Speaker 1: 0:00

Today we're going to have another edition of Justice Then Justice Now. Today's guest is Ken Cates. Ken is a career federal agent, law enforcement expert. He has worked everything undercover. He's worked for a couple agencies and he rose to the ranks of being an executive with the various agencies and the special agent in charge on what's happening today with the border in Arizona area and he should provide real insight into this. This is an individual that lives in the southwest border region. He knows the problems, he knows the solutions. He's not somebody that's a talking head on mass media that has either never been there or been appointed to those positions politically. So this is like I said. This show is the real deal. It has the entire criminal justice spectrum for the listener.

Speaker 1: 1:11

I am going to talk about a book he wrote. Everything Changed. It is an account. It's a fictional account of border life and what it is to be an agent there and what it is to be an agent there. I think that this should be handed out to Homeland Security and DOJ so that they understand the whole process that has been controversial for the last couple of years there. It's my pleasure to speak with Ken now. Ken, thank you for getting up early this morning on East Coast time, and it's a pleasure to talk to you today.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Well, thanks very much. It's my pleasure to be here, not that early. It's only an hour. We only have a little hour difference. I live right outside Dallas, texas, and the only really thing I'm missing this morning is my golf game. So you are a special. It's a special event for me to do that.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Yes, yeah, I was. I watched the. I'm not a golfer. I tried to hit a golf ball like a baseball my whole life, so I wasn't very successful. But I did enjoy the PGA Championship with the former Olympic champion who, long overdue, won one of the majors and that, and you know, I like following it and I think it's a great sport, you know, to watch as a spectator. You know, especially the 19th hole. I think that's a tradition. My father was a golfer and I used to say to him you know he would, he would uh. Grown up in Massachusetts he would get up early in the morning, finish his work by three o'clock and hit the links and then hit the uh. After he played nine holes he'd sit at the 19th hole and watch uh Walter Cronkite on TV, or 12 o'clock high or shows like that. So anyway, thank you very much for coming on.

Speaker 1: 3:12

If you could, if you could, on the first segment, I'd like to talk about what gets you interested in law enforcement where you grew up, and just to start out with that, I think, would be the best thing.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Well, let's see, it's kind of a funny story, I guess. Um, because I never was interested in law enforcement. I didn't have the. I really didn't have the slightest inkling about law enforcement. I expected uh. Initially I thought I'd be uh, uh, try to be an attorney and then discovered that was just too hard and a little boring, I thought. With all due respect, but I grew up in Mesquite, texas, right outside of Dallas. It was a little country town at that time that was known for the rodeo. So you know a bit of a country guy, I guess you'd say certainly suburban. But I got into law enforcement on a fluke because I'd started college. It turned out to be very expensive and ultimately Uncle Sam came calling.

Speaker 2: 4:32

I went into the Army for two years and, long story short, when I finally got back out of the service and was finishing up my college degree, really with an expectation that I'd wind up being a high school history teacher, at this point, my mother called me and said she asked me if I was in trouble or you know, essentially, what have you done? I said I have no idea what you're talking about, mom. She said well, some federal agent is calling here trying to reach you. And I said gosh, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. In fact, I didn't even except watching the FBI on TV. I didn't know anything about the feds and anyway, ultimately I called the guy and it turned out he was a recruiter and said well, you know what you need to come down for an interview.

Speaker 2: 5:30

I said an interview about what? Why are you calling me? And the guy said, well, didn't you apply for a job here? And I said not that I know of. And at any rate he said, well, oh, I see you're a VRA guy, which was a program that the government had at the time, the Vietnam Veterans Readjustment.

Speaker 1: 5:50

Act.

Speaker 2: 5:53

And he said well, you must have signed up for this program. I said, mister, when I was trying to get out of the Army I signed anything. They put in front of me I wanted to get out. They put in front of me I wanted to get out. And anyway, I went down and interviewed and got offered a job in the regional intelligence unit for DEA and then after about a year ATF offered me a job as an agent. The rest is history. So it was kind of a fluke really Turned out. It paid a little more than teaching high school history, so it was kind of a fluke really Turned out.

Speaker 1: 6:26

It paid a little more than teaching high school history, yeah, but a little more dangerous. But today, being a teacher in some of the inner city schools, I don't know which is more dangerous. You know, unfortunately, those are the times I agree. Yeah, so tell me about when you went to ATF. What was that like and when was that?

Speaker 2: 6:48

Well, let's see. I guess I started with ATF about the end of 74. I'm kind of an old guy, I think I finally got on in about early 75. About early 75. And I got hired in Dallas and then, ultimately, I went to Little Rock as my first office and I'd always wanted to travel, I'd always wanted to see the country, and so I decided to wanted to see the country and so I decided that I would give California a try. And after about a year, year and a half in Little Rock, which was a fun time but perhaps not as actionable, I guess, as I thought it might be Then I transferred out to California and ended up working in Sacramento and then down in Los Angeles, which is where I spent the majority of my time as an ATF agent, working out of the downtown LA office agent working out of the downtown LA office.

Speaker 1: 8:07

We've talked before and we have mutual people that we know because I was in Los Angeles in the mid 80s, also with the marshal service, so there was a lot of it's a very small law enforcement world especially probably bigger now with a lot more agents than we had, but when you only had like 2,500 nationwide for each agency, you pretty much crossed paths with a lot of people in that. So tell me about LA what was it like working? What kind of cases did you work and that.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Well, you're right, we certainly do have some mutual acquaintances. In fact, you know, if you've been in the feds you know that that's not atypical A guy might start out in the marshal service and wind up in ATF or gosh. I've had guys that were in the FBI and wound up in customs with us. But uh, when I got to LA, uh, I got uh initially posted to, uh, uh, I guess the most uh, at least in our view, the most action oriented office. It was called the downtown LA Metro group and uh, we had every bad part of of that. You can imagine. Uh, south central watch, compton rampart, yes, yeah, uh, you know, hollywood west, hollywood, uh.

Speaker 2: 9:34

So we, we had the, we had the inner city and, uh, we were primarily a gun enforcement group. So we were out looking for violent criminals that were creating nefarious deeds using firearms and we did a lot of gang work. We were in what was affectionately known then as the ghetto just about every day. We also supported and participated with the arson group, the downtown la arson group, so we had a lot of fires that we worked. I I joined the atf national response team while I was in los angeles so that that sort of aided my travel and give me a little break from being down in the ghetto, so to speak. We could get out and go to a bombing or a fire and work those incidents forensically. But actually I've always said that my time in Los Angeles in the LA Metro group probably some of the funnest time that I ever had as an agent. We worked a lot of undercover in those days. You wouldn't believe it, but a Texas cowboy looking guy in fact that was an undercover name I used a lot was Cowboy Texas cowboy looking guy and one of my closest friends and longest partners, a little Italian guy. We were down in the ghetto working stings and buying, buying guns from gangsters. Um, you know, in reflection seemed like almost every week. So uh, it was. It was quite a diversity of work out on the streets running with LAPD, running with the gang units, the sheriff's department crash units, and then of course, you know, come Monday you might have to put on a suit and be in court.

Speaker 2: 11:33

I always said that being an ATF agent back in those days was about the most challenging. I thought that you could challenging job you could have as a fed, because being an ATF agent AJ was fairly close to being a true street cop. But at the same time you might, as I said, you might wind up on an arson scene the next week, you might wind up in court, you know, the following week and then, of course, you had to take care of all your own internal paperwork. The ATF system at that time was a lot simpler than it is today, I'm sure you know. We had to account for all our own undercover money, so we were our own accountants.

Speaker 2: 12:23

We did a little bit of everything back in those days and we did it with some of the greatest guys I ever met some of the funniest, most dedicated, hardworking, courageous group of guys, and not just in ATF. We worked closely with Secret Service, who were in the office right next door to us. We worked with the customs guys out of Terminal Island at the time and certainly we worked with LAPD almost constantly. So great cast of characters in our own office and in those different agencies and, wow, it was a really. I always say it was the greatest time in the world to be an 1811, a special agent, because we had just enough technology and resources to be out ahead of the crooks. But regulations and rules hadn't really caught up with us at that time.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Yeah, I always tell people that our travel program was having GTRs in your pocket and if you had to do a controlled delivery or you had to go after a fugitive, you just walked up to the airline counter, filled it out and got on the plane. Everybody was like, well, didn't you have to get approval for that? I said the approval was that you were going to go out and make an arrest. You know, and like LA, like some of the watering holes, like Gorky's and Emmylou's downtown that we went to, and you know the big movie that was out then was Live and Die in LA with Secret Service and put them on the map for Petrovich and for the counterfeiting and the check forging and all the stuff which you know.

Speaker 1: 14:08

And I went later to work at Secret Service as a consultant on their assets seizure and financial investigation. So it was, like you said, a totally different world and the many friends that we've accumulated over the years are from different jobs. I always said that I stayed with an agency until they restarted my five-year background, said that I stayed with an agency until they restarted my five-year background so they wouldn't catch up with me and I could retire. You know what?

Speaker 2: 14:39

I mean Well, you can't hit a moving target. That's what I always said. That's a good point, okay, so you were an ATF from what years? In Los Angeles? Let's see, in LA, I was there from 80 to 86, I think it was.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Okay, yeah. I was there 83, 84, and part of 85. Yeah, yeah, it was a good time A little different.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Yeah, it was a great time. We were there during the Olympics. You know the Olympics was a big deal at the time, you know. Thankfully nothing happened. It ended up being a boring assignment. Were you on the task force for that? Yeah, we all were. Atf brought in a bunch of guys from all over the country and we actually were just doing presence patrolling. I guess during all that we were driving around from venue to venue. In fact that was one of the biggest investigations that ever happened in ATF. Los Angeles then was because on one boring evening an unnamed agent and again this shows you how far back technology goes Took his two-way radio and Johnny Paycheck's take this job and shove. It was playing over the AM radio at the time, so he keyed the mic and broadcast all over the LA basin and the task force frequency Take this Job and Shove it. And I think our office, our bosses, had about a three-week investigation trying to identify who that culprit was.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Home in on it, home in on it. I'm dating culprit was Home in on it, home in on it. I'm dating myself too Home in on it, and that, yeah, when I was out there during the Olympics two weeks before, I had a case in Oxnard and it was a fugitive who had assumed the identity of a dead person I'm going to promote my book a little. But we went up there and he had blown up two police cars in Spokane and the courthouse and ATF was involved and the Bureau of course, because it was terrorism, of course they got to get in there, the FBI listeners. I don't mean to offend you, but you know. But anyway, I was involved in that and you know, like you said, with that and kidding around, seriously, you had some very serious cases and I'd like you to talk about the one that involved the chief in LAPD. I think that's a tremendous story.

Speaker 2: 17:08

Well, again, I think, upon reflection, I think that was another quasi-famous agent's case. It was a young agent at the time named Bill Queen, but he started that case and it involved the Aryan Nation, which was prominent at the time, and Nation which was prominent at the time, and it ended up being an undercover case and worked with LAPD on it. But the LAPD had a controversial unit back then called the Intel Unit I think it had another name, but it was essentially an intelligence function but later got banned, I believe, but we won't get into that.

Speaker 1: 17:55

I know they're chalking it up.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, so that particular case. A bunch of Aryan Nation skinhead types were interested in acquiring a bunch of fully automatic weapons and were involved in converting semi-automatics to automatics. So our office there, the Metro Gun Group, got involved in that case. Our agent worked undercover. Ultimately there were some threats made against Darrell Gates, the chief of LAPD at the time.

Speaker 2: 18:33

And so we worked that case and in those days an investigative group would be about eight or 10 agents and it was a pretty tight-knit group. So if one guy was out on a case, the whole group was out. We tried to have a standing rule back in those days that you know you run the deal, the deal doesn't run you, and the standing rule was we don't want to have any deals that go on Friday night, saturday night or Sunday night, so try to keep your deals during the work week.

Speaker 1: 19:10

Federal Friday. It didn't always make that happen.

Speaker 2: 19:13

But we tried and, at any rate, we ended up taking down that group of guys, getting a warrant, raiding them. Lapd and some of their significant players came out there. We took all those guys into custody and prosecuted them. And then Darryl Gates came over and, uh, you know, gave us a big pat on the back and we all got our picture taken with the, with daryl the, you know, the inventor of the swat concept, and, and, uh, that picture floats around from time to time. What's that?

Speaker 1: 19:44

what was that tank? There was a name for the. Remember the tank that they got to demolish houses.

Speaker 2: 19:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was where they put the big long spear on the front of them Right. Like a Brinks armored car truck.

Speaker 1: 20:02

They were selling them up at the police academy. We would go up there for the clam chowder on Fridays and to see Heather Locklear swim in the pool for TJ Hooker. Remember those days.

Speaker 2: 20:14

Yeah, yeah, oh sure, yeah, we used to. You know most law enforcement agencies and certainly ATF. Back then they gave us I think they gave us three hours of paid time a week to work out, so that was our go-to spot. We'd go up to the LAPD Academy.

Speaker 1: 20:32

It's a little slow with me, but the name of it was RAM. That was what they called it RAM. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I have this useless information that goes into my brain the closer I get to 70.

Speaker 2: 20:45

So I'm going to say it yeah, believe me, I'm living that. But yeah, we'd go up there to the LAPD Academy and run on the track and, you know, eat in the cheap cafeteria and you know, try to get gun deals out of the gun store that was up there. And then you know, we, as I said, we worked in the ghetto constantly. We were on many raids with LAPD where you know they ran, they ran that Ram through the side of a house and about pulled down a you know some kind of a crack house or something down there. Pretty, it was wild times really. I mean I I look back on it I think my gosh, I don't know how we didn't get. You know, we didn't get really hurt down there because we were, we were really winging it many times.

Speaker 1: 21:34

Running and gun, and that's exactly what that era was right there, especially in that city yeah, we, well, we had a great uh.

Speaker 2: 21:42

I'll tell you. You know, I think all uh, all really productive cops will tell you that what makes a great investigator is having great informants. And and then we just happen to have about the best informant uh that we ever had down there. Uh, in fact, I, you know, I hate to even call him an informant he was uh, uh, you know, he was a cooperating individual and uh, uh, he, that guy could generate more gun cases down there. Uh, he was uh at the time, of course, we were young guys. I think he was about 65. We called him Old Nicky. You know, we thought Old Nicky was old. Sorry, we got an Amber Alert or something coming up here.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Oh okay, that's important. What happens when I hear that noise? I have one of those sugar monitors and it goes off. It went off yesterday on my phone and everybody's like what's that? I said I shouldn't have had that martini at lunch. No, I'm kidding with you, but it does go off Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 22:48

But that's really what made the. We did one of the very first. My partner Jimmy and I did one of the very first headquarters monitored special projects down there. So we came up with this concept of, instead of having a storefront kind of sting where we would buy guns, we had a mobile state. So we first used a old Nikki's van and then we got our own undercover van and we we made a circuit all through South Central and and every every day we would have different stops and we would roll up in our van.

Speaker 2: 23:27

My partner Jim and I and and, of course, our LA Metro cover teams would be around and and uh, we would just meet these gangsters on the street and buy stolen guns and uh, occasionally we'd buy dope from them, you know, whatever it took, and and uh, really sit on the street corner and uh, smoke a cool cigarette and, you know, drink a couple of beers and uh and uh, you know, talk them right into prison. So it was a wild, wild and crazy time down there then and it was all really based on the teamwork that we did and based on having great informants and begrudgingly because back in the day we would never have admitted this, but begrudgingly we had some supervisors that gave us enough rope to either hang ourself or make us pretty good agents. Luckily, we're still breathing.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Trial by fire. Right, that's exactly what it was. You were there, so let's go to follow you with ATF and where you moved to after that.

Speaker 2: 24:35

You know from having lived in LA that even in the 80s traffic every day was just a nightmare. It was just unbelievable. I lived down in Huntington Beach, which from my driveway to my parking spot in the downtown federal building was about 30 miles, and that was typically an hour, 15 to an hour to two hours on the road one way. So that also actually facilitated a lot of undercover work because we knew we were going to be stuck in traffic. So we might as well just stay at work and you know work, uh, work down the ghetto till eight, nine o'clock at night and then drive home with you know less traffic, but I had on my desk.

Speaker 1: 25:17

I had on my desk a sign and it said we arrest fugitives by appointment only because it was the same thing. We had to know the guy was there because the the chief deputy, who was a former Marine, would come in and say you got a rest today. Yeah, how sure are you? On a scale of one to 10?, well, I always learn 50% chance, just so 51. So we would go out and do it, but I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead, tell me about it.

Speaker 2: 25:46

No, no, no, that's exactly the way it was. You know it was just. The commute was a struggle. So after five or six years of that, I really I loved ATF. I loved being an ATF agent.

Speaker 2: 25:59

I was relatively successful, I guess, and so I kept just trying to get transferred to one of the outlying offices closer to my house, because there were a couple of other outlying ATF offices in Long Beach and down in Santa Ana that were 30 minutes on surface streets. But I think I tried. I submitted a memo to transfer to one of those offices. I think my record was 24 times because I would submit it once a quarter, 24 times, 24 times, because I would submit it once a quarter, 24 times to just leave downtown, leave the Metro Gun Group and just go to a little slower paced office. And so ultimately my my special agent in charge, then after about the 20. One time I got my memo back and he had handwritten on it. Your repeated requests for transfer are noted. They are not in the staffing pattern at this time and you can expect to remain in the LA Metro Gun Group for a long, long time. You're kidding me? That's a true story. So I thought, golly, maybe it's time to do something else. So, uh, so about the in 86, um, to kind of digress, customs, up until the 84, 85, 86, in that area customs agents were essentially precluded from working narcotics cases because of the DEA, the creation of DEA in the 70s, and a lot of customs agents had been merged into DEA back then, I think in 72.

Speaker 2: 27:50

And so customs worked. You know, they worked general smuggling and a lot of commercial import fraud and things like that. I mean they certainly earned their pay but they didn't really work narcotics. But by the mid 80s the war on drugs was really going on and dope smuggling was so prevalent, particularly down at the US borders, at all the ports of entry, and the process at that time was that when the uniformed customs inspectors and customs officers would catch a load of dope in a truck or a car or what have you, they had to call a DEA agent to come down and take the case and take it to.

Speaker 2: 28:31

And customs officers would catch a load of dope in a truck or a car or what have you, they had to call a DEA agent to come down and take the case and take it to federal court and DEA just got overwhelmed. Those were called port call cases. Dea had gotten overwhelmed and recognized that they needed some help. And customs got at that time cross-designated Title 21 authority to work narcotics domestically. And so Customs put on a huge hiring to take on that new program that they had, that expanded narcotics program. So man Customs in the late 80s Customs was hiring guys from DEA and ATF and Secret Service, I mean just about everywhere FBI guys. And so to go back even further back in, oh my gosh, I think it was around 78 or so in ATF Ronald Reagan, who was not an ATF fan when he got elected president had committed to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Fire.

Speaker 1: 29:34

You're going to talk about the RIF notices right Right.

Speaker 2: 29:36

Reduction of course.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Yeah, we had all gotten RIF notices back then and so a lot of guys did what ATF management called jump ship. A lot of those guys that got a lot of agents back then in the 70s went over. They went to Secret Service and other places but seemed like predominantly a lot of guys went to customs as agents. So by the 80s when I was told I was going to be in downtown LA for a long, long time, a lot of those xatf guys had moved into customs management positions. So from those and as you point out, you know a lot, most of your friends are guys that you worked with.

Speaker 2: 30:19

So still knowing some of those guys and knowing that customs was hiring, I kind of put out some feelers and uh and and got um, you know, got some positive feedback about just transferring over to customs there in LA. But then they also pointed out that, boy, they were really hiring down in Texas, which has a huge Mexican border, and if I ever wanted to go back home I might ought to consider that. So, long story short, I ended up applying. I actually went back to atf and said, well, look, these guys offered me a job and and I'm thinking about going, unless you think there's a possibility that I can get uh you know, out of la and uh. And ultimately they said, yeah, if I were you I would take that job.

Speaker 2: 31:11

So so I did I, I, uh, I transferred to customs. I was lucky enough to get picked up, uh, as a customs agent down in san antonio, down san antonio, texas. So that was my uh, that was my, my impetus to leave atf, to leave my longtime friends. I mean I had about 12, a little over 12 total years with ATF when I left 12 or 13. It was really all I knew and, despite having worked a couple of cases with customs out in Los Angeles, boy, I really knew nothing about customs. But you know, it was an opportunity to get back home, be closer to my parents my parents were getting elderly then and get my kids out of LA at the time. So really, once again, sort of fate just intervened and I pulled the trigger on it and got transferred down to San Antonio and the whole world of mother customs opened up to me there.

Speaker 1: 32:13

What year was this?

Speaker 2: 32:17

So that was the fall of 86 when I left LA. I think it was 80. I'm pretty sure it was 86.

Speaker 1: 32:24

This was the Von Rob era, when they really started beefing up enforcement and all that. I'm anxious to talk to you about when he closed the border, which is legendary.

Speaker 2: 32:37

Yeah, commissioner Van Rob was the commissioner then.

Speaker 1: 32:40

Yeah, so you went to San Antonio.

Speaker 2: 32:45

I did. I went to San Antonio. I ended up. At the time I had a pilot's license, and now I have my attack dog barking on the other end of the house.

Speaker 1: 32:59

It's lunchtime, that's why Did you feed him.

Speaker 2: 33:03

Probably means my wife has an Amazon package being delivered somewhere. So I had a pilot's license Again. Again, it was kind of a funny story. I, I, I reported for work, you know, on a monday morning and and, uh, atf, atf, that I just left was was pretty, you know, it was pretty structured.

Speaker 2: 33:25

I mean, we were, you know, we were accountable to our bosses and and, and we were, you know, we were accountable to our bosses and and, uh, they, we had a, we had a lot of bosses that had that idea that, uh, to quote one of my partners, that that agents ought to be all in their places with bright, shining faces. You know, by 8 30 you should be in the office, that kind of stuff. We, we, believe me, we have plenty of workarounds for that. But when I got to customs the first day, I showed up and there were just a couple of the SAC secretary and the admin officer were there. I said, hey, I'm the new agent, I'm here to report, and they said, oh yeah, no one's here today, you're going to have to come back tomorrow. Oh my gosh, I said no, no, no one's here today, you're going to have to come back tomorrow. Oh my gosh, I said no, no, no, I can't come back tomorrow. You know, I mean, I got children, I need to get, you know, my insurance transferred over and get my pay started. And they went, yeah, no, they're all at the range and then they're having a barbecue out there and so no one will be here until tomorrow. So you just got to come back tomorrow. So, uh, I ultimately did talk him into letting me sign on, but but essentially, I came back on Tuesday and, uh, um, walked into the SAC office down in San Antonio, which was a small office that was originally about eight or nine agents and at that time was ballooning to about 20.

Speaker 2: 34:51

And so there were not enough desks, not enough cars, you name it. So I walk in on the second day, on Tuesday, and ASAC met me, the assistant special agent in charge, and he said oh, yeah, yeah, the SAC told me you were coming. What group are you going to be in? I said, man, I don't know what groups do you have? You know, I knew nothing about customs. And so the ASAC said well, what are your hobbies? What are your hobbies? And I said, well, I'm a. I'm a big runner. I ran a pretty big runner and I golf a little bit and I, I, I got a pilot's license. Oh, you got a pilot's license. Oh, you're in the air smuggling group. That's how management was back then.

Speaker 2: 35:39

They were over at a big orange hangar over at the San Antonio airport. They're located with the customs air guys over there. I had actually already been over there and I said, yeah, I know where that is. They said, well, just go over there. They got an acting supervisor over there to just tell him you're assigned to his group and I don't want to bore you. But upon reflection I said, okay, well, all right, great. Well, how am I going to get over there? He said, well, I don't know. I said, well, I need a car.

Speaker 1: 36:09

A jeep ride Come. Well, I don't know. I said, well, I need a car G-Ride.

Speaker 2: 36:10

Come on, where's my G-Ride? He said, oh, we don't have any cars, we're going to get some. But we'll get you a car. Just see the lady out front. She'll lease you a car for a while and then we'll figure something out. I said, okay. I said well how about equipment? He said well, like what I said well how about like a gun?

Speaker 2: 36:30

Yeah, yeah, I said how about like a gun? And the guy looked at me. He said a gun. He said don't you have your own gun, texas? Yes, I said I don't have a gun. He said you came from ATF. You don't have your own pistol. I said no. I said in ATF you got to carry a government gun. So I don't even. I got a deer rifle and a shotgun but I don't own a pistol. So he reached down in one of those big old, you know mahogany government desks that he sat behind you know big, huge executive desk and pulled open this big file cabinet and there was about 20 pistols of every kind of make and model thrown in there, automatics and revolvers. And he said, hey, just grab one of these and pick one out and then tell the property guy to put it on your paperwork when you think about it. So I picked out a little five-shot stainless steel Smith which in ATF you had to die or retire.

Speaker 2: 37:28

Yeah, model 60, cheap special. Somebody had to die or retire to get that gun in APF. So I got a little cheap special and I said okay. Then I said well, how about some ID? He said you'll get that when you go to customs agent school. I said well, when's that going to be? He said it'll probably be. That could be a year or longer because we got a bunch of new hires that are going to those academy classes now. So I gave him the pistol back. I said well then I probably won't need this pistol if I don't have any ID, you know. So he said okay, wait a minute. And he goes in the little front office, comes back with a, with a customs, a customs letterhead and it said typed on it was to whom it may concern, this will certify that kenneth gates is a special agent with us customs, authorized to make arrests and carry firearms, signed uh, acting special agent in charge. And then he gave me a blue government credit card and that was the id that I carried for my, like my first year in custody.

Speaker 1: 38:31

He didn't say a little note on the side we don't need no stinking badges, right?

Speaker 2: 38:37

No, no, you know. Now, within within a couple of months, they did send me a temporary badge from from a Glencoe, from Plessy and and a little laminated ID card. But I carried that letterhead man. I got on airplanes with that and a blue government credit card more than once in my first year.

Speaker 1: 39:04

The good old days.

Speaker 2: 39:05

It was very organized. I said what about a vest? I said I need a vest. He said a bulletproof vest. He said I need a vest. He said a bulletproof vest. He said we don't have any of that stuff in customs. He said I don't know about all you transferee guys, but we don't have any of that stuff in customs. And I mean that's how primitive it was in 86 when I came to customs, wow. So once again, as I say, it was the greatest time to be an agent because they basically said here you go, here's your government steed and a gun, go forth and do good stuff and just figure it out. And we did. We went out and man Customs had some incredible they were called air officers at the time and and customs pilots, who were all law enforcement guys.

Speaker 1: 39:52

Right.

Speaker 2: 39:52

And man, we would just get in airplanes and fly around and follow, follow airplanes that were coming across the border and land behind them and, you know, fly out to some remote desert strip and eat good Mexican enchiladas in West Texas for lunch. You know, it was just a wild, wild time and I guess it was sort of the closing days of air smuggling, because that was really just before the cartels sort of organized and put all the independent smugglers out of business. Back in those days you could just fly across the border to some Mexican town, you know, buy 500 pounds of weed and fly it back in and, you know, within eight or 10 years the cartels organized all that and you could fly to Mexico with a plane, but you probably weren't flying back out.

Speaker 1: 40:45

So what did you do with the? And just for a personal note, we had a big-time air smuggler on yesterday who got out on a compassion release and quite a character from the Keys. So you got seven life sentences for that. What's his name? Dickie Lynn? Yeah, and he was on and I'm going to have on after you one of the smugglers from the late 70s. He also received substantial sentences.

Speaker 1: 41:25

So this should be good, and I never was in an air group like that. I mean, I was in airport response, which was totally different. Uh, with that and uh it's. I love hearing uh smuggling stories because I don't think the general public, uh, they're so used. This is refreshing for me to hear because a lot of the complaints that we had as agents and as a first line supervisor, like I was, is we would get managers that hadn't lived a life, that had been done a tour in headquarters. You know the deal. And then they come back and they're an ASAC or a DSAC. But go ahead, tell me what happened with your smuggling then when you went there in San Antonio.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Well, again, it was still pretty primitive Customs and some of this predates me so I'm kind of giving you some secondhand background and some of this predates me. So I'm kind of giving you some secondhand background. But, as I said earlier, customs Special Agents didn't work narcotics up until the late 80s, you know, just by statutory limitation for Title 21,. You know that all belonged to DEA agents. But the one program in Customs that continued to work narcotics was the customs air program. So they had customs air officers and customs pilots who were just as much an agent as any agent you ever met, in fact even more so, had flown up and down the southwest border from all the way from Brownsville to basically to San Diego and and tracked drug smuggling airplanes. They worked cases, they worked informants. You know I think they had an informant in every little fixed-base private airport up and down the Mexican border. So those guys were very, very, very prolific, even as that program evolved and they restructured and they ended up with air interdiction officers. Those guys were out there every day patrolling and flying around and developing information and then doing interdiction work when planes would bust the border and radar would pick them up. Those were the guys that launched in customs aircraft and customs helicopters, you know, to land right behind a dope smuggling scheme and take those people into custody. So that was the environment that we kind of fell into. Uh, uh, those guys were veterans and knew what they were doing, and and uh, uh, there was a little friction because, uh, the agency, as I said, customs was evolving and and uh and agents really became uh, preeminent in in the prosecution of those kinds of cases, but very, very common that we would be in the office. And Customs had its own network of feeds from every FAA radar all over the country. And then in the 80s they put up a series of aerostats, those big balloons up and down the border, to finally cover places that didn't even have FFA radar coverage.

Speaker 2: 45:11

A typical smuggling deal was a small aircraft, might be a single engine, might be a twin engine. An independent smuggler would fly into gosh, you name it Monterey or Piedras, negras or wherever, take on a load of weed Typically I think it was weed smuggling but might take on cocaine at the time and then, uh, come back across the border. Of course they would turn off their aviation electronics, they would turn off their transponders, fly really low and then pop up, turn their, turn their uh transponders back on and then you know, land in wichita falls or Lubbock or or wherever the you know that they were based out of and and the customs communications and radar guys, our radar specialists. They were just constantly scanning those radar screens looking for those unidentified targets and and they would launch customs aircraft. You'd get, you'd get a call and it would be. It would be like a fire alarm went off. The air crews would run to the airplanes or we had some old Army surplus Mike Model Huey helicopters. That was even before the Blackhawks came in. But you would run out there and jump in an aircraft with the customs pilots and we would go chasing after those airplanes and land behind them in fields or on county roads and um and jump out. And you know, sometimes you caught dope and sometimes you didn't.

Speaker 2: 46:41

You know just a, I guess a humorous story. I was sitting in the office in san antonio and one of those alerts came from the, the customs radar guys, and the pilots came running into our squad bay and said come on, we got, we got a, we got a hot target coming across the border from del rio. So, man, I ran out and we jumped in a customs king air, two pilots and myself and uh, at the time I think I had a six inch smith model 66, uh 357 revolver with me. That was it, and a blue nylon customs raid jacket. That was. That was a sum total of our equipment. So we jumped in this customs airplane and took off and all of a sudden, of course they're on, the pilots, are talking to the radar guys and and all of a sudden the of course they're on the pilots or talking to the radar guys, and all of a sudden the transponder kicks on. You know every kind of trapping of a smuggling deal and they vector in behind.