So you don't feel there have been situations where you felt there was a fine line between leading someone on and encouraging someone to do something? There aren't a whole lot of defenses when the bad guy hands me the weapons, when he hands me the drugs, when he's on tape saying that he wants someone killed. To me, the undercover case is the best investigative tool to put a case together, because particularly when it's an undercover agent-not an informant but an undercover agent-you have a trained law-enforcement officer that knows what it takes to put a case together. What do you think about the ethics involved in undercover work? There have been allegations of entrapment, particularly in terrorism cases, where defendants feel they have been led on. And as an undercover agent, you've gotta understand them in some way, be it the child molester, be it the drug dealer, be it the weapons dealer. Criminals can smell fear, they can smell hatred, they know when you aren't accepting of their lifestyle. That made it much easier than it was on several of the cases where I had to infiltrate a group on my own, without the introduction.Īs an undercover agent, you have to see the gray-you have to find some goodness in a person in order to be attracted to them. In most, I had an informant who'd introduce me-typically, we had somebody that we had arrested and they were "working off a beef," they were cooperating with us in order to lessen their sentence, and they'd introduce me.
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How do you begin to infiltrate an organization and work out how to make contact? On VICE News: Gun-Toting Protesters Held a Rally Against 'Islamization' Outside a Texas Mosque
I'd conduct interviews by myself, and I liked the idea of working undercover and posing as someone else. I gravitated toward individualism: I sought it out.
So I looked for those opportunities once I graduated. VICE: So how did you get into working as an undercover agent for the FBI?īob Hamer: I was looking for excitement, and while I was in training at the FBI academy, a couple of the instructors had done some undercover work, and I thought, That seems interesting and exciting. I called him up for a chat to talk about the old days. He speaks with a friendly Midwestern twang that's more Fargo than Infernal Affairs, is a big-time Christian, and is generally a very affable guy. He's not what you'd necessarily expect from a grizzled undercover cop who's infiltrated the inner circles of drug cartels, pedophile rings, and weapons smuggling operations. Hamer's been busy since his retirement, writing books, including co-authoring two with Oliver North (of Iran Contra fame-Hamer is fairly conservative). At one point during that gig, Hamer was propositioned to help fund a giant meth factory in North Korea. The last case of his career was Operation Smoking Dragon, a sting operation that took down a cell of Chinese smugglers who were bringing weapons and counterfeit cigarettes into the United States. I first spoke to Bob Hamer while I was working on a piece about North Korea's role in the international drug trade. In various disguises, he writes on his website, he "successfully posed as a drug dealer, contract killer, residential burglar, fence, pedophile, degenerate gambler, international weapons dealer, and white-collar criminal," and was involved in operations against everyone from the Mafia to the pro-pedophile group North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Bob Hamer spent 26 years doing just that while working for the FBI.
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