X-NEWS: eisner comp.dcom.telecom: 4916 Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.1 30/1/93 VAX/VMS V5.5-2; site eisner.decus.org Path: eisner.decus.org!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Special Report: FBI Raid on Telco Manager's Home Message-ID: <05.09.93.1@eecs.nwu.edu> From: TELECOM Moderator Date: Sun, 9 May 1993 15:00:00 CDT Reply-To: TELECOM Moderator Sender: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Approved: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu Lines: 320 This news report from the May 9, 1993 {Omaha World Herald} arrived in my mail just a few minutes ago. PAT From: jsaker@cwis.unomaha.edu (James R. Saker Jr.) Subject: FBI Raid on Curtis Nebr. Telco, Family Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha Date: Sun, 9 May 1993 16:34:53 GMT The following article detailing a FBI raid on a small-town family and local exchange carrier was printed in this morning's Sunday {Omaha World Herald}: "FBI Probe, Raid Anger Curtis Man" Stephen Buttry, {Omaha World Herald}, Sunday May 9, 1993 Curtis Neb. -- The evening was winding down for the Cole family. Ed Cole, general manager of the Curtis Telephone Co., had dozed off on the living room couch. His wife, Carol, was running water for her bath. The 10-year-old identical twins, Stephanie and Jennifer, had gone to bed. Amanda, 14, was watching "48 Hours" on television in the living room. "It had something to do with fingerprints and catching criminals," Amanda remembers of the TV show. At 9:40 p.m., Amanda heard a knock and answered the door. In marched the FBI. Thus began a year of fear, anger and uncertainty for the Coles. Mrs. Cole, 40, still has nightmares about the night of May 13, 1992, when federal agents stormed into her bedroom, startling her as she was undressing for her bath, naked from the waist up. "I used to go to bed and sleep the whole night," she said last week. "I can't anymore." Federal agents did not find the illegal wiretapping equipment they were seeking, and a year later no one has been charged. The agents siezed nothing from the house and later returned the cassette tapes they took from the phone company office. Ronald Rawalt, the FBI agent in North Platte who headed the investigation that led to the raid, declined to comment, referring questions to the Omaha office. "It's still a pending investigation, and we're not allowed to make a statement," said agent Doug Hokenstad of the FBI's Omaha office. If the investigation comes up empty, he said "we normally don't make a statement at the end of the investigation." That infuriates Cole, 39, who says the raid cast suspicion on him and the phone company and left them with no way to clear their names. "Either file charges or say there's nothing there," he said. "This was done in a highly visible manner, and there was no finality to it." Request for Help Cole has asked Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., to investigate. Beth Gonzales, Kerrey's press secretary, said the senator received Cole's letter and is assessing the situation. The case that brought FBI agents from Washington, Denver, Houston and Omaha, as well as nearby North Platte, to this tiny southwest Nebraska town in the Medicine Creek valley apparently started with a personnel squabble in the phone company office. Cole said two women complained of their treatment by two other workers. The women who complained threatened to quit if the company did not take action against the other women, he said. Cole and his assistant manager, Steve Cole, who is not related, observed the office workers for a while. "We found the same two making the ultimatum were the aggressors," Ed Cole said. He gave the complaining employees written reprimands, and they quit Jan 16, 1992. The two women contended in a hearing concerning state unemployment benefits that personality differences with Ed Cole led to the reprimands and their resignations. Both women declined to comment on the matter. 300-Hertz Tone In an affidavit filed to obtain the search warrants, agent Rawalt said one of the two, Carol Zak, contacted the FBI in March 1992 and told them of "unusual electronic noises (tapping noises) on her telephone line at the inception of a call received." Later in the affidavit, the noise is described not as tapping, but as a 300-hertz tone. Steve and Ed Cole demonstrated the tone last week on phone company equipment. It is caused, they said, by a defective 5-by-7 circuit board, or card. The defect is common, and the company replaces the card if a customer complains. The tone is not heard if a customer answers between rings, but if the customer answers during a ring, the tone blares into the earpiece for an instant, about the duration of the ring. Ed Cole, who has placed wiretaps for law officers with warrents, said wiretaps don't cause such a sound. "Most wiretaps, don't they have a loud, blasting noise to announce there's an illegal wiretap?" he asked sarcastically. Surveillance After Mrs. Zak told agent Rawalt of the noise on her line, the FBI began recording her calls, the affidavit says. On April 30, the affidavit says, the FBI began surveillance of Ed Cole -- not an easy task in a town of 791 people. During the weeks before the raid, phone company employees noticed a stranger watching the office and workers' houses. They guessed that a private investigator was watching, possibly gathering information for the former workers. "When somebody sits around in a car in a small-town Curtis, especially at 3:30 when grade school lets out, people take notice," Steve Cole said. "We had a suspicion that we were under surveilance." The affidavit says agent Robert Howan, an electrical engineer from FBI headquarters, analyzed tapes of Mrs. Zak's phone calls and concluded that a wiretap on the line "is controlled from the residence of Eddie Cole Jr. and is facilitited through a device or computer program at the Curtis Telephone Company." Based on Rawalt's affidavit, U.S. Magistrate Kathleen Jaudzemis in Omaha issued warrents to search Cole's house and company offices. Federal agents gathered in North Platte and headed south to Curtis for the late-evening raid. Flashlights, Commotion When Amanda Cole opened the door, she said "The first people that came in went past me." They rushed through the living room into the kitchen to let more agents in the back door. The agents wore black jackets and raincoats, with large, yellow letters proclaiming "FBI." Neighbors and passersby began to notice the commotion as other agents searched the outside with flashlights. The agents showed Cole the search warrant and told him and Amanda to stay in the living room. The agents asked where the other girls were, and Cole replied that it was a school night and they were in bed. Rather than flipping the hall light switch, the agents went down the darkened hall with flashlights, "like they think my kids are going to jump up and shoot them," Cole said. The twins recalled that they were puzzled, then scared, to wake up as FBI agents shined flashlights on them. The intruders did not enter gently, either. "After they left, our doorknob was broken," Jennifer said. Farther down the hall, the agents found the embarrassed and angry Mrs. Cole. "They didn't knock or anything, and I was undressing," she said. "They told me to get a T-shirt on." After Mrs. Cole put her clothes back on, agents allowed her to go with them to get the frightened twins out of bed. Mrs. Cole and the twins also were instructed to stay in the living room. Interrogation As agents searched the house, Cole said, Rawalt told him to step out on the porch. While he was outside, Mrs. Cole decided to call the phone company's attorney. "They told me I couldn't do that," she said. "I worked at the Sheriff's Office for several years, and I know no matter what you're accused of, you're entitled to an attorney." She called anyway. Meanwhile, according to Cole, Rawalt was interrogating and berating him loudly on the front porch, creating what Cole considered a "public spectacle." "I've lived here 15 years. I've built up a reputation," said Cole, who is president of the Curtis Housing Authority, chairman of the Nebraska Telephone Association, and coach of the twins' softball team. "And there's cars going by real slow. Here Rawalt brings me out on the front porch, turn on the light for everyone to see and starts interrogating me." Cole said Rawalt tried to pressure him to admit he was wiretapping and tell him where the equipment was. "He pointed at my wife and kids and said, 'Look at what you're putting them through,'" Cole said. Three-Hour Search Cole said it would take about 20 minutes for an expert to examine the phones in the house -- a teen line, the main line plus two extensions, a 24-hour repair prone that rings at his home as well as the main office, and an alarm that rings in from the central office. "The search continued for more than three hours, as agents looked in closets, cabinets and drawers. The family could hear Garth Brooks singing as agents played the children's tapes, apparently hunting for recorded phone conversations. At the same time the Coles' house was being searched, agents visited Steve Cole and Roger Bryant, a phone company employee who is a neighbor of Mrs. Zak's. "They insinuated I had broken into my neighbor's house to put in a wiretap," he said. The agents "asked me if I knew if Ed was making electrical devices in his basement." (Cole said he wasn't. Agents found no such devices.) The agents told Steve Cole to take them to the phone company office so they could search the switch room. Number of Agents The Coles were not sure how many agents participated in the raid. They saw at least five at the house but thought they heard others outside and entering the back door and going into the basement. They said seven agents were at the office, but they weren't sure which agents searched both sites. When the agents said they were looking for wiretap equipment, Steve Cole said "I told them it just couldn't be right. If Ed were to do something or I were to do something, the other one would know." Steve Cole said agents searching the phone company, including Howan, did not appear to understand the equipment very well. They would not tell him why they suspected a wiretap. After 1 a.m., Ed Cole said, the search of his house ended, with agents empty-handed and taking him to the office. About 4 a.m., the agents told Steve Cole about the 300-hertz tone. "The minute they told me, I knew what it was," he said. He said he quickly found the defective card for Mrs. Zak's line, demonstrated the sound for the agents, then replaced it and showed that the sound was gone. "I demonstrated it, and then they both got white," Steve Cole said. Card Analyzed Howan then went to Rawalt, who was with Ed Cole outside the switch room and explained what had caused the tone, Ed and Steve Cole said. "I'm jubilant," Ed Cole recalled thinking. "I've been exonerated." But he said Rawalt told him: "I've investigated this for two months. I've flown agents in from around the country ... I may charge you on circumstantial evidence." "My heart just sunk," Cole said, "because that means they're not here to find the truth. They're just trying to support their pre- conceived ideas." He said Rawalt told him he would take the card for analysis. Cole said the searches could have, and should have, been conducted without the embarrassing fanfare -- during normal business hours, while the children were in school and his wife was at work. Because of the highly public nature of the raid, Cole said, the company has hired a lawyer to investigate the investigation. The company is trying, with little success, Cole said, to get information from the FBI so it can reassure regulators, lenders, stockholders and customers of the company's integrity. Tapes of Calls Rawalt visited the Cole's house again in January. Although this time it wasn't a raid, his presence upset the family. He returned tapes siezed in the raid but told Cole that the circuit card was stilll at the FBI lab being analyzed. It still has not been returned, Cole said. "The FBI, the most respected law enforcement agency in the world, has had this card in their laboratory in Washington, D.C., for almost one year, and they still cannot determine if it has a tape recorder strapped to it," Cole said. The bureau also has refused to give the phone company of its tapes of Mrs. Zak's phone calls, which could show whether the sound on her line was the tone from the defective card, Cole said. "It makes one wonder if they'd put a family and a company through this just because they don't want to admit a mistake," he said. "If they'll just give me my life back by making a public statement, it would be over." (End of article forwarded to TELECOM Digest.) Jamie Saker jsaker@cwis.unomaha.edu Systems Engineer Business/MIS Major Telenational Communications Univ. Nebraska at Omaha (402) 392-7548 [Moderator's Note: Thank you very much for sending along this report. This is just another example of the clumsy, oafish and unprofessional organization which has become such a big joke in recent years in the USA: The Federal Bureau of Inquisition. Imagine: a telephone line out of order which turns into a massive FBI assault on a private family. And of course there will be no apology; no reparations; nothing like that. The FBI is too arrogant and powerful to bother with making amends for the damage they have done. I hope Ed Cole and his telco demand and obtain revenge on everyone concerned, including first and foremost Mrs. Zak, the scorned woman who set the whole thing in motion when she got fired for her bad attitude at work. I know if it was myself, I would not be content until I had turned the screws very hard on all of them, especially her. PAT]