How Witness Protection Works

I'm Josh Clark. That there is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, but that they're down the road a piece, etcetera. I am down the road, apiece. I'm sure you are. I wish. Have you ever committed a crime? Charles? I've never been caught or convicted of committing a crime, Josh, But you have. I've never been convicted of the crime. Talk is big on c y a crime. Everyone's made a right on red when they shouldn't have. Sure have committed a crime. Everyone who listens to this podcast knows that I started

out early as a thief and stopped shortly afterward. Remember the firecrackers in the pac Man shirt? Ye yes, um, If you committed crime. You've got your own thing going on, right, sure, But what happens if you witness a crime. You're just some innacent person and you see somebody shoot somebody else in the head. The blood comes spurting out and like a big arc and the eyes go glaze and you're just standing there watching this and you get a good look at the person who did it. What do you do?

You get the heck out of there. You call a cop. Yeah, that's a good first step. And what what may end up happening? And I think this is where you're going, is you may end up a witness that has to go to court and testify against this bad, bad person. Here's the thing, Uh, part of our constitution actually, I don't know if it's in the constitution, but let's say a general protection that any individual has is protection against

being coerced into testifying against somebody. It's an individual's right to choose whether or not you want to testify, and um, a lot of people choose not to. Yeah, very much. It's a big problem. Actually, Uh, there there's a lot of people who do witness crimes that you say, I'm not doing it. I'm not going to get involved exactly.

One of the reasons why is because there is a longstanding tradition of witnesses being murdered when they testify or agree to testify, especially in circumstances where you're dealing with gangs or drugs or racketeering crime. Yeah, but some of the heavy hitters. Sure. I mean, if you're gonna go up river for twenty years and you've already killed a bunch of people, what's one more witness? Exactly? Right? Um. So, the the US federal government and actually some other countries

have this as well. I looked into that, did you when you come up with well, we'll get to that later. Okay, they have something called the Witness Protection Program, commonly thought to be called the witness Relocation Program. That's kind of an aspect of the larger program, right exactly. So let's let's go back to the nineteen sixties. Okay. So we're the guys that are dressed funny in nineteen sixty exactly. And I haven't figured out yet if people can see us,

can't see us, or just ignoring us. I think we're observing. Okay, Um, so, Chuck, it's the nineteen sixties. John F. Kennedy's father, Joseph has just stolen the presidential election for him. Uh, and he's put his brother Bobby in his attorney general. They have turned on the very mafia that helped get them New York, I think, Illinois, uh, some key states in the presidential election. Now, up to this point, there was no mafia. There was

an unrecognized entity. It existed, but as far as the federal government, including and especially Jayer Hoover, it wasn't real. Organized crime in the United States wasn't real, and there certainly wasn't a mafia. Well, Bobby Kennedy comes in, is like, there is a mafia number one and number two, we're going after him. Um. And so the Kennedy administration goes after organized crime. They they they very famously started interviewing crime bosses, some of whom said that they were patriotic

Americans because they pay their taxes, that kind of thing. Uh. And the mafia becomes part of the collective consciousness of the United States. Right by nineteen seventy uh, there was actual real strides made in combating organized crime, one of which was the Organized Crime Act of nineteen seventy Organized Crime Control Act, thank you chuck, just to be specific, which was introduced by who Arkansas Senator John McClellan in nine. Yes, he had an aid who actually drafted the legislation forum

That would be g. Robert Blakely. And it was a large bill. So what he did, and like many bills, there's a lot of things kind of snuck in. There're not snuck in there, but inserted. He uh inserted a little thing about witness protection for the first time officially thanks to a guy named Gerald Schuer who created the witness protection program. He was a U S attorney, had the ear of Blakely. Yeah, and he was a U

S attorney under Bobby Kennedy. So in this provision in nineteen or in this Act of nineteen seventy, there's a provision that says the Attorney General can basically allow the federal government, I guess the Marshall services named in it to protect any witness by any means they need to. So there you go. That's pretty wide latitude. It was revised in nineteen eighty four to include family members as well. Yeah, the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of eight four, right, and

it's been going ever since then. Better known as van Halen nineteen eighty four. That's the alternate named alternate. Yeah, um man, you just made me want to do the robot, didn't. Um So, Chuck. We've got the Witness Protection Program. Everybody knows about it. It's it's been um part of popular culture since its inception. Movies, especially right, um the al and All the movie Betsy's Wedding My Blue Heaven. Yeah, one of your favorites. Right, I love that movie. I

know you don't like it. I it's not that I didn't like it. I didn't like Steve Martin. I didn't buy his character. Not you weren't supposed to buy his Martin doing a Mafio. So that in and of itself is comedy. That makes me a schmuck. Not necessarily. Everyone's in title Loui's own opinion here, a's stuff. You should know. Our motto is to each his own. Sure, so you're fine, Chuck. But there was another little movie that's arguably the greatest

gangster movie ever made, possibly better than The Godfather. That's a tough one, it is, but the fact that it's even competing with the Godfather, it's a lot about it. That movie is a little Martin Scorsese movie called Goodfellas, based on real life events, based on a book called Wise Guys by Nicholas Plague yep, and based on a famous rat snitch called Henry Hill, who ray Leota played in the film. Yeah, and Henry Hill was a real dude, and he really did uh snitch on the um? What

was the what was the family? The Luchese crime family? And he took the stand and and was in the witness protection program for a while. He's clearly not anymore because he's on Howard Stern all the time. Uh No, but he was in the witness protection program. He was a problem child from what I understand. And ladies and gentlemen, may I announce Mr Charles W. Bryant doing a dramatic reading from the movie Goodfellas. Silence please. We ran everything. We paid off cops, we paid off lawyers, we paid

off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. That's the hardest part. Today everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everybody else. Can't even get decent food. After I got here, I ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles with ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like

a schnook. Thank you, Charles. That is the last scene from Good Fellows when Raino does goes out to get the paper. Story imagines Joe PESSI just shooting up such a classic. So you can tell from that passage brilliant by the way, buddy, thank you. You can tell by that passage that UM witness protection is not a lot of fun necessarily, especially if you are a high flying mafios So you have to go become some regular Joe and Tempi. Yeah, absolutely right, Um chuck, I'm about to

blow your mind. My man, I've been waiting on this. You're ready. My Blue Heaven also based on Henry Hill. Was it really? Do you want to know why? Uh? I don't know. Nicholas Pelegy married one Nora Efron the screen. No, I kid you not. I went back and cross references. Yes, those two got married in Ron who wrote My Blue Heaven. Both movies were based upon joint interviews they conducted with Henry Hill. No kidding, I kid you not? Did she right? My Blue Heaven h huh did not know that? Wow? Yep,

So there you go. There's a cocktail party tidbit. Yeah, that's good. Didn't I know they were married? Are they still married? Yeah? As far as or do you have a rubbed out? Not yet, but she doesn't know too much. By this time, he's got some concrete boots with her name on him. Alright, So, Chuck, let's talk about the actual witness Relocation program, which in the industry is called

whit SEC. Yes, officially took hold in nineteen seventy. Since then, hush your mouth, there have been more than witnesses and family members have entered this program and been protected and relocated by the U. S. Marshals. Right, and by family Chuck means by marriage or blood, not by you know, crime, family, right, right of course, like hide my wife and kids along

with me? Right? Yeah? Okay? So um, who's eligible? Chuck? Well, you have to apply, and the ultimately the application, you know, ultimately, the the Attorney General gives the stamp of approval, but they take certain things into account, like, uh, what you're going to testify against, right, it's gotta be big, sure, and probably there also can't be any other witnesses that have the same information as you that don't need to

be because it costs some money. So I got the idea that they want to try to avoid it if possible. But if if you have the information and you're guaranteed to show up and testify, and you definitely are going to need protection because of this testimony, then there's a good chance that you might be accepted. Usually it covers people who have information big time about organized crime, racketeering, UM, major drug offenses, UM, terrorist activities. Yeah, that's kind of

a new on the scene. That is new and also fairly new on the scene are people who are members of gangs that have information about gang members, big ones. A lot of them are are fit that mold these days. Right. So, prosecutor trying a case has a witness puts in an application on his or her behalf to the Justice Department.

They have a special bureau called the Office of Enforcement Operations, right uh, and they get with the Federal Marshal Service and basically all these agencies come together to interview the person. They create a dossier on the potential witness. I love

that word, by the way, thank you. And one of the things that they come up with, is what kind of a threat that person will pose to his or her new community that I never thought about a lot of times, Well, you clearly haven't seen my blue heaven then a lot of times, Um, these people are criminals themselves. And you know, just because the government's moving you doesn't mean you're a reformed person. True, although we should say

there's a recipativism rate of sevent in the witness relocation program. Right, if you are we're a criminal and you are turning state's evidence, you're protected. There's a seventeen percent chance that you will go on to commit a crime while under protection. It is a bone head, word, isn't it? Uh? Compared to uh, paroled cons, that's not too bad considering that, uh it's yes, there's a forty percent chance that will go on to commit another crime while on parole or

off parole. But sure, right, um, so it's not too shabby. And so far ten thousand I believe more than ten thousand criminals have been convicted from witness testimony from witnesses in the witness Relocation program. So it's chance success rate of conviction. When when they're using someone who's turning state's evidence, which is why it's going on still and why it has such a spectacular budget. Apparently this year or in two eight, they had a thirty eight million dollar budget

the Marshall's office did just for witness relocation. Don't you get sixty grand a year? Yeah, let's talk about that, chuck. So let's say that you've been enrolled in the program, You've been accepted. Uh, what happens is you get a T shirt says witness Protected person. You remember that Simpsons where they go in the witness relocation program? Yes? I do. Yeah? Um, and did you see that onion article? I sent you a witness protection parade. FBI cancels annual Witness Protection Parade.

Yeah that was good. Um. So you've been enrolled in the program, you moved out to Tempe, and you are living a new life, right, Yes, you're no longer living a life of crime. So you were a criminal, or so you were a normal person. You don't have your job any longer. No, you gotta get any job to get to this point. To get to Tempe from say Philly, there are some things you had to do first. Detroit, okay, okay, all right to get for them. Detroit to tempt you,

there were some things you had to do. First. Number one, if you have outstanding debts, you gotta pay them first. Yeah. See, this is something I never would have thought of. No, I would think maybe they would just kind of settle those because what if you can't pay your debts. I imagine that if you have good enough information, they'd pay them for you. But I think that part of the program is they want you to do that if you can. If you and they, I imagine wouldn't know whether you

have the money or not. Um, But yeah, you have to pay your outstanding debts. Um, they will change your name. You get to pick it, though, do you get to pic which surprised me. They suggest that you keep the same initials and or the same first name. That surprised me too. Well, think about it. I mean, if somebody's like, hey, Johnny, and you look and that was your old name, but your new name, you know your new names, you don't

want to do that. Yeah, but it also makes it easier to find once they put out this alert that hey, they're probably gonna have the same initials and maybe the first name. But who wants to go to Tempe? Yeah, that's good. Point. All right, so that they are you have to clear your debt, they change your name, you get all sorts of new records, new birth certificate, new Social Security card and all this is handled on the down though. But there are records of you changing your name,

changing your social Security number, but it's all sealed. Yeah, I mean apparently happens just like a regular name change, but they seal it off instead of allowing it's it's not public record. Names runer. Once you get to Tempe, you are um given housing or they help you find housing. I think it's a temporary thing at first while that they just want to get you taken care of immediately, and then later on they will help you out with your ultimate like living after life scenario um and to

help you live out your ultimate life scenario. How much do they get a year, did you say, Chuck? Sixty thousand? There called substance payments are on average sixty thousand per year. And I didn't see in the article that they ran out over. Yeah. I couldn't determine whether or not. Once you get your job, I didn't know if that was to tide you over until you got a stable career,

or if that was for life. I don't know. I don't know either, um, which one could argue, and I'm sure many critics have that basically, this is the government paying for testimony. Yeah sure, I never thought about that. Um. But you have to try to get a job, or you can be dropped. You can't be dropped, or you they can stop giving you the subsistence payments. Yeah, I think that's what happens. But you can go on to

welfare if you want, right, But they tried. The marshals are responsible for I think they said they have to give you one job opportunity. They have to bring you one job opportunity. Alright, So Chuck, like you said, they get you out of Detroit to Tempe as fast as they can. They get you whatever, temporary housing until you can find real housing. You're getting sixt k a year. Uh, and you're trying to find a job. But sometimes trials drag out for a while. What do they do, I mean,

do they just leave you alone? What happens when it comes time to go to trial? This is the most dangerous part. Kind of like stealing a nuclear weapon. The easiest time to steal one is when it's in transports. Same with protective witness, protected witness. You've got twenty four hour protective custody like around the area of the trial to and from the trial. Clearly, and they use all kinds of little tricky ways to make sure that you stay alive. Right. Gerald sure wrote a book called wit sec.

Remember he's the founder of the witness Protection program. Yeah, he did, uh, And in it he talks about how witnesses were delivered by fishing, boat, by mail truck, armored car. Yeah, and actually they often use armored cars as decoys. Well, they bring a witness into in in a normal car to the trial. He did that with famously with the mafia member Joseph Barboza. Who don't you kind of have to say it like that, but yeah, clearly, if your name is Joseph Barboza, you're born to be in the mafia.

It occurred to me, right now, we're really treading on thin nights. We might get greased by the FBI, the marshals, or the mafia. So they cover you before trial, they cover you after trial, especially during transport, and then after that. All you have to do is if you remain in the in the program, you can remain in it for the rest of your life and you just check in once a year, I believe is what it is, unless

you're moving that kind of thing. Yeah, and you you definitely have to let them know when you're moving, so it's not just that they move you to the dump and ground of Tempe. There are some rules to follow, and we should say that the Marshall's Service is quite fond of pointing out that no one who's ever followed

the rules of the Witness Protection program has ever been killed. Yeah, Josh, there are two rules actually, which is you can never go back to where you were originally from and you can't get in touch with like friends and family members from your past life. And apparently, um, it's getting more and more difficult to get people to follow the rules.

Which why is that, Well, apparently people are dumber than they used to be, sort of what the what the deal is from what I read is that, Um, the nature of the crimes these days, with gang members and the like, you're getting younger and younger people turning state's evidence. So it's not like the old days of Sammy the Bowl. Gravano is like in his fifties and he turned state's evidence.

What was the story you sent from Newsweek that one girl seventeen seventeen, she was a member of I think MS twelve, yes, which is an Hispanic gang um in Virginia. I think it's all over the place. But she was based in Virginia and she turned She apparently had a very vivid memory that what what's that quote? That quote is beautiful? Yes, her court appointed a lawyer said she wasn't just a witness, she was like the rain Man of witnesses. Yeah, she'd like to talk, so she spilled it.

Bro she did. Uh, and they relocated her successfully to Kansas City. I think, yeah, they moved her to Kansas City. She did a while. Uh did a good job for a little while, and then I was like, oh, I missed my friends. L O L let me get back in touch with my friends and had them come out and visit. Yeah. At one point her handler came out to check on her. And apparently her handler was supposed to be her stepfather, and she um hid her MS twelve friends in the bathroom the weekly hotel. They had

put her up um while he visited. She was really trying to stay alive, very she wasn't and you know what, she didn't know. She didn't actually she yes, she got homesick and lonely and went back to Virginia and what two days later they found her floating in the river I think some other some other person in the witness relocation program. Uh. An official of it called her a fatality waiting to happen. Yeah, they knew she wasn't in for the long haul, right, So it is becoming increasingly

difficult to protect people. Um, but the as we said, the marshals have a really good budget. They are what's been called the gold standard of witness protection. If you go down to the state and local level, if you're a witness secret protection, you're probably going to die. Yeah, there are states. A few states have their own programs that good ones. I think usually up to about five hundred thousand is about as much as a state throws

into witness relocation. And remember, you have to be testifying in a federal trial to get witness protection from the U. S. Marshals. If it's just a state or local trial, it's comer

at the sheriff's office exactly. That's you're you're getting that level of protection from what I understand most um, most of the protection you can expect will be to be put up in a weekly motel for a couple of weeks until the trial, and a bus ticket out of town, maybe a security deposit for down payment on an apartment somewhere else. That's about it. And that's when Javier Bardem shows up at your front door with a with a

cattle killer. Yeah, and as a result, a lot of witnesses are murdered every year in state trial uh in New Jersey apparently won't work with anyone who has a criminal record. Yeah, So prosecutors are like, this guy can shut the case, but he wants witness protection and you won't give it to him because he sold crack before something New Jersey. You know, I lived there there they don't have or at least where I was, they didn't have Um County sanctioned waste disposal. So it was literally

like the Sopranos. The trash guys would come and it would be like lu Chonese trash service on the side of the truck and these guys would get off the truck and remove your trash. And I always remember thinking, Wow, that's an excellent front. So that's it for witness protection. You can read the article on the site by typing in Witness Protection in the handy search bar how stuff works dot Com. We're sorry, we don't have a lot more to present to you, but it's kind of a

hush hush program. Yeah, they do have other programs in the rest of the world. We we briefly mentioned that, but um, Canada has it, New Zealand, I think Jamaica has one that's reportedly not very good, and um, what else South Africa and Kenya, New Zealand, oddly China. You already said New Zealand, Well it's even otter now. And uh, Israel has one that starts slated to start next year. So good luck Israel, Good luck with the witness Protection program. Um,

let's see. I guess since I already said handy search bar and then chuck started up again, that means it's time for or listener mayl I'm gonna call this a listener mail from Jordan's. How's that for straightforward? All right? Josh, you may remember recently we did a show on the Clovis people. I do remember. You want to recap that briefly. Sure, the cloths people were thought for a long time to be the first inhabitants of the Americas that they came

around about twelve thousand years ago. Uh. And then a discovery no, I'm sorry, ten thousand years ago. Then a discovery of a site in Chile um On uncovered people who had lived there twelve thousand years ago, completely turning the field of anthropology on it. Tier So Jordan's is an archaeologist in Kansas. He writes in he just graduated from uk Go j Hawks, I'm a longtime listener. I love your podcast about the First Americans. It was entertaining

and well researched. There was one mistake, however, I can't let go. As an archaeologist working on the plains, Josh mentioned there was no evidence of Clovis people on the plains to explain how they traveled from the Bearing Land Bridge all the way to Chile. Uh. Clovis sites are found throughout the plains, but they're not as many of them as in other regions of North America. The problem is that and here's where he starts. Stand there it

out a little bit. The problem is that Paleo Indian records on the plains are deeply buried due to massive sedimentary deposition. Following the Clovis time period. Hey, uh, this means that most of the known sites are in valleys where streams have down cut and exposed the deep sediments on the banks containing the closed deposits. So basically the record could be several meters deep and only easily seen

in cut bank exposures. That leads to sampling bias when compared to regions east and west of the Great Plains, A minor quibble, I will admit. So uh, he wrote in, and I wrote him back, and he wrote back again and said, at uh, if you're interested for context, there are a lot of pre Clovis investigations currently going on all around North America. In fact, a major, a major research area here at KU is searching for pre Clovis. And there are a lot of sites in North America

that are convincing. Just uh, they're not Monte Verde. So he said that the Bearing Land bridge. His theory is that there were quite a few tricks across that by different people's during various periods. And um, I just wrote an article and evolutionary geneticists who found evidence of an evolutionary bottleneck at the Bearing Land. So yeah, that supports what we were talking about so or what the Clovis police say. Jordan, good luck brother Jordan. Keep keep up

this Indiana Jones. Stuff. Yes, very thrilling life, that of an archaeology and imagine. If you want to correct Chuck and I, it's not that hard. You can send in an email to Stuff. Hold on, you thought I was going to give the email. I just didn't you. I thought nope. First, I want to say, if you have a spare twenty five dollars lying around and you feel like saving the world with it, go to our Kiva team. That's a micro lending website that helps entrepreneurs in the

developing world and in the United States. Right right, you can find our page at www dot kiva dot org, slash team slash stuff you should know. And again, if you want to send us an email now, you can send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the

reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you