Baitfish, Barracuda and Al Capone

By Bill West

Jeff Breinholt’s excellent CTB article today, “The Value of Aggressive Enforcement,” is a strong reminder of the historically proven value of the multi-agency task force approach in targeting complex and difficult criminal organizations. This has been carried into the national security arena with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the various similar multi-agency efforts. The theory goes back to the Al Capone gangster days when the notorious mobster was taken down on those “mundane” tax violations. Everyone knew Capone was a murderous thug, but the tax charges were what the Feds could make stick. History has not seen many defenders of Mr. Capone.

Having spent a quarter century investigating and enforcing US immigration and nationality laws, and most of those years in organized crime and national security task force efforts, I know this approach works. Whether utilizing more routine violations against lower-level suspects (the baitfish) to work up the chain toward the kingpins (the barracuda) or, on occasion, charging the main players with “lesser” offenses, the end result is taking many bad guys (and sometimes bad gals) off the streets. Some of the most powerful and wide-ranging of those “routine” violations are tax and currency charges, weapons violations and immigration violations.

Interestingly, when the Government has applied these investigative and prosecution techniques against organized crime targets, there is little if any protest from any quarter, including the media, except perhaps the criminal suspects themselves and their attorneys. That has not been the case when these entirely legitimate and proven techniques are applied against terrorism suspects and their organizations. Suddenly, investigators and prosecutors are accused of bias and going on “fishing expeditions” and “casting wide nets.”

There is no double standard in this. This is smart and effective application of proven investigative and prosecution process. It needs to continue.

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