A Report From the Wiretap Subculture
Ellison, James M.
A Report From the Wiretap Subculture by James M. Ellison There is a wiretapping industry in the United States. For nearly three years I was part of it. I worked as a writer and editor of...
...A secret microphone in the exterior of the case is optional...
...One look inside Room D explains the security that surrounds it...
...The weakness of Title I11 lies in its apparent impotence in preventing manufacturers, like AID, from trafficking in outlawed devices in violation of state laws...
...NIA’s promotional brochures warn that all applications are reviewed by an academic selection committee which reserves the right to refuse admission to any candidate...
...On occasion, overflow crowds from Goodwin’s motel also have’ used the Tradewinds...
...Holcomb is a veteran in the bugging business...
...Concealed microphones, hidden recorders, and tiny transmitters are used to bug a room...
...What I saw at NIA/AID convinced me that one of the apparent lessons of Watergate should be taken very seriously: the use of wiretapping for domestic surveillance goes hand in hand with a more general disrespect for the law...
...With this catchall defense for invasions of privacy, they dismiss any suggestions that tigliter restrictions might be necessary to curb police abuses of the technology...
...AID manages to sell telephonetapping equipment to the same departments...
...While most states permit police to bug under a court order, many draw the line at phone taps and will not permit them under any circumstances...
...Lauderdale Beach...
...Skilled in the art of eavesdropping, they will join hundreds of others in what NIA’s training director calls “our select fraternity .” James M. Ellison is a Florida writer who formerly worked for the National Intelligence Academy...
...Even this token nod to the law is questioned by AID sales people...
...AID’S smallest room bug is barely over an inch long and is powered for up to eleven days by a tiny hearing-aid battery...
...And it is further hampered by the FBI’s inclination to overlook any infractions which they deem useful to the law enforcement community as a whole...
...A staff suggestion that only students from states with enabling statutes be permitted in the room for instruction meets with a cold reception at the front office...
...He is an honorary member of several police organizations and claims to have been a Texas Ranger at one time...
...Two weeks before the Haitian Coast Guard revolted, Holcomb was ordered off the island, accused by the government press of being a U. S. agent...
...Since AID’S sales have often been insufficient to meet its overhead, this financial arrangement has proven most convenient...
...No pictures of Classroom D appear in the color brochure of NIA facilities distributed to police, and there is no mention of it in the text...
...A Newsweek reporter given a selected tour of the Academy was not permitted to view the room...
...While AID and NIA share the same building, they are separated on paper for tax purposes...
...Even the paperwork requirements meant to prevent bogus cops and private investigators from attending the school are largely ignored...
...Theoretically, the board also approves the curriculum for the Academy...
...The day after their admissions to illegal intercepts, the same two officers brought me several pieces of equipment, including a concealable body transmitter and a telephone tap transmitter, and asked that they be serviced...
...Many of AIDS personnel are simply paid with NIA checks backed by the tax-free Foundation...
...Small transmitters worn under the clothes, inside a necktie knot, or even in a fountain pen are among the bugs known as “body transmitters...
...When the visitors departed, it was AID business as usual...
...Their stories about previous exploits indicate they have conducted illegal taps...
...A new employee once mistook him for the air-conditioner repairman when he found him poking around the ventilation system in the photo studio, dressed in baggy pants, open sport shirt and sandals...
...This tongue-in-cheek reference to the theft of phone company tools and accessories is not lost on the students, who abound with humorous tales of their own acquisition of equipment from less-than-watchful phone personnel...
...In a memo delivered to the NIA director and read to the instructional staff, one sales represent...
...Lauderdale’s industrial park under the name Audio Intelligence Devices, Inc...
...In his final address to several of the graduating classes, Director Stanley characterized the Congress of the United States as “potentially the most dangerous we have ever had...
...But the purpose of NIA isultimately the promotion of AID equipment, and screening students by states reduces the sales market...
...Deceptive credentials, modeled after those used by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, were fabricated to facilitate Holcomb’s arrival and departure at airports...
...The installation of room bugs was, for me, the most revealing glimpse of what we were training people to do...
...Aerial and underground cables are looped, spliced, color-coded and suspended with approved Bell telephone procedures...
...One applicant confessed to a 15-year-old misdemeanor charge (convinced that it would be discovered by the exhaustive investigation of the committee...
...Lauderdale News last February, “We’ve got public-spirited people out helping to save everything from the sea otter to the yellow-winged butterfly...
...Instruction in technique is provided, and the students then practice on live lines with service equipment pirated from actual Southern Bell phone installations...
...And two weeks later they will turn out another group of alunmi-eager to purchase AID products and expand the use of wiretaps and hidden microphones in their local communities...
...Grading the Apprentice Buggers The high point of the two-week training course is a day-long surveillance exercise, combining telephone recording, concealment of a body transmitter on an “undercover agent” meeting with drug dealers, and individually graded installations of room bugs in hotel rooms at the Tradewinds...
...It,~ish, owever, an academy, a sort of finishing school for would-be plumbers...
...The National Wiretap Commission is currently completing a comprehensive study of the capabilities and abuses of existing equipment in the hands of the police, manufacturers, and private citizens...
...In 1970, with Goodwin’s immense wealth behind him, Holcomb set up his manufacturing plant in Ft...
...During those years they worked exclusively on AID equipment instruction manuals, advertising brochures and catalog sheets...
...Even when standing in one spot, his entire body is in motion...
...It is a simple matter of economics...
...But who is putting money into saving and helping law enforcement?’, The eccentric Goodwin is not much of a manager, and without Jack N. Holcomb, he would not be able to play a prominent role in the police/ wiretap subculture...
...All of the equipment was of AID manufacture...
...The Commission subpoenaed Jack Holcomb as president of AID and consultant to NIA in June 1975...
...There is no selection committee, and there are no background investigations...
...One student even went so far as to produce a shotgun for the arrest, in violation of the Academy rules that all firearms be surrendered upon registration...
...Methods of deceiving operators into providing assistance are referred to as “games with Ma Bell...
...He also claims the title of consultant to NIA...
...Police chiefs and sheriffs sending agents to the school do not volunteer information on their state laws, and NIA is not about to ask...
...All employees of AID and NIA are directed by Holcomb regardless of where their checks come from...
...Goodwin is a multi-millionaire yacht broker and motel owner, with oil and lumber holdings...
...Mission accomplished, the installers survey the room for any evidence of their entry, remove any sawdust or litter produced in the installation, and quietly steal away...
...Some people chase fire engines...
...One-Dallas agent informed me that he used illegal intercepts as a matter of course, since it was the only way to catch anyaiminals...
...The legality of using wiretaps and bugs is, however, part of NIA’s course material...
...A lip-service hour of instruction is delivered by NIA president and attorney, Douglas Carlton...
...The Commission’s report should be instrumental in revisions of state and federal laws controlling the use of such equipment...
...From the street, it is an anonymous building, devoid of any identification beyond the two plain green obelisks at either end of the lawn...
...both were from a state prohibiting taps...
...Unfortunately, AID and NIA are not alone in the wiretapping industry...
...Employees of the graphics, photography and technical writing departments are the most obviously exploited NIA personnel...
...This lack’ of ethics in training don-authorized personnel in, highly sensitive areas has caused some dissension among staff members at the Academy...
...The Unitels include microphones, concealable transmitters and receivers and a recorder-all neatly disguised in a standard Royal Traveler attache case...
...Once on the target, the two-man teams resort to hand-signals and whispers...
...Creeping around the room on all fours, the students investigate potential hiding places, estimating where the victims of the intercept will be standing when they talk and then installing the transmitters in locations where reception should be best...
...A few students have been accepted on the strength of a phone call requesting immediate admission and arrive with no application, no fingerprint cards, photographs, letters of authorization or any other proof of identity...
...As the president of Audio Intelligence Devices, Holcomb’s primary objective is to sell equipment...
...In 1969 he was deported from Anguila by British authorities as “a gangster-type element” involved in an abortive coup...
...The completed applica,tion and other materials are supposed to be sent to NIA 30 days prior to the start of the class for which the officer‘ applies...
...As he told the Ft...
...In reality Holcomb also uses it to accommodate AID sales personnel, potential customers and other companies in need of temporary quarters for promotional seminars...
...The devices range from tiny telephone transmitters, designed to replace the carbon microphones in telephone handsets, to complete “attack kits” called Unitels...
...The imposing list of admission requirements and procedures, with the implied background investigations of the candidates,, has been cause for concern for some students...
...But documentary evidence shows that tax exempt money from the Leo Goodwin Foundation regularly passes through the NIA into AID-in other words, from Jack Holcomb’s left hand into his right . Balding, round-faced Holcomb conducts his business with almost manic energy...
...I was instructed to remove all photographs of the room from a facilities presentation to be shown to a reporter interviewing Director Ronald Stanley...
...Both require that the school and the manufacturing facility be separate...
...With materials from salvage yards, independent and Canadian telephone companies, and other unidentified sources, NIA has built a working telephone system...
...When tax inspectors toured the facility, Holcomb quickly directed that all evidence of AID promotional projects in the graphics and writing departments be concealed and replaced with anything labeled NIA...
...By far the most interesting fact of NIA’s recruitment is its indiscriminate acceptance of police from ‘all states...
...State tax officials were told that the hotel is used exclusively for housing students of NTA and thus deserved a real estate tax exemption as part of an educational institution...
...The records show that at least 25 per cent of the departments being trained at NIA are from states prohibiting wiretapping or bugging practices...
...The legal distinction between wiretapping and bugging has consistently been a source of trouble for NIA...
...Although the Academy was not operational until late 1973, they were being paid with NIA checks throughout 1972 and 1973...
...In reality, Holcomb has the final word...
...The exercise originally called for an arrest to culminate the day’s events, but the “bust” was omitted when it became apparent that the students played the game with too much enthusiasm...
...An operational memo from the director instructed the staff to refer to wiretaps with the euphemism, “wire communications intercept” in ali classroom presentations and written material...
...What he meant was that congressional awareness of the scope of illegal wiretapping may disrupt the market for his firm’s services...
...What they do with it when they leave here is no concern of ours,” he said...
...He claims he is interested only in helping law enforcement officials combat organized crime with the most sophisticated technology available...
...The address of one half of the building is 1300 NW 62nd Street, the other 1400...
...I worked as a writer and editor of training publications for two interlocking companies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Audio Intelligence Devices (AID), which manufactures bugging equipment, and the National . Intelligence Academy (NIA), which teaches policemen how to use the bugging devices...
...The money man is Leo Goodwin, Jr., son of the late founder of the mammoth Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO...
...Holcomb’s financial control of both organizations was established with the installation of George E. Martin as the secretary/treasurer of the Academy...
...A hardwarebedecked telephone pole, mounted on an astro-turf mound, dominates the room...
...NIA demonstrates an AID telephone transmitter that requires 110 batteries, uses the phone company’s own power, and is even labeled as a “Western Electric Noise Filter” in case a telephone repairman comes across it and considers removing it...
...Everything about NIA is, under Holcomb’s direction, pseudo-governmental...
...The responsible agencies seem afraid to prosecute violations for fear that they will lose the technology if the extent of the police abuses becomes known...
...My first nine months with NIA were devoted to these AID promotional projects...
...They are warned about booby-traps and alarm devices installed by the phone company...
...The point of “on-target discipline” is stressed so that the neighbors are not alerted to the presence of agents in the next-door apartment...
...His lecture amounts to a warning that getting caught at illegal wiretaps or bugging may result in tougher legislation from Washington...
...He had a better reason for refusal...
...Meanwhile, the NIA will open its doors to another class this month...
...Each candidate’s application requires three fingerprint cards, two standard mug shots showing police department identification in the photo and the signature of the commanding officer of the sponsoring agency...
...Under his various titles Martin takes his orders from Holcomb and controls the NIA checkbook...
...A $760 tuition fee is payable upon arrival...
...In 1973, internal feuds over Holcomb’s control of the Academy forced the federal people out., and a new staff was hired...
...Leo Goodwin pursues police causes, particularly the fostering of wiretapping...
...Director Stanley informs students that the best way to get up-todate regulation equipment is to “follow a telephone company truck around until something falls off...
...knowing that they are forbidden by state laws to possess or use it...
...One man has the money and the other has the schemes and connections to put the capital to work...
...A “tap,” on the other hand, refers specifically to the interception of both sides of a telephone conversation by means of a listening device attached to the telephone line...
...On one occasion I was “captured” with a strangle hold and arm-lock, while my accomplice was subdued by a flying tackle from an overzealous trainee in need of a good grade...
...In Classroom D the intricacies of the telephone system are laid bare to the student wiretappers...
...ative complained that .discussions ’of legality would not help sales of equipment...
...The tap may be inside the telephone itself, or it may be somewhere outside the building, in a pole can, or in a ground box nearby the residence of the phone being tapped...
...Desks and dressers are dismantled, and transmitters taped behind the drawers...
...Our Select Fraternity’ The justification for police spying and the need for more sophisticated equipment given by Jack Holcomb and NIA Director Stanley is that organized crime cannot be stopped by other means...
...Such indiscriminate training was, however, a concern of the presidentially appointed National Commission on Wiretap Laws...
...Hopefully it will result in enforceable laws to reverse the rising tide of electronic surveillance in this country...
...He boasts of having free-lanced all over the country prior to the 1968 legislation that restricted wiretapping and bugging to police agencies...
...Federal legislation known as Title 111 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 is supposed to regulate the use, manufacture, advertising and sale of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping devices...
...Mention of NIA as employer has been known to abort traffic tickets, expedite credit approval and elicit awed reactions from nonemployees...
...The school is now staffed mostly by former Florida policeme n . According to the Police Standards Board-approved guidelines, NIA enrollment is limited to career law enforcement officers with a minimum of two years in narcotics, vice, intelligence, organized crime or criminal investigation, or in internal security...
...The course includes directions for every contingency, from lack of equipment to nosey telephone company personnel...
...If the California police can’t learn wiretapping at NIA, they won’t buy a telephone transmitter from AID...
...Another employee and I played the roles of the two hapless drug dealers, doomed to capture at the end of the day...
...Students are advised to check their local jurisdictions for prohibitions...
...Claiming that release of such records would jeopardize police operations, Holcomb declined to produce NIA’s enrollment statistics...
...Martin also doubles as the personnel manager for AJD and NIA...
...In general terms, a “bug” means any clandestine eavesdropping accomplished with a device of some sort...
...Although it has capacity for 100 students, the Tradewinds has never hosted more than 32 at a time...
...Bell & Howell, for example, does not simply make slide projectors and movie cameras...
...Its student, body is comprised of municipal, county, state and federal agents, including many from states which prohibit their police agencies from using wiretaps and eavesdropping equipment...
...As for teachers, the Academy has employed ex-CIA, ex-Customs Bureau and...
...Title 111 delegates to the states the right to further legislate on the use of intercepts, and many states have done so...
...Holcomb controls both AID and NIA, apparently oblivious to regulations of the IRS and the Florida Police Standards Board, which certifies the Academy...
...Only communists and Mafia figures would benefit by tighter control, they say...
...Their “Special Operations Group” in Massachusetts is AID’S largest competitor, and it was Bell & Howell equipment that was recovered from Nixon’s plumbers...
...They ought to know...
...In police circles, Goodwin is known as a police buff...
...Elaborate wall murals add scenic backgrounds, depicting residential and business locales for the various types of phone installations...
...Police from California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio-state., prohibiting their investigative agencies from wiretapping-have been accepted and trained at NIA...
...Audio Intelligence Devices is a manufacturing facility, It produces a complete arsenal of wiretapping and room-bugging equipment...
...The National Intelligence Academy is neither national nor particularly related to intelligence...
...It is exactly 1/80th of the curriculum...
...Even those from states with enabling statutes boast of having conducted taps and intercepts without benefit of required court order...
...One year later Holcomb turned up in Haiti...
...The room is locked whenever telephone company personnel are in the building on service calls, and even the students are prevented from viewing it until the last few days of their training program...
...The only clear distinction between the two addresses appears on the huge letters painted on the rear of the building for the benefit of aircraft taxiing in from the adjacent Executive Airport...
...Two Michigan officers who took part in the conversation agreed that sometimes the police had to step outside the law in order to be effective...
...Because of this distinction and the continuing furor in the aftermath of Watergate, the word wiretap has disappeared from NIA’s approved list of terminology...
...Tiny “fleapower’’ devices are hung in the folds of floor-length drapes...
...Its curriculum includes wiretapping, clandestine recording, microphone concealment and vehicular tracking...
...The fingerprint cards, if they are received at all, are filed away with no attempt .to verify identity...
...hollow bed headboards are opened, transmitters installed, and the microphones fed through tiny holes drilled through the wood...
...Since there is no federal agency of the same name, Holcomb cannot be accused of impersonating a federal agent, but the effect is the same...
...With all his millions, the 57-yearold Goodwin looks like the night watchman coming in to pick up his severance check...
...Many states have outlawed wiretapping and other types of bugging completely...
...A subsidiary in the NIA/AID empire is the Tradewinds Hotel on Ft...
...Outside the Law The trajnees themselves are aware’ of the laws of their own states but are eager students nevertheless...
...It includes samples of virtually every type of indoor and outdoor terminal block and access point the would-be tapper is likely to encounter...
...retired’ military intelligence agents...
...He rocks forward and back on his slightly bowed legs, locking and unlocking his knees, giving the distinct impression that at any moment he will either fall flat on his face or break into headlong flight...
...Two men are responsible for the sibling firms...
...He carries at least one set of phony credentials manufactured by the NIA/AID graphics department identifying him as an agent of a New York Narcotics Agency...
...We even produced two color movies extolling the superior qualities and applications of AID’S products for eavesdropping...
...Other manufacturers range from one-man, garage-sized operations to well-financed su bsidiaries of larger firms...
...They monitor on receivers set up elsewhere in the hotel while a drug deal conversation is reenacted in the room they have bugged...
...Already, NIA graduates have been implicated in recent investigations into political uses of wiretapping in Louisiana...
...NIA’s screening process is only on paper...
...The letterhead stationery, the vinyl binders for student training manuals, and the business cards of the instructors all bear a patriotic red, white, and blue eagle crest logo pirated from a catalog of government insignias...
...They only happen to be one of the larger interests...
...He needn’t have worried...
...Phony Procedures The NIA is supposedly governed by a board of directors which, in compliance with the Police Standards Board of Florida, establishes the criteria for admission to the two-week basic course in technical surveillance...
...The authorizing signature on the ID was masterfully forged from an original by the NIA graphics supervisor, who boasts of his abiljty to duplicate virtually any signature with only a little practice...
...The ID emphasizes the words NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE at the top of the card, while the word “Academy” appears in smaller type of another color elsewhere...
...With instructors monitoring the phones, the students are graded on how quietly they can tap into a phone conversation already in progress...
...The title alone implies federal authority, an amusing fringe benefit to some employees...
...Classroom D Classroom D defies disguise...
...I once asked the director, Ronald E. Stanley, about the propriety and consequences of such training...
Vol. 7 • December 1975 • No. 10
