FBI Case File Review

Retired agent Dell Spry was liaison to the CIA Counterintelligence Center, Counterespionage Group, and was the lead investigator for the FBI in the Aldrich Ames case. He reviews the two-year-long investigation where he, as the FBI case agent, along with a team of FBI and CIA personnel, was successful in identifying Ames as a KGB mole. Ames, who was directly responsible for the execution of several...

Retired Agent Vincent McNally became an instructor in Crisis (Hostage) Negotiations and Program Manager for the FBI's Critical Incident Stress Management teams at the FBI Academy. Vince reviews a hostage negotiation case in Honolulu, Hawaii, involving a workplace violence situation. Vince and I also have an open and honest conversation about the stress and trauma experienced by law enforcement per...

Retired agent Keith Kelly, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), reviews his most high-profiled assignment as the case-agent of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, a 21-person inter-agency investigation into the largest securities fraud case in history. This work resulted in the identification, seizure and forfeiture of more than $8 billion in assets along with the conviction of Bernard Madoff who rec...

Retired agent Ed Hino, who has been retired for over 26 years, takes us back in time to the era of the G-Man and reviews two very different kidnapping cases. The first case is about a kidnapped baby, a 24-hours-old newborn snatched from the arms of his mother who was resting in her hospital room. The second case involves a kidnapped motorist ordered by his captors to drive them from Ohio to Alabam...

Retired agent Jane Rhodes Wolfe supervised a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Chicago and oversaw the intake and analysis of suspicious activity reports. She reviews a case that resulted from the report of an attempted purchase of a restricted toxin, known as the puffer fish poison case. During the interview, she also provides tips for the public regarding potential threat indicators of suspicious ac...

Retired agent Brig Barker, a combat veteran and a highly respected linguist with full fluency in Arabic and a professional working proficiency in German, reviews how he used his fluency in Arabic to investigate international matters such as the illicit trade of blood diamonds to terrorist organizations. During his deployment to Sierra Leone, he was tasked with officially opening the FBI Attaché of...

Retired agent Mike Rochford, as a manager at FBI Headquarters and in the field, oversaw such cases as Aldrich Ames and Earl Pitts and worked to identity six unknown subjects, government spies, the FBI and CIA, had been for years trying to uncover. One of those "unsubs" was eventually identified as FBI agent turned spy, Robert Hanssen. Mike reviews the investigation of Hanssen, who is considered th...

Retired agent Shawn Henry reviews cybercrime, the global computer intrusion threat and cyber security. During his career, Shawn held multiple positions relating to cybercrime and computer intrusions, including Deputy Assistant Director and Assistant Director of the Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters; Supervisor of the FBI Cyber Crime Squad in Baltimore; and Chief of the Computer Investigations Uni...

Retired agent Bea DeFazio is interviewed about working Innocent Images cases, going undercover online to catch child predators trolling in computer chat rooms to sexually exploit children and exchange images of abuse. During the last half of her agent career, she posed online as a child or teen and engaged in conversations with child predators in an attempt to gather the evidence to identify them...

Retired agent Dana Ridenour is interviewed about working drug investigations on the island of St. Croix, Resident Agency out of the FBI's San Juan Office in Puerto Rico and going deep undercover in California to infiltrate and build relationships with individuals associated with the animal rights extremist groups to gather intelligence about criminal activities and the location of activist fugitiv...

Retired agent Bill Grace reviews how he conducted two high-profiled investigations involving municipal corruption at the same time, one directed at the corrupt activities of Camden, New Jersey Mayor Milton Milan and the other targeting Washington Township, New Jersey Mayor Jerry Luongo. Electronic and physical surveillance indicated that even before Milan entered municipal politics, he was associa...

Retired agent Sam Smemo is interviewed about how witnessing the devastation of 9/11, compelled him to transition from fighting the war on drugs to joining the war on terror. After hunting dangerous fugitives during the early part of his career, once onboard with the FBI, Sam worked drug cases while assigned to the Philadelphia Division. He talks about working on a drug case that inadvertently resu...

This is the second half of a two-part episode with former FBI agent Terry Hake. Terry continues his account of working undercover as a crooked defense attorney in the largest public corruption investigation in America. When the investigation—code named Operation Greylord—was initiated, Terry was a young Assistant State's Attorney fed up with corruption in the Cook County, Illinois court system. Du...

Former FBI agent Terry Hake is interviewed about working undercover as a crooked defense attorney in the largest public corruption investigation in America. When the investigation—code named Operation Greylord—was initiated, Terry was a young Assistant State's Attorney fed up with corruption in the Cook County, Illinois court system. He wore a wire for three-and-a-half years, fully aware that he c...

Retired agent Cary Thornton reviews an undercover sting and insurance fraud investigation he worked in Detroit for nearly three years where he and two other undercover FBI agents played the roles of owners and operators of an auto wrecking company willing to dispose of cars for cash so the vehicle owners could file fraudulent insurance claims. The Bureau gave the case the code name Operation Steam...

Retired agent Bob Bazin reviews his time studying at the Barnes Foundation and investigating and recovering stolen art from all over the world while assigned to the Philadelphia Division. He also reviews the case he worked with the Philadelphia Police Department of an armed robbery at gunpoint from the Rodin museum of the priceless sculpture—Man with a Broken Nose. Bob Bazin spent most of his care...

Retired special agent John Ligato is interviewed about his eight-year role as a deep undercover agent, wherein he operated strip clubs in Memphis to gather evidence against bikers selling drugs and stolen property and in Cleveland in order to infiltrate the mob. His efforts in Cleveland resulted in one of the largest public corruption cases involving members of law enforcement. Check out episode s...

Retired Supervisory Special Agent Harry Garcia reviews a multi-agency Southwest Border Taskforce investigation—code named "Port Sweeper" and "Boiling Point"—initiated in the 1990s that resulted in sentences of life imprisonment and 27 years in prison for the main subjects—two corrupt inspectors assigned to the Calexico border patrol station and the seizure of $1.2 million in cash.  Check out episo...

Retired Special Agent Jesse Coleman reviews the two-year period he went undercover as a drug dealer selling cocaine and heroin to made members of the Sicilian mob. During the undercover investigation, he secretly recorded over 200 conversations between him and the subjects. Jesse's efforts resulted in the arrest and conviction of 20 members of the mob family operating in the U.S., in addition to t...

Retired Supervisory Special Agent Ron Nolan is interviewed about several cases investigated during the time he served as the Legal Attaché in Lagos, Nigeria - the investigation of the death of a teenage girl from New Jersey who dies while on a school trip in Ghana and the frequent kidnapping of American oil and utility workers in Nigeria. During his four years in the LEGAT Lagos position, Ron repr...

Retired Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) John Cosenza reviews how extraterritorial jurisdiction authorizes the FBI to investigate crimes against Americans on foreign soil, such as murders and kidnappings, if the crimes were based on an act of terrorism. These extraterritorial jurisdiction and counterterrorism cases took John around the world to numerous countries and international venues....

Retired agent Mike served in the FBI for 28 years. He spent most of his Bureau career working bank robberies, violent crime and fugitives and was promoted to be the supervisor of the Philadelphia Violent Crimes and Fugitive Task Force. Mike Carbonell reviews two cases, one involving a toddler kidnapped for ransom and another about Mike's efforts to locate fugitive Ira Einhorn in Europe and return...

Retired Special Agent in Charge Wayne Davis, one of the first African American special agents to attend the FBI Academy and meet all standard special agent qualifications, provides a fascinating personal and historical account of diversity in the FBI and his private meeting with Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1965, at which time the Director Hoover expressed his views about Martin Luther King and the...

Retired agent Jerry Clark reviews one of the most bizarre bank robbery schemes in the history of the FBI. Known officially as COLLARBOMB, the case involves a pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank with a time bomb locked around his neck. It took Jerry and his partners from AFT and the Erie Police Department several years to unravel the complicated plot and to discover there were more dead bodies invo...

Retired agent Gerry Downes worked in the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit (now known as the BAU) for 11 years. He reviews the time he traveled with several team members to Accra, Ghana, in May 2001 to assist in the identification of a serial killer responsible for the horrific murders of over 30 women. During the two weeks the Gerry and the FBI team were in Ghana, a suspect was arreste...