Editor’s Note: Last week, an article written by former FBI agent and founding president of the Patrick Henry Center Gary Aldrich that appeared in the Washington Times caught the eye of WorldNetDaily’s Geoff Metcalf. Shortly after the tragedy of Sept. 11, Metcalf
received a phone call from an old friend, Bill Mallory. A retired Drug Enforcement
Agency agent, Mallory suggested the same concept Aldrich had written about: Use untapped resources that have a wealth of experience and knowledge who, arguably, are willing to offer their services to a volunteer force, which would free up currently employed federal agents to investigate the recent terrorist attacks. On his radio-talk show, Metcalf discussed this concept with Aldrich.
Metcalf’s daily streaming radio show can be heard on weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Eastern time.
Q: Gary, what has been the reaction to this “A Few Untapped Resources” piece you wrote?
A: It has been amazingly positive, and I’m very pleased. This all started, as
you may know, when many of the retired or former FBI agents approached FBI
headquarters and asked, “How would you like us to come in and do some of the grunt
work that normally falls to the agents to do. That would free up the agents to go out with
badges and guns and subpoenas and do the real work of the FBI, which is on the street.”
Q: What was the reaction?
A: Well, FBI Headquarters claimed that they considered it carefully, but then
for various ministerial reasons they just didn’t think they would want to do it.
Q: A friend of mine is the former head of the FBI office in Sacramento, Calif.,
who called his old office with basically the same kind of offer. He was willing to come in
and just answer phones or push papers to free up the other agents to do more important
stuff. He hasn’t even been given the courtesy of a return phone call to blow him off.
A: We are rather disappointed. I can’t tell you the exact numbers, but we
know there is somewhere near 10,000 retired and former FBI agents who keep
membership in a society. We also know there are several thousand FBI agents who keep
track of each other on a specialized chat area just for former FBI agents. I know there is
quite a discussion out there about it and quite a lot of disappointment. At the same time,
you will find those agents who will take the position, and they always will, “Don’t question
headquarters. They know what they are doing.”
Q: Hey, everybody is questioning FBI headquarters these days. John
Ashcroft is talking about this big sea change and the commingling of the FBI, CIA and
Treasury with a partridge in a pear tree to come up with something new.
A: It’s true Attorney General Ashcroft talked about dramatically altering the
jurisdictional scope of the FBI, and I think it is well overdue. I think I may have told your
audience before about the many ridiculous federal violations that have been trucked over
to the FBI by the Congress and a willing White House — load up the FBI with all kinds of
gimmickry-type investigations that serve a “political” purpose and a constituency that
demands we get some particular situation like “dead-beat dads.” You may recall in the last
couple of years that happened to be one of our big national crises. How did that end up
being such a big deal? Well, it happened to control runaway prices we had (that we didn’t
have) and to round up these dead-beat dads who were not paying child support. Half the
reason they don’t pay child support is because they don’t have jobs. The other half is that
nobody knows who the father is. It just becomes a ridiculous waste of resources of the
federal government when it is really more of a state issue, or a local issue.
Q: Regarding this idea of using retired and former federal agents, when
Mallory called me, he said all these guys would probably we willing to volunteer. I have
done a very unscientific, grass-roots poll, and everybody I have talked to about the
idea says, “Yeah! We’re good to go.” They’d happily take a flight to Chicago, New York,
Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles or whatever. I’d get on board with a piece.
A: Yes, you’re talking about a large number of people who would do it just
for country, and basically as a way of thanking the taxpayers and the government for
allowing them the great career they had in the first place. I would do that for free, for
nothing, as a volunteer, and I’d do it for the experience, and I’d do it too because I would
feel I was making a contribution to the current cause, which is of course to defeat
terrorism.
Q: I don’t understand the reluctance of the government to even talk about
this. I mean, if you crunch the numbers, this should be a no-brainer. If they put the sky
marshals up, they’ve got to pay them at least fifty grand a year plus perks and benefits. If
you stretch the numbers, you end up looking at billions of dollars vs. a volunteer
pool of guys that are trained and experienced. Mallory told me his entire office and all the
agent offices on the East Coast were cleaned out in the ‘70s when they had the last sky
marshal demand. Until the government could hire and train a cadre, they used DEA and
Treasury guys. These guys are willing to do it now. They’ve got the experience, the
training and security clearances. I don’t understand why the government doesn’t seize this
opportunity.
A: I don’t either. And I’ll tell you, if I was Democrat or a liberal, I would not
want to do it because I’d want to federalize everything and …
Q: You’d want more union workers.
A: Yeah. I’d want all union workers, all new voters for my party. I would
know federal employees would more than likely vote to keep their own jobs, of course,
and to keep their benefits high.
Q: Here’s a startling concept: How about divorcing oneself from the politics
for a moment and consider if the objective is to make the skies safer and/or to make the
passengers “feel” safer. Why not take advantage of this already experienced, talented pool
that isn’t going to cost the taxpayer anything more?
A: It makes no sense to me either. And I’ll tell you something you may
already know. I’ll tell your readers that the White House traditionally uses volunteers for a
lot of their important work.
Q: I didn’t know that.
A: Yes. And many of these volunteers come highly recommended by
members of the White House staff who think these are good, stout fellows and good ladies
to bring along on a presidential event. But when the president goes out and travels, many
of the people you will see coming ahead of him and getting the place ready, staying with
him and leaving with him, are trained volunteers. And if they do it enough, of course,
they’ll get that all-important FBI security clearance to get greater access to the event.
Otherwise, they can be on the periphery with some semblance of a check, but the bottom
line is they are working for the president of the United States. They are working
for the White House, and the White House itself has many volunteers who are not paid.
That works out quite nicely, and everybody is quite happy.
Q: The big focus right now is on anti-terrorism. Attorney General Ashcroft
is reorganizing everything to focus on that. The military is being reorganized to focus on
that. Everybody is focused on that big ‘T’ terrorism threat. We are hearing complaints from
people in Justice that FBI agents are all committed to just one case right now. Everything
else is on hold.
A: Yes, it’s a big problem.
Q: It would seem that a volunteer pool of people already experienced would
be something they would grab at. Is it an institutional “groupthink” that prevents them
from embracing a good idea?
A: I believe that’s a big part of it. I know that the agency I worked for took a
significant hard line on anything new over the years. And when somebody came along with
some change, it basically had to be forced upon them.
Q: Give me an example.
A: I am an avid user of computers, the Internet and all the wonderful things a
computer can do for you, especially if you are an investigator. We had to basically bring
older agents to the technology kicking and screaming. I think some were able to escape
using a computer at all the last 10 years of their career by simply dodging the training or
pretending that they somehow knew something about them when they really didn’t.
Q: That’s amazing. I would think especially under the squireship of Louis
Freeh, everybody would have been brought up to snuff on the computer.
A: You can bring a horse to water … But likewise, the administrative
management of the FBI, in terms of purchasing these computers, was just as bad
in that it took too long to order them. It took too long to research the concept of
computers for FBI agents. By the time they got around to delivering the computers, there
were not enough of them, and they were already obsolete. There was not a plan on the
part of the FBI to upgrade the computers as time went by.
Meanwhile, at this time I’m over at the White House, and I’m seeing the White House
bring in, as just part of their normal budget, a whole new boxcar load of computers for use
by White House employees.
Q: That was one of the first things they did.
A: Yes, indeed. And the FBI is still using the old 386/486 computers.
Meanwhile, the White House was on its way to Pentium 3, and the FBI is wondering why
they can’t get the work done. You scratch your head and you try to talk to these people
about new technology and why it’s so important for the bureau to get these machines and
learn, and you get this fish-eyed stare from the older agents.
Q: Are things changing now? I mean, I know things are changing, but how
difficult is it going to be for Gen. Ashcroft to drag the FBI along the path that he has
apparently chosen?
A: I don’t think any change goes down well with the FBI. It never has, and it
probably never will. I say that because you have people who work there who were chosen
because of the way they think. They want people at the FBI who are not boat rockers and
not innovative. They seek people like that to hire them. They don’t want boat rockers.
They don’t want forward thinkers. They just want you to go out and investigate the case
and bring the evidence to the U.S. attorney’s office, period.
Q: Yeah, but the mission statement has apparently changed and no longer is
going to be about just solving crimes but about preventing crimes.
A: Well we’ve been down that road before, and I’m not really sure where that
will lead us, unless you are talking about counterterrorism, counterintelligence and that
kind of work. I would agree with that kind of concept. But pro-active relative to fighting
crime didn’t work before. We tried that when Clarence Kelley was director, and it was
reduced to some guy going around the office displaying different kinds of deadbolt locks
you could buy for your door. And that is certainly not effective.
Q: Barbara Olson’s new book, “The Final Days.” has reminded several people
of various pending lawsuits — Filegate for one. Aren’t you a part of that?
A: Let me talk about pending lawsuits in general and Filegate specifically. My
partner Dennis Scalambrini was unfairly treated by the White House, FBI and Department
of Justice after my book came out . Dennis has filed a lawsuit to recover at least some of
what he lost by being forced to retire early. But that is a lawsuit that goes on and on and
on.
Q: Why does it take so long for these things to reach some kind of
conclusion?
A: Because it’s a political decision that can be made by the president and
the attorney general to either dispense with these because it is the fair thing to do — to
settle these out with the people who have filed the lawsuits, or they can dig their feet in
and say, “Hey, we’re the federal government, and we are not going to roll over when
somebody sues us, no matter what reasons they have for doing it.”
Q: But we have a new administration. There’s a new sheriff in town.
A: Yes, and I think that if pressure was brought to bear on the White House
and the attorney general in relation to these cases, then I think the attorney general would
make the right decision to do the right thing in these cases.
Q: What can readers do as individuals to help move the process?
A: They can simply identify the lawsuits they are concerned about, and I think
they can find them on the Internet quite easily. I think most of them are Judicial Watch
lawsuits. And I would say get the identity of those lawsuits of most interest, because you
can’t ask the administration to settle every lawsuit that was lodged during the
Clinton administration. But we know of some that are very, very egregious situations that
ought to be resolved. I think the Scalambrini matter is one, and I think Filegate is another.
And I think those matters should be resolved in favor of the plaintiffs.
Q: Come to think of it, Monica Lewinsky was a volunteer.
A: That’s a good point. Monica Lewinsky would never have happened in the
Bush administration, nor would she have ever been allowed to happen during the Reagan
administration. It was only in the Clinton administration that a 20-something-year-old
intern could have been alone with the president of the United States in the Oval Office.
Q: I recall, and I don’t think it was ever really resolved, but when the Clintons
first came into office, there was a problem with a lot of people not being able to get
security clearances. Either they had some minor drug conviction or something …
A: Or major drug conviction..
Q: And was that ever resolved, or did the administration just arbitrarily
decide they were not going to do security clearances?
A: They continued to conduct investigations and present reports to present
the “perception” of a security-clearance process, but in fact, there wasn’t very much done
at all to screen employees coming into the Clinton White House.
Q: What if someone did not or could not qualify? Were they dismissed or
moved into a less-secure area? What did they do with them?
A: You’re asking what “normally” should happen? Sometimes when they
want an employee, for whatever reason, they will give him a job at a different agency —
not the White House — so that they can at least have some contact with the
administration. But in the case of the Clinton administration, in that particular case, they
got to work wherever in the world the Clinton administration wanted them to work,
regardless of what came up in their background.
Q: I can remember when I went to the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at
Fort Benning, some guys were not allowed to sit in on a lecture that was classified. If you
didn’t have at least a secret clearance, they would not allow you in the door.
A: That’s the way it should be, and that’s the way it used to be. When the
Clintons came in, they relaxed all those rules for their political-type people. But the rules
still applied to Joe-Nobody, who wanted to seek a job down at the Department of
Defense.
Q: Gary, returning to your concept of using retired federal agents to assist
with airline security, has anyone actually yet said that liability is one of the things they are
concerned about that may prevent them from embracing a cool idea?
A: Not officially. I’ve heard some speculation as to why they might refuse
volunteers, but that might raise the question of how many lawyers we need in the federal
government to tell us why we can’t do something. I’m certain these agents would sign
whatever paperwork was necessary to hold the government harmless.
Q: The great example is your own experience. You were not armed. All you
did was tell the stewardesses who you were and that you had a couple of decades-plus
experience, and that alone seemed to make them feel warm and fuzzy.
A: Yes, and it did make them feel better. But it was actually more
than that. As a former law-enforcement officer, I know from my experiences that most
people aboard an aircraft, including the flight crew, really don’t have any notion about how
to protect themselves in the event of a hijack attempt. People don’t come hard wired with
instructions about what to do in the event that there is a violent crime occurring in their
presence. But those of us who have had time either in law enforcement (federal, local or
state) or are on duty (retired or former), those of us who have had time in the military in
an enforcement-style role do know what to do in the event of violent attacks.
Simply put, there are at least thousands of us out here that are ready, willing and able to
assist airlines or whatever else.
Q: Give us an example, please
A: If airlines encouraged former law enforcement or military people who had
that kind of training to check in at the counter and identify themselves before they got on
the flight, the flight crew could know who they are, could possibly even move them to a
better location or seat and also tell the pilots that there is somebody with prior
law-enforcement experience. All that is valuable information in the event something does
go wrong on the flight.
Q: Have you seen this piece floating through cyberspace by former FedEx
pilot John Burnett?
A: I’m not sure I’ve seen the same piece, but if you describe it a little better, I
might know it.
Q: He takes a very hard-nosed, draconian position, and he referenced a
situation in a FedEx aircraft where a guy was a member of the crew and took a hammer
and started wacking guys out. What he was basically saying was pilots have to recognize
now that things have changed since Sept. 11, and not to go with your training, but
that if or when (God forbid) confronted with a situation like this, to put the bad guy down
and out for good. Certain law enforcement might not appreciate that, because they have to
be able to interrogate and find out a variety of things they want to find out. But this was a
pilot and a cop.
A: I’m not so certain that’s the best thing to say, Geoff, simply because you
use the amount of force necessary to resolve the situation and take control of the conflict.
If that means deadly force, then that means deadly force. If it means to cave the guy’s
head in so he never breathes another breath, I think a certain number of us would say yes
to that. But really, as a civilized society, we don’t do that. And we would do whatever it
takes to control an attempted hijack and arrest them and turn them over to the proper
authorities. If it happens to be a military tribunal, so be it. But no, I don’t think we can
become executioners.
Q: The specific case he referenced had the pilot and crew initially successfully
subdue the guy. They knocked him out. The pilot assumed he was out and got up to finish
flying the plane, and the bad guy recovered and came after him again.
A: This sounds like a bad grade-B movie. Here’s a circumstance where the
pilot really knows nothing about taking someone out, nor would he know that the next
thing he should do after knocking him out is to handcuff him with something or to tie him
down with duck tape or whatever. This just points out what I said previously: It’s very
valuable to have someone on the plane who knows something about the enforcement of
the law and how to make an arrest.
Q: I’m curious, and I don’t mean necessarily replacing some new cadre they
want to hire of sky marshals, but to either compliment or supplement them with former
experienced people. I mean, the more eyes and ears (and yeah, guns) you have, the better.
A: I totally agree with this concept. Not just in the circumstance of a
jet hijacking or airline security, but also in our daily lives as well. I’m an advocate for HR
218, which simply says that former law-enforcement people ought to have the right to
carry a concealed weapon, and they ought to be able to do that across state lines with
state reciprocity so that their education, their experience, their talent and their knowledge
could be used if it is necessary.
Q: It has been a constant frustration that the work Dr. John Lott has done
demonstrates statistically an axiom, really, that the people on the left are loath to accept:
More guns mean less crime. Bad guys don’t want to encounter anyone that is armed.
A: That’s true. And I will go a step further and just say that the left never has
liked law enforcement. They didn’t like us when they were emerging as a powerful
political radical group in the ‘60s, and they like us even less today. And that’s one of the
reasons they don’t want us armed — because they don’t like us. That would be giving us
something we want, you see. Whereas they do like the fire department, of course, and if
they get mugged, they do like the police at that moment in time. Everybody else in
the society likes us, and they’d like to see us participate more as a homeland defense force.
But the left controls the media — most of it, as you know — and so far, they are controlling
the Congress on this issue.
Q: Everyone is now talking about “homeland defense.” I can remember the
old civil-defense drills back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Have they made any real effort
toward structuring or coming up with an actual TO&E (Table of Organization and
Equipment) for this homeland-defense system, or is it just kind of out there in the ether?
A: The latest reports I’ve heard about it is the coordinator — the gentleman
who has been selected to head this up, Gov. Ridge — is happy to be a “coordinator.” And
that’s his term for it. I’m not sure exactly what that means..
Q: He means he doesn’t have any authority and can’t really do Jack-spit.
A: It is my concern that we may have created another position without any
real authority or power. I know that in the case of the Drug Czar, that’s what happened
there. The Drug Czar was announced, I guess, as a balm to sooth some people who were
screaming for more effective ideas relative to the “War on Drugs,” so we created the Drug
Czar post that was supposed to be cabinet level. That went back and forth and back and
forth. The Drug Czar never really was in charge of very much..
Q: I’ll give you my opinion on the Ridge appointment. I think as
structured, he allegedly has some responsibility but no authority. You know that the FBI
for sure, the CIA, any of the other cabinet positions are not going to give up anything,
they control budgets. Ridge apparently doesn’t control a budget. He has access to
resources and is supposed to “coordinate.” I think he’s just in a holding pattern. My
prediction is that once Dick Cheney does retire, Ridge is going to be the next vice
president, and he’s in a holding pattern until that time. That’s my call.
A: That’s an interesting theory. I would go on to say if the president of the
United States needs to hear what the latest concern is relative to homeland defense. He
probably ought to hear it from the horse’s mouth. That is the agency that has the most to
do and say about the issue, whether it’s the FBI or the CIA or whoever it is. The president
probably ought to hear it firsthand from the director of that agency and not from some
third party who might misinterpret what is being said. On the other hand, if Ridge is
supposed to be a clearinghouse for such information
from different agencies, why have we already got the National Security Council? And I
wonder what, then, is the National Security Council’s role in the White House? I thought
that is what they are supposed to do?
Q: Organizationally, it is like he is neither fish nor foul.
A: And I don’t know exactly what he can do, magic-wand wise, that
everybody isn’t already thinking to do. You know that regardless of any criticism for
the CIA or FBI or other agencies, they are performing as good as they can right now. As
time goes by, they may shift into old habits that are not exactly what we like, but I can
assure you that right now these agencies are running fast as they possibly can. If they need
to run faster, it is not because of lack of effort or heart. It may be because they are
ill-structured, management-wise, or don’t have the right equipment or whatever. But it
won’t be because they are not trying.
Q: One of the territorial battles that always went on between the FBI and
the CIA was the FBI had CONUS — Continental United States. That was yours. Anything
outside of CONUS, that was the CIA. There was an ongoing turf feud, and they wouldn’t
share — or I was getting the impression as an outsider that they weren’t sharing
information, and when they did it was like pulling teeth. Now Gen. Ashcroft comes along
and says that it will be a matter of policy that the FBI, the CIA and Treasury are going to
be working in a new homogenous goo. Is that going to work if there isn’t some real strong
leadership and management?
A: I think it will work as well as it has worked in the past, frankly, and I
would say it was only in certain circumstances that the FBI and CIA refused to work
together. But in most circumstances, they did. There would be select cases where they
made a case where the information was so hot, so sensitive, that to take it out to
another agency would increase the odds too greatly of information being leaked or
mishandled in some fashion. And we had cases that have gone on for decades that the CIA
never knew about, but by God, the White House did. Because I know reports were made
to the president on some of these cases.
Q: Abuse of power under the color of authority was the norm under Clinton.
Notwithstanding the warm feelings for this administration, a lot of folks are still hinky
about prospect of same-ol’, same-ol’ from this administration.
A: I’m with my good friend Bob Barr on this. I don’t like any new power
given to the government because I can’t trust the government after eight years of Bill
Clinton. I could barely trust it, if I did, before Bill Clinton. What has happened with
Clinton is he has destroyed any trust we had in the federal government or the
government’s ability to restrain itself from violating the rights of its own citizens. Sadly,
the new administration that has come behind has not done anything, really, except be
there, show up. They haven’t done anything to reassure a lot of people that much has
changed. So the federal government comes along and says now we
have a new president, and we want all these new powers. And a lot of people are saying
“No. We can’t trust you.”
Q: We’ve been there and done that and been burned..
A: Yeah. You haven’t rolled back the excesses of the Clinton administration.
In fact, you haven’t even made a comment about the excesses of the Clinton
administration. One of the things you asked earlier, Geoff, was what about these lawsuits
and shouldn’t they be settled? People sued because they were abused by the Clinton
administration, and I say “yes” to that. They should be settled, and this would be
one sure way for the new administration to say to the general public and the people who
have been wrong, “Hey, we understand the prior administration was abusive, and we think
the government was wrong in these cases. That’s why we are settling these.”
Q: Even though I do not like a lot of things in this new anti-terrorism bill, I
do like that they at least recognized that it had to be sunsetted.
A: But they didn’t spontaneously include those things in the bill. They had to
be beat about the head and shoulders to get their attention on these matters. There wasn’t
a large group of people on Capitol Hill saying, “Oh yeah, don’t forget to put in the sunset
clause.” No sir! There were a lot of people in this city of Washington, D.C., who
expended enormous political capital to make sure that those sunsetting provisions where
in there.
Visit Geoff Metcalf’s archive
for previous Sunday Q&A interviews.
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