Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [84]
Prisoner witnesses can also apply for protected testimony. The Bureau of Prisons is responsible for protection of prisoner witnesses while incarcerated. The Marshals Service provides secure transportation to and from court and safe testimony. Provided sponsorship is available, prisoner witnesses can also apply for protection upon release from prison.
A federal investigation and consideration of the likelihood of the prospective witness’ death are essential elements in the assessment of applications for the WPP. Those who are accepted into the program cease to exist under their old names. A check for old records would show that the entrant never existed prior to his or her new identity. Participants may choose their new name as long as it’s ethnically compatible and is not a previously used or a family name. New documentation includes a driver’s license, Social Security card, birth certificate, and diplomas to the level of education that one has actually attained.
Entrants into the WPP undergo an initiation and introduction to the program at a safe site and orientation center situated in metropolitan Washington, D.C. The location is highly secret and secure, bearing no address. In addition to name changes and new documentation, participants are familiarized with information regarding the area from which they supposedly originate. Though contacts back home are discouraged, participants can initiate, but not receive, calls and can keep in touch through secure mail-forwarding channels. Discretionary money is available for rent, furniture, clothes, automobiles, and so forth. Finally, in a signed Memorandum of Understanding, the responsibilities of participants and the Marshals Service are defined.
According to the Marshals Service, “In both criminal and civil matters involving protected witnesses, the Marshals Service cooperates fully with local law enforcement and court authorities in bringing witnesses to justice or in having them fulfill their legal responsibilities.”
However, in his article, Mr. Slate takes issue with that statement, writing: “As an analysis of the history of the WPP shows, along with litigation, and subsequent hearings, it is questionable whether such cooperation has always occurred. The witness protection statutes contemplated only the protection of witnesses and their families—not protection of the public from the witness. This Machiavellian approach of putting governmental interests first has served to taint the origins and development of the WPP.”
The victim of a glitch, Andrew remained in the Hole for four months. The prosecutors and agents he was working with thought he had already been moved. While they were preparing to visit him in his new home, they found he was still in Otisville. Shortly after that, he was given and passed a polygraph exam and was finally ready to enter the first phase of the WPP on December 16, 1998. It was a move he welcomed.
“Those four months in the Hole were pretty stressful for me,” Andrew remembers. “By the time they transferred me, I’d lost ten or fifteen pounds and hadn’t had a haircut in months and seldom shaved. I must have looked like somebody who’d been stranded on a deserted island for a while. I was pretty aggravated with the way things had gone. It was the kind of therapy I didn’t need. But I finally was formally accepted.
“Entering the Program meant moving to a special housing unit with other inmates like yourself. These are usually smaller settings placed in strategic locations across the United States. I have too much respect for the marshals to name any of the locations.