The Strength of the Wolf (81 page)

“I was there afterwards,” Andy Tartaglino recalls, “when Giordano went to Hendricks to complain. Hendricks asked him, ‘What exactly did Califano say?' ‘He said he'd take care of me,' Henry replied. ‘But did he promise you the job?' To which Henry hung his head and said, ‘No.' ”

On 12 July 1968, Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced John Ingersoll's appointment as BNDD's director, knocking many a proud FBN agent to his knees. Not only had they been forced into a shotgun wedding with the chicken pluckers, but their new leader had never made an undercover buy or bust. To make matters worse, Ingersoll projected nothing but disdain for the FBN's legacy, along with a fierce desire to put as much distance as possible between himself and the growling wolf pack he had inherited. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Ingersoll's qualifications for the job were strictly managerial. He had a degree in criminology and public administration, and as a policeman in Oakland in the 1950s, he had come under the tutelage of law enforcement guru Orlando Wilson, and was chosen by Wilson to head a showcase research unit in the Oakland PD. On Wilson's recommendation, Ingersoll in 1961 was appointed director of Field Services for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and began his ascent to national prominence. Ingersoll was appointed to Kennedy's Blue Ribbon panel, where he (gasp) expressed his opposition to mandatory sentencing – the backbone of drug law enforcement – and advocated the transfer of the FBN from Treasury to Justice.

“He was trying to grapple with the problem on an intellectual level,” a supportive colleague explains.
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Ingersoll's intellectualism may not have been appreciated by the FBN, but it did enable him to achieve results. As director of IACP's Field Services he conducted a study of the Charlotte, North Carolina, Police Department. The study resulted in his appointment as Charlotte's police chief in July 1966, and by applying his progressive ideas, he defused the department's racial tensions and curbed corruption in its narcotics squad. Ingersoll's program became a model for big cities around the nation, and he became the IACP's poster boy. Knowing it would increase his benefactors' clout in Congress, he allowed himself to be promoted as a clean-cut family man, above moral reproach, who could unite federal, state, and local agencies in an enlightened, systematic approach to drug law enforcement.

In preparation for his job as director of the BNDD, Ingersoll was briefly assigned as an assistant director at the pork barrel Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration (LEAA), which allotted federal dollars to politically correct state and local police departments. While there he tracked the reorganization and met with staff officers and field supervisors from BDAC and the FBN. Preceded by their cynical reputations, the FBN agents were received less warmly than their earnest BDAC rivals, who quickly adopted Ingersoll's policies in hopes of obtaining key positions.

At Ingersoll's direction, BNDD was divided into divisions for Enforcement, and Regulatory and Scientific programs. Giordano became associate director for Enforcement, and George Belk became his special assistant. Enforcement had three offices: Domestic Investigations under John Enright; Foreign Operations and Intelligence under former BDAC executive Ed Anderson; and Investigative Services under Walt Panich. John Finlator, as associate director for Regulatory and Scientific Programs, oversaw the Office of Training under Pat O'Carroll, the Office of Compliance under BDAC Supervisor Patrick W. Fuller, and the Office of Science and Education under Fred Garfield.

To protect himself from the wolf pack, Ingersoll circled himself with friends. Chief among the patronage appointees were Perry Rivkind (a wealthy Illinois Republican politico), as his executive assistant, and Michael Sonnenreich, who, as deputy to chief counsel Donald Miller, served as Ingersoll's
consigliere
. Ingersoll's top staff officers were Nelson “Bill” Coon, chief of the Office of Administration, and Andy Tartaglino, as chief of Office of Inspections. Like Ingersoll himself, this inner circle (except for Tartaglino) was regarded by FBN veterans as pudgy, arrogant, and naive.

Despite his awkward entrance, Ingersoll made a good impression on a few FBN agents, including George Gaffney. “He came in while I was on leave,” Gaffney recalls, “and when I got back, all the top posts were filled. But Ingersoll was a gentleman, and he gave me a good assignment as his special assistant running a cooperative program with the Mexican government. The job was largely out of the office, working with the State Department and using AID money to provide the Mexicans with equipment and technical assistance – mostly small planes and helicopters – in an effort to eradicate marijuana and opium.” Gaffney also represented Ingersoll at Interpol sessions, and served as Ingersoll's liaison to a Drug Abuse Committee at the Pentagon. The military's problem, of course, was escalating drug addiction on military bases and among soldiers in Vietnam.

In breaching the walls of the BNDD, Ingersoll's most important personnel decision, made secretly, was awarding Andy Tartaglino the job of chief inspector. “I'd met with Ingersoll in April,” Tartaglino says, “and had asked to be transferred from Main Treasury into BNDD, with status.” In view of his own concerns about lingering corruption, Ingersoll agreed and, with Tartaglino as his filter, began the critical task of selecting eighteen regional directors. As Tartaglino recalls, “Ingersoll made every decision himself, in consultation with Giordano and Finlator.” But he also privately asked Tartaglino about each candidate's “lifestyle” before the interview.

When the process was over, former FBN district supervisors held most of the regional director jobs in the BNDD, positions that were equivalent to their old ones. William Durkin acquired the prized New York regional director (RD) post, and George White's protégé, Dan Casey, won the equally desirable Los Angeles RD post. Not surprisingly, the four members of Tartaglino's anti-corruption Task Force all landed on their feet: Frank Pappas became the RD in Baltimore; John Windham got the RD job in Kansas City; Bowman Taylor became deputy RD in the newly created Miami region; and John Evans became chief of General Investigations under John Enright at the Office of Criminal Investigations. Giordano loyalist Fred Dick was sent to the National War College.

Some BDAC veterans did get RD posts – Otto Heinecke in Chicago, William Logan in Miami, and Richard A. Callahan in Boston – but generally speaking, BDAC veterans and outsiders fared better than FBN veterans in securing administrative positions. Top headquarters positions went to Edward Anderson as chief of Intelligence and Foreign Operations, and Edward Mullin as his deputy in charge of Intelligence. Mullin had served in the FBI, and reportedly spent a few years in the CIA's clandestine services. Accustomed to the latest technological advances, he was shocked to find that the FBN had no intelligence files or register of informants. Also a former FBI agent, Anderson quickly earned a reputation as a nitpicker who made stupid demands and kept his staff bogged down in unnecessary paperwork. At one point Hank Manfredi, the deputy in charge of Foreign Operations, went to John Evans at General Investigations and said about Anderson, “This guy's gonna drive me nuts!”

As one overseas FBN agent recalls, “The FBI was unbelievably jealous after Apalachin, and the sorehead attitude lasted until they had enough clout to put in Mullin and Anderson at BNDD. But they didn't have a
clue. They were elegant window dressing, and when those two were there, we didn't know who was in charge.”

Hank Manfredi's presence as chief of Foreign Operations provided some operational continuity, but he was suffering from heart disease, and wanted a sinecure post at the United Nations. Making matters worse, he had to wait while the books were cooked to square the differential between his FBN and CIA salaries; and while he waited, the UN job went to Pat O'Carroll. A promotion in July 1968 helped ease the pain, but by the end of the year the Nixon regime had seized control of the BNDD and had begun using it for nefarious political purposes. Instead of coasting to retirement, Manfredi found himself knee deep in Nixonian dirty tricks, powerless to protect himself.

A similar dilemma confronted CIA officer Paul Knight after he was ostensibly hired into the BNDD and made a staff assistant to Henry Giordano. According to Knight, his job was to prepare policies and procedures for the BNDD's rapidly expanding stable of overseas agents. In doing that, Knight stressed the need for a knowledge of foreign languages and laws: he taught incoming agents how to work with foreign cops and the diplomatic corps; how to acquire and handle the freewheeling soldiers of fortune who worked as informers overseas; and how to differentiate between “fascinating, accurate, and useless intelligence.” No one, however, remembers seeing Knight at headquarters.

The selection process produced as many losers as winners, and caused considerable resentment. Several cases loom large. Ernie Gentry was so upset he retired. Pat Ward, who had just bought a house in Chicago, quit after being forced to take a transfer to Detroit. An agent since 1940, and the founding father of the Purple Gang, Detroit District Supervisor Ross Ellis was sent to Seattle, where he became despondent and took a demotion in order to return to Detroit as a group supervisor. Both Ward and Ellis had been long-time foes of Charlie Siragusa and, of course, Andy Tartaglino.

The indignities heaped upon Ward and Ellis did not sit well with many FBN agents. They blamed Ingersoll, Finlator, and Tartaglino, but the transition period had rendered them temporarily powerless. So they bided their time, barely concealing their resentment, and to the hundreds of new agents hired into the BNDD, the Purple Gang, under the leadership of Bill Durkin, George Belk, and Phil Smith (Belk's liaison to Justice Department's Strike Forces), came to include all former FBN agents – a fierce faction awaiting the day when they could crush pretentious John Ingersoll and his BDAC sycophants, exact revenge on Andy Tartaglino, and regain control of what was rightfully their organization.

In his effort to modernize drug law enforcement, John Ingersoll appointed professional administrators to head the offices of Management Analysis, Personnel, and Finance, and he assigned accountants and financial experts as staff officers to the regional directors. And to help headquarters exert greater control over operations, a new breed of agent was cultivated. The ideal recruit was a Marine captain with Vietnam War experience and a college degree. More women and minorities were hired, and accelerated promotions and incentive payments became standard procedure. The training school was expanded to include a course for foreign policemen. Recruits were trained for six weeks rather than two in an expanded curriculum that included courses in how to work with the public, as well as with local and foreign law enforcement agencies.

One of Ingersoll's top priorities was internal security. Certain that many corrupt FBN agents had evaded justice by slipping over to BDAC, he asked Andy Tartaglino to pick up where the Task Force had left off in April 1968. Tartaglino leaped into action and began organizing his inspections staff at his office at 633 Indiana Avenue. The original members were Irwin Greenfield, Robert Goe, and – having ostensibly transferred back from the CIA – Tom Tripodi. The focus of Tartaglino's attention was still New York, where he worked closely with inspectors Tom Taylor (who had joined the BNDD) and Ike Wurms.

Not everyone was happy with this arrangement, and when John Finlator learned that Tartaglino had been appointed chief of inspections, he immediately contacted Criminal Division chief Henry Petersen at Justice, and complained that Tartaglino “operated alone,” was “obsessed,” and should not be left unsupervised. “To resolve the problem of fairness,” Tartaglino recalls, “an assistant chief of the Criminal Division, Robert Rostall, was assigned to oversee the establishment of the inspections staff. To satisfy Finlator, Dick Callahan in Boston monitored the process. Callahan was a Finlator confidant whom I briefed before the merger.”

With Callahan watching from the wings, Rostall reviewed the performance of Andy's Gang and declared it a success. He then traveled with Andy to make cases on agents in California, St. Louis, and elsewhere. Tartaglino and Rostall generated an average of two indictments per month, but Tartaglino's greatest triumph was a case he made on Charlie McDonnell, the sharp undercover agent from Group Three who had worked for Dan Casey in San Francisco before jumping to BDAC. Described as “affable” and “a gentleman,” McDonnell was always dressed
in a jacket and tie, and never let a partner buy turkey. As titular head of Black agents in New York, he had once slapped Bill Newkirk for coming to work drunk.

Alas, Charlie Mac was as wrong as a three-dollar bill.

The case on McDonnell began in New Orleans in 1967, when FBN Agent Jack Compton busted drug trafficker Marvin Sutton with a quarter-kilo of junk. Sutton flipped and named Joe Miles as his source. A former heavyweight boxer from Baltimore, Miles sold junk in New Orleans, where he owned a house of ill repute, and in New York, where he had worked for years as an informant for several agents. In 1967, he was secretly sharing an apartment, out of which they dealt narcotics, with Charlie McDonnell, BDAC's deputy director in Baltimore. Despite the fact that Agent Jack Peterson had blackballed Miles, he was utilized by McDonnell and Russ Dower, a former member of Group Three and the Gambling Squad in the FBN, who had followed Charlie Mac into BDAC.
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“We were developing a conspiracy case against Miles,” Compton said in a statement given to US Attorney John E. Clark in Texas on 20 August 1975.
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“Then Tartaglino and Company started leaning on me hard to get an arrest warrant for him. But we weren't ready to pull the plug, and the US attorney agreed that we should not prosecute at that time. But the inspectors wouldn't accept that, and Miles was arrested in New Orleans in March [1968]. It was a flimflam deal in which we loaned him a lot of money to come down. On hand for the bust were Tartaglino and my boss at the time, Frank Pappas.