The Last Undercover (24 page)
“Why?” Brian asked.
“Because it would be great to be able to talk [with others] about things we’re talking about,” Todd said. “This is my third NAMBLA meeting to come to, and aside from this I’ve never knowingly had contact.”
James tried to explain the issue to Brian: “That’s one of the purposes of the organization . . . contact with like-minded individuals. . . . That’s one of the reasons that the organization subjects itself to being attacked by groups that would like to see an end to it. They believe that such an organization actually engenders a greater proliferation of that kind of thinking. They don’t want organizations like this to exist.”
Brian said, “But you know what? The way I look at it, blacks were looked down upon, okay? Gays—looked down upon. You all are certainly looked down upon, right? Fifty-nine years from now, it’ll be all right.”
“Hey, great!” Todd said. “We’ll be dead and gone. I’ll be eighty. Where’s the Cialis? We’ll need it then.” Todd went on to say it was so difficult to even chance a discussion with someone about the topic. He had so much to lose if it were discovered he was a BL and a member of NAMBLA. “Because of what I do for a living, I have everything to lose.”
Maybe I had more in common with the attendees than I thought: we were all living multiple lives. I was an FBI agent posing as a pedophile one day and an international weapons dealer the next, while others were predators attempting to hide their secret from the outside world. I learned to lie to further my assigned undercover investigative tasks, yet they had been lying just as long to survive in a society that hated what they espoused. We were all practiced liars; that made detection more difficult—for both sides.
Floyd, an elder statesman in the group, saw it differently. “I don’t have those issues. I’ve spent most of my life very open and direct about what I do and what I don’t do. . . . If you try to hide it, it comes out in most unexpected ways.”
Brian observed, “The secret best kept is the one told.”
I wasn’t ready to tell my secret—at least, not yet. In a few months though, I would tell all—hopefully to a jury in a courtroom, with these guys sitting at the table of the accused. I grabbed my crutch and ambled to my room, hoping to sleep and ready myself for a new adventure the next day.
S
aturday marked the beginning of the conference meetings. I awoke refreshed and excited about the possibilities for the upcoming day. I could feel the adrenaline rush as I dressed. I slept well, which for me was unusual. I’m often restless the night before an undercover meet, mulling over in my mind any of a hundred scenarios that might confront me during the assignment.
As I reflected on what I knew so far, I realized David’s opening salvo the day before about his overseas adventures boded well for a day of successful information gathering. I looked forward to pursuing that topic with him. It was important that David raised the travel issue, since that would negate an entrapment argument in court. It also paved the way for me to explore the subject in further detail. I strapped on my recording equipment—for the first several hours, a concealed camera—and made my way toward the garden area, where a continental breakfast was being served. Many had gathered, including guests who were not part of NAMBLA.
The weather was perfect. Some even suggested we conduct part of the meeting outside, but security concerns prevailed. We spent every session inside the conference room.
As I joined my NAMBLA “friends” around a wrought iron patio table for some easy conversation prior to commencement of the conference, Todd was in the middle of a story about his motorcycle adventure in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Bahamas. While vacationing with a group called Flying Dentists in February 2002, he decided to rent a motorcycle and tour the island, including a visit to a conch farm.
This was his first time on a bike this size and he was unfamiliar with the toe brakes. Riding by himself, he lost control on a back road straightaway and crashed. The results were a broken collarbone, four broken ribs, and a broken hip. The injuries and the resulting seven missed weeks of work were devastating. But according to Todd, the most embarrassing part was he was rescued by seven carloads of Girl Scouts and their mothers. David never missed a beat: “Too bad it wasn’t Boy Scouts.”
“That would have made it all worthwhile,” Todd said sincerely.
When David Mayer briefly left the table, he was the topic of conversation. All we knew about him from the night before was that he had a doctorate in economics, master’s degrees in social work and psychology, and worked for over twenty years as an international flight attendant. It appeared he was not using his education to its fullest. Todd said David admitted to talking with a CIA recruiter when he was in graduate school. David’s CIA “contacts” would reemerge as the investigation progressed.
We made our way to the building that housed the conference room, just off the pool and garden. Compared to last year’s facilities in New York, these accommodations were quite an improvement, though the hardwood floors were a bit worn. Still, there was a kitchenette, and turn-of-the-century photos of the greater Miami area adorned the walls. The chairs were set up in a semicircle and the attendees took their seats.
LEADERLESS, SHIRTLESS, CLUELESS
P
eter welcomed us.
This group is unique. It’s membership-based. You are responsible as to how we move from here. . . . Even the European groups—they may hold work meetings, but the largest group that we know of is Martangue in the Netherlands and I think basically they just send out a magazine like we do and have a steering committee, but I don’t think they hold general membership meetings. But this general membership meeting really guides what NAMBLA will do for the rest of the year.
Chris spoke next, asking for a wider participation in NAMBLA’s work by the attendees. Chris referred to this small gathering of seventeen men as the organization’s “core group.”
Peter asked each of us to introduce ourselves, if we were comfortable doing so, and to answer the questions “What do we want?” and “What are our aspirations?” The responses were interesting: No one admitted coming for any of the organization’s stated purposes as outlined in the NAMBLA policy statement. The primary theme of their comments, as the FBI suspected all along, was “networking.”
Sam Lindblad began. The Albuquerque resident readily admitted to being “a year and a few months out of prison, where I put in seven years.” He came seeking “camaraderie and a common soul.”
Tim from Michigan said,
I live pretty much in isolation from other BLs. . . . Part of my interest in coming here this weekend is meeting other BLs and begin[ning] to develop a community of people [for] exchange . . . and . . . support. I don’t really see this as a time in this country where we can go out and be, like, real vocal and active in the sense of carrying signs. . . . I think the focus for us, as a group, is to try to reach out among ourselves and provide more support than maybe we’re doing right now. I see this as kind of being dark times and if we don’t support each other, I don’t know who is going to.
Someone followed with an “amen.”
David Mayer came for the networking; Mike from Cleveland wanted “to develop a better networking community of other guys that have the same feelings as myself.”
John from San Francisco identified himself as a “gaytheist” who had “been in jail twice and any commitment to anyone might facilitate my way back into jail.” Decrying his plight as a boy lover, John admitted to being “out as a gay” and “out as an atheist” but “those things are different. You go around saying you like to run your hands through a boy’s hair, or you like to kiss him or do other things like that, it doesn’t get the same reaction.”
Substitute teacher Dick Stutsman, fifty-nine, from a small town in South Carolina, said he loved boys: “I admire them; they’re beautiful creatures.” He had lived in South Carolina for over a year, having come from Atlanta, where he was a mentor in a middle school. Dick described himself in reassuring terms: “I think I’m not a sociopath. . . . In my twenties and thirties there might have been cases where I seduced, inappropriately, people who were naïve . . . I am fearless to a fault . . . open to a fault, and I don’t want to be a danger to this organization.”
Paul Zipszer, from the Orlando area, was attending his first conference. “Basically, the reason I came was to see what’s going on.”
Todd Calvin from Dallas was attending his third consecutive conference and spoke passionately when he said he came for “the camaraderie, for actually being able to be yourself and having nothing to hide because we’ve all been hiding a whole lot for a long time. We don’t have to do that here.”
Steve Irvin from Pittsburgh was “active in eighty-eight and the nineties, met a lot of nice people, then got busy and paranoid and drifted away . . . so I came just hoping to meet some new people.”
Chris read several disjointed quotes that had nothing to do with the introductions. He quoted Tim Reed who wrote about pre-1994 Kandahar, Afghanistan, “where the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies flaunting their relationships.” He quoted foreign politicians and national writers. He quoted a writer who said NAMBLA was into “transnational prostitution” and “kidnapping.” Finally, Peter and others called him on his rambling, and we moved on to David R. Busby.
David R. got a big laugh when he explained he “first found out about this organization somewhere around 1989 or ’90. Since I was a kid into a young adult, I was very active in the Boy Scouts. I got to go to this national meeting. . . . The then chief executive of the Boy Scouts of America, his name was Ben Love, told us about this incredible organization that he thought was so horrible, called NAMBLA. And from that point on I was a member. I didn’t have any idea that you existed, but thanks to the Boy Scouts, I now know.”
David R., who described himself as “not gay because I like what I like,” spoke with used-car-salesman zeal: “I truly believe that, probably in my lifetime, people will come to think of people like us the way they think of homosexuals. . . . [It’s] good to get together with people who like what you like and believe what you believe, so I really like being here.” David R. also admitted to being a nudist. Soon after that, Mike from Cleveland took off his shirt and remained shirtless throughout the day. David R. told me more than I actually wanted to know, and I was hoping Mike didn’t take David R.’s encouragement any further.
As the pointless oration droned on, I allowed my mind to go on a little R&R—while keeping enough of an ear on the proceedings to maintain the appearance of engagement in the discussion. I looked around at the guys in the room and tried to imagine them sitting in prison cells. I didn’t know for sure how the arrests would go down in this case if we were successful enough to reach that point, but fantasizing about taking these guys down—hard—helped me stay sane during the emotional wear and tear of my time as a “BL.”
T
hinking about their arrests took me back to my very first collar as a new agent. “Every Marine is a rifleman.” It’s an adage all Marines know. Even though I was a judge advocate in the Corps, I attended both the ten-week Officer Candidate School and the six-month officer basic school (known as TBS, The Basic School) at Quantico, Virginia. Upon graduation I was qualified to lead a rifle platoon into combat. Instead I was assigned to the Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island, and then to the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, California. I never saw combat in the Marines, so I never really knew how I would respond to that first real moment of truth. I believed in my Marine Corps combat training but never put it to use. The four-month training at the FBI Academy prepared me for a different kind of combat. But I wondered how I would respond to that first “fight or flight” incident. Once I reported to the San Diego office of the FBI it wasn’t long before I was tested.
My first squad assignment included fugitives, which meant we were tasked with tracking down those charged with “unlawful flight to avoid prosecution”: UFAP, in its inevitable governmental acronym form. We were following up leads on a fugitive who was wanted for robbery, kidnapping, and attempted murder. Our subject knocked over a jewelry store, then grabbed the owner and dragged her away as a hostage, subsequently tossing her off a seventy-foot cliff in an apparent effort to eliminate her as a witness. Unfortunately for him, she survived the fall and identified him. He vowed never to be taken alive and crossed state lines to elude capture, which is where the FBI came in.
One night my partner and I were working late on some information linking the fugitive to an apartment complex in the Mission Beach section of San Diego. We managed to hop the security fence and approached the apartment in question. As I stepped forward to knock on the door, I landed in fresh cement—making a large footprint outside the door to the apartment. Since I had already messed up somebody’s handiwork I knocked on the door but there was no answer. My partner and I laughed off my gaff and planned our return the next day.
It was early the next afternoon when we approached the apartment a second time. A handyman was on his hands and knees smoothing out my mistake from the night before. He resorted to language I was all too familiar with from the Marines when, with a cherublike face, I inquired about what happened. Before I could even offer an apology—which I had no intention of doing—the fugitive opened the door preparing to leave his apartment. He looked down at the handyman and looked at us. We were dressed in “soft clothes” and appeared to be with the handyman. It was obvious he couldn’t step through the wet cement, and we assumed he was retreating to the back door. The handyman told us the apartment had a back door that led to an underground parking garage.
We sprinted toward the garage tunnel and arrived there just as the large, cast-iron door was opening. Without much thought—as will soon become obvious—I planted myself in the center of the drive and pointed my .38 at the fugitive bearing down on me in his car. I hollered out commands with Marine Corps authority. For reasons I will never understand—but attribute to God’s care for his foolish children—the suspect obeyed me. Instead of turning me into roadkill, this fugitive, who vowed never to be taken alive, stopped the car, turned off the engine, and threw his keys on the sidewalk. I rushed up to the car and stuck my .38 in his left ear, deep into the ear canal. My adrenaline was pulsating at near lethal levels and my hand was shaking, as was the barrel of the .38 lodged inside his ear. My partner and I pulled the now shaken captured fugitive out of the car, cuffed him, and waited for the A-Team to show up.