In my case, the FBI was simply doing something for the sake of doing something. They were engaged in just about every act of amateurism and incompetence that could have been conceived for their line of work. Many of their people appeared to have been learning on the job. That’s not the way to protect this country.It was the mid-90’s and the mortgage business was close to hitting its peak. Capital America Corporation, the mortgage bank and brokerage that I established in 1993 was finally beginning to make a little bit of money to pay the bills. At the time, interest rates had been on a sharp decline and deals were easy to have if you just showed up at appointments. In the many years that I was in the industry, I developed a reputation for being able to structure very tough deals. I became a specialist in doing loans for self-employed individuals. Basically, if you could not show documentation for your income, I was the man you came to see. The industry developed an innovation they called the “No Income Qualifier”. All you had to do was tell me how much money you made a month and if the underwriter believed you, you had a loan. It was lucrative, stimulating and it brought me my share of interesting clients. This was one such client.
The introduction was inauspicious enough. He came into my office in Mission Viejo, CA saddled with a very tough problem. Two of the three coastal properties he owned in Laguna Beach were in foreclosure. A renter at one of the properties had not paid in months, causing him to use up his operating capital and fall behind on all his mortgages. What’s more, he didn’t have a traditional source of income and nothing on his credit report to show a borrowing history. He didn’t even have a bank account when I first met him.
His name was Donald “Curly” Castro, a self-confessed former member of “La Eme” - the Mexican Mafia. Over the length of time that I worked with him, I got to hear stories about his not so ordinary life. He once told me that he was an ex-convict having served a 12-year sentence for drug-trafficking. Except for the death of Enrique Camarena, a DEA Agent who was executed in Mexico by drug lords, he never mentioned anything that would alert me to a violent nature. In fact, he mentioned that he was once cellmates with Michael Milken, former bond trader at Drexel, Burnham, Lambert in a minimum-security prison. People who end up in the Camp Snoopy of prisons generally do not exhibit violent tendencies.
The Bureau keeps an extensive list of businesses and people who they suspect are members of organized crime. Because of his criminal past, “Curly” was certainly on that list and my association with him raised all sorts of red flags. They thought I may have been an enabler, potentially involved in money-laundering piles of narco-cash that the drug-lords have sitting in warehouses. It was an easy connection to make. The drug lords had cash and I was in the mortgage banking business. Whether “Curly” was in foreclosure or not meant nothing to the Bureau, just that I may have the capacity to move their money into legitimate investments. In one transaction, I became a person of interest for the Bureau’s criminal division.
How I got to be investigated by the counterintelligence division is complicated, baffling and an abuse of taxpayer’s dollars. It is an example of how a group of people could exaggerate a threat scenario, selectively tailoring information to justify a particular outcome, in this case so that they can move residency from one state to another and enjoy a lower cost of living. There aren’t very many parts of this country you can move from that have a higher cost of living than Orange County, California. Someone just had to have a bite of the “Big Orange”.
Counterintelligence operations usually have a much longer timeline than criminal investigations, requiring significant resources and personnel. So, someone had to sell the idea to the higher-up at the Bureau to get the operation and commensurate assets approved. A number of elements had to have been present for that to happen. First, I had to have ties to a foreign country, particularly with individuals who have or may have political clout presently or in the future. Second, someone at the Bureau had to have made the assessment that I posed a potential risk to this nation’s national security. Third, they discovered credible and verifiable information that could place me in a position of influence to create such conditions. Fourth, and perhaps the most actionable, is the potential for a criminal enterprise to fund a political career and acquire influence in government.
The Bureau’s culture may explain the reason why the investigation was conducted in the manner that it was, requiring both the criminal and counterintelligence divisions working the case separately. In his book The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, Robert Kessler spoke about the chasm that exists between those two disciplines. He wrote:
For the most part, criminal and counterintelligence people do not mix socially. Criminal agents tend to view counterintelligence people as lazy and timid. Counterintelligence agents look at criminal agents as dumb and low class.Inter-departmental rivalries in areas of government dealing with national security concerns are an unacceptable risk to this nation. Even more threatening is the possibility that the Bureau may be woefully short on talent when it comes to threat analysis. In a business where a single flawed interpretation of information may cause considerable damage to the nation, it is something that should not be taken lightly. All we have to look at is the 9-11 attacks on New York where the FBI failed to connect the dots that overwhelmingly pointed to an imminent terrorist attack. The direct effects of 9-11 on our current economic state a decade later is debatable. However, it’s immediate effects could not be denied. The first day of Wall Street opening the markets saw the DJIA decline by 684.81 points, wiping out significant amounts of wealth. Entire industries (i.e. Airlines, Travel, Insurance, Agricultural, Small Business etc) experienced devastating declines in business. The attacks also placed this nation on a path that would bring her to two expensive wars and long-term foreign entanglements.
The OC Task Force was primarily organized to conduct an investigation into my alleged criminal ties. Then, based on poorly analyzed information, a team mostly from the New York Field Office with counterintelligence expertise was organized to investigate my business for national security reasons. From what I am able to gather, the OC team was not informed of the NY presence until very late in the investigations. (The reason for New York’s involvement is much deeper and emotionally charged, however. That will be discussed on the next installment of this series entitled “The California Jamboree”.)
The FBI has considerable resources to follow-up on even the tiniest shred of information. They are able to create complex data maps that could give them a macro perspective on matters they are investigating. From my stand-point it is very difficult to say what is contained in their investigative file. It’s also doubtful that I’ll be able to get all the information that I will need when I finally bring them under the jurisdiction of the federal court through a civil action. Government objections based on immunities protecting sensitive information and identities of their personnel are very hard to overcome in court. So, relying on conjecture I arrived upon a number of conclusions.
When it comes to shaping public opinion about individuals or companies they are investigating, no organization has more resources at its disposal than the FBI. Usually, when they release intercepted phone conversations to the press it’s in the form of sound bites, with neither context nor a fair opportunity for the subject to explain what was heard until during the trial months into the future. The releases are often one sided and sympathetic to the government’s case. By the time the case goes to trial, a negative and difficult to restore public image has already been created.
The FBI’s use of specially crafted information when soliciting the help of an individual is even more effective. Nothing feeds a person’s sense of patriotism more than getting a call from the world’s most powerful law enforcement agency asking for assistance. Unfortunately, there is no way for anyone to tell whether the FBI is feeding them false information or if they were making conclusions based on flawed or poor analysis without checking the information themselves. In the eyes of Americans, they are the FBI. They are the best and they simply do not lie. Unfortunately, that assumption is patently false.
The counterintelligence division have a wide range of discretion when it comes to operational and tactical matters. Furthermore, they have a culture that allows a “We are the good guys, they are the bad guys” mentally when investigating an individual or group. From what I have personally experienced, the FBI can do just about anything as long as their actions are protected by immunities or are completely deniable. They can lie, cheat, steal, fabricate, sabotage and cause hardship to other people, to the detriment of an individual’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Last Updated: August 18, 2011 - 1133AM
