By Honor Bound Page 23
“At first the military special missions units were a little standoffish,” Tom recalls with a grin. “Their attitude was, ‘This is something we can do. Just give us a call and we’ll storm the building for you.’ When we told them about the precautionary and measured restrictions of a law enforcement confrontation and engagement, they became a little less interested. And when we told them that after every shooting where there are wounded or fatalities, we turn in our guns for forensic examination, they really stepped back. ‘We’ll stick to pure combat,’ they said, ‘and you can have the domestic law enforcement–related operations.’ Of course, there was the issue of the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the military from being used to enforce state laws, but that was another issue. They wanted no part of our restrictions. But we had a good working relationship with both Army and Navy special missions units, and we enjoyed ongoing cross-training with them. We came to know, like, and respect them, and they felt much the same about us. We had similar mission requirements but different rules of engagement and different areas of responsibilities. So it was a good fit.”
“The first time I was with Tommy on a serious confrontation,” Prouty recalled, “we were after a group of violent Puerto Rican separatists in San Juan. These were some seriously bad guys called Los Macheteros. They had killed a guard in a bank robbery and now they were holed up in a building, and we thought they had hostages. I was outside the building, and Tommy was inside the front door near a staircase with another HRT member. The leader of the Macheteros, Filberto Ojeda Rios, and his wife were up on the second floor. Tommy and his teammate rounded the staircase and began to climb the stairs when they ran into a hail of machine gun fire. The shooting resulted in Tommy’s teammate taking some cement fragments in the leg. Tommy grabbed him off the stairway. Then we went into a long period of negotiations. Finally, Rios’s wife came down and surrendered, but Rios would not surrender. As Tommy stepped outside to call for tear gas, Rios came down the stairs with his submachine gun slung. Suddenly, he raised a concealed handgun. One of the agents inside shot the gun from his hand. It was a lucky shot for sure, but we were doing everything possible to take him alive. Tommy reacted instantly. With only a pistol, he raced back into the building and took Rios into custody. I’d heard from SEAL buddies that Tommy had no fear, and this incident confirmed it for me. He was going back in to take on a guy with an automatic weapon with just his pistol.
“Another issue with Tommy was his use of bureau vehicles,” Sandy continued, shaking his head with a grin. “The exact number is not known, and he wrecked just one while I was his supervisor. With only one eye, he had problems with depth perception. He even wrecked a car in a car wash, or got it so tangled with the car-wash equipment that they had to call a wrecker. He was a brave and very capable agent, but when he got behind the wheel, look out. After he left the HRT and was working for Wayne Manis in Idaho, he was chasing a bad guy and drove a car into Lake Coeur d’Alene. Going into a cold, deep lake with a car is serious business; the water pressure won’t allow you to open the doors. But Tommy just waited for the car to settle and the water level to rise to the roof, then rolled down the window and swam out. But you had to love the guy. He put a lot of bad guys in jail.”
Following his time in the Navy, Charles “Sandy” Prouty enjoyed a long and active career. He earned his law degree at George Mason at night while working at the Washington field office. He was one of the early supervisory agents at the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, leaving the HRT for FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Prouty was the special agent in charge of the Boston field office at the time of 9/11. He retired as the executive assistant director for Law Enforcement Services at the FBI.
Perhaps Tom’s most important and notable undercover operation was the Sikh sting, an operation that ultimately thwarted an attempt on the life of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The operation started in late 1984 when a man named Frank Camper contacted the Birmingham office of the FBI. Camper later met with Cecil Moses, the special agent in charge of the Birmingham, Alabama, field office. Camper ran a mercenary-type shooting school of sorts that trained military wannabes and amateur soldiers of fortune—those who wanted to think of themselves as mercenaries. He also sold them guns, ammunition, and field gear. Camper was something of a character and a good old southern boy who had an inborn dislike of federal agents.
“When we met with him, Frank Camper told us this amazing story,” Moses recalled. “He stated right off that he didn’t like me or any other federal agent, but that this was maybe something I ought to know about. A group of four Sikhs from India who were part of a radical Sikh separatist organization based in New Jersey were enrolled in Camper’s school for mercenary training. They apparently were very well funded and they seemed to trust Camper. They had just come to him and asked him if he knew anyone with expertise constructing bombs—improvised explosive devices. They further told Camper that they were preparing to target and assassinate the prime minister of India. They wanted someone to help them with this and to teach them bomb-making skills so they could take that knowledge back to the Punjab area of India and conduct terrorist operations there. Camper told them he would see what he could do. Now this guy had come to us with this.”
“We needed an undercover agent who could pose as a disaffected, ex-military type who knew about demolitions,” said case agent Bob Sligh. “And one that didn’t look like an FBI agent sheep-dipped to appear like some radical bomb maker. I’d met Tommy briefly while I was assigned to the Washington field office and I knew he worked undercover. We asked for Tommy, and they sent him down to us for an interview and a briefing of what we were up against. When Cecil met him he agreed with me; Tommy was perfect for the job. I knew he was a decorated Navy SEAL, and since he was with the HRT, we figured he could handle himself. Camper made the introductions, and Tommy fell right in with these Sikhs. They liked him and they immediately trusted him. They also wanted to know if he could get them C-4 explosives, automatic weapons, and false passports. Tommy told them ‘no problem,’ that he could do it all.
“The Sikhs had a compound on some land in Delaware County, Pennsylvania,” Sligh continued, “near the Pennsylvania–New Jersey state line. They wanted Tommy up there to work with them. In addition to bomb-making skills and documents, they wanted him to train them in urban warfare and urban assassinations. There were some thirty to forty active members of this Sikh separatist organization. Most of them were here on student visas. Their leader was a New York–based Sikh named Lal Singh. Their primary objective was to assassinate Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when he arrived in New York in June 1985 for a state visit.
“The government of Prime Minister Gandhi [Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of India from 1984 through 1989] was very unpopular among the Sikhs in India. Sikh bodyguards who were supposed to be protecting his mother and predecessor, Indira Gandhi, were the ones who had killed her. Rajiv Gandhi had initiated a campaign of repression against the Sikh community in India, and now they were out to get him—while he was on American soil. With Tommy on the inside, the FBI was going to let the plan mature and arrest them prior to the PM’s scheduled visit. But the Sikhs had other ideas.”
“Bhajan Lal, a senior Indian official, was scheduled to be in New Orleans for a medical procedure ahead of the Gandhi visit,” said Cecil Moses, picking up the story, “so the Sikhs decided to target him as well. Through connections to Frank Camper and confirmed by Tommy, the FBI learned that four armed Sikhs were on their way to New Orleans to kill Lal. Bureau agents, working with local law enforcement, intercepted the four armed assassins moments before they would have killed Bhajan Lal. With this plot thwarted, the bureau had to quickly decide what to do. Did this action to save Lal jeopardize the plan to take down the Sikh compound in Pennsylvania? Was Tom Norris blown and now at risk? They decided to move. A host of bureau agents descended on the compound, but the Sikhs were gone. They had scattered, but their plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi was foiled.”
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Without Tommy’s undercover work,” reported Bob Sligh, “the prime minister of India, the world’s largest democracy, might have been assassinated in the United States.”
“The work of the bureau and Tommy’s role in the case had national implications,” recalled Cecil Moses. “At the time, we weren’t on all that good of terms with the Indian government. Thwarting plans to kill Bhajan Lal and Prime Minister Gandhi gave President Reagan a chance to bolster our relations with the Indians. As for Frank Camper, that was another story. He was later arrested for his involvement in a firebombing out in California, and did prison time as a result of the conviction. It was after I retired that he came up for parole. I was happy to testify at his parole hearing and see him released. He was a crook, but he was also a patriot. I still get a Christmas card from him each year.”
“We managed to convict Lal Singh in New York and the four would-be assassins in New Orleans,” Sligh said. “All did time. Following the arrests, myself and two other agents were with Tommy in New Orleans preparing for the trial. We were at Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter having dinner the night before our scheduled court appearances. One of the agents who was having a beer excused himself to use the restroom. While the rest of us were talking, the waiter cleared the table and also took the guy’s beer. Well, he came back and said, ‘Hey, where’s my beer?’ We explained our oversight, and he ordered another beer. We talked for a while longer and the same guy said, ‘I’m going to make another head call. This time, keep an eye on my beer.’ When he returned, he reached for his beer and jerked his hand back. ‘What th’ hell!’ he shouts. Sitting on top of his beer glass, on a coaster, is Tommy’s glass eye. ‘Well,’ Tommy says with a wry smile, ‘you said you wanted us to keep an eye on your beer.’ Tommy was not without a sense of humor.”
* * *
“It was a busy time for me at the bureau during the mid- and late 1980s,” Tom recalled. “I was busy with the HRT, and I still had a caseload at the Washington field office. And these undercover assignments, which I really liked, kept coming up. I’d settle in to work on my caseload, then I’d have to zip across the country for a hostage-taking or an undercover assignment. I liked working in the Washington office and I liked being with the HRT down in Quantico. There were great people to work with in both places. But I was looking for a chance to move out west and get closer to my property in Idaho. That came about when a long-term undercover assignment came up at the Salt Lake City field office. It meant I’d have to leave the HRT and relocate to Salt Lake. Even so, I was ready to return to more of the investigative work and full-time law enforcement.
“I was also looking to settle down and be in one place for a while. I’d been in the bureau for close to ten years and I loved the work, but that work involved working a lot of overtime and it came with a lot of travel. I was dating then, but I didn’t have a steady girlfriend or one I was seeing for any extended period of time—not with my schedule. It was in the back of my mind that if I were ever to get married or start a family, maybe I ought to be in one place. But it seemed that the job always came first.
“The Salt Lake City office was working on a big case that involved the theft of government property on a large scale. Some of the theft was taking place on nearby Hill Air Force Base, but it was going on at other bases across the country too. The case strategy was to set up a seemingly legal entity that would serve as a fence for stolen military property. Then the bad guys would come to us, and we could let them build the case against themselves. Investigating theft on a military base is not as easy as it sounds. It’s a closed world, and while there are procedures for custody and disposition of government property, there are also ways around the system for those on the inside. At Hill, they were stealing property that ranged from gas masks and body armor to surplus jet engines.
“We set up this pawn-shop-slash-fencing operation, and let it be known that we didn’t ask a lot of questions regarding items brought in for sale. We set up a storefront and took in a lot of legal and routine merchandise that was resold to other legitimate outlets at a taxpayer’s discount. For about six months, another agent and I were living the life of borderline-legal used-goods brokers. Pretty soon we were getting in pilfered military equipment and consumables. All of the transactions were carefully documented by hidden video and audio surveillance monitors. From time to time we’d travel to gun shows, where we would set up a booth and buy military equipment. This gave us a chance to mingle with the other buyers to determine if they had or purchased stolen government property.
“It was a great operation. We’d make a buy and document the transaction for use later in court. The operation proved to net a good many government-property theft rings, and ended up convicting and putting a lot of people in jail. It was very satisfying.
“While all this was going on, the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office asked me what I’d like to do after we wrapped this thing up. I said that I’d like a transfer up to the Coeur d’Alene office. I knew there was an opening up there in the office with Wayne Manis. He was responsible for the federal investigations across northern Idaho. He told me he thought I would be happier in Salt Lake, but he agreed to the Coeur d’Alene transfer. Shortly after the prosecution and trial work associated with the government thefts, I was on my way to the panhandle of Idaho. Coeur d’Alene is the Kootenai County seat and, with a population then of about 25,000, it was an Idaho metropolis. The office was only a half-hour drive from my ranch on Hayden Lake. After all the traveling, the moving, the undercover work, and all, I was finally home—home in the mountains of Idaho.”
After a twenty-year career in the FBI, Tom Norris officially retired from the bureau and the Coeur d’Alene office in 1999. Tom’s duties included the full range of federal investigative work, but he became best known in the FBI for his undercover work. Moving among criminals while posing as one of them takes a special kind of person—sort of like moving behind the lines through enemy territory in Vietnam. Here again, Tom seemed to have a knack for it. He saw duty as one of the first assault team leaders with the newly formed Hostage Rescue Team. Today, active and retired FBI agents tell stories of Tom Norris and his exploits in the bureau, just as Navy SEALs reminisce of his combat exploits in Vietnam. When asked about all this, Tom will often demur or try to change the subject. I know he’s proud to have been a Navy SEAL and very proud to have earned the right to wear the Medal of Honor. But if you press him on the subject or ask him about the sum of his life, he will tell you, “I was very lucky to have had some great work both in the Navy and in the bureau, and some great people to work with.”
At his retirement ceremony in Coeur d’Alene in late 1999, there was a large gathering. Representing the many present from the bureau were Wayne Manis, Sandy Prouty, and other former SEALs who became bureau agents. Several SEAL team commanding officers and command master chiefs were there in full-dress whites. Medal of Honor recipients Vice Admiral Jim Stockdale, Drew Dix, and Mike Thornton were there. Among the former SEALs, there was Ryan McCombie and Dick Couch. His brothers, Kenny and Jim, were present as well. There was a lot of good fun and gag gifts presented to Tom. The one I like best came from a contingent of current and former members of the HRT. It seems that when Tom left the team and they were cleaning out his desk, they found one of his extra glass eyeballs that he left behind. The HRT agents had it painted, replacing the iris with the crest of the HRT. When they presented it to him, to much applause and no few shrieks from the ladies present, Tommy promptly popped out his prosthetic eye and popped in the HRT adorned replacement. He wore it for the rest of the evening.
AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB
In receiving the Medal of Honor, Tom Norris and Mike Thornton qualified to join an exclusive club, perhaps the most exclusive club in America—the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. The society was created on 14 August 1958 by legislation signed by President Dwight Eisenhower. The purpose of the organization, as spelled out in Chapter 33, Title 36, of the U.S. Code, is:
2. Maintaining the memory and respect for those who had died receiving the Medal of Honor, as well as those living recipients who had since died.
3. Protection and preservation of the dignity and honor of the Medal of Honor at all times and on all occasions.
4. Protecting the name of the Medal of Honor as well as individual Medal of Honor recipients from exploitation.
5. Providing assistance and aid to needy Medal of Honor recipients, their spouses or widows, and their children.
6. Promoting patriotism and allegiance to the Government and Constitution of the United States.
7. To serve the United States in peace or war.
8. To promote and perpetuate the principles upon which our nation is founded.