like this.
Watching him go, you wonder how it's all going to end, the jilted agent now fighting his own agency, and it doesn't look good for anybody. Maybe he was right. Maybe the Angels, still riding, still the most powerful motorcycle gang on the planet, really did run over him.
A Very Hellish Journey
Newsweek
Jay Dobyns convinced the Hells Angels he was one of them. And that may have been the easy part. After going undercover, he's been a man on the run.
The first thought that might cross your mind when you meet Jay Dobyns is, I wonder if this man is going to kill me. Something about the shaved head and tangled goatee, the death-skull tattoos and silver rings on every finger, gives him a somewhat menacing look. His heavily muscled arms are inked shoulder to wrist. His eyes, icy blue, can be hard and unforgiving. When he is angry-and Dobyns is very, very angry-he cusses volcanically.
His fearsome persona was convincing enough to fool the Hells Angels into believing Dobyns was one of them. In 2001 the decorated, 15-year agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms went undercover and infiltrated the outlaw gang. His job: get evidence to bring down its members for a long list of alleged crimes, including drug running, extortion and murder. For nearly two years, the churchgoing former University of Arizona wide receiver assumed the fictional identity of Jaybird Davis, a debt collector, gun runner and biker. He soon impressed the Hells Angels with tales of murder and mayhem, and won initiation into their inner circle by agreeing to bash in the skull of a rival gang member.
In fact, the ATF staged the attack: a Phoenix cop posed for "proof" photos as the dead man, his head covered in cow brains. It wasn't easy for Dobyns to keep his cover without breaking the law, or his wedding vows. He says he turned down bong hits and offers of sex with Hells Angels groupies. To avoid suspicion, he festooned his body with more and more gang tattoos, and talked meaner and tougher than anyone around him. Once, he says, a gang member scolded him for being too flamboyantly outlaw. "You look like a convict, you talk like a surfer and all the jewelry is like you're f---ing Liberace on crack," he recalls the biker saying. "Tone your s--- down." When he could, he'd sneak home to Tucson and slip briefly back into his life as a husband and father of two.
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Dobyns's risky work seemed to pay off. In summer 2003, "Operation Black Biscuit" and parallel raids ended with the arrest of 52 people, leading to the indictment of 16 Hells Angels and associates on racketeering and murder charges. Dobyns and his team of fellow undercover agents were heroes. The ATF awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal. His recently released book about the undercover operation, "No Angel," is climbing the bestseller list. Twentieth Century Fox just bought the movie rights to his story.
But Dobyns says he is anything but happy about the way things have worked out. In the years since the sting ended, he has had a hard time returning to life as an ordinary citizen. His face is now too well known for undercover work, and there are few adrenaline rushes to be had in his new assignment managing an ATF ballistics program that analyzes crime-scene evidence.
He also fears for his safety. Though he takes precautions to conceal where he lives, he says the Hells Angels are after him and his family. He has documented numerous death threats, and last summer his house was set on fire. Most of all, he is furious at the ATF, which he says now treats him like a pariah. He says the agency has done little to protect him or to go after the people who want him dead.
This month he sued the government for $4 million, charging that the bureau he risked his life for has left him to fend for himself. His claims are backed, in part, by the Department of Justice inspector general's office, which issued a report last September concluding the ATF hadn't done enough to conceal his identity and "needlessly and inappropriately" delayed responding to two of the threats against him. (The ATF would not comment on the details of Dobyns's complaints. "The safety and welfare of our employees is of utmost concern to the ATF," a spokesman says. Further, the ATF says it "does not, as a matter of policy, comment on personnel matters or pending litigation.") "I still love ATF," he says. "No group is more eager to go toe-to-toe with predators. But I have a serious problem with white-collar desk-drivers who are going out of their way to ruin me."
The trouble began when the Hells Angels cases went to court. If convicted, many of the defendants would have faced long prison terms. But the bikers' lawyers successfully argued that investigators and prosecutors had mishandled and withheld evidence, undermining the defense. The charges against several defendants were dropped; others wound up pleading to lesser offenses.
Dobyns says he started getting death threats. In 2004 he was working undercover on a new case when he unexpectedly bumped into the Hells Angels tattoo artist who had inked the skulls on his arms. "We know who you are," Dobyns recalls him saying. "We know where you live. You'll run the rest of your life." The tattoo artist pleaded guilty to threatening a federal officer and served 17 months.
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After that the ATF moved Dobyns and his family several times. He lived for a while in California and Washington, D.C. He says he asked the bureau to move him covertly, giving him a new identity and keeping his address a secret. But he says the ATF told him "a covert move was not a cost-effective use of their resources."
Instead, Dobyns says, "I started doing my own backstopping." He moved from rental to rental, putting the one-month leases under his wife Gwen's name, "trying to break the paper trail to me." He paid cash for all his cars so there wouldn't be loan documents to trace.
Dobyns says the death threats followed him. Legal documents filed in his lawsuit allege threats "by or from members of the [Hells Angels] and their criminal associates." The bureau, he says, failed to take them seriously. When he filed a formal complaint, he says the higher-ups branded him a troublemaker and pulled him from undercover work. He eventually settled with the agency for an undisclosed amount.
After moving around for a few years, Dobyns wanted to settle in one place with his wife, son and daughter. He bought a house, and appealed to a judge to remove his name from tax records. Around 3:30 a.m. one night last August, someone set fire to his back patio. Dobyns was out of town, but his wife and family were inside. "I looked up and there was a wall of orange flames," says Gwen. They got out in time, but the house was nearly destroyed. The arson investigation, still ongoing, was turned over to the FBI.
Dobyns says he understands homeowners are always considered suspects, but he is furious that investigators still haven't cleared his name, despite his repeated offers to take a polygraph. (An FBI spokesman says he "can't confirm or deny there's an investigation involving Mr. Dobyns.") "They are basically accusing me of attempting to murder my own family," he says.
This is what seems to most animate Dobyns's anger-his sense of dismay that the ATF has turned against him. "I have done every dirty, rat-snake assignment for them for 20 years," he says. "I've done nothing but go to war for them." Dobyns lived for the danger and excitement of undercover work. As a rookie agent, he was shot in the back before he got his first paycheck. He volunteered for dangerous duty, posing as a gang member and drug dealer. Throughout the years, he's won 12 commendations for his work.
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He takes guff from his family and friends for still dressing and acting like an outlaw. After two decades of working the streets, "I kind of fell in love with my props," he says. "It became who I was." He says he misses "the rush of riding in a pack of gangsters at 85 miles per hour, only 18 inches apart. That's a rush that even catching a pass in front of 70,000 people in a stadium can't match."
Dobyns and his family now live in a sparsely furnished rental while they wait to rebuild the house that burned down. His wife has mixed emotions about staying. "I understand where he's coming from, we're all sick of this and ready to get on with a normal life," she says. "On the other hand, sometimes I think if we move just one more time, don't tell anyone, go into sort of our own kind of witness-protection program, it would be a good idea." She pauses. "I am very protective of my husband, but God, he has gotten his ass kicked."
People may say Dobyns is using his complaint to drive publicity for his book, or that he's asking for trouble by calling attention to himself. And he admits the last few years have been miserable for his wife and kids. "The battle damage I have done to my family with this is terrible," he says. "But I'm not moving anymore. I am not running anymore." He sounds by turns bellicose and exhausted. "I am not afraid. I will not be intimidated and forced to wear a wig and a plastic nose and mustache. I am going to live my life."
The first thought that might cross your mind when you meet Jay Dobyns is, I wonder if this man is going to kill me. Something about the shaved head and tangled goatee, the death-skull tattoos and silver rings on every finger, gives him a somewhat menacing look. His heavily muscled arms are inked shoulder to wrist. His eyes, icy blue, can be hard and unforgiving. When he is angry-and Dobyns is very, very angry-he cusses volcanically.
His fearsome persona was convincing enough to fool the Hells Angels into believing Dobyns was one of them. In 2001 the decorated, 15-year agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms went undercover and infiltrated the outlaw gang. His job: get evidence to bring down its members for a long list of alleged crimes, including drug running, extortion and murder. For nearly two years, the churchgoing former University of Arizona wide receiver assumed the fictional identity of Jaybird Davis, a debt collector, gun runner and biker. He soon impressed the Hells Angels with tales of murder and mayhem, and won initiation into their inner circle by agreeing to bash in the skull of a rival gang member.
In fact, the ATF staged the attack: a Phoenix cop posed for "proof" photos as the dead man, his head covered in cow brains. It wasn't easy for Dobyns to keep his cover without breaking the law, or his wedding vows. He says he turned down bong hits and offers of sex with Hells Angels groupies. To avoid suspicion, he festooned his body with more and more gang tattoos, and talked meaner and tougher than anyone around him. Once, he says, a gang member scolded him for being too flamboyantly outlaw. "You look like a convict, you talk like a surfer and all the jewelry is like you're f---ing Liberace on crack," he recalls the biker saying. "Tone your s--- down." When he could, he'd sneak home to Tucson and slip briefly back into his life as a husband and father of two.
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Dobyns's risky work seemed to pay off. In summer 2003, "Operation Black Biscuit" and parallel raids ended with the arrest of 52 people, leading to the indictment of 16 Hells Angels and associates on racketeering and murder charges. Dobyns and his team of fellow undercover agents were heroes. The ATF awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal. His recently released book about the undercover operation, "No Angel," is climbing the bestseller list. Twentieth Century Fox just bought the movie rights to his story.
But Dobyns says he is anything but happy about the way things have worked out. In the years since the sting ended, he has had a hard time returning to life as an ordinary citizen. His face is now too well known for undercover work, and there are few adrenaline rushes to be had in his new assignment managing an ATF ballistics program that analyzes crime-scene evidence.
He also fears for his safety. Though he takes precautions to conceal where he lives, he says the Hells Angels are after him and his family. He has documented numerous death threats, and last summer his house was set on fire. Most of all, he is furious at the ATF, which he says now treats him like a pariah. He says the agency has done little to protect him or to go after the people who want him dead.
This month he sued the government for $4 million, charging that the bureau he risked his life for has left him to fend for himself. His claims are backed, in part, by the Department of Justice inspector general's office, which issued a report last September concluding the ATF hadn't done enough to conceal his identity and "needlessly and inappropriately" delayed responding to two of the threats against him. (The ATF would not comment on the details of Dobyns's complaints. "The safety and welfare of our employees is of utmost concern to the ATF," a spokesman says. Further, the ATF says it "does not, as a matter of policy, comment on personnel matters or pending litigation.") "I still love ATF," he says. "No group is more eager to go toe-to-toe with predators. But I have a serious problem with white-collar desk-drivers who are going out of their way to ruin me."
The trouble began when the Hells Angels cases went to court. If convicted, many of the defendants would have faced long prison terms. But the bikers' lawyers successfully argued that investigators and prosecutors had mishandled and withheld evidence, undermining the defense. The charges against several defendants were dropped; others wound up pleading to lesser offenses.
Dobyns says he started getting death threats. In 2004 he was working undercover on a new case when he unexpectedly bumped into the Hells Angels tattoo artist who had inked the skulls on his arms. "We know who you are," Dobyns recalls him saying. "We know where you live. You'll run the rest of your life." The tattoo artist pleaded guilty to threatening a federal officer and served 17 months.
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After that the ATF moved Dobyns and his family several times. He lived for a while in California and Washington, D.C. He says he asked the bureau to move him covertly, giving him a new identity and keeping his address a secret. But he says the ATF told him "a covert move was not a cost-effective use of their resources."
Instead, Dobyns says, "I started doing my own backstopping." He moved from rental to rental, putting the one-month leases under his wife Gwen's name, "trying to break the paper trail to me." He paid cash for all his cars so there wouldn't be loan documents to trace.
Dobyns says the death threats followed him. Legal documents filed in his lawsuit allege threats "by or from members of the [Hells Angels] and their criminal associates." The bureau, he says, failed to take them seriously. When he filed a formal complaint, he says the higher-ups branded him a troublemaker and pulled him from undercover work. He eventually settled with the agency for an undisclosed amount.
After moving around for a few years, Dobyns wanted to settle in one place with his wife, son and daughter. He bought a house, and appealed to a judge to remove his name from tax records. Around 3:30 a.m. one night last August, someone set fire to his back patio. Dobyns was out of town, but his wife and family were inside. "I looked up and there was a wall of orange flames," says Gwen. They got out in time, but the house was nearly destroyed. The arson investigation, still ongoing, was turned over to the FBI.
Dobyns says he understands homeowners are always considered suspects, but he is furious that investigators still haven't cleared his name, despite his repeated offers to take a polygraph. (An FBI spokesman says he "can't confirm or deny there's an investigation involving Mr. Dobyns.") "They are basically accusing me of attempting to murder my own family," he says.
This is what seems to most animate Dobyns's anger-his sense of dismay that the ATF has turned against him. "I have done every dirty, rat-snake assignment for them for 20 years," he says. "I've done nothing but go to war for them." Dobyns lived for the danger and excitement of undercover work. As a rookie agent, he was shot in the back before he got his first paycheck. He volunteered for dangerous duty, posing as a gang member and drug dealer. Throughout the years, he's won 12 commendations for his work.
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He takes guff from his family and friends for still dressing and acting like an outlaw. After two decades of working the streets, "I kind of fell in love with my props," he says. "It became who I was." He says he misses "the rush of riding in a pack of gangsters at 85 miles per hour, only 18 inches apart. That's a rush that even catching a pass in front of 70,000 people in a stadium can't match."
Dobyns and his family now live in a sparsely furnished rental while they wait to rebuild the house that burned down. His wife has mixed emotions about staying. "I understand where he's coming from, we're all sick of this and ready to get on with a normal life," she says. "On the other hand, sometimes I think if we move just one more time, don't tell anyone, go into sort of our own kind of witness-protection program, it would be a good idea." She pauses. "I am very protective of my husband, but God, he has gotten his ass kicked."
People may say Dobyns is using his complaint to drive publicity for his book, or that he's asking for trouble by calling attention to himself. And he admits the last few years have been miserable for his wife and kids. "The battle damage I have done to my family with this is terrible," he says. "But I'm not moving anymore. I am not running anymore." He sounds by turns bellicose and exhausted. "I am not afraid. I will not be intimidated and forced to wear a wig and a plastic nose and mustache. I am going to live my life."
By Holly Watt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Over a five-year period, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost dozens of weapons and hundreds of laptops that contained sensitive information, according to a scathing report issued yesterday by the Justice Department.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine identified "serious deficiencies" in ATF's response to lost or stolen items and called the agency's control of classified data "inadequate."
From 2002 to 2007, ATF lost 418 laptop computers and 76 weapons, according to the report. Two weapons were subsequently used to commit crimes. In one incident, a gun stolen from the home of a special agent was fired through the window of another home.
Ten firearms were "left in a public place." One of them was left on an airplane, three in bathrooms, one in a shopping cart and two on the top of cars as ATF employees drove away. A laptop also fell off the top of a car as an agent drove off.
Another weapon "fell into the water while an agent was fishing," according to the report.
"This seems like deja vu when you look back at previous reports outlining the same missteps by DOJ law enforcement agencies in 2001," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has criticized federal law enforcement agencies for failing to account for weapons and laptops. "Keeping track of government property may seem like housekeeping to some, but when it comes to guns and computers with sensitive information, it's critical to public safety, national security and the credibility of the ATF."
A regular audit of weapons and other sensitive items has been conducted since a study in 2001 revealed that the FBI and other agencies had misplaced20hundreds of firearms.
Yesterday's report showed that ATF, a much smaller agency than the FBI, had lost proportionately many more firearms and laptops.
"It is especially troubling that that ATF's rate of loss for weapons was nearly double that of the FBI and [Drug Enforcement Administration], and that ATF did not even know whether most of its lost, stolen, or missing laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information," Fine wrote.
W. Larry Ford, assistant director of ATF's Office of Public and Governmental Affairs, said the agency "is committed to strengthening controls over weapons, laptops and ammunition by more strictly enforcing agency policies and by developing new procedures outlined in our response to the OIG."
Many of the missing laptops contained sensitive or classified material, according to the report. ATF began installing encryption software only in May 2007.
ATF did not know what information was on 398 of the 418 lost or stolen laptops. The report called the lack of such knowledge a "significant deficiency."
Of the 20 missing laptops for which information was available, ATF indicated that seven -- 35 percent -- held sensitive information.
One missing laptop, for example, held "300-500 names with dates of birth and Social Security numbers of targets of criminal investigations, including their bank records with financial transactions." Another held "employee evaluations, including Social Security numbers and other [personal information]." Neither laptop was encrypted.
ATF employees did not report the loss of 365 of the 418 laptops.
The report was less critical of ATF's control of explosives, but when the inspector general reviewed inventory records, he found that amounts "on hand did not correspond with the amounts recorded" in records at eight of 16 locations.
ATF investigates crime involving firearms and explosives, arson and trafficking of alcohol and tobacco. It was transferred to the Justice Department from the Treasury Department in 2003, and the report contained implicit criticism of earlier auditing of the sensitive materials. ATF held "inaccurate data accumulated over several years," it said.
"The Good Guy"
February 5th, 2009
By Leo W. Banks
Death threats be damned, undercover cop Jay Dobyns isn't running anymore
On Aug. 10, 2008, the Dobyns family home burned after someone set a bookcase on the back porch on fire.
"When defense lawyers lambasted me as a dirty cop, no one at ATF stepped up and represented for me or the other undercovers. They were happy to let the public believe there was corruption in the operation when they knew there wasn't." -- Jay Dobyns
Dobyns addresses a group of lacrosse players at Orange Grove Middle School.
Jay Dobyns looks at the rubble at his feet, and brother, it's a mess. Everything is black and busted up. The blaze was six months ago, and the place still stinks of smoke. This used to be his Tucson home. He steps through the broken glass and the ashes, not talking much, because what in the hell is there to say?
And for Dobyns, not having much to say is a trick.
He's a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, author, public speaker, former UA football player and Internet celebrity known for his undercover work in the deepest penetration ever made of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.
If you Google his name, you won't find much middle ground. Opinions on him range from true American hero to out-of-control cowboy cop who not only loves being at the center of the action, standing up to his knees in Adrenalin River; he needs it.
You see, all through his life, Dobyns has known only one way to take on anything--with grinning, arms-wide leaps off the highest ledge.
Now, at 47, his house gone from an arsonist's match, his family badly shaken by their 3 a.m. escape, Dobyns is watching his back against outlaws sworn to kill him.
I ask what goes through his mind when he looks at this wreckage, and he says, "I think to myself, not with regret, but as an honest question, 'Jay, how could you have let your life get to this point?' There has to be an easier way."
This is big. Dobyns in an act of self-reflection? It's not his strong suit.
Twenty years of undercover work dulls your capacity for self-reflection, makes it a dangerous luxury. Doubt yourself for an instant, let your mind wander to a decision made a year ago, 10 minutes ago, and you're likely to be down-by-the-river, broke-dick dead.
Does this mean Dobyns is a changed man? Does this mean he's found redemption?
The operation is codenamed Black Biscuit. Dobyns is lead undercover, working mainly with a Phoenix cop named Timmy, and a street informant known only as Pops. Their job is to get as close as possible to the Hells Angels, pretend to be their friends, see and hear everything they say and do, then betray them.
"Most people are intimidated by the Angels' reputation for violence," says Dobyns. "But we put ourselves out there as alpha dogs, and they were impressed by that. It worked because we came in balls out."
Dobyns' cover is as Jay "Bird" Davis, a knee-capper for a made-up biker gang called the Solo Angels. The world in which he lives, for 21 months, is dangerous and hyper-violent, and he describes it in a book, co-written with Nils Johnson-Shelton, called No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels.
It will be published by Crown and available in bookstores on Tuesday, Feb. 10. Twentieth Century Fox already has bought movie rights.
Unless you catch your Zs on a prison cot, the book isn't bedtime reading. It has chapter titles like "Jesus Hates a Pussy." And "My Sucking Chest Wound."
Dobyns tells of characters who beat a woman unconscious after she insults them; when she awakens and insults them again, they allegedly beat her more, drag her into the desert, stab her repeatedly and try to cut off her head and stick it on a pole. But the knife can't cut through her spine. So they give up and leave her dead on the ground.
The book describes beat-downs and gang rapes, with almost all the action taking place in Arizona. He tells of an Angel approaching him at a biker rally near Flagstaff and offering Dobyns entertainment for the night--the biker's own teenage daughter and her best friend. The girls might be all of 16. At first, Dobyns is puzzled, then he figures it out. Bird's a debt collector, gun runner and supposed hit man--but not a drug addict. In other words, he has his act together.
"In the biker world, I was a catch." he writes.
Black Biscuit ends in 2003. Two other books have been written about it, but Dobyns wants to go deeper into the personal side of a long undercover job, the impact it has on an agent's psyche, on his family. After banging with the boys for weeks at a time, he tells of returning to Tucson and shedding his biker vest to coach his son's T-ball team and reconnect with wife, Gwen, who, increasingly and justifiably, wants her husband home, her family restored, the great stress lifted.
At one point, at an Angels' meeting in Mesa, Dobyns' cell rings. It's his son Jack, who chirps, "Hi, Daddy!" Keeping in character, Bird says, "Whassup? Big Lou there?" That's code for "put your mother on the line."
Eventually, inevitably, the divide between his two lives blurs, and Dobyns morphs into the worst version of himself, into Bird Davis--paranoid, fearful, always amped, swallowing a six pack of Red Bulls and three Starbucks lattes daily, along with fistfuls of speed-like diet pills that yank his eyes back into his skull in a cold, dead stare.
A year after Black Biscuit ends, Dobyns and other agents listen to surveillance tapes of four men talking. Dobyns recognizes three of them, not the fourth, and this guy's messed up. He's babbling, barely making sense. Dobyns hands the headphones to fellow agent Jenna Maguire, plays the fourth voice and says, "Who the f--- is that asshole?"
Maguire says, "You don't know?"
Dobyns says no. Maguire smiles and says, "That's you, Jay."
The hell of it is, for all that, the 16 indictments that come out of the investigation yield very little. Most are eventually dropped, or the defendants plead to much-lesser charges. The government fails to prove its basic contention that the Hells Angels are a criminal gang that commits crimes as part of an organized conspiracy.
Defense lawyers go public to charge that ATF agents used questionable tactics in gathering evidence, and they get backing from one of Black Biscuit's own operatives, the street informant Pops. In a National Geographic video on the case, he goes on camera and says agents broke rules in gathering evidence and did illegal taping.
The same video quotes Sonny Barger, godfather of the Hells Angels, debunking the central premise of Dobyns' book, that he was patched into the club as a member--given an official Hells Angels patch for his vest. Barger calls Dobyns a liar for making that claim. The video also quotes Angels lawyer Patricia Gitre alleging "pretty egregious conduct" by the undercovers, and she, too, aims criticism at Dobyns, suggesting he enjoyed his role a little too much. "But Agent Dobyns, let's be truthful," says Gitre. "There's somewhere inside of you that said, I want to be a biker."
The collapse of the case makes news in Arizona, with much of the criticism revolving around ATF's use of informants. In January 2005, Arizona Republic writer Dennis Wagner reveals that one informant was a longtime drug addict and drug seller, and another might've taken part in a murder, something unknown at the time of his enlistment by ATF. And on July 8, 2003, when agents move in to make their wrap-up arrests, one of the takedowns turned chaotic with gunfire. A judge later describes this raid--on the Hells Angels Cave Creek charter--as an "unlawful" attack.
Dobyns says Black Biscuit's failure opened the door for defense lawyers and Barger--Dobyns says he was "patched" and that Barger can't bear to admit "a cop got under his wire"--to make whatever claims they wanted, knowing they wouldn't have to back them up in court.
Dobyns becomes Black Biscuit's father, its public face, a scapegoat for the defense and for ATF. "When defense lawyers lambasted me as a dirty cop, no one at ATF stepped up and represented for me or the other undercovers," says Dobyns. "They were happy to let the public believe there was corruption in the operation when they knew there wasn't. It meant they didn't have to talk about why the case really fell apart: the bickering between ATF and the prosecutors on how to proceed. It wasn't anything the undercovers did."
He sends me a photo of a kid in a football uniform, and I'm thinking: Who's this fresh-faced boy, all wild-haired and teenage-tough? Look closer. It's Dobyns from his days at Sahuaro High School. Man, it must be a million years ago.
He grows up mainly on Tucson's eastside, loving football, loving the UA. On game days, he rides the bus from Speedway Boulevard and Camino Seco to campus to get his ticket. He dreams of one day playing on the same field, and the dream comes true. He starts for UA at wideout for three seasons in the early '80s. Former teammate Glenn Howell says, "Nobody was going to outwork Jay. Man, he was a workout freak."
When the gates to the field are locked, because it's against the rules to practice, Dobyns and Howell hop the fence and go to work running routes. Dobyns isn't fast, but he catches everything. If the quarterback throws the ball off the moon, he goes up and gets it. He wins all Pac-10 honorable mention his junior and senior years. "I didn't have much raw talent, but I played like a maniac," says Dobyns. "I had to if I wanted playing time. I threw fear out the window, played the hardest I could, and it carried over to ATF."
He starts with the ATF in 1987. While helping take down a suspect in a gone-to-hell neighborhood south of Tucson's airport called Dogpatch, Dobyns is taken hostage and shot between the shoulder blades, the bullet exiting his chest, blood arcing out the hole like someone pressing a thumb over a garden hose. He'd just taken off his ballistics vest because he felt stuffy.
Dobyns says, "I remember thinking, 'I've been on this job a week, and I'm going to die in the dirt in this f------ trailer park.'" Actually, he's been on the job nine days, which means he's been shot and taken hostage before he gets paid for the first time.
Now Dobyns is in Joliet, Ill., 1989, back at work after the shooting, and he's standing with his feet wide, his gun in the firing position as a car speeds toward him. The driver and passenger are gangster gun dealers. The passenger is leaning out the window firing a machine gun at Dobyns, who, instead of getting the bleep out of the way, is firing back with his nine--bam, bam, bam.
But Dobyns stays put because, as he says, "I always wanted to confront the most violent people, go face to face with them," and that's what he does, planting himself until the car rams him, and up he goes, hurtling over the hood and the roof. He's shot again, this time in the gut. But he keeps his vest on, so the bullet bounces off.
Howell and Dobyns stay close after their playing days. Howell even does undercover jobs with Dobyns when Howell works security for Tucson Unified School District. They were on a task force targeting gangs and guns at schools. Today, Howell is the strength and conditioning coach for Pima Community College football and the UA's rugby team.
I say to Howell, "Why does Dobyns do what he does, the undercover stuff?"
Howell says, "It goes back to athletics and being challenged. In football, they're always bringing somebody in to take your job, and Jay would see the new guy, and he loved the challenge. We had to go against some tough-ass dudes, playing LSU, USC in front of 60,000 people. The adrenalin was unbelievable, and when I went undercover with Jay, I got the same rush. That shit's fun. People'd say, 'Aren't you scared?' And I'd say, 'No. because I have my boy here.' Jay was my cover guy. That comes from playing ball with somebody, knowing how he works and that he'll give himself up for the team."
"That's why the Hells Angels loved him. He got in because he was, like, one of their dudes. He's a great teammate ... even if it's a criminal teammate."
We're driving in Dobyns' rig, the model of which will remain nameless, and Dobyns is telling me he's done running. He's lived in 16 places in 48 months, and enough's enough: no more bouncing from city to city, no more aliases. "After the fire, I said, 'That's it,'" Dobyns says. "I'm not going to be intimidated by these threats anymore. I'm gonna make my stand and be happy doing it."
He tells me where, but I won't name the state, the city or anything that might lead to him. "But they're still hunting you," I say. I know this without asking, because here we are going down the road, and he's checking the mirrors, looking for someone tagging too close, staying with him through too many turns, and he's got his piece with him--because he never goes anywhere without it.
"I might regret this," says Dobyns. "But I've lost a big chunk of my life using the escape-and-evade mentality, and it hasn't worked. They keep finding me."
We drive along in sun-drenched silence, the windshield flickering with shadow and light, shadow and light, from the branches of the ghostly winter trees overhanging the road, and suddenly, without prompting, he comes out with a startling remark, a declaration of pride, motivation and self-identity deeper than anything he says in all our e-mails, meetings and phone calls.
This apologia runs a total of four words. Dobyns says: "I'm the good guy."
How strange it sounds, because good guys usually don't have to cover their tracks this way, and they don't look how Dobyns looks, which is a bit like a dime-rock dealer on his birthday. His head is shaved, and he's wearing fatigue shorts, flip-flops and an Arizona Cardinals football cap pulled low against thick, black sunglasses, and he's got enough skin ink to piece together a good-size novel. And now, away from the ashes of his home, he's plenty talkative, puffing a Marlboro Light, blowing smoke out the window, the sun glinting off the look-at-me rings on his fingers, as he gestures, puffs, gestures, puffs.
I say to him, "Good guy? The Hells Angels don't think you're a good guy. By now, I'm sure ATF doesn't, either."
It's true. Dobyns is a man alone, hunted by what he calls a criminal syndicate, his house in ashes, and now he's locked in a brutal lawsuit against ATF, his own employer, charging that they've essentially abandoned him against those trying to cap him.
Shortly after Black Biscuit ends, and after Dobyns' identity is revealed, the threats begin. The first comes in August 2004 at Club Congress in downtown Tucson. Dobyns is working a case when a Hells Angel walks in, recognizes him as Bird, noses up and tells him the Angels have found where he lives, and he's "going to get hurt." He says to Dobyns, "You're going to spend the rest of your life on the run!"
The threats keep coming, according to court papers. A prisoner says his former cellmate talks of wanting to place a gun to the back of Dobyns' head and pull the trigger. Other informants tell law enforcement the Hells Angels have allegedly farmed a hit out to the Aryan Brotherhood and MS-13. The feds hear talk of wanting to rape his teenage daughter, kidnap and gang-rape his wife and videotape it.
Dobyns wants ATF to go after the people making the threats--confront them, breathe on them, make them understand the agency is prepared to use its full power to protect their man. But Dobyns says they don't step forward to sufficiently protect him and his family, and he sues. This case ends in a settlement in September 2007, with the agency agreeing to change the way it responds in the future.
Then the fire happens, Aug. 10, 2008. Someone torches a bookcase on the Dobyns' back porch, and the light from the flames is so intense that it awakens Jack, then 13. He races into his mom's room, shouting, "There's a fire! There's a fire!" Just as Gwen Dobyns sits up, an electrical outlet beside her bed explodes and tosses out a flash of fire that runs like lightning up to the ceiling.
The three of them, Gwen, Jack and older sister Dale, get out safely. The home is destroyed, $300,000 in damage. For reasons no one understands, Jack chose to sleep that night in his sister's room, right off the porch. It was the weekend, and Dale had fallen asleep watching TV on the living-room couch. If Jack had gone into his bedroom, there would've been no one in the porch bedroom, and the fire would've burned longer before anyone noticed. "It was a miracle," says Gwen. "God put Jack in her room that night."
The fire is plainly a hit attempt on Dobyns or his family, and he says it merits the dispatch of 100 ATF agents to comb the site, talk to neighbors, turn informants inside out. Instead, the agency responds by sending one investigator to the house 30 hours after the incident. No supervisor comes. Dobyns sees it as part of the same pattern that existed before the first lawsuit was settled. He says, "ATF's attitude is, 'You're gonna whistle us? OK, we're not doing a f------ thing for you.'"
An independent agency--the Office of Inspector General, part of the Department of Justice--largely backs Dobyns on his charge that ATF did not respond appropriately to the threats. The OIG investigates four of the threats against Dobyns and concludes that ATF "needlessly and inappropriately delayed its responses to two of the threats" and "should have done more to investigate two of the threats."
Two months after the fire, Dobyns files a second lawsuit, this time asking for $4,000,050 in damages for harassment and abuse, including the tarnishing of his name. His suit claims a supervisor, in front of others at ATF's Phoenix headquarters, declared Dobyns mentally unfit for duty. "Dobyns is broken," the supervisor allegedly says. "It is my duty to see Dobyns removed from this field division and this agency."
The suit also drops this bombshell: Sixteen days after the blaze, Dobyns is on the phone with an ATF supervisor who offers to transfer him and his family out of the area. Dobyns says he's not moving again until ATF makes some effort to find the arsonist, and so far, Dobyns tells the man, you've done a piss-poor job investigating the fire.
Later that day, in another call with ATF, Dobyns is told he's a suspect in the arson. The agency he still works for thinks he might've tried to murder his own family.
Now we're sitting on the sidewalk outside of a coffee bar talking about Dobyns' alibi. It's a strange thing to need when you've won ATF's Distinguished Service Medal for investigative excellence, 12 additional ATF awards for investigative achievement, and the Top Cops Award from the National Association of Police Organizations.
The last one is presented to him by then-U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, a Tucson guy now working at Canyon Ranch. He's the doc who greets Dobyns when he's wheeled into the ER after the 1987 shooting, the guy who re-inflates Dobyns' lung, plugs the holes in him and says of those aware of the extraordinary dangers Dobyns accepted in Black Biscuit: "Some of them (older Tucson cops) are in awe of him because of what he volunteered to do against guys who'd think nothing of eliminating him."
But now he needs an alibi, and this is it: He's in Phoenix at the time of the fire, taking flying lessons. He's staying at a hotel on a credit card. His cell is pinging all over the Valley, and it pings all the way down Interstate 10 as he drives home after the emergency call. Investigators interview him five times, and every time, he tells them, begs them, to pull up the damn rugs, look at everything, credit receipts, financial papers, phone records.
He's got a Marlboro Light going, and he's sipping a three-shot venti caramel macchiato from Starbucks--he still drinks three a day--and his cell phone is on the table between us, and it begins to sing. The ring tone is from the rapper Nelly.
Boom-bada-boom-bada-boom. "Yeah ... yeah ... OK." He clicks off. He puffs his Marlboro, heaves a plume of smoke across the sun. "I told them, I said, 'Give me a lie-detector test.' It's routine to give an arson suspect a polygraph. 'Go ahead, put me on the box.' But they won't do it. They don't check out my alibi. They do nothing to eliminate me as a suspect."
But the kicker comes the day after the fire--his family terrified, much of what he owns in ashes--when ATF tells Dobyns they're doubling his workload. He leans across the table, his Ray Charles shades framing his bald head: "Do you think if they believed I set this fire, really tried to kill my family, they'd offer to transfer me? They'd double my workload? Would they keep an attempted murderer on the payroll? It's pure harassment."
Asked to describe her reaction upon hearing Jay is a suspect in the blaze, Gwen Dobyns sputters to find the words. "It's an emotion that's hard to explain. I'm very protective of my husband." She pauses, searches again for the right words. "It makes me incredibly angry. I can feel my heart race just talking about it."
Dobyns says investigation of the fire started with Pima County, went to ATF and is now with the FBI. But when contacted by the Weekly, Special Agent Manuel Johnson, media coordinator for the FBI in Phoenix, neither confirms nor denies the agency's involvement in the investigation. Tom Mangan, ATF's spokesman in Phoenix, declines to comment on the arson or on Dobyns' lawsuit. He refers a call to ATF's D.C. headquarters, but a lawyer there refers the call to another spokesman, who does not call back.
In a CNN report on Dobyns that aired before the settlement of his first lawsuit, Mike Sullivan, ATF's acting director, issues this statement: "As ATF executes its mission to prevent terrorism, reduce violent crime and protect the public, we will continue to place the highest value on ensuring the safety of our employees and their families."
So this is what it's like now for the man alone, sitting at a sidewalk café in broad daylight, watching the next car as it rolls past, because it might contain the gunmen coming for him, waiting for the night, when he hears every sound, every unexplained knock, sometimes jumping from bed to clear the house with a shotgun.
It's a form of agony, sure, but not a crippling one. Dobyns still makes public appearances and gives speeches here and around the country--the topic, of course, is how to manage risk--still does his job for ATF, still, as he says, goes through every day with a smile, marveling at how blessed he is ... and now, how liberating it is, after years on the run, to say: Enough! It stops here. He calls his new strategy hiding in plain sight.
It's a huge risk, but it fits his character perfectly. It's another all-ahead-full, balls-out circus leap. You're bringing in new players to take my job as wide receiver? OK, boys, let's see what you've got.
Listen to him speak of how he's decided to live, the pride in the words, the willingness to poke the hornet's nest and bathe in the fallout.
"I'll be damned if I'm gonna wear a fake mustache and wig and hide from these guys," says Dobyns. "I don't want to fight. I don't want trouble. Look, it's been six years, and you won anyway. Let it go. But if they come for me, they better bring some dudes, because we're gonna get it on."
I ask Howell what the daily pressure does to Dobyns, and Howell says: "He's concerned. But if anybody's gonna f--- with Jay, he's got the wrong dude to f--- with. He's smart, thinks on his feet. He's calm, mentally strong, and that's what makes him dangerous. If you're trying to get at him, it's hard to do, because he's so mentally tough."
And Dobyns' redemption? It has nothing to do with the way he did his job. If he could consult a genie and erase events of his past, he wouldn't change a thing. He'd even take that bullet again. No, the redemption he needs is for what the job did to his family. Dobyns put undercover work ahead of his wife and kids, and that brought the nightmare of Black Biscuit to them as well.
"It's disheartening I did that, but I don't dodge accountability," he says. "I justified it, believing there was a greater good in taking bad men off the street, and I wanted my family to embrace that philosophy as much as I did. It was self-serving. They didn't sign up for this job; I did."
Now it looks like the job will never end. Black Biscuit will never end. The people who want Dobyns dead have elephant memories, and by talking about it, by writing the book, by signing the movie deal, by his star turns on CNN, National Geographic, the History Channel, Dobyns himself is keeping the story alive. He does so, he says, to make sure people know the truth, to reverse the humiliation he feels at ATF's disavowal of his work.
But it makes the biker role permanent. It keeps the curtain from falling on this danger-loving cat named Bird Davis. In No Angel, Dobyns writes: "I thought I'd been the one infiltrating the Hells Angels. I had it backwards. They were the ones who had infiltrated me."
Dobyns is at a party at the Spirits Lounge in Mesa. Three Angels push a drunken blonde at him, having decided Bird should take her home. She curtseys at him, and, very drunk, pumps her fists and shouts: "Gimme a B! ... Gimme an I ... Gimme an R! ... Gimme a D! What does it spell? Bird! That's my man! If he can't do me, no one can!"
Bird plays along, because he has to play along. Dobyns has been avoiding women and has heard whispers about that from these men who, he believes, make gang rape a pastime. So to cover himself, he lets the cheerleader sit on his lap, even gives her a piggyback ride around the pool table.
Then the party moves to an Angels clubhouse, and the cheerleader tags along--now Dobyns realizes he's made a big mistake. By allowing the cheerleader to come to the clubhouse, Bird has delivered her "into the mouth of the lion," into a possible gang rape. Dobyns writes, "I had to get us both out of there. Pronto."
Thinking fast, talking fast, he does so. They get onto Bird's bike, the cheerleader barely able to hang on as he drives her home. He gets her inside, dumps her onto her bed, unconscious, and his mind starts to work. Is this a setup, some kind of test? Maybe he's been made, the girl poisoned, and Dobyns will be discovered with the body. Maybe she's the old lady of an enemy, and Dobyns is a pawn in a game of payback.
The more he thinks, the more he's convinced the Angels have tailed him. He calls a member of the task force and asks for a sweep of the area. It's done. No sign of the Angels outside the house. But Dobyns isn't ready to leave. His paranoia won't let him.
He wanders the house while the cheerleader sleeps. In the refrigerator, he finds turkey, moldy cheese, some ketchup, and makes a sandwich. In the living room, he sits in a chair and eats, and when he's done, he puts his head back and shuts his eyes.
Burn that image into your mind. It captures the essence of undercover work.
See a man eating a crummy sandwich alone in the dark in a strange woman's house, having saved her from herself, because as a cop, an officer of the law, he's sworn to do that, no matter how foolish the choices she's made, and having saved himself from the mistake he made in cozying up to her, a split-second call, an instinct call, the consequences of the wrong one so easily lethal.
But it's not over, even in the quiet of that room, because he still has to go outside, and who knows what awaits? And as he thinks with his eyes closed, he sees a likely scene from his future. It features him in a courtroom witness box, answering questions about what he's done this night, about his mistake, and about every night over 21 months, under oath, justifying everything in an inch-by-inch public strip-down.
Remember the image of the tattooed man. He's the good guy. He did what he was asked to do.
Although this case of abuse and mismanagement(confirmed by the DOJ/OIG) is one of the most publicized, there are many many examples of gross misuse of authority by ATF that do not receive the media, congressional or investigative attention. Review the record of ATF EEOC complaints and the average time to investigation. You will not find ONE instance of wrongdoing ADMITTED without a full blown litigation on the part of the complainant. Equally as troubling is that the below article states clearly and succinctly that ATF readily squanders 1000's of man hours and millions of taxpayers dollar without regard. THIS IS AN INDISPUTABLE FACT since this article was written.We invite ANY manager from ATF to dispute this as a fact and be prepared to publicly deny this. The settlements in 2008 were in the millions of dollars.
Leaders dispute picture of a bureau run amok
Dennis Wagner, The Arizona Republic
Jan. 14, 2007
Jay Dobyns is no stranger to dangerous adversaries. Within days of becoming a sworn agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Dobyns was taken hostage and shot during a Tucson sting operation. A year later, he was run over by gangsters in a getaway car. Since then, he has gone undercover to bust bombmakers, murderers, drug dealers, gunrunners and prison thugs. Three years ago, he infiltrated the Hells Angels so completely that he was offered membership in the biker club.
Now, after nearly two decades of service, after being praised by ATF as a hero and earning national awards, the man known as "Jaybird" is battling his most formidable foe yet: his employer. Dobyns, 45, is one of dozens of current and former agents to allege mismanagement and misconduct in the ATF, a federal agency responsible for enforcing America's gun laws and preventing terrorist bombings. More than a dozen lawsuits, administrative claims, grievances, ATF documents and letters to Congress reviewed by The Arizona Republic accused administrators of betraying their own field investigators and operatives out of arrogance or incompetence.
A 2006 inspector general's report also found that the agency was plagued by poor management and questionable judgment. The ATF director resigned amid the inspector general's investigation. But agents, lawyers and experts say problems persist, and if left unchecked, a troubled agency will continue to spin out of control.
"The public needs to know," said Kay Kubicki, a Detroit attorney and former agent who has represented about 25 ATF employees in cases against the bureau, winning half of them and obtaining settlements in some others. "This has a lot to do with homeland security."
Claims of Abuse
In grievances filed with the ATF, Dobyns claimed the agency failed to protect him when he was threatened in the line of duty and then harassed him when he complained about the lack of security. He has submitted a multimillion-dollar claim alleging the bureau ignored death threats against him and his family. According to a grievance Dobyns filed in May, ATF administrators sought to undermine his credibility by spreading false allegations that he was psychologically unfit for duty and a danger to himself or others. Dobyns alleged in that 83-page record that he was subjected to unwanted transfers, denied security, accused of fraud and blocked from getting a Medal of Valor.
In internal probes, the ATF has dismissed most of Dobyns' complaints. Dobyns' allegations were lodged first in ATF grievances, followed by complaints to the Justice Department's Inspector General's Office, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and members of Congress. According to those filings, the conflict escalated as Dobyns challenged bosses, complaining up the chain of command. Other bureau employees, some of whom have similar problems with the ATF, say Dobyns' transformation from hero to scapegoat is just one example of mismanagement that pervades the agency.
ATF Acting Director Michael J. Sullivan declined to speak about Dobyns' complaints, related investigations or allegations about the agency but said he believes the bureau is "working very hard to carry out a mission on behalf of the American people." Sullivan believes no other federal law enforcement agency provides taxpayers with a greater return per agent when it comes to arrests and convictions. Field agents, he said, make that possible. Their security "should be one of our highest priorities," Sullivan said. "This is their agency. . . . If there are things that aren't working well, we should know that and do everything we can to correct it."
But Kubicki claimed managers routinely abuse their authority and are more interested in self-promotion than ATF's mission. "There's a saying in ATF: 'Big cases, big problems. Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems,' " she said. "But you're supposed to do big cases in the federal government." Others say the ATF, with about 5,000 employees and a $980 million budget, is foundering due to ethical failures, rogue investigations, spending abuses and decaying morale.
Vincent Cefalu of Modesto, Calif., a 20-year agent with grievances pending, recently sent a letter to Sullivan complaining about "unethical practices and widespread distrust." Cefalu accused administrators of "wasting thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars" because internal investigations are mismanaged. Billy Queen, a former agent who wrote Under and Alone, a book about his infiltration of the Mongols biker gang, said he retired in 2003 after enduring four years of harassment from ATF administration. Queen said he still loves the bureau but believes it is beleaguered by incompetent bully managers. Such criticisms are supported, at least in part, by the government. A 173-page inspector general's report faulted former ATF Director Carl Truscott, who resigned in August, for misconduct.
Among the conclusions: Truscott overspent on a lavish new headquarters, improperly used employees to help with his nephew's high school documentary and squandered resources on a personal protection team. Perhaps more telling than that behavior, according to the report, was Truscott's dishonesty and finger-pointing when confronted. The inspector general's probe was prompted by an anonymous letter written by midlevel managers at the ATF, assailing their boss. In the aftermath, line agents wrote a second letter saying those supervisors were equally guilty of mismanagement.
The condemnations are hardly new. In a blistering 1995 report, Time magazine described the ATF as "the most hated federal agency in America . . . a divided and troubled agency far more likely to abuse the rights of its own employees than those of law-abiding citizens." The overall finding: The ATF's in-house scandals and abuses impaired its law enforcement mission.
ATF Missteps
Last month, Dobyns' attorney, James B. Reed of Phoenix, filed a $3.3 million claim, preliminary to a lawsuit, with ATF headquarters. Reed wrote that Dobyns was damaged by over 50 acts of "mismanagement, retaliation, harassment and defamation." An 83-page grievance submitted in May to Edgar Domenech, ATF deputy director, said the problems started after a series of murder plots against Dobyns by the Hells Angels and other criminal outfits. The grievance said that after the threats came in, the ATF's Office of Operations Security prepared a risk analysis, placing the danger level at "critical." A list of safety measures was drawn up. Yet, according to Dobyns' filings, administrators disputed the danger and denied protections.
"The ATF Field Division was clearly aware of threats," Dobyns wrote in his grievance. "This apathetic attitude . . . is, at a minimum, malfeasance of their office and a dereliction of their duties."
In one instance, Dobyns claimed, the ATF failed to warn him that a prison inmate had discussed plans to kill him and torture his teenage daughter. "I have served ATF faithfully for over 19 years," Dobyns wrote. "For this, I have been subjected to a calculated attack by members of ATF management." In a Nov. 20 letter to Dobyns marked, "Notice of grievance decision," Domenech said "many parts of ATF failed to maintain open and effective communication with you" regarding threats. He also acknowledged "significant issues in carrying out appropriate risk assessment procedures."
Despite that, Domenech concluded, the mistakes were unintentional, and the bureau had "implemented new policies and procedures to redouble its efforts in this regard." "Therefore," Domenech said, "the personal relief that you seek . . . hereby is denied." Dobyns, now on leave from the bureau, declined to publicly discuss details of his case beyond an e-mail statement:
"I have been honored to serve ATF. . . . Unfortunately, a wide gap has evolved between the management of the bureau and its front-line field agents. I have high hopes that our new acting director will be able to close that gap." "I am now a man without a country," Dobyns added. "I am up against the crime syndicate that I infiltrated and the agency that abandoned me. . . . My family lives in fear."
Sheree Mixell, an ATF spokeswoman, said the bureau does not discuss pending investigations or personnel issues. But she noted that in a 2004 survey by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the ATF finished first among federal law enforcement agencies in employee satisfaction.
Bureau's Star Player
For most of his life, Jay Dobyns seemed comfortable living on the edge. At the University of Arizona, he was a star wide receiver, featured on the cover of the Wildcats team program in 1984. After playing briefly in the Canadian league and now-defunct World Football League, Dobyns looked for an alternative career. Miami Vice lured him into law enforcement, and he chose the ATF because of its Gonzo-style investigations. Over 18 years, Dobyns, tough, frenetic and profane, worked the Oklahoma City bombing case and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He captured a Mexican drug-cartel kingpin, busted Aryan Brotherhood gangsters and bought hand grenades from the Mexican Mafia.
Finally, he infiltrated the Hells Angels in the Arizona case known as Operation Black Biscuit. Dobyns and several other operatives went underground for 21 months in one of the ATF's largest undercover investigations. It resulted in the indictment of 16 members and associates of the biker club.
But a strange thing happened once the charges got into court. ATF agents and federal prosecutors turned on one another. Explanations are conflicting. By one account, ATF agents failed to tell the U.S. Attorney's Office about key evidence and informers. By another, prosecutors received the materials but withheld them. Either way, the case collapsed last year. Most Arizona defendants were set free. The government dropped its key charge that the Hells Angels club is a racketeering enterprise. A Las Vegas trial ended with ignominy when the Hells Angels claimed victory.
ATF embarrassment grew. And accusations about mismanagement in the agency mounted. Amid the turmoil, a key informer named James "Pops" Blankinship went public, telling The Arizona Republic that Black Biscuit was a rogue operation. His allegations were followed by a $1 million lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court two months ago, claiming the ATF endangered his life, ruined him financially and misled him about the government's witness protection program. The bureau has not responded.
Living in Fear
Today, Blankinship is in hiding and at odds with the ATF. Dobyns has moved his family and taken an alias. His damage claim listed a new threat allegedly issued by a Hells Angels member awaiting trial for murder. The claim said the inmate wrote jail mail to an associate describing how Dobyns could "end up getting AIDS from a dirty needle and die a slow miserable death . . . (or) he will get a bad dose of steroids, send a blood clot to his brain, have a stroke and be (expletive) retarded." There was also graphic wording about how Dobyns' wife could be tortured. The damage claim said ATF supervisors learned of that threat just days before Domenech promised reforms yet failed to react appropriately.
"This letter is not mere musing by an incarcerated suspect," wrote Reed, Dobyns' attorney. "(The inmate) has demonstrated the ability, willingness and resources necessary" to have the acts carried out. "For an agent who time and again placed his safety and life on the line for his agency, the failure of ATF to take protective measures on that agent's behalf against known, specific and credible threats from known criminals is unacceptable."
By David Hardy · 15 October 2008 08:14 AM
I've got a copy of a Justice Dept Office of Inspector General report on a case--can't post it because it gives names and addresses, and I haven't the pdf editing capability to delete them. But here's a summary:
ATF agent goes deep undercover, pursuing some genuinely violent bad guys. I'm talking outlaw biker gangs, prison gangs, that manner of thing. The report doesn't say, but I assume it took years. It's not like you can look up the Aryan Brotherhood or Mexican Mafia in the telephone book and send a membership application and wait for their magazine to tell you about their illegal activities. He got in, built some cases. Prosecutions result and his cover is of course blown (you can't testify under your alias).
He runs into a member of one of the groups, and they tell him outright that the group has their eye on him, will get even, he is dead meat, etc.. He requests from his supervisor an emergency transfer. With one of those the person and family are moved immediately, to a good distance, and given new identities (down to a credit history under their new names, so no one can trace them that way).
His supervisor handles it as an ordinary, voluntary, transfer. As in, it'll take weeks for approval, if we do approve, you can be transferred nearby, no new identity. In the meantime other reports are coming in. An informant who shared a cell with a prison gang leader reports that he saw a list of men marked for "hits" and noticed the agent's name on it. Etc., etc.. It becomes apparent that not one, but two groups well-known for killing people are both out to kill him.
The transfer is not modified. It's still voluntary, agent is in one duty station and would like to move to another for personal reasons, and HQ will process when they feel like it.
Maybe prison gangs have their own bureaucracy ("as district chief, I can approve ordinary hits, but hits on LEOs have to be approved by the regional director") but he survives long enough to get his transfer. An ordinary transfer, no new identity, etc.. (And he probably paid for the moving expenses).
The IG report of course faults the agency for how it was handled. But I suspect the folks who bumbled it and came close to getting their guy killed suffered no more than temporary embarassment, and that the agent will be regarded by his superiors as a pain in the neck for having complained.
It should be noted that it is obvious that fear of retaliation pervades ATF as an institution. However, we as field agents do not act anonymously and stand tall out of courage and honor. The below letter shows how much ATF's credibility is suffering from within. This can only illustrate where the opinionf of the public we serve, the taxpayers we are accountable to and the industries we regulate opinions are of ATF.
SEPTEMBER 22, 2006
OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
950 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20530
DEAR INSPECTOR GENERAL,
EMPLOYEES AT THE BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS, AND EXPLOSIVES HAVE LONG BEEN DISTURBED WITH THE ACTIONS OF SOME OF OUR EXECUTIVES. THE TIME HAS COME TO SHARE THESE CONCERNS WITH YOU FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION. FOR THE GOOD OF OUR BUREAU, WE IMPLORE YOU TO SEEK ANSWERS TO THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS SURROUNDING WASTE, MISMANAGEMENT, AND ABUSE OF POWER BY TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS:
ARE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR BOUCHARD AND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR CHASE VIOLATING DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE RULES BY USING GOVERNMENT-OWNED VEHICLES TO COMMUTE FROM HOME TO WORK IN DEFIANCE OF A POLICY THAT PROHIBITS THE USE OF TAXPAYER FUNDED VEHICLES FOR SUCH PERSONAL USE?
IS IT A GROSS WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY FOR THESE ASSISTANT DIRECTORS TO DRIVE LUXURIOUS NEW GOVERNMENT VEHICLES FOR PERSONAL USE WHILE AGENTS DRIVE MUCH OLDER AND HIGH MILEAGE CARS TO GET THE JOB DONE?
IS IT AN EXTRAVAGANT EXPENDITURE OF TAXPAYER MONEY FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR BOUCHARD TO ARRANGE WEEK-LONG CONFERENCES FOR OVER 30 OF HIS EMPLOYEES AT PLACES SUCH AS LAS VEGAS HARD ROCK CASINO AND SEA ISLAND GOLF AND TENNIS RESORT WHILE FIELD AGENTS LACK ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT? DID THESE CONFERENCES COST TAXPAYERS $30,000? $50,000?
IS IT AN EXTRAVAGANT EXPENDITURE OF TAXPAYER MONEY FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR RADEN TO ARRANGE A TRIP OF ALMOST TWO WEEKS FOR NEARLY A DOZEN OF HIS EMPLOYEES TO ATTEND A CONFERENCE IN GERMANY THAT DID NOT DEMAND SUCH EXTENSIVE GOVERNMENT RESOURCES? DID THIS TRIP COST TAXPAYERS $20,000? $40,000?
IS IT A MISUSE OF AUTHORITY AND RESOURCES FOR DEPUTY DIRECTOR DOMENECH TO WASTE TAXPAYER MONEY BY ORDERING THE DIRECTOR’S SECURITY PERSONNEL TO PROVIDE HIM CHAUFFERED LIMOUSINE SERVICE FROM WORK TO HOME, ALTHOUGH SECURITY APPARENTLY WAS NOT NEEDED FROM HOME TO WORK, AS ACTING DIRECTOR?
HAS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR CHASE WASTED TAXPAYER MONEY BY TRAVELING, WITH HIS SPOUSE, ALL THE WAY ACROSS COUNTRY TO LOS ANGELES FOR A ATF RETIREMENT SEMINAR THAT IS OFFERED WITHIN HIS DUTY STATION OF WASHINGTON, D.C.?
IS DEPUTY DIRECTOR DOMENECH VIOLATING ANTI-NEPOTISM LAWS FOR PUBLIC OFFICIALS (5 USC 3110) BY ARRANGING FOR HIS WIFE TO BE PROMOTED FROM A SECRETARIAL POSITION TO A SENIOR PROGRAM ANALYST? BY ARRANGING FOR HIS SISTER IN LAW TO BE PROMOTED FROM A FIELD AGENT IN NEW YORK TO THE AGENT IN CHARGE OF THE PORTLAND, OREGON OFFICE AND HAVING TAXPAYERS PAY THE EXPENSES FOR THIS MOVE BACK HOME? BY ARRANGING FOR HIS NIECE TO BE HIRED AS AN INSPECTOR IN FLORIDA, THEN NORTH CAROLINA?
DOES DEPUTY DIRECTOR DOMENECH VIOLATE MERIT SYSTEM PRINCIPLES BY REGULARLY PRACTICING FAVORITISM IN MAKING PERSONNEL SELECTIONS BASED ON FRIENDSHIP AND FACTORS OTHER THAN MERIT? DOES HE CREATE AN INTIMIDATING, HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT BY RETALIATING AGAINST THOSE HE PERSONALLY DISLIKES THROUGH UNDESIRABLE, FORCED REASSIGNMENTS AND TRANSFERS?
IS IT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR RADEN TO SPEND A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF TIME IN FLORIDA AND CANADA BEING ENTERTAINED BY A TECHNOLOGY VENDOR WHILE APPROVING TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS WITH THEM?
IS IT AN ABUSE OF AUTHORITY AND WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR BOUCHARD TO ARRANGE WITH OTHER ASSISTANT DIRECTORS A CHANGE IN POLICY THAT ALLOWED HIS SON TO BE HIRED AS A PAID SUMMER INTERN ON GOVERNMENT SALARY WHILE OTHER ATF PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS GO UNFILLED DUE TO BUDGET CONSTRAINTS?
IS IT AN EXTRAVAGANT EXPENDITURE FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR CHASE TO USE TAXPAYER MONEY TO PURCHASE A WORLD GLOBE FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS WITH GOVERNMENT RESOURCES SIMPLY TO DECORATE HIS OFFICE? WAS THIS GLOBE USED TO PINPOINT WHERE HE WOULD TAKE NEEDLESS TRIPS TO CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS AROUND THE WORLD TO PLACES LIKE FRANCE, HUNGARY, AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL LOCATIONS?
IS IT UNETHICAL CONDUCT FOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR RADEN TO REPRESENT ATF AT FUNCTIONS AND EVENTS WHILE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL?
THESE ARE BUT A SAMPLE OF KEY EXECUTIVES ABUSING THEIR POSITIONS AND TAXPAYER MONEY THAT WE HAVE WITNESSED OVER THE LAST 3 YEARS. AS YOU INVESTIGATE THESE EXAMPLES, YOU WILL FIND MANY MORE LIKE THEM. FOR THE GOOD OF OUR BUREAU AND ITS FUTURE, PLEASE STOP THIS IMPROPER BEHAVIOR AND MISMANAGEMENT BEFORE IT FURTHER ERODES MORALE HERE AND THREATENS THE FUTURE OF ATF.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Atfers United against Mismanagement and Misconduct (ATFUMM)
Inside BATFE
By David Hardy · 16 October 2008 08:04 PM
1. Deputy Director Edgar Domenech just got a government "golden parachute" out. It's impossible to sort out the internal politics involved, but he'd been demoted and said it was a result of exposing wasteful spending by the prior director. (GIven the byzantine politics of ATF higher levels, it's hard to sort out who is a whistleblower and who's back-stabbing, except that a lower level agent is always going to be treated as the latter. Report fraud, waste, or abuse as a street level agent, and you're toast. Do it as a high enough guy to get WashPo coverage, and you have a shot).
2. The ATF director has just been given a report from the Inspector General that is pretty devastating. MAJOR screwups, their internal affairs refusing to check out complaints about those, etc.. So now offices are being told to generate favorable publicity, quickly, because this is going to get out sometime soon.
A Slight Correction: By David Hardy · 13 October 2007 02:21 PM ATF official announces 77 arrests in a gang sweep in Spokane, a roundup of "the worst, chronic offenders with ties to illegal firearms and violent crime." Then spends two weeks evading reporters' questions. Because it turns out there were only 35 arrests, and they included ones for driving infractions and misdemeanors. Only one gun was seized in the "sweep." "I guess he may have taken some liberties with how those numbers were represented," an ATF spokesman admitted.
IG Report on BATFE Disciplinary Matters By David Hardy · 29 January 2007 05:45 PM Just found an Inspector General's report on ATFE disciplinary matters. Major findings: 1. Many problems are not being reported. 47 of a group of 58 that were supposed to be reported to the Justice IG were not. For others, while a demotion or firing was decided upon, there was no record showing that it had actually been done. 2. Of 76 files where the agent was disciplined, 16 contained no documentation at all to show why, and not one showed a report of investigation. 3. ATF rules allow a supervisor to both bring charges and be the judge of those charges, which is done most of the time. It also has no consistent standards, so that each case is a law unto itself.
ATF From The Inside By David Hardy · 30 September 2007 09:49 AM I've received the attached PDF file (134K) from someone in the know. It details ATF agents' complaints regarding how managers are conducting themselves. Here are a few snippets: " Field agents have attempted to challenge the un-ethical, and illegal actions of field managers through various means in recent years only to meet with retaliation so destructive it almost inevitably results in the challenges or allegations being withdrawn." " Fear of ATF leadership has replaced transparency. Lack of trust and the absence of good faith in trying to resolve these issues have caused a growing number of Agents to rely upon legal means to invoke the protections and seek redress. Record numbers of EEOC, OIG, OSC, whistleblower and internal grievances face the new management team. Requests for congressional intervention by Agents across the country..." "The EEOC complaints over the last 2 years number in the hundreds. The overwhelming percentage of which contain allegations of retaliation. " " First impressions in the field are that Acting Director Michael Sullivan is a competent and professional leader who possesses the skill to lead the Bureau of ATF&E. However, he continues to act on filtered information from those who have created these problems. These problems and those responsible must be dealt with before the Bureau can restore trust in it management team. With the appointment of Deputy Director Ronnie Carter and Assistant Director Billy Hoover, the signal was clear. The intent is/was to restore ethical and professional leadership to the Bureau. Perhaps the problems are too significant to place on the shoulders of 3 men, or maybe the Bureau is beyond repair. Either way, the complaints continue as does the retaliation, abuse of authority and the climbing number of EEOC, OSC, OIG and internal grievance complaints." Having worked in the bureaucracy, I can see the comment about the incoming director. The guy on top may be good, but he knows only what his assistant directors tell him, and they know only what the guys below them tell them, etc., etc. At each stage of this, information is filtered to remove bad news, protect your unit, protect your buddies, etc.. If you send up info that makes your unit look bad -- that's gonna hurt you when your superior does your yearly evaluation, right? By the end of the filtration, the guy in charge hears nothing but "Everything is being run perfectly, and there are no problems, and anyone who managed to get your ear about problems is a lying sack of offal." Then of course they hunt down the guy who talked. He's not a team player. He makes his bosses look bad. Jack him around, transfer him around, seek out excuses to give him a bad evaluation, maybe see if you can tag him with misconduct (hmmm... did he use his official car for a grocery run?). The greatest fear of mid-level is that the boss may get unfiltered information. At Interior I was a simple staffer. Even my secretary didn't work for me -- she reported, like me, to my boss. Yet one day we received written orders that if the Secretary of Interior called us to ask for data on a legal case, we were to refuse to talk to him and tell him to go thru channels. (The order was given, and stuck, because our ultimate boss had in fact better White House connection than the Secretary. Our ultimate boss was a good guy, not a bureaucrat, so I'd wager the mid-level folks had gone to him with horror stories about the Sec. becoming a loose cannon if he got real data, and sold him on the idea). [UPDATE in light of comment: I did start under Watt, in '82, but the Secretary under which this happened was Manny Lujan. I forget the Solicitor's name, but he was a good one, in this case I'd assume spun by mid-level management. The full story: the bean-counters, the admin people, came up with the idea of a litigation book, in which each case in which we were involved would have one page, no more and no less. The thought we were involved in a few hundred cases. It turned out to be many thousands. Sent by, in those days, a 1200 baud modem. The first try locked up the mainframe for a solid day. Afterwards, each office had to send them in by floppy, sent overnight. Then someone in HQ had to review them lest the horrific sin, a typo, be found. But our corrections didn't go back to the author, so next month would have the same typos... Anyway, at the bottom of each page was " For further information contact: John Smith, 208-0124." A bureaucrat knew that mean John Smith was handling the matter, kindly do not think you can contact him, you go thru channels. Lujan, who was a nice guy, didn't understand that, actually read the briefing books -- by now a set of about six big three-ring binders -- and calling people. Hence all the uproar. He was getting raw data, from someone who actually knew what was going on! In those days, we called ourselves OPs, Omnipotent Peons.]
A Slight Correction: By David Hardy · 13 October 2007 02:21 PM ATF official announces 77 arrests in a gang sweep in Spokane, a roundup of "the worst, chronic offenders with ties to illegal firearms and violent crime." Then spends two weeks evading reporters' questions. Because it turns out there were only 35 arrests, and they included ones for driving infractions and misdemeanors. Only one gun was seized in the "sweep." "I guess he may have taken some liberties with how those numbers were represented," an ATF spokesman admitted.
IG Report on BATFE Disciplinary Matters By David Hardy · 29 January 2007 05:45 PM Just found an Inspector General's report on ATFE disciplinary matters. Major findings: 1. Many problems are not being reported. 47 of a group of 58 that were supposed to be reported to the Justice IG were not. For others, while a demotion or firing was decided upon, there was no record showing that it had actually been done. 2. Of 76 files where the agent was disciplined, 16 contained no documentation at all to show why, and not one showed a report of investigation. 3. ATF rules allow a supervisor to both bring charges and be the judge of those charges, which is done most of the time. It also has no consistent standards, so that each case is a law unto itself.
ATF From The Inside By David Hardy · 30 September 2007 09:49 AM I've received the attached PDF file (134K) from someone in the know. It details ATF agents' complaints regarding how managers are conducting themselves. Here are a few snippets: " Field agents have attempted to challenge the un-ethical, and illegal actions of field managers through various means in recent years only to meet with retaliation so destructive it almost inevitably results in the challenges or allegations being withdrawn." " Fear of ATF leadership has replaced transparency. Lack of trust and the absence of good faith in trying to resolve these issues have caused a growing number of Agents to rely upon legal means to invoke the protections and seek redress. Record numbers of EEOC, OIG, OSC, whistleblower and internal grievances face the new management team. Requests for congressional intervention by Agents across the country..." "The EEOC complaints over the last 2 years number in the hundreds. The overwhelming percentage of which contain allegations of retaliation. " " First impressions in the field are that Acting Director Michael Sullivan is a competent and professional leader who possesses the skill to lead the Bureau of ATF&E. However, he continues to act on filtered information from those who have created these problems. These problems and those responsible must be dealt with before the Bureau can restore trust in it management team. With the appointment of Deputy Director Ronnie Carter and Assistant Director Billy Hoover, the signal was clear. The intent is/was to restore ethical and professional leadership to the Bureau. Perhaps the problems are too significant to place on the shoulders of 3 men, or maybe the Bureau is beyond repair. Either way, the complaints continue as does the retaliation, abuse of authority and the climbing number of EEOC, OSC, OIG and internal grievance complaints." Having worked in the bureaucracy, I can see the comment about the incoming director. The guy on top may be good, but he knows only what his assistant directors tell him, and they know only what the guys below them tell them, etc., etc. At each stage of this, information is filtered to remove bad news, protect your unit, protect your buddies, etc.. If you send up info that makes your unit look bad -- that's gonna hurt you when your superior does your yearly evaluation, right? By the end of the filtration, the guy in charge hears nothing but "Everything is being run perfectly, and there are no problems, and anyone who managed to get your ear about problems is a lying sack of offal." Then of course they hunt down the guy who talked. He's not a team player. He makes his bosses look bad. Jack him around, transfer him around, seek out excuses to give him a bad evaluation, maybe see if you can tag him with misconduct (hmmm... did he use his official car for a grocery run?). The greatest fear of mid-level is that the boss may get unfiltered information. At Interior I was a simple staffer. Even my secretary didn't work for me -- she reported, like me, to my boss. Yet one day we received written orders that if the Secretary of Interior called us to ask for data on a legal case, we were to refuse to talk to him and tell him to go thru channels. (The order was given, and stuck, because our ultimate boss had in fact better White House connection than the Secretary. Our ultimate boss was a good guy, not a bureaucrat, so I'd wager the mid-level folks had gone to him with horror stories about the Sec. becoming a loose cannon if he got real data, and sold him on the idea). [UPDATE in light of comment: I did start under Watt, in '82, but the Secretary under which this happened was Manny Lujan. I forget the Solicitor's name, but he was a good one, in this case I'd assume spun by mid-level management. The full story: the bean-counters, the admin people, came up with the idea of a litigation book, in which each case in which we were involved would have one page, no more and no less. The thought we were involved in a few hundred cases. It turned out to be many thousands. Sent by, in those days, a 1200 baud modem. The first try locked up the mainframe for a solid day. Afterwards, each office had to send them in by floppy, sent overnight. Then someone in HQ had to review them lest the horrific sin, a typo, be found. But our corrections didn't go back to the author, so next month would have the same typos... Anyway, at the bottom of each page was " For further information contact: John Smith, 208-0124." A bureaucrat knew that mean John Smith was handling the matter, kindly do not think you can contact him, you go thru channels. Lujan, who was a nice guy, didn't understand that, actually read the briefing books -- by now a set of about six big three-ring binders -- and calling people. Hence all the uproar. He was getting raw data, from someone who actually knew what was going on! In those days, we called ourselves OPs, Omnipotent Peons.]
The hypocracy of DD Domenechs complaint is readily apparent. He has reviewed many many similar complaints from field agents during his tenor with no wrong doing by managers found, UNTIL IT HAPPENED TO HIM. Current information suggests his complaint was quickly resolved, he got a sweet deal and will be attending the war college as partial settlement. This is outrageous.
ATF Whistle-Blower Alleges Backlash
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page A17
Edgar A. Domenech says he thought Justice Department officials would welcome information about mismanagement at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Instead, the 23-year ATF veteran says, Justice officials ignored his complaints and later retaliated against him by demoting him, denying him a bonus and attempting to give him a poor job review.
"I realized I was committing career suicide at the time, but I felt I had a moral obligation as the deputy director to protect the agency and the men and women of the agency," Domenech said in an interview yesterday. "In retrospect, I was naive to believe that the department would welcome my honesty."
Domenech filed a 13-page complaint yesterday with the Office of Special Counsel, saying that ATF and the Justice Department punished him for raising questions about the performance of former ATF director Carl J. Truscott, who resigned in August 2006 while under investigation for alleged financial mismanagement.
Domenech, who was second-in-command at ATF for four years, said his complaints about Truscott beginning in late 2005 were ignored or played down by aides to then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales because Truscott had ties to the White House. Truscott headed President Bush's Secret Service detail before taking over ATF.
Spokesmen for ATF and the Justice Department declined to comment on Domenech's allegations. The ATF spokesmen said they had not seen the complaint and could not discuss personnel issues.
An October 2006 report by the Justice Department's inspector general largely confirmed complaints by Domenech and other ATF senior executives. It determined that Truscott had engaged in a wide-ranging pattern of questionable expenditures on a new ATF headquarters, personal security and other items. The report also said that Truscott improperly forced employees to help his nephew prepare a high school video project and required female employees to serve lunch to guests.
In the complaint, Domenech's Washington attorney, Debra S. Katz, outlined actions by the Justice Department and ATF that she alleged are violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act.
Domenech said ATF's acting director, Michael J. Sullivan, and other officials have taken actions meant to punish him for raising questions about Truscott. The moves include transferring him out of headquarters and excluding him from meetings and duties that usually would be his responsibility.
He also alleged that, after years of outstanding job reviews and bonuses, he was given an average review in 2007, which was changed only after he complained. Because of the earlier review, however, he was denied a customary bonus, he said.
Domenech, who now heads ATF's Washington field office, drew comparisons between his case and the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The federal prosecutors were told that they were being removed only to make room for new people. Sullivan gave Domenech a similar explanation when he demoted him, Domenech said.
Justice officials repeatedly played down Truscott's problems as head of ATF, and Sullivan even invited the former director to take part in ATF's annual award ceremony in August 2007, Domenech said.
Domenech first raised complaints about Truscott's performance in December 2005 with William Mercer, then principal associate deputy attorney general, who later would be a pivotal figure in the controversy over the dismissal of the federal prosecutors.
Mercer and another official said Truscott "appeared to be in over his head, but since his name came directly from the White House, there was little that could be done about the situation," according to the complaint. Several months later, Domenech said, Mercer dismissed complaints about Truscott as coming from "disgruntled career staff."
After Truscott left, Domenech reversed a decision by Truscott to include an engraved quotation from Bush at the entrance to the new ATF headquarters in Washington.
