[NYTr] Statement of former FBI agent John Ryan

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Rich Winkel -activ-l - Dec 9, 2007

Judi Bari.org 
http://www.judibari.org/Ryan050701.html

Statement of John C. Ryan

May 7, 2001

I, John C. Ryan, was a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) from Feb. 28, 1966 to Oct. 11, 1987, assigned
to Phoenix and Yuma, AZ (1 yr), Utica, NY (9 yrs), East St. Louis,
IL (5 yrs) and Peoria, IL (7yrs). Most of my career I specialized
in organized crime (OC) investigations. I also worked general
criminal and applicant cases, and near the end of my Career I
specialized in Foreign Counterintelligence & Terrorist cases.

My duties were to investigate violations of federal laws (those
assigned to FBI jurisdiction), make arrests, serve search warrants,
or as directed by the President of the United States.

I was fired from FBI on Oct 11, 87 for refusing a direct order to
investigate non-violent peace groups as saboteurs/terrorists, based
on my religious beliefs. I sued for re-instatement, (John C. Ryan
vs. US Dept of Justice, Case No. 88C 2410, Central District of
Illinois). Reinstatement was denied. The case was heard 10/15/91
by 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Case No. 91-1467 -- appeal
denied.

Informant development and informant handling was my specialty
throughout most of my FBI career. I worked OC for approximately 16
of my 22 years. I worked, handled, developed or attempted to develop
literally hundreds of individuals as informants. I handled 7 Top
Echelon (TE) informants including a Mafia member informant, and
paid several thousand dollars to informants, both as "regularly
paid" or in individual payments. I received two cash incentive
awards for my work with informants. My two letters of censure from
the FBI, neither of which I am ashamed, were because of overzealousness
in my informant work. I attended a specialized informant In-Service
training which gathered agents around the FBI that specialized or
excelled in informant development.

During my entire FBI career, all agents working criminal matters
were expected to have informants, also known as a source, asset,
snitch, stool-pigeon, a 137 (the informant file number). One's
informant coverage was a major portion of all performance reviews
and inspection reports. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, with
the inner-city rioting and unrest, every field agent had to have
at least one "ghetto informant" meaning an Afro-American informant.
In the late 60s, early 70s, the Top-Echelon Criminal Informant
Program (TECIP) began, targeting OC figures, particularly Mafia
members.

There were an overwhelming amount of rules and restrictions on the
program, ostensibly to assure the "integrity" of bureau informants,
and to prevent abuse by the informant or the agent.

The reality is that many agents either had no ability or desire to
develop informants, some were simply unable to converse with somebody
in the "criminal element" in a civil manner. By and large, the
informant program was an internal game between the field and
headquarters, almost all on paper, to meet the bureau requirements,
and fraud on the part of the agents became rampant.

It was the unwritten policy of the field offices that all fugitive
apprehensions, recovered stolen cars, and many other statistical
accomplishments be attributed to an informant. A new informant was
designated a Potential Criminal Informant, (PCI). This PCI needed
3 accomplishments (i.e., a fugitive located, a stolen car recovered),
to become a Criminal Informant, (CI). After that all you had to do
was contact the CI at least every 30 days, and fill out a background
sheet. I heard these specific instructions, several times, from the
informant coordinator at all-agent conferences. "Phony informants,"
or "paper informants" were the rule. Subsequently, the bureau rules
governing informant development, handling. and reporting pertained
almost entirely to this type of informant.

On the other hand there was always a scattering of agents that
worked legitimate informants. Some of these informants were extremely
competent and productive. Sometimes the informant was a "walk-in,"
a person that contacts us with some information, for some reason,
and volunteers to continue providing information. There were agents
with hoodlum friends or relatives that turned informant. Then, often
in the course of a case, especially in prosecution stages, a subject
would turn informant in return for leniency or release.

Then there were agents that had the desire and ability to develop
informants. From my experience and from numerous contacts with other
agents that specialized working informants, it became obvious that
not many agents fell into this category. Many FBI divisions, mainly
smaller ones, had no such agent, some with only one. Some of the
larger divisions were not much different.

As a rule, the more productive an informant, the more paperwork and
administrative problems he or she caused. Any agent familiar with
real informants knows this, and often the agent found him/herself
at frequent odds with the field office or the bureau and found it
essential to cut corners with the paperwork, and subsequently with
the content of the informant's information.

The rule said every informant had to be contacted at least once
every thirty days. In reality, some informants were contacted on a
regular basis, sometimes daily, while others were difficult to find,
it was dangerous to meet, did not like to be contacted, or were
generally unavailable. One productive informant could, in effect,
carry several lesser productive informants. By this, I mean, it was
common to take information from one informant and attribute it to
another, or several others, to keep all productive, but especially
to meet the 30 day contact rule. It was also common to use police
intelligence information, information from illegal wire-taps and
microphones, even news stories, by attributing the information to
informants, both as a means of inflating an informant's worth,
and/or masking an illegal eavesdropping operation.

All agents were required to certify upon every informant contact
that the informant did not hold back any information and that the
informant showed no signs of emotional or mental instability. Both
statements, in my estimation and that of most agents I knew that
handled informants, were absurd. Informants frequently held track
Information or altered the information to fit their agenda, which
was often revenge, or to provide what the agent was hoping to learn,
especially if payment was involved. I found this aspect so common
that I regularly maintained informants to inform on my informants.

Informant development and informant handling was my specialty
throughout most of my FBI career. I worked OC for approximately 16
of my 22 years. I worked, handled, developed or attempted to develop
literally hundreds of individuals as informants. I handled 7 TE
informants including a Mafia member informant, and paid several
thousand dollars to informants, both as "regularly paid" or individual
payments. I received two cash incentive awards as well as two letters
of censure from the bureau for informant matters.

The informant program was haphazardly maintained, by the bureau and
by the field. There was little security given to informants. On a
PCI case, the informant's actual name was the title and used
throughout all paperwork. (CI's names were concealed and given
symbol numbers.) The informant files were shelved with all other
files and were available to any agent or clerk in the office. It
was presumed that most of the informants were either totally
fictional, or at least exaggerated.

The bureau requires a case agent to certify that they have instructed
the informant that he/she is not an employee of the FBI, and that
they are not to portray themselves as such. This is a problem that
probably every agent that worked real informants has encountered.
I recall a former mob muscle, hit-man that turned informant and who
took to his new role with the same enthusiasm he had as he did for
the mob. Once, after reading a newspaper column that trashed the
FBI, he became so upset and took it so personal that he wanted to
go and "mess-up" the columnist that wrote the article.

One secretary that handled informant payments became extremely
resistant and uncooperative to me because the informant was earning
more than she was, and she complained openly to others in the office
about this. One SAC (Special Agent in Charge) commented when an
agent was forced to pay several hundred dollars to repair a bureau
car he damaged, "I thought that's what informant money was for."

In my first assignment I was told by an experienced agent to read
"Our Man in Havana," a novel by Graham Green, if I wanted to know
how the bureau informant program is best worked. In this story an
"agent" in Havana, Cuba, manufactures all of the information he
sends to his superiors using the diagram of a vacuum cleaner as the
sinister weapon he spying on. I Worked at the Mexican border, and,
as a favor to another agent responsible for "security" information
from Mexico, would periodically go into Mexico, buy every Mexican
newspaper I could find and give them to that agent, who told me he
would read to find intelligence information to attribute to his
security informant.

I was working OC cases when the TECIP was initiated. The program
was pointed at the Mafia, or organized crime in general, (for offices
that did not have Italian Mafia affiliations) seeking major OC
figures as informants. It was a highly successful program but rarely
operated as the bureau instructed and was led to believe it was
run.

I attended an informant in-service training session at Quantico in
which the director of the CI and TECI programs (both designed the
particular programs and were with then from their start) both
admitted they had never, in their field days, worked actual informants.
Both were being very candid, and admitting the programs had great
shortfalls.

One agent that had two good OC informants feared and mistrusted the
bureau informant system so much that he never put either informant
on paper, but instead attributed any information either told him
to any one of several marginal or non-existent informants he carried
on paper.

I know of an instance where an agent, in a division needing a Mafia
member informant, took a person he was friendly with, a low level
street con-man, with an Italian last name, and by quoting police
intelligence sources and other informants, made him into a Mafia
member -- or so the bureau thought. At the same time there was a
highly productive illegal microphone in a local Mafia member's
premises. The individual was "targeted" as a possible informant,
successfully developed, greatly enhanced the agent's reputation,
the field office's reputation and provided a vehicle to report the
information from the microphone. Further, this informant was paid
significantly on a regular basis (which also made the agent, office,
and the information more appealing). When another, legitimate Mafia
member informant, from the same Mafia family and the same city was
developed, but did not validify the other so-called member, neither
the field division nor the bureau balked, and the bogus member
informant continued to be paid on a regular basis.

I had an informant that was on federal probation, but deeply involved
with OC friends. Bureau rules prohibited contacting a federal parolee
or probationer without permission of his Probation Officer. I
contacted the Probation Officer who was convinced the source was
going straight and told me he would violate him if he caught him
talking to me. Instead of violating the bureau rule I made his
girlfriend an informant and normally contacted them together,
attributing all the information to her file. At a later point it
became necessary to use some of his information in court. The
situation was explained to the bureau. Although I was given a letter
of censure, the bureau permitted me to provide the information as
testimony. Although prepared to, I never testified in this, case.
I would have, honestly, but the FBI file in which I reported the
informant information to the bureau was fraudulent. The OC section
of the bureau recognized the problem but the Office of Professional
Responsibility did not.

With the advent of the Federal Strike Forces, the Media, PA break-in,
(where, for the first time, actual internal FBI files, including
informant contact forms, were stolen and seen by the public), the
death of J. Edgar Hoover, then the Watergate scandal and the Senator
Frank Church Guidelines that resulted, a great deal of change began
to take place regarding informants.

Prior to all of this, rarely was the majority of informant information
used for prosecuting crimes. It was gathered primarily for intelligence
purposes (as was security type information). Intelligence gathering
had become an end in itself, to impress one's own supervisor or the
bureau, or just to gather intelligence for its own sake.

When wiretaps became legal, (early 1970s) informant information
became imperative to obtain the affidavits necessary for the court
authorized wiretaps. Often, especially when working with Strike
Force attorneys, we would be tasked to obtain specific informant
information to strengthen the affidavit, make it more specific, or
to update the information due to the delays that occurred getting
the affidavit approved. Sometimes it was dangerous -- dangerous for
the informant's security, or dangerous for the case if the informant
realized the target of the affidavit -- contacting the informant,
or the informant was reluctant to be contacted, as when didn't like
being an informant, or when the informant did not know he was an
informant. Often in such cases, either the update would be invented.
At this stage too much was at stake logistically, (eavesdropping
equipment, manpower, surveillance, extra clerical help, etc.) for
any informant problems, especially when it was the agent that
testified as to what the informant said, not the informant. Regardless
of the integrity of that agent, that informant's file was already
so full of falsehoods that another one wouldn't matter.

One day, sometime in the early 1980s, all agents were contacted,
by phone, not by memo, and told to close all "non-productive,"
(meaning phony) informants, with "no questions asked." Gradually
many changes were made, such as removing informant files from the
general files and keeping them in a special locked area, inaccessible
to one and all, supposedly only the case agent. At the same time a
new policy overtook the bureau; "quality not quantity." This applied
to informants as well as all of the case work. But at the same time
an addendum was whispered; "but we want a lot of quality."

As I have noted, there were numerous rules and procedures established
at different times for the handling of informants at different
stages of their development, and for maintaining files and records
of contacts and dealings between informants and the agents who
worked with them. Those rules were honored as much in the breach
as in the observance in my experience. There were periodic announcements
from the bureau of reforms, reconstitution of procedures and other
supposed improvements in the system, but the same practices always
continued, or were re-established over time.

Because of these experiences and observations, it would come as no
surprise that FBI agents in the Judi Bari case, or any case, would
distort, exaggerate, misrepresent, falsify or otherwise manipulate
information about an informant, or about information supposedly
received from an informant, or meetings, or the contents of reports
and files, etc., regardless of the untruthfulness or unlawfulness
of their actions. Anyone -- supervisors, bureau headquarters, a
court or magistrate in a given case, prosecutors, city police
officers -- might have been a target (victim) of such fraud and
deception regarding informants and informant information in the
circumstances and atmosphere I am describing.

(signed)

John C. Ryan May 7, 2001