Sei sulla pagina 1di 8

Portrait of an Informer: The Secret Life of Ryan Emerson By Jonathan Marshall City Paper, September 23, 1988 Ryan

Quade Emerson was a journalist on the FBI's payroll. He was a paid snitch for Lyndon LaRouche. He had more aliases than he could remember. A compulsive informer, Emerson was a Walter Mitty character who dreamed of earning his kicks and his keep by going undercover. For a while he succeeded, sleuthing on organized crime and terrorism at the behest of the government agents who investigate spies, political extremists, and mobsters. Eventually, though, Emerson was reduced to fighting industrial dirt and grime to make a living. In his most recent undercover adventure, Emerson helped build the federal case in Boston against Lyndon LaRouche and his followers on charges of credit card fraud and obstruction of justice (see Who's Afraid of Lyndon LaRouche? City Paper, August 28, 1987). Emerson's information helped justify the giant raid by hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement officials on LaRouche's Leesburg, Virginia headquarters in October 1986. Information developed from that raid has been put before a grand jury (with no indictments to date) by U.S. Attorney Henry Hudson, star of the Pentagate investigation and of Ed Meese's anti-pornography commission. The Boston case against the LaRouche camp collapsed after the judge declared a mistrial in May 1988. (The judge has set a new trial date for January 3, 1989.) Today, federal prosecutors would just as soon Emerson disappeared because public disclosure of his infiltration of the LaRouchies has called into question the legitimacy of the government's case and methods. Worse yet, Emerson's furtive career as a snitch raises the specter of an out-of-control FBI undermining the credibility of the fourth estate by turning journalists of greater stature than Emerson into paid sources. Back in 1976, amid the furor over revelations that the CIA had American journalists on its payroll, CIA Director George Bush, in his first public act in that capacity, announced that his agency would not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station. He noted the special status afforded these institutions under our Constitution" and the need "to avoid any appearance of improper use by the agency. But as the Emerson case illustrates, the CIA's domestic counterpart puts no such restrictions on the buying and selling of journalists. Its guidelines for the use of informants make no distinctions by profession, an FBI spokeswoman declares. As recently as April, the FBI refused to confirm or deny Emerson's work for the Bureau. To do so, it claimed, would involve disclosure of other sources, methods and techniques involving foreign counterintelligence investigations and could provide hostile intelligence services with an accurate description of our informants' capabilities during a specific time frame. But during a special hearing with regard to the LaRouche case in Boston, federal prosecutors admitted that Emerson has had an informant relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many years and with numerous FBI field offices. Emerson himself also admitted to undercover IRS assignments and supplying information to a federal anti-terrorism task force in Miami. He was even an informant for LaRouche's top cadre, peddling information back and forth between them and various government agencies. No one, it must be added, ever really trusted him. The outlines of Emerson's undercover existence surfaced during three days of testimony he gave this April at a hearing convened in Boston to weigh the LaRouche defense's contentions of prosecutorial misconduct.

Emerson, who had hitherto discussed his life only sketchily in press interviews to tout his various publications and who did not answer phone calls for this article, answered detailed questions spanning more than two decades of his career. Documents released by the FBI to the defense supplement his own account. Born Ivan Nachman in 1932 (he changed his name in the late '70s), Emerson dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy, seeing action in Korea. In 1955, he joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. A few years later he quit and took up dog training as a new livelihood. Emerson testified that his career as an informer began in 1964 when he infiltrated the Southern California Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party (ANP) at the request of a local FBI agent. Emerson's assignment was to cultivate a police sergeant, a local ANP leader and a fellow dog lover. As their friendship developed, Emerson reported to the FBI on the ANP's meetings and its participants. The FBI claims it paid Emerson only $182 (plus $44.30 in expenses) for his troubles, but Emerson was proud to be listed on the bureau's pay roster as an Expert in Racial Relations. Apparently, no one was ever indicted as a result of his work; FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover was simply building his files on domestic political groups. But Emerson also dabbled on the side in criminal informant work; he testified that he helped local police break a high class prostitution call girl service in Beverly Hills and the Los Angeles area around the same time. In late 1966, word got around that his cover with local Nazis had been blown, so he decamped for Miami where his brother worked for the police department. Emerson found work as a state constable, arresting fugitives on criminal warrants. In 1968, he joined the staff of a Florida state legislative committee investigating organized crime and corruption in law enforcement, a job that ended a year later when the committee folded. He imagined himself as one man against crime, Miami Herald investigative editor Jim Savage recalled in an interview with the Washington Post. He always felt he was doing important things for the country....He's a sort of Don Quixote. Emerson teamed up with the IRS in the early '70s to run an undercover operation against drug suspects in the Miami area. In his testimony, Emerson boasted that he acted as an intelligence coordinator...hiring informants, paying informants, debriefing them, that type of thing. He wanted dearly to convert the contract assignment into a regular gig as an IRS special agent, but he failed. When an unrelated scandal broke over the IRS's use of female undercover informants as sex traps, the feds closed down Emerson's network. Emerson quit professional law enforcement in 1976. Within a couple of years he had settled on a new profession: journalist and publisher. But for him, journalism was not so much a matter of uncovering the truth as it was a new opportunity to go undercover himself, once again in league with the FBI. As his subsequent actions made clear, Emerson did not share the view of Herman Nickel, Washington editor of Fortune magazine, who told the House Intelligence committee in 1977, "A reporter who moonlights for the CIA or any other intelligence service because of the lure of money prostitutes himself." Emerson might instead have agreed with Ray Cline, former deputy director of the CIA, who defended such paid relationships on grounds that "the First Amendment is not the central purpose of our Constitution." Emerson's new base for this joint venture in journalism and intelligence work was Nevada. In 1978 found a job at a Las Vegas printing company. The setting stimulated his urge to publish, beginning with the newsletter Terrorist Intelligence Report. For material he relied mostly on open news sources, but he also developed contacts among investigative reporters who passed him tips. He sent copies to every law enforcement agency he could think of, hoping for subscriptions. He grabbed for publicity, too, once offering $125,000 for an interview with the perpetrators of a 1980 extortion bombing at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Lake Tahoe. Then, he says, the FBI approached him, as it had in the '60s. They expressed interest in my newsletter and what I was doing and offered to subsidize me on the basis, of course, that I would share information with

them relative to domestic terrorism, Emerson testified. The FBI, he said, paid him $350 to $600 a month, plus expenses. For the information he provided, Emerson contended, it was a minuscule amount. The FBI's account is a little different. According to its Las Vegas office, Emerson did provide reliable and useful information regarding the Abscam investigation, the location of a fugitive criminal, the interest of American communists in the MX missile system, local narcotics violations, and Cuban exile terrorists in the United States. (Curiously, when LaRouche attorneys questioned Emerson during last April's hearings, he either couldn't remember or denied knowledge of these topics.) Emerson's handler in the FBI's Las Vegas office, Daniel Camillo, called him difficult to control and extremely interested in money. The agent was struck by Emerson's apparent opportunism. Several times, according to a telegram Camillo sent to FBI headquarters, Emerson requested the FBI fund his newsletter in return for his cooperation. (He) also made known his affiliation with the FBI on several occasions to the general public in order to obtain information for his publication. Emerson promoted his publishing ventures with suggestive hints about his past. Describing himself to an interviewer from New West magazine as a former contract intelligence agent, he added mysteriously, I was in deep, deep cover, about as deep as you can get. He boasted to the Christian Science Monitor in 1980 that he had worked in intelligence for various agencies of the US government, but specifically denied that he was working for the FBI. There's no connection with the bureau, he declared, adding with a laugh: 'But I wish they would give me some money.' In fact, the FBI did pay him $4,950 for services and another $1,747.74 in expenses between May 1979 and November 1981. These sums, along with his wife's earnings, represented the bulk of his income. During the LaRouche case, prosecutors admitted that Emerson used much of this money--with the knowledge of the FBI--to pay for his publication. They also admitted that Emerson provided information using his position as a journalist as a cover for interviews--in one case, of two alleged Soviet intelligence agents visiting the University of Las Vegas--of interest to the Bureau. Among Emerson's journalistic ventures in this period were International Intelligence Report ($25 per year) and Organized Crime Review ($50 per year)--amateurish looking and marginally informative journals that summarized news accounts without citation. (The Miami FBI office described Emerson's publication on terrorism as basically a composite of legitimate media stories, conjecture on his part, and references to his 'anonymous sources.') One of Organized Crime Review's unacknowledged sources was War on Drugs, a monthly prepared by a LaRouche front. When we found out about it, we complained to him about stealing our material, says Herb Quinde, national security correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine published by the LaRouche organization. He said we should work together, and offered us his mailing lists. LaRouche's people agreed to swap information rather than fight. A lot of his good stuff was never published, a LaRouche source says. Emerson was sinking fast into a netherworld of his own making. Now he had two secret bosses, the FBI and the LaRouche group. The informant relationships could get a little incestuous at times. In one case, Emerson passed on to his FBI contact a tip from the LaRouche staff about planned radical activity at one of the 1980 presidential conventions. According to Emerson, the bureau agent then established that the Lyndon LaRouche organization in New York was already in contact with FBI and Secret Service agents in New York City and that they were aware of the information. Emerson moved back to Florida in late 1981, and claims to have ended relations with the FBI because of low pay. Emerson told a LaRouche security staffer he was bitter at the FBI for not fulfilling promises of

money and a new identity. But his disenchantment was short-lived. In late 1984, FBI records show, he worked briefly as an informant for the Houston FBI office on a kidnapping case and on an investigation concerning Iranians living in the U.S. At least twice, Emerson testified, he supplied information to the Federal Law Enforcement Terrorist Task Force in Miami, including a tip about an alleged terrorist plot against the White House. By July 1982, according to an FBI report, he was setting up an international consulting service that could be covertly assisted by CIA. He solicited applications for field researcher jobs in the area of intelligence gathering, requesting fees with every application, but never hired anyone. Nothing seems to have come of his plan. Though he had tried every angle, Emerson's attempt to make a living hit a low ebb. In 1983, the FBI reported, Emerson had no gainful employment whatsoever. He admitted his publications about terrorism were being discontinued because he had no funds to produce and distribute. He left behind a trail of disgruntled investors who accused him of defrauding them of stock in his publishing ventures; U.S. attorneys in Baltimore and Atlanta, however, declined to prosecute, FBI records show. Emerson had better luck with his LaRouche connection. I received some monies from the LaRouche organization while I was in Florida, he testified last April. I did receive funds from them to pay for my services as an intelligence analyst. Following Willie Sutton's dictum, he went where the money was. In the spring of 1985, he moved his family to Purcellville, just 25 minutes from LaRouche's headquarters in Leesburg. He asked us to pay for him to move here, Quinde recalls. Then he phoned and said, "We're next door.' He was put onto our informant account. We'd pay snitch fees depending on what he'd bring in....He was on the phone every day. We didn't trust him, says another ranking member of that organization. We didn't ask him to move. But he did have good information, not only on terrorism but on what was going on in Washington. Emerson was up front about his desire for money, according to this source: I'm going to do this for you guys, why don't you pay me?' he said. The most he ever got, ever, was $250 a week. It started at $100. He pretended to be committed but it was an arrangement of convenience. Along with information, he came up with suggestions for a nationwide computer bulletin board system, a nationwide informant system--all sorts of schemes we rejected. The LaRouche people stuck with Emerson because he delivered the goods--or at least so they thought. He came in with quality information derived from access he had at the NSC, Quinde says. He brought in precise intelligence readings. He says now he either made it up or got it from magazines. Our assessment was he was bringing in stuff you couldn't get in the public sector. Judging by notebooks kept by Emerson's debriefers at LaRouche headquarters, he held their attention with inside stories of power struggles between George Shultz, Ed Meese, President Reagan, and William Webster--all supposedly based on high-level government sources that he gave code-names like Orlando, Blue, and Horse's Mouth. Emerson later denied under oath that he ever had such sources, but nonetheless asserted that the information he passed on was generally accurate. Emerson said he just couldn't remember where any of it came from. It's easy to understand why the gnomes of Leesburg remain impressed by Emerson to this day. On January 2, 1985, according to entries in the notebooks of one LaRouche aide, Emerson told them about [CIA Director

William] Casey's secret paper re special ops impossible in govt. All done privately and contracted out. SAS--too much rivalry. 2 copy secret memo FX--Ft. Meade, antimilitary intelligence. As we know now, Casey did conspire with Oliver North to contract covert operations out to the Enterprise, the network of private agents funded by the Iran arms sales and contributions from the Saudi government. SAS could refer to the British Special Air Services, an elite commando unit, some of whose veterans worked for North in Central America. Fort Meade is the home of the National Security Agency. Did Emerson know something the rest of the country didn't, or was he a lucky guesser? LaRouche operatives believe the former. But until Emerson reveals his sources, the public can only wonder. Emerson also claimed to be in touch with Frank Camper regarding aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and the training of special ops groups from foreign governments. Camper, who began working as an FBI informer in 1970, ran a mercenary school in Alabama from 1981 to 1986. He is now serving a 14 year sentence for weapons, conspiracy and racketeering violations in connection with a California bombing. Perhaps one reason Emerson appealed to the LaRouche staff was because he fed their paranoia about government plots against them. In early 1985 he talked of authorized COINTELPRO op--background checks on members, families--informants ops--calls already going out--those targeted wouldn't report on such approaches and ex-members back into LC [LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees]. COINTELPRO was the FBI counterintelligence program, formally disbanded in the mid-'70s, that aimed to disrupt subversive political groups. Emerson also warned the organization that Assistant FBI Director Oliver Revell was out to bury us and claimed the IRS was forming a task force to investigate LaRouche's followers. And he confirmed that a negative climate was developing against them in the intelligence community. Such tips made him indispensable to an organization that felt its existence threatened by the federal investigation then underway in Boston into the fundraising tactics of LaRouche's presidential campaign. Now that the government has admitted using information from Emerson to make its case, LaRouche attorneys contend Emerson was a COINTELPRO-style asset all along, planted in their midst by the FBI to gather information, sow confusion, and generate paranoia that would make them prone to run afoul of the law. Lending credence to the theory, despite denials by Emerson and the FBI, are several oddities: In the fall of 1985, Emerson informed the FBI in a letter about the alleged illegal activities of an associate of Edwin Wilson, the convicted trafficker in explosives and terrorist devices. Emerson's letter, released as an exhibit in the April hearing on alleged government misconduct, was not addressed, but he initially testified that it went to assistant FBI director Revell. That admission rang bells inside the LaRouche defense team. Revell had personally taken charge of an FBI investigation of LaRouche in 1982-83, which had been requested by Henry Kissinger, who had been harassed by LaRouche followers, and by two of Kissinger's close associates on the president' Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Edward Bennett Williams and David Abshire, who called for a foreign counterintelligence investigation to determine the sources of LaRouche's money. Revell also sat with Oliver North on a secret, interagency counterterrorism committee and acted on North's behalf to investigate domestic opponents of the contras and delay official investigations that threatened to uncover the Iran-contra scandal. Defense attorneys have argued that North encouraged government investigators to nail the LaRouchians because they were interfering with his fundraising for the contras and taking legal steps to pry loose government documents regarding one of the Iranians implicated in secret U.S.-Iranian arms deals and negotiations. Later in his testimony, Emerson changed his story and denied sending his note to Revell--though he admitted being in touch with Revell on another matter. But the letter, which did go to the FBI, remains a

mystery. The FBI classified it secret only after the LaRouche defense learned of its existence. The FBI's handling of the note violated every official rule: It was never date-stamped, received no file number, and its routing was never marked. Further questions about the Bureau's procedures and credibility are raised by another FBI document, a February 15, 1985 memo from Revell to FBI Director William Webster obtained by the LaRouche defense. It concerns threats against Dr. Henry Kissinger and the FBI's investigation of LaRouche's organization. Two entire paragraphs are blanked out, but the memo notes This matter is being handled by our Terrorism Section. What makes the memo particularly noteworthy is its heading, DO NOT FILE. That designation, reminiscent of the days when Hoover kept secret political files, violated normal FBI procedures and suggests the Bureau handled the case with special political sensitivity. LaRouche attorneys theorize that Emerson wrote his note to establish a paper trail, explaining how and why he got back in touch with the FBI in late 1985--and to disguise the fact that he was an intelligence asset all along. If so, Emerson's letter had the desired effect. It prompted a meeting with FBI agent Angus Llewellyn of the Alexandria office. A few weeks later, February 4, 1986, they had a followup meeting, this time including agent Tim Klund. According to Klund, Emerson volunteered to provide information on LaRouche, but wanted he compensation. Klund said the FBI couldn't pay. He and Llewellyn agreed that Emerson seemed unstable (testimony 75-179, 76-16). A day or two later Klund requested a search of FBI files on Emerson just in case he could be of use. With or without official direction, Emerson's instincts as an informant came into play again. Only two days after his meeting with Klund he told the LaRouche staff that the FBI wanted their cooperation on terrorist intelligence matters. He suggested it could be the opening they needed to take pressure off the federal investigation of credit card fraud. According to a notebook entry by one LaRouche aide, Emerson proposed: Suppose we and bureau were working on a terrorism case--keep things on a confidential basis--further things for your own purposes....Tim Klund--has our case--wants to let us know what's going on--have to go through the paces. Didn't express any animosity. At the LaRouche people's direction, Emerson sent agent Llewellyn a letter requesting an intelligence exchange between the LaRouche organization and the FBI on terrorist matters. Emerson told his fellows that he met with Klund, Llewellyn, and another agent to set up the relationship. That summer, however, LaRouche's group fired Emerson. His information was no good, Quinde recalls. His general attitude became suspicious when he brought stuff in on the Boston case. But Emerson continued to meet with agent Klund. Klund persuaded him to reestablish contact, which Emerson did that August by delivering a cake to one of LaRouche's aides. (No one thought to ask Emerson at the hearing whether he shared recipes with Robert McFarlane, who similarly tried to make friends in Tehran through appeals to the appetite.) The cake was only a peace offering. The tastier lure was Emerson's optimistic report about the progress of the Boston grand jury probe. He told the LaRouche staff that there had been a successful blocking of the investigation and that the FBI was stopped cold. The news was phony, but his targets dutifully recorded it in their notebooks. Later the prosecutor in the case would cite the successful blocking passage, planted by Emerson himself, as evidence that the LaRouche defendants intended to obstruct justice. Emerson played another key role in the case. In September, he again made contact with an offering of cake and phony information about the Boston case. His mission, directed by the FBI and prosecutor, was to spy inside LaRouche's offices and help prepare a physical description for a search warrant. Emerson never made

it inside--his targets were too suspicious of his conduct--but the FBI cited his alleged description of the offices in preparing the warrant for a massive search by hundreds of federal, state and local agents that October. The LaRouche defense plans to make the disputed warrant a basis for future appeals if the case goes against them. Emerson became an embarrassment to the government, which never called him to testify. The prosecutor, by his own admission, failed to notify the defense in a timely fashion about Emerson's history as an FBI informant, forgot to turn over the results of an FBI polygraph test of Emerson, and neglected to tell the defense about a tape recording of an investigator's interview with Emerson, among a host of other matters. The Boston jury didn't know all that, but it heard enough to become disgusted by the government's methods. Although the judge declared a mistrial in May 1988 because the case was dragging on too long, juror Roman Dashawetz told Boston Herald the jury was unanimous in its opinion. We would have acquitted everybody at this point, and that's based on prosecution evidence, Dashawetz said. There was too much question of government misconduct in what was happening in the LaRouche campaign. It seemed some of the government's people caused the problem [for LaRouche and] may have been involved in some of this fraud to discredit the campaign....There was a question as to how many of the actual alleged wrong-doers were government people and how many were overzealous LaRouche people. Emerson, meanwhile, is back doing what he loves best. Last year he published a Who's Who in Terrorism. More recently he put out another book on U.S. Terrorists, Radicals, Revolutionaries, which featured the LaRouche organization prominently, along with the Quakers, United Church of Christ, National Organization for Women and National Council of Churches. It opens with an order form for a new newsletter, Counter-Terrorism, at the special introductory rate of $290/yr. Emerson boasts that the CIA was among the earliest subscribers and pays us hard cash for our intelligence information. Since its initial trial subscription, the CIA has sent us more and more money for more and more subscriptions. (Emerson adds, We thought it would be in poor taste to ask the CIA for a testimonial.) The book's acknowledgments express sincere appreciation to Headquarters, Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with several journalists who make a specialty of exposing LaRouche's activities. But Emerson still can't make a living from journalism; all his books and magazines bring in only $5,000 a year, he admitted to Washington Business Journal in March. Somebody has to be doing it, he told the magazine, before moving to Coral Springs, Florida, in search of better opportunities in the pressure cleaning business. Whatever Emerson's personal fate, his case revives perennial questions about the role of government informants in controversial criminal cases with political overtones. Did Emerson and other individuals, under FBI direction, lead on the LaRouche group to commit crimes? And did political considerations weigh in the government's use of Emerson to bring charges against that organization? Recent revelations of improper FBI investigations of other groups critical of the administration's Central America policies make these questions of more than passing significance. Emerson's special occupation raises unusual issues that deserve special consideration by Congress. In particular, the fact that the FBI subsidized his publications to use him as an informant under journalistic cover should deeply trouble anyone concerned with the First Amendment. In 1976, the Church Committee warned, with respect to past CIA practices, that the use of American journalists and media organizations for clandestine operations is a threat to the integrity of the press. All American journalists, whether accredited to a United States news organization or just a stringer, may be suspects when any are engaged in covert activities. The same lesson surely holds for the FBI. As Rep. Don Edwards (D-Calif.), chairman of the House subcommittee on constitutional rights, observes, The domestic use of journalists has serious constitutional problems. For a federal police agency to interfere with freedom of the press is unacceptable. If we think

reporters we talk to might be FBI agents, it will chill us all. Gary Stern, an associate of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D. C., also sees "grave implications" in the use of journalist informants. Like the CIA, the Bureau has long used journalists as cooperating sources and as outlets for leaks and disinformation. Both agencies, for example, used friendly reporters and editors to smear critics of the Warren Commission. Gossip columnist Walter Winchell thrived on tips passed to him by J. Edgar Hoover's office. Joe Trento and Dave Roman reported in Penthouse magazine a decade ago that leading executives at Copely Press ran a system of intelligence gathering for the FBI. But the element of pay adds a new and dangerous dimension to such relationships. It robs journalists of whatever objectivity and independence they have left, and makes them prey to unscrupulous requests to slant their coverage. It robs all journalists of credibility, if the public cannot tell who is on the take and who is not. For the government to put private journalists on its secret payroll crosses, and indeed demolishes, the First Amendment barrier. Emerson himself is not the issue here. Rather, the FBI's willingness to hire him as a paid asset, and its failure to implement guidelines on the hiring of journalists, suggests that other, more prominent members of his profession could be targets for recruitment if they are not already on the payroll. But even a journalist as minor as Emerson was in a position to do damage, as the LaRouche organization found out. And through his books and newsletters, he may have continuing influence with some law enforcement agencies and fellow journalists. Emerson may be guilty of opportunism, LaRouche of fraud and obstruction of justice. But the FBI's own opportunism threatens to obstruct the journalism profession by eroding the essential element of trust without which it cannot properly serve the American people.

Potrebbero piacerti anche