The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

by Andrew G. McCabe

It is striking that this moment in the late 1990s, when radical Islamic extremism and Russian organized crime were emerging with new clarity, was also one when the poisonous personalization of politics deflected attention from those very threats. In the present moment, as I write, both of these phenomena—foreign terrorism and foreign organized crime—represent two of the greatest threats we face.

long tradition of ignoring organized crime.

Mob investigations, which are complicated and lengthy, tend to produce a low yield of

favorable stats. Under

After Hoover’s death, in 1972, the FBI put some manpower on La Cosa Nostra. For these investigations, the Bureau mastered new ways of doing business.

reckon with complicated international criminal structures, to collect and process evidence in other countries, and to overcome language barriers in order to navigate foreign courtrooms.

No matter where he was, he liked to get up early and go for a run. This meant that his advance team had to plan the running routes and run them ourselves at the exact time Freeh would, so that we could gauge lighting conditions, access routes, traffic, and crowds.

But they wanted so badly to see this that they failed to understand how firmly organized crime had taken hold in all of the former Soviet republics. You have to wonder what might have happened if the U.S. government had taken Russian organized crime more seriously during those years—but beyond a certain point, it’s also pointless to wonder. Nobody can see everything.

The central idea of Russian organized crime is vory v zakone. The phrase means “thieves-in-law” and refers to the top tier of the underworld. Russian organized crime grew out of the Soviet prison system and reproduced the hierarchies of the gulags. The only law the vory observe is the “thieves’ law,” a strict code that says they will never work, never hold a legitimate job, never do what the authorities tell them to do.

The path to becoming a made man in Russia is different. The vor must have been to prison, done hard time, and declared himself a thief for life. People who live like that will, as a consequence, keep going back to prison. The more times the vor goes in and out of prison, the higher his status, which is written on his skin. Icons are as important in Russian crime as in Russian religion, and one way to spot the vor is by his tattoos. The tattoos are an intricate symbolic language, inscribed with ballpoint pen ink and sewing needles, dark and rough and hittery-skittery. Crosses on the knuckles indicate the number of times a man has served time in prison. Stars on the shoulders signify authority. The real leaders who emerge from that process are the vory v zakone.

There’s a big overlap between gangsters and people who look like gangsters—a big overlap between true vory and people who go to wiseguy nightclubs and flash a lot of money. We would get to know the bartenders at Russian mob clubs. A bartender at, say, Rasputin in Brighton Beach, might tell us, These five guys come in here every night, spending loads of money. There’s girls all over the table. We’d ask the bartender to describe those five guys in detail.

Since the early 1990s, most businesses in Russia have had to operate with the protection of a krysha. Even if provided by the police or other government officials, the krysha is ultimately tied to organized crime.

There is no effective distinction, in Russia, between organized crime and government, so kryshas have proliferated to where they block out the sky. Everyone lives under protection. The transformation has been systemic. It cannot be attributed exclusively to the actions of any one individual. But under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, the cohabitation of crime and government became the norm. Crime is the central and most stable force in Russian society.

That case, in retrospect, looks like a moment when Russian organized crime staked an early claim on the American frontier.

money laundered had come from a mixture of legal and illegal activities.

it became clear that Russian oligarchs—the men who, during Russia’s transition from communism to kleptocracy, made billions by acquiring state-owned companies for a song—were supporting some of the vory outside Russia, but not yet in America.

One of our worst fears was that the top tier of the vory v zakone would use money to undermine Western institutions in which many millions of Americans have reflexive faith. That fear had now been realized, and we asked ourselves what institutions might be next, and we asked whether any American public official might be susceptible to a two-hundred-million-dollar bribe, and we asked whether democracy itself might become a target.

Enterprise theory allows investigators to structure their understanding of crimes that once seemed too vast to understand. Enterprise theory is to investigation as grammar is to language. Without grammar, language would be a sprawling mush of verbiage. Without the enterprise theory, FBI investigators would find it practically impossible to wrap their minds around criminal activities of sprawling scope—criminal activities for which many people share responsibility.

Bruce Mouw and Philip Scala, who brought down John Gotti and the Gambinos in the early 1990s.

Enterprise theory was an answer to a problem that had been more than a century in the making: the problem of organized criminal activity in

the United ...

They showed that criminals working together were much more effective than criminals working alone.

wingtips,

Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations drew citizens’ attention to the effects of racketeering—a series of events that culminated, in 1970, with the passage of the Organized Crime Control Act, which included the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations provision.

RICO created important new prosecutorial options. For the first time, the leaders of an organization could be held responsible for the crimes they had ordered others to commit. Each member of a group who participated in a pattern of racketeering activity could bear the full weight of responsibility for all the acts conducted by the organization. A conviction under RICO could carry stiff civil and criminal penalties, including up to twenty years in prison.

to develop a new model of investigation that would enable agents to take full advantage of the authority offered by the RICO statute.

Criminal investigations are typically structured around proving the elements of a single criminal offense. RICO opened the door to prosecuting an entire organization. The enterprise theory was the structure by...

Enterprise theory taught agents to identify new elements of a crime, to satisfy the new requirements ...

new forms of evidence. Through the lens of enterprise theory, agents could begin to see an organization as a whole, to understand the role and significance of each member, and to develop an u...

enterprise investigations involve extensive intelli...

enterprise investigators look for pieces of intelligence that can be used as evidence not only to prove the enterprise exists, but also to prove that members of the enterprise committed particular crimes.

The first major requirement of the RICO statute is to prove the existence of the enterprise that is the subject of investigation.

enterprise as “any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associate...

the enterprise theory directs agents to collect association evidence: proof that people are associated with each other in a way that could qualify them as a criminal enterprise.

Their association, or a larger one of which they are a part, may qualify as an enterprise under RICO. Association evidence takes many forms—bank records showing money transfers between individuals, joint names on legal documents such as contracts and leases, communication between subjects. Generally, any physical remnants of historic, legal, social, or other associations could help the investigators prove the existence of an enterprise.

The second major RICO requirement is to prove that each member of the enterprise participated in a “pattern of racketeering activity.” Investigators must prove that each subject participated in two or more of the crimes that are specifically

defined in the statute. These include numerous federal crimes such as bribery, counterfeiting, and fraud, as well as offenses that are typically prosecuted by the states, such as robbery, drug trafficking, and murder. Following the enterprise theory, agents examine the full scope of criminal activity associated with the entire enterprise from the inception of the investigation. By collecting this intelligence all along, agents develop a rich picture of criminal activity and later sort out which member participated in which crime.

Proactive enterprise cases are focused on collecting evidence of an enterprise while criminals are still committing crimes.

This means collecting intelligence

and evidence in real time, from within the en...

electronic surve...

enables the investigators to collect the content of communications betwee...

requires specific authorization from a federal court and can involve some of the most sensitive i...

they were talking about guns. Unfortunately, criminal organizations, terrorist groups, and foreign spies now routinely utilize encrypted communication platforms that put the content of their conversations beyond the reach of law-enforcement and intelligence-agency surveillance.

People with this kind of access are typically confidential informants (CIs), cooperating witnesses (CWs), or undercover employees (UCs).

In the FBI, a confidential informant is someone who regularly provides information to the FBI but whose role as a source can never be revealed. Exposing the informant’s relationship with the FBI could place the source and his or her family in great danger. Protecting the identity of a confidential informant is one of an agent’s most sacred responsibilities. Some confidential informants provide information about the activity of an enterprise and its members for many

years. One drawback of relying on a confidential informant is that the sensitivity of maintaining confidentiality means the source’s information cannot be used as ...

A cooperating witness is someone who maintains informant-like access to an enterprise, but who also understands that he or she may one day be exposed as a government cooperator. Cooperating witnesses offer all the insights and intelligence of informants, but they are also available to take the stand and testify at trial. They are highly valuable for this dual role, and their testimony is often essential to convicting the leadership of a criminal enterprise. In some ways, this strength is also a weakness. Providing testimony usually signals the end of their career. Once they are publicly revealed as government cooperators, or “burned,” it becomes far too dangerous to...

The most sensitive and dangerous of all these efforts to penetrate a criminal enterprise comes when investigators attempt to insert one of their own into the group. Undercover employees can provide extraordinary insights into the working of an enterprise, and they can also steer conversations in order to obtain recorded statements on particular events. They are even able to alter the activities of a group to prevent acts of violence. During a trial, undercover employees provide powerful testimony. They offer both the access of an enterprise member and the credibility of a law-enforcement officer. Undercover employees are uniquely skilled and highly trained and require intense ...

Not giving up your people: This is important. It is crucially important not only to the FBI but to the country’s safety and security. The ability to identify and develop relationships with human sources is oxygen to the FBI. The Bureau cannot live without that. It is the first step toward the activation of any of our other, more