Breaking Rank (42 page)

Then again, nobody's worldview got changed either. Certainly not mine. I was still more philosophically aligned with the protestors than with my fellow cops. But the way my “comrades” treated the provost and his staff left me nauseated. A couple of them got in his face, spittle flying, doing their best to browbeat and filibuster their ideology into the guy. Michael Moore would have been much more respectful. One student pushed the provost because he'd asked them to “cool your language.” Who did they think they were, this minority of protesters? Who gave them the right to bully others?

It was wrong, and inaccurate, however, for my police colleagues to write off all antiwar protestors and civil rights demonstrators as rich spoiled brats or social misfits. As individuals, some of them may have been just that, but most of the people I befriended and spied upon were among the most dedicated, hardworking, and morally upstanding I've ever met. They applied themselves to a study of our world: what was wrong with it, what needed to be done to put it right. And they acted.

Somebody in one of the dorms was playing, for all the world to hear, Steppenwolf's “Magic Carpet Ride.” I applauded the selection, as well as the fog that had crept up the hill and through the pines from the shores of La Jolla. It was a Friday, late in the afternoon. The square was empty but for a small knot of laughing nerds and preppies near the fountain. No demonstrations, no screaming speeches or chanting to drown out Steppenwolf.

The quarter was over, library books turned in, grades handed out. The dorm dwellers—those not already headed home to New York or San Francisco, or India, Lebanon, Mexico, Germany, Japan—had the place to themselves and they were in a party mood. I was probably the only commuter on campus that afternoon, and I had no real purpose there. My undercover assignment was over, my own magic carpet ride ended. The results of the sergeants' exam had just been posted. My name sat at the top of the list. Soon, I'd be debriefed, write a manual on this different kind of undercover work, shave off my beard, trim my hair, and sew on the stripes.

For most of my thirty-four years as a cop I kept a journal. I saved photos, newspaper clippings, commendations, evaluations, disciplinary actions, major-event reports, notes and memoranda, calendars, audiotapes, videos of key events. I was driven to do this, in part, because I'm a packrat but mostly because of a vague notion that at some point in my life I might want to write of my experiences. As I assembled those materials for this book I came face to face with a large crater in my recorded history.

Two months into my new job as a sergeant, recently divorced and crying myself to sleep over having left my three-year-old son, I came home to my apartment and pulled from the closet a big cardboard box, its contents overflowing. I slung it onto the sagging bed. One by one I removed every item: weekly reports; campus and underground newspapers; stacks of photographs. One photo is of me. It had appeared in
The Triton
, UCSD's student paper. I had no idea it had been taken, and was shocked when it showed up on page one. I'm at my hairiest, sitting on a concrete bench next to the square, smoking a Schimmelpennick cigar, peering forlornly through my granny glasses, and waiting on a cold morning for the demonstration
du jour.
The caption contained words like
dwelling . . . gut . . . soul.
I was probably thinking I'd like another cup of coffee right about now but then I'd have to piss and the demonstration is just getting under way so if I drink another cup now I'll
really
have to pee and I might miss something and it could be important, so, all things considered, I'd better pass on the coffee. David, the “Trotskyite Marxist,” had seen the paper, called it to my attention. “Lookin'
très
artistic there, my man.”

Also in the box was the manual I'd written to help guide the work of future undercover agents. It contained a brief history of criminal violence that had stemmed from radical political movements in the city, the most violent of which dated back to the early part of the twentieth century when city fathers directed San Diego cops to wade into IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) demonstrators; I forget how many were killed. I offered tips for infiltrating radical groups: how to position and insinuate oneself into a trusting relationship with a variety of personalities, how to carry out the work artfully.

I put the manual down and picked up other memorabilia: political flyers, programs for “radical” plays in local theaters, pins and buttons . . . Staring down at the mound on the bed I was mortified. I had lived a lie for a year.

I stuffed everything back into the box and headed for the kitchen where I layered aluminum foil into the bottom of the sink and burned everything that could be burned. I trashed the rest. It was only mildly cleansing.

I resolved to keep my own counsel about that year, volunteer nothing about it, furnish deceitful answers to the inevitable questions. At least there would be no physical evidence of my spying.

For years I lied to people like Larry Remer, publisher of one of the underground papers and contributor to
San Diego Magazine.
And friend. “Tell the truth Norm,” he said, some seven years after the assignment. “You worked the Red Squad that year, didn't you?” He knew. Of course he knew. He was a freaking journalist. But I lied, hiding behind a technicality.

“Nope. I worked O.C. that year.” Organized crime. Hey, if students decide to block a recruiter, take over a building, trespass on private property, well then, they're “organized criminals.” Aren't they? Besides, why should I tell a
journalist,
friend or foe, about what I really did? Isn't the idea to keep undercover work . . . under cover?

This is my first public telling of the story. I spied. I lied. There you have it.

In light of violence at recent antiglobalization and antiwar demonstrations, shouldn't local police departments, and the FBI, for that matter, get back into spying on political activists? No. Absolutely not.

Although I was never burned as an undercover operative, one of my successors was, and he was soon implicated in a variety of nefarious activities, such as pouring glue into university locks, and other conduct of “agents provocateurs.” His exposure produced San Diego's “Red Squad” scandal. Similar such scandals broke out all across the country in the seventies as
local officials learned of the scope and nature of police spying in their own backyards.

In Portland, Oregon, Winfield Falk, a former police intelligence detective, sneaked into his own agency and “stole” thirty-six boxes of materials, the product of police spying during the sixties and seventies. The materials had been earmarked for the shredder under that city's restrictions on police spying. In the boxes were dossiers on city council members, a grape-boycotter who would go on to become Portland's mayor, and even an Oregon governor. There were intelligence reports on food banks, voter registration organizations, a rape crisis agency. In Denver, as recently as 1999, files were discovered on 3,200 Colorado citizens representing 208 organizations, ranging from the League of Women Voters to American Friends Service Committee to Amnesty International.

San Diego, Seattle, and most other big cities now have local “intelligence ordinances” designed to halt police spying abuses. Preambles to these laws state more or less the same thing: Police intelligence on criminal and terrorist activity is invaluable, in fact essential to the mission of public safety. But spying on
noncriminal
activists is abhorrent—and illegal.

How to prevent abuses? Seattle's ordinance, the first in the nation, passed in 1979, has, among other provisions, three that make sense—and one that I question. The ordinance (1) bans spying (absent evidence of criminality) on political, social, or religious activities or affiliations; (2) requires the signature of the chief of police authorizing any investigation into “private sexual information” as well as inquiries into political or religious organizations; (3) employs a civilian auditor, nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, with complete access to all intelligence files and a mandate to conduct random inspections, review the chief's authorizations, and enforce all provisions of the ordinance. It's a strong ordinance, and I support it.

The provision that creates heartburn for me? The one that allows the auditor (a position held by a succession of experienced, respected local attorneys with unimpeachable integrity) to inform the subject of intelligence gathering that he, she, or it (in the case of an organization) has been (1) spied upon, (2) unlawfully. Damages for “substantial” violations of this provision may be assessed against the spy and his or her supervisor, and
paid to the unwitting victim of the abuse. My concern is over the chilling effect the provision
can
create. Detectives afraid to do their jobs. Snitches afraid to come forward. Other agencies reluctant to share information. The feds, for example, withheld important information from my department for three days, pondering whether it would get anyone in trouble in the lead-up to the protests surrounding the meeting of the WTO in Seattle, November 29–December 4, 1999.

The challenge is to achieve a balance between appropriately aggressive crime fighting (including the prevention of crimes and acts of terrorism) and rigorous protection of citizens' rights to privacy (the Fourth Amendment) and free speech and assembly (the First). It's a delicate balance and, all things considered, I guess I can live with my mild case of heartburn.

On February 18, 2003, Seattle joined hundreds of other U.S. cities condemning certain provisions of the USA Patriot Act (October 2001). The resolution, passed unanimously, is an eloquent statement on the need to combat terrorism
and
to curb the impulses of law enforcement that, however understandable in times of war and terrorism (and noisy protests), would make America a country less worth defending.