Chapter 37
Jaeger and Shanks returned to the office and took their seats at the beat up conference table again. Malvone said, “Okay, let’s get back to business. Bob, what do you have lined up for tonight?”
“We’re still working down the rod and gun club list; we’ve got surveillance on these two, Bancroft and Kincaid. We’re going to take a little breather tonight, do the surveillance in shifts and let the troops get some rest. ”
“No, I’m sorry Bob; we can’t let them rest up, not yet. I’ve got a new mission that’s got to go down tonight; they can sleep after it’s over tomorrow. Here’s tonight’s target.” Malvone passed a thin file folder from his briefcase to each STU leader. They contained printed images of a thin-faced nearly bald man in his late fifties or early sixties, biographical data sheets, copies of magazine editorials, and printed excerpts from what looked like internet chat sites.
“This guy is Leo Swarovski; anybody heard of him?” asked Malvone.
“Oh sure,” said Shanks, “he writes for gun magazines. I’ve seen that name for years.”
“Exactly. He’s what you call a ‘prolific writer.’ Swarovski writes under his own name and a couple of pseudonyms for a half dozen gun magazines, plus he’s written a dozen books on guns and military history. He’s not a member of the Black Water Rod and Gun Club, but he’s a friend of Burgess Edmonds, and that’s close enough for government work. It’ll fly outin TV-land.
“And he’s been a real thorn in our side for years. Every time the ATF has stepped on its dick in the last 20 years, Swarovski’s been all over our case. He calls us ‘F-troop’ and ‘jackbooted thugs’ and the ‘gun Gestapo’, all that crap, and right in print, right in his articles! He’s one of the worst Constitution fanatics you ever saw, he’s a real Second Amendment nut case, and he’s extremely anti-government.”
Michael Shanks said, “The man really knows his guns though, I’ll give him that. And he used to be a pretty well known competition shooter. I think he won some national combat pistol shooting championships in the 1980s.”
“That’s all true,” replied Malvone. “And he’s still pretty sharp. He shoots almost every day; he reloads his own ammo, the whole nine yards. So he’s not going to be a pushover . His wife’s a serious shooter too; she used to be regular Annie Oakley, and for a while she was nationally ranked in trap and skeet. So I’m expecting these two to be dead-enders all the way. They’ll shoot back if we give them half a chance, so we’re not going to. This is going to be a straight-up no-knock raid: door charges, flash-bangs, the works.”
“This is in Richmond?” asked Silvari.
“The Richmond suburbs,” replied Malvone. “But closer to Petersburg.”
“Then this isn’t going to be like Edmonds, this isn’t going to be an accidental fire, this is going to be an overt law enforcement raid ? Are we going overt now, are we going to intentionally blow our cover?” asked Bob Bullard.
“It’s just going to be reported that the raid was conducted by a federal law enforcement tactical unit. The details beyond that will all be protected under the Patriot Act: there’s no Freedom of Information Act for terrorism-related cases. It’s all clamped shut, there’s a total blackout, so the STU Team itself will still be covert.”
The other leaders around the table nodded in agreement.
“I gave the Richmond Field Office SAC a heads-up call. When you’re finished with Swarovski, the Richmond ATF is going to assert federal control and take charge of evidence collection. It’s already set up. When you’re done, you just get in your vehicles and come back.”
Bullard asked, “What kind of ‘evidence’? Does he have any contraband?”
Malvone answered , “He’s got, or a least he had, at least a dozen assault-type rifles that we know of. And he’s owned at least three fifty caliber sniper rifles, including one semi-auto Barrett. Plus you can bet he’s got rifle scopes out the ass. Maybe he got rid of them all, maybe he didn’t; you’ll find out soon enough tonight. But even if he did get rid of everything illegal, it doesn’t matter, because you’ll be bringing some of your own as insurance.”
Hammet interjected, “We can bring some of Edmonds’s scoped hunting rifles, that’ll tie them together.”
“Sniper rifles George, sniper rifles. But that’s the idea. And we’ll bring some of our confiscated militia weapons too. That’s all we actually need, any contraband weapons of his own will just be icing on the cake.”
Bullard added, “Don’t forget he’s an ammunition reloader. And that means he’s got gun powder, so we can stick bomb making on him too. That always looks good on a domestic terrorism case.”
“Right you are Bob, right you are. But the only ‘case’ we need to make is in the court of public opinion, because Swarovski’s going to be carried out of his house feet first.”
Malvone continued, “Now you might be thinking that doing this asshole Swarovski will be a good night’s work, and it will be, but it’s not all, it’s just one step leading up to the main event. Tomorrow the STU is going to break out from the rest of federal law enforcement; we’re going right to the top of the pack. Oh, we’ll still be an anonymous ‘ATF tactical unit’ out in TV-land, but we’re going to be very, very popular where it matters. I’m telling you, Randolph and Sanderson getting sniped, that hit too close to home!
“Want to know why I don’t want Fallon or Sorrento marked up? Have you wondered about that? Have you wondered why we haven’t turned Fallon over for a public arrest? I mean, here’s the state AG’s assassin, that’s quite a feather in our cap to bring him in, right? We could have done the big media perp walk and taken the credit, but we didn’t, and here’s why: Fallon and Sorrento haven’t finished their crime spree yet. They’re driving up to Washington tomorrow to assassinate the Homeland Security Director, but they’re not going to make it all the way.”
The men passed sly looks and winks to each other around the table. Jaeger said, “And let me guess who’s going to discover the plot and save the day, just in the nick of time.” He turned and gave Michael Shanks a high-five.
Shanks added , “And naturally, these two desperados will be taking along a couple of Burgess Edmonds’s finest long-range sniper rifles for the assassination attempt.”
“Well I’m done here now, you guys don’t need me any more, I can go back to DC,” Malvone joked. “Really, I can see you guys have grasped the concept. So tonight we’re going to leave some of Edmonds’s rifles at Swarovski’s place. Tomorrow, Fallon will be found with another of Edmonds’s rifles, and if Swarovski’s still got them, one of his fifty calibers. That’ll tie them all together in one nice tight bundle. Fallon and Sorrento as the trigger men; Edmonds and Swarovski as the money man and the organizer. Cut and Print. In fact, it’s the information I’ve got in my briefcase now that’s going to lead you to Fallon and Sorrento tomorrow, the information you’re going to ‘find’ in Swarovski’s house. So this time, don’t burn his damn house down!”
They all laughed at that one, and exchanged knowing nods. Jaeger said,
“Boss, at the risk of sounding like an ass-kisser, I have to say you are one scary freaking genius.”
“Well Tim, I don’t know if I’m a genius or not, but I’ll admit I did have kind of a ‘eureka moment’ a few years ago, a real shot of pure 100-proof insight. You know about ‘plausible deniability’, and how we use it all the time to avoid taking any blame for screw-ups . By ‘we’, you know, I mean the government. If there’s any possible alternative explanation for a screw-up, no matter how far-fetched, you just deny, deny, deny; and if there’s no rock -solid direct proof, eventually the problem goes away.”
Silvari said “Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations.”
“Exactly.” Malvone continued. “Clinton was the real master; he raised it to an art form. But I’ve been studying more recent history, and especially the way the media reports things, and then it just hit me. All of a sudden I saw the flip side of ‘plausible deniability.’ I call it ‘probable culpability.’ Smear somebody, plant some evidence, and then cap ‘em. As long as the target is somebody the media didn’t like to begin with, they report it just exactly the way you want them to, right down the line.”
“Like Waco,” said Bob Bullard, who had been there.
“Just like Waco. If we’re dealing with ‘religious cults’ like in Waco, or gun nuts like Edmonds and Swarovski, it’s a piece of cake, because the media already hates them. Show them some automatic weapons that were found in the ashes, who can say otherwise? We’re from the ATF, so we’re the experts, right ? The TV networks are all on our side in this, just look at how well it worked on Timeline!”
“Oh yeah, ‘Terror in Tidewater’, that was beautiful!” said Tim Jaeger. “You can always count on CBA to do a gun story the right way.”
“As long as we paint it in broad strokes, it’ll work every time, at least with the major networks,” said Malvone. “If anybody finds a few details that don’t fit, some actual evidence that contradicts our version, it doesn’t even matter, because then they’re just dismissed as paranoid ‘black helicopter’ kooks, and after that they can never get any traction in the ‘respectable’ media. Waco, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, you name it: anybody who bucks the official story is called a lunatic and a conspiracy theorist. Nobody wants to be lumped in with the black helicopter loony tunes, so no credible reporter ever looks into these cases very hard. Other than a few whack jobs on internet sites, nobody that matters ever really challenges the official stories. Just look at Waco, for God’s sake! Or Vince Foster, or any of them.”
Silvari said, “Reporters are so afraid of being called a conspiracy theory nut, that it actually makes minor conspiracies easy to pull off.” “That’s it in a nutshell,” said Malvone. “That’s the beauty of ‘probable culpability’.”