9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy

Hr~D 'jo//{S}-
W
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

Eve~t':I"---- .....ISuperviSOry Special Agent, Phoenix Field Office, FBI

Type of Event: Interview

Date: October 23, 2003

Special Access Issues: None

Prepared.by: Michael Jacobson

Team number: 6

\....
~ocation: FBI, Phoenix Field Office

PficiPants Non-Commission: Sean O'NeiIJ, Assistant General Counsel, FBI

Parti.C
..ipants - Commission: Michael Jacobson and Caroline Barnes

•
Background

\ \rl has a BA in criminology. He worked as a police officer for 12 years in

\ Indian~ He worked his way up and was eventually promoted to homicide detective.
\Hejoined the FBI in 1987, and was assigned to the Phoenix office.' He has been assigned
'to the Phoenix office for his whole career. He has worked bank robberies, kidnappings,
drugs, and was promoted to supervise the gangs/violent crime squad in 1994. He then
took over the SOG squad in Phoenix, which he supervised for about a year and a half.
There were two SOG squads then, one in the Tucson RA that had a drug focus, and one
in \Phoenix. When the Phoenix SAC shut down the Phoenix SOG Squad in June 2001
and rotated those agents back to the investigative squads, Ralph was assigned to the front
office and reported to the administrative ASAC. He worked on OPR investigations,
coordinated the crime survey, and worked on the AFOR. He also worked as a supervisor
in thl:\;.c....ommand post. He did this for 10 months.
Phoenix SOG program pre 9/11

'1 Isaid he believed that the SAC shut down the Phoenix SOG squad in
reaction to an action taken by FBI HQ. HQ had mandated a reduction in agent FSLs in
early 2001 for every fie1d office, and the FSL was reduced by about 8-9 agents in
Phoenix. The SOG squad in Tucson remained after the one in Phoenix was shut down.

He was opposed to the SAC shutting down the SOG squad. Any experienced
investigator would tell you that you need surveillance in your investigations. With the
SOGs, their budget is not taken out of the field office budget. HQ' funds the SOG
• program, so it's "painless" for the SAC, who only has to find bodies for the program .
Having surveillance capabilities, in his opinion, is essential. For example, during a Title
3, if you hear a subject say that he's going to a certain location, you need to be able to
follow him. The same thing applies with FISAs. You have to see what the subjects are
actually doing.

The SOG was fully engaged at the time. They had about 130 agents in Phoenix
HQ City at the time.

9/11 Classified Information

Current Phoenix surveillance program

When the new SAC arrived, she re-established an SOG squad. After 9/11,
Phoenix Division brought the Tucson SOG to Phoenix full time. They remained in
Phoenix until March 3, 2003. They also brought in surveillance teams TOY from other
offices to help. These were mostly SOG not SSG teams.

• 9/11 Classified Information

Lack of prestige of working surveillance

Surveillance has always been treated like a "poor cousin" at the FBI. It doesn't
leap into the forefront of people's minds when they are allocating resources. He admitted
that he was one of the people who thought that maybe the agents going to the SOG
squads were not the best investigators. There may be some truth to that. There are not a
lot of volunteers for the SOG squad. The SAs working investigations have latitude
regarding what they do, and even in terms of their schedule. The SOG do not.

In addition, doing surveillance in Phoenix is particularly unpleasant because of

the conditions. You can't leave the air conditioning running because that might draw
attention to you and it causes the cars to break down more quickly, but it gets to be 140
degrees inside the cars.

• 2
9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy
..gBCItET

• 9/11 Classified Information

Surveillance prioritization

There are currently 4 SSAs who supervise IT and DT. These SSAs are the ones
who decide what the-priorities are, which they then relay to him. If the SSAs can't
decide, then the CT AS~~ would make the decision. This hasn't happened yet.

The priorities are relayed to him orally. He would actual1y like to put together a
more formal process. Everyone isjust going as fast as they can, and they don't have the
time to document it all. He does-have close personal contact with the 4 SSAs. SSA
George currently has the 2 PriOritY'«~~es.

They make up the schedule everyweek f!lr Ib!:i ~ I~ams. They've had a couple of

•
priority cases. They were covering one o~ Fajor case targets and a few of
this target's associates .

It's very difficult for them to do 24/7 surveillance. This would take 4 teams to
cover 1 person. They can do I shift per person per day, 5 days a week. The shifts
fluctuate (in terms of time) based on what they've been hearing in the FISAs. An
additional constraint is that the pilots are limited, in terms of the number of hours they
can work in a day. They can only work 8 hours in a day.

9/11 Classified Information

Use ofTDYs personnel and other agencies to assist with surveillance

He hasn't asked for any TDY personnel from other offices to help them with the
work load. He thinks that he could get TDY personnel ifhe asked for them. But the
bottom line is that virtually everyone across the country needs surveillance resources.

•
The SACs have great latitude as to what goes on in their division .

3
, ."

•
They don't use other agencies for surveillance assistance. At times, the JITF
squads will do their own surveillance though. They don't ask state/local for surveillance
assistance, and they are not asked by the state/local for surveillance help. Surveillance is
not a simple thing, though many people think it is. He's not even sure if the police would
be good at it ("not just anyone can do this").

9/11 Classified Information

80's rolein surveillance program

,I I was the chiefofthe Aviation and.SPC·

He was kInd of a one man program for the SOG for a while.
n~ Unit ~t HQ.
oined him

•
recently. This lack of HQ personnel involved in SOG ma~ters IS one 0 t e reasons why
soc has not gotten training. Currently, the FBI is trying to create new training for SOG .
They did recently separate the two, and now have a ~eParate HQ SaG unit.
: '

9/11 Classified Information

• 9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy

SEC~'f 4
 ..
SBCR£T

• When the SOG complete their log, it goes to the squad secretary who types it into
an FD-302. Once irs typed, the SOG members who were on the surveillance review it
for accuracy and initial it. It then goes back to the secretary who uploads it to ACS. The
cover sheet comes back to him and is placed into the file. This all happens within one
business day, usually.

9/11 Classified Information

They do not send a copy of the logs to the analysts. They send them to the case
agents who might then send them to the analysts, but they don't make extra copies of the
logs.

FD-302s must be uploaded into ACS, but there is no FBI policy requiring that
surveillance logs be uploaded. It takes slight of hand to get ACS to accept the logs

•
because they are not on an FD form. In Phoenix, they've chosen to upload the logs, but
not all field offices are doing that. Some SOGs upload their documents and some don't.
The FD-302s go into the investigative files and are all uploaded, which is one reason
they've decided to submit their logs that way. .

Relationship with case agents

They have streamlined the process for requesting surveillance. The case agent
fills out a form which provides the background on the case. Typically, his squad will get
the form, which will be forwarded to the team leader. The team leader will then contact
the case agent about the c se and would then subse uentl brief the team before the
survei 1lance.

~~------~~~--------~--~--~~--~
9/11 Law EnforcementSensitive-------------'
The surveillance personnel are
In C ose contact WIththe case agents throughout the investigation, often multiple times
daily.

Relationship with Language Specialists

Now that Phoenix has so many FISAs, the surveillance personnel have been in
touch with the language specialists as well. He doesn't know how the LSs are rotated to
cover different FISAs. They have to deal with many different LSs, which is a slight
impediment, but no big deal.

• ~~CREI 5
.. -. ...

•
Technology

9/11 Classified Information

•
Patriot Act and other legal issues

There have been no big changes in their work resulting from the Patriot Act.
They are able to do whatever they need to do, and were even before 9111. He can't think
of any legal or policy impediments to their work. None stand out in his mind.

Access to ACS and intelligence community databases and products

They do have ACS at the offsite. They have full access. They do use it, but not
as frequently as someone working in the office. They might use it, for example, to see
whether an "UNSUB" has come up in other cases, to input a report indicating that a
particular individual has been sited in another jurisdiction, or to do a name or license
plate check. They don't spend much time in the office though, and they will only use it
to do queries. They don't have access to any other databases. He can't recall seeing any
CIA analytic products. He might occasionally get an FBI analytic product from a case
agent. He thinks that the case agent would send it to them if they needed it.

• 6