BEFORE THE UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES
CONGRESS COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS
2226 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C.
November 4 & 5, 1991
Good afternoon, Chairman Miller and Members of this Subcommittee-
My name is Sherree Rich. I am testifying today in response to a subpoena about my employment with Wackenhut. I am currently a Child Abuse Investigator with the State of Florida. Prior to that, I worked for six months for the Wackenhut Corporation.
Prior to accepting employment with Wackenhut I had worked for the Tallahassee Police Department for two and a half years, and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office for three and a half months on a special undercover operation.
I accepted employment with the Wackenhut Corporation in August, 1990, after applying and being interviewed at the Tampa office of the Wackenhut Corporation. Since I was interested in becoming an investigator I was referred to Wayne Black, of the Miami Special Investigations Division (hereinafter "SID). Several weeks after my initial interview I was contacted by Wayne Black for an interview. Wackenhut arranged to fly me to Miami for an interview at the SID offices. During that interview I advised Mr. Black that I was interested in becoming an investigator. He agreed to train me as an investigator. Because of recent undercover experience in my previous job, he requested that I begin work on an undercover operation that Wackenhut was conducting in the Washington, D.C. area.
After completion of my background investigation I was hired, and went to Miami for final processing and preparation for the operation. The final preparation for leaving to conduct the activity was to get a large amount of cash for use in setting up the undercover office.
Mr. Wayne Black and I flew up to Washington on or about August 11, 1990. On the flight to Washington, D.C. I was provided a number of articles to read about Exxon's activities in Alaska, environmental issues about oil spills, and the Alaska pipeline from Alaska newspapers. We were joined later by Rick Lund and Vern Johnson. We checked into the Crystal City Marriot Hotel, where I stayed for approximately 4-5 weeks. All of my hotel expenses for were covered by Wackenhut.
During the first few days after arriving in Virginia I was briefed on what my duties were to be in connection with the undercover operation. Initially I was told very little about what the real purpose of the investigation was. I was directed to open and set up and office, posing as "The Ecolit Group," which I knew to be a false identity standing for "ecological litigation." This included opening a personal bank account in my name, with ECOLIT on the check. I deposited several thousand dollars. It also included ordering cards with my name on the ECOLIT card identifying myself as a "staff researcher." I also ordered cards for Wayne Black, identifying him as Dr. Wayne Jenkins. As part of my cover I also joined the Library of Congress as a researcher. I ordered the Anchorage Daily News as part of the cover so that the office looked legitimate. I also purchased several books about environmental issues and several environmental posters, such as "SAVE THE WHALES" and "SAVE THE EARTH" as props.
The bogus office was located at 2341 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 525, in the Century Building, Arlington, Virginia. The office was in a suite of offices that shared common secretarial answering and reception services, and a common lobby. In order to appear legitimate I also received daily telephone calls from Miami, posing as if it was the Miami ECOLIT office, as well as faxes and occasional letters.
At about the same time, Mr. Richard Lund, posing as Mr. John Fox, rented a suite in the same location called Overseas Trading Company. Although we were working together in this undercover operation, we pretended only to know Mr. Fox casually because he assisted in getting our computers. In fact, Mr. Rick Lund, and another gentleman named Vern Johnson, wired the offices with video and audio microphones and cameras for the purpose of recording all of the communications and transactions between Hamel and Black. This included putting in a video camera inside a portable stereo which was wired to Rick Lund's office where it was picked up on a receiver and recorded. The sound system was also wired through the ceiling panels to the office two or three offices down the hallway. I was present when all the wiring was done in these offices.
I was present during the time when Rick Lund and Vern Johnson wired Ecolit's office in Arlington, Virginia. We arrived at the QRC offices (where we rented the Ecolit office) at night. Rick and Vern ran wires from John Fox's office, International Overseas Trading, through the ceiling into the Ecolit office. Rick had attached the wires to a remote controlled, toy dune buggy. He used this vehicle to drive across the inside of the ceiling from his office, across the intervening office to the Ecolit office so he could get the wires to the Ecolit office. He ran the wire from the ceiling through a stanchion in the wall, cut a hole in the wall to bring the wire out and ran the wire under the carpet.
Up until the opening of the office all I had been told was that we were conducting the investigation into a person named Charles Hamel. According to Wayne Black, Mr. Hamel had spent about ten years trying to seek revenge on Exxon for receiving a raw deal on oil brokering. Throughout the entire course of my involvement with the undercover operation, Exxon and Alyeska were used interchangeably by all of my superiors. I came to understand that Alyeska was a company formed by seven oil companies, and assumed that it was the Exxon portion of Alyeska that was requesting the investigation.
As I became more familiar with the investigation I learned that Mr. Hamel was receiving documents and information, allegedly illegally, from sources within Alyeska. Wayne Black and Rick Lund told me that Hamel would receive Exxon and Alyeska information and then turn it over to Congressman Miller, and also get the Environmental Protection Agency involved, and that by doing so Hamel was causing Alyeska and Exxon a great deal of financial hardship and negative publicity. It was my understanding that the purpose of the investigation was to find out who the sources of information were and let Alyeska know who they were, so that they could handle the leaks. I believed that as soon as an employee was identified he or she would be terminated. In fact, I believe that one employee was identified and terminated during this time frame.
It was my understanding that the investigation would last for six months to a year. In order to staff the office I was told to rent an apartment in Crystal City, Virginia. I did so; all of the expenses and costs for the apartment were paid by Wackenhut, including a rental car, gas, food, and utilities. The only thing I was responsible for were personal telephone calls and personal items. I was not aware of any State of Virginia or local authority license to conduct this activity.
My job was to appear to be researching environmental causes in and around the Washington, D.C. area, and to convince Mr. Hamel of the legitimacy of the operation. Throughout the course of the investigation, when Wayne "Jenkins" Black received documents from Hamel, I was to scan those documents into a computer. I was responsible for paying all of the bills for the office.
While the operation was going on someone from the Miami office drove up a Recreational Vehicle Camper fully equipped with living quarters and electronic surveillance equipment, such as portable telephones, two way radios, and other equipment that I did not recognize but understood to be used for picking up telephone calls. The RV was parked near Mr. Hamel's condo and the park for one night.
I was aware that Wackenhut had someone pick up Mr. Hamel's trash to go through it for information, and also knew that while Mr. Black was at Mr. Hamel's house he was wired to pick up all of their conversations, and that during his visit there he went through a bunch of Hamel's documents that were lying around and read from those documents into the "wire" so that the information could be transmitted back to Rick Lund. On one occasion I was also wired to go to Hamel's house, when I gave him a check for $2,000.
It was my understanding that Hamel was having personal financial problems, and that part of the plan was to "hook" him into working with Wackenhut's undercover operations was to make funds available to help him support his environmental causes. I presented two checks to Mr. Hamel, one in the office and one at his house.
I was never present at any meetings in the office or the hotel room, and never went to dinner with Mr. Hamel, but I know that Mr. Black met with him in the office and that those meetings were videoed taped by Mr. Lund in his office down the hall.
The operation lasted about three months, during which time Mr. Black came from Miami on a number of occasions. At the end of that time frame I was told that the operation was closing down. I was told that it was closing down because Alyeska attorneys wanted to stop the operation. I believe that one of the concerns that led to closing down the operation was because Wackenhut was confirming that Hamel did, in fact, have information on environmental wrongdoing which Wackenhut had no way to handle.
For the last few weeks of the operations it was unclear to me how long it would actually last. Comments were made about closing it down early. Then Mr. Black stopped talking to Mr. Hamel entirely , and directed me to "cover" for him by saying he was in a meeting or not in his office in Miami. To the best of my knowledge Mr. Black never called him back. Then Mr. Black returned to Miami, and I was instructed to close down the office and load the computer equipment, files, posters, and all of the props and papers we had collected into a rental van, and drive it to Miami, which I did.
I continued to work at Wackenhut until January, 1991. During that time I had one further follow up involvement with the Hamel investigation. Sometime in October or November, I was briefly interviewed by two attorneys regarding my activities in the Virginia office. I was only asked by them "why" I was hired, and what my function was in Virginia. Prior to the interview I had been told by Wayne Black to just answer the questions that they asked very briefly, and not to add anything.
On my last day of work I was directed by Gil Mugarra to pick up the trash for one of the other investigator's assignments. This involved getting up at about 3:00 a.m. in order to insure that you were able to pick up the trash without being seen and before the garbage pick up. I questioned this assignment since it was not my case, and discussed it with other investigators and with Mr. Mugarra. Following these conversations I believed that the assignment had been returned to the original investigator. No one ever told me that the trash assignment was to be my last. The next day, Black called me into his office and asked me what had happened. He advised me that I was being put on suspension because I had "refused" to pick up the trash. That was not true. He told me that he would call me the next morning around 8:30 a.m., instead he called me around noon the next day and advised me that I could quit or be fired. I asked him if he would give me a good reference if I quit, and he said that the only thing that would be on my personnel file would be that I quit, so I resigned.
I hope that this information is helpful to the Committee investigating this matter. I will be pleased to try and answer any questions that you may have.