Then three months ago, thirty-two-year-old Special Agent in Charge Douglas diMonda of the New York bureau of the FBI and forty-three-year-old NYPD Division Chief Peter Arden visited the Dae-jungs and Tetter and Stevens at their homes. The shopkeepers were informed that four months earlier, a major case squad had been formed by the FBI and the NYPD, and that they were investigating the occupants of the brownstone. The florists and the candy-makers were told only that the lessee, Earl Gurney, was a white supremacist who was suspected of having masterminded violent antiblack and anti-gay activities in Detroit and Chicago.
What the merchants weren't told was that the paramilitary group to which Gurney belonged, Pure Nation, had been infiltrated by an FBI agent a year earlier. Writing in code to his "mother" in Grenda Hills, California, "John Wooley" reported on the Pure Nation training facility in the Mohawk Mountains of Arizona and their plans to hire themselves out as the military arm of other white supremacy organizations and militias. The agent knew that some enormous New York operation was being planned, something much larger than the ambushes that left three black men dead in Detroit and five lesbians raped in Chicago. Unfortunately, the agent was not sent to Manhattan with the strike force and did not know what Pure Nation was planning. Only Commander Gurney knew that.
After months of surveillance from the street and from parked cars, of taking fingerprints off bottles and cans in trash bags and running background checks, diMonda and Arden were sure they had a team of Pure Nation's most dangerous members in their midst. Six of the seven men and one of the two women living in the building had rap sheets, many involving violent crimes. However, the major case squad didn't know what Gurney might be planning.
Phone taps picked up only conversations about the weather, jobs, and family, and there were no faxes. A search warrant to examine mail and parcels also turned up nothing. The occupants almost certainly assumed that they were being watched and listened to, a tacit indication that something was up.
Then, in the two weeks prior to approaching the Daejungs, Tetter, and Stevens, the stakeout team had seen something which made it imperative for them to begin moving in a force of their own. They noticed that the nine people who lived in the brownstone were bringing in more and more boxes, duffel bags, and suitcases. They would arrive in pairs, with one person always empty-handed, wearing a jacket and keeping both hands in pockets. The stakeout team did not doubt that there were guns in those pockets, as well as in the boxes, duffel bags, and suitcases.
But diMonda and Arden didn't want to grab just a bag of guns. If there were a weapons cache upstairs, the major case squad wanted it all.
The idea of obtaining a search warrant to examine the premises was rejected. By the time a team reached the third floor— headquarters were usually located on the highest floors— any incriminating documents or computer diskettes would be destroyed. Besides, diMonda and Arden didn't want to play softball with these creatures. Bureau head Moe Gera agreed, and gave the go-ahead for a strike team to be put in place, quietly and unobtrusively.
The florists and confectioners gladly allowed their shops to be used as staging areas. They were frightened, not only of the assault but of possible repercussions. But they had all marched in the Village protest against skin-head attacks in the summer of 1995, and said they could not live with themselves if others died because of their inactivity.
DiMonda promised that the NYPD would provide protection for them both at home and on the job.
The positioning of the team was done over time.
Korean-American FBI Agent Park was sent to work in the Dae-Jung shop. Tetter and Stevens hired Johns, a black sales clerk who was a detective with the NYPD. Both employees spent a lot of time outside the shops, smoking cigarettes and being seen by the people who entered. After two weeks, they brought in three more assistants each, so there was a total of eight additional agents at the site. All of them worked the day shift, which was when the brownstone was most active. The legitimate employees of both shops were paid to stay home.
Each new employee made sure that they were noticed by the people coming and going at the brownstone. Noticed often, so that they would become invisible.
The cop on the beat was temporarily reassigned, replaced by Detective Arden. Concealing his bodybuilder physique under loose-fitting clothes, diMonda, worked the street as a homeless man who occasionally slept on their stoop and had to be shoved or kicked off. Gurney himself actually complained to Arden to "keep that useless shitstink" away from his home. Arden said that he would do his best.
The FBI obtained a layout of the building from the landlord, who thought he was showing the brownstone to a prospective buyer. The blueprints were scanned into a computer at the New York bureau. A three-dimensional image of the interior was constructed from it, and an assault plan was worked out. The day was chosen, and an earlymorning time was selected, when the narrow, one-way street would be the least crowded. People who were going to work would have already left, and tourists would not yet have made their way to Greenwich Village.
Earlier on "M-morning," when it was still dark, undercover police officers made their way into the shops.
Five officers were placed in each shop, and their job was to handle arrests once the vermin had been flushed out.
The primary squad in the two shops had been instructed to go into action when diMonda shouted, "Hey." Either it would come when someone pushed him, or when Arden tried to move him from the stoop. Once the primary squad moved, a twelve-person backup team would leave their van, which was parked around the comer on Bleecker Street. Six of them would go in only if they heard gunfire.
When they went into action, police would seal off the street and make sure no one else left their apartments. If the neo- Nazis managed to get out of the building, the other six agents in the support group would be in position, in the street, to pick them up. An ambulance was also parked and waiting on Bleecker, in case it was needed.
It began at 8:34, with diMonda settling down on the stoop with a cup of coffee and a bagel. For the last few weeks, the first two people usually left the building between 10:00 and 10:30, took the PATH train to Thirty-third Street, and went to an office on Sixth Avenue. The office made no attempt to conceal what it was: a small editorial and advertising sales office for the racist magazine Phrer. The visitors left the office with whatever they were supposed to bring back to the apartment. The FBI had examined cartons being shipped to the magazine and found no weapons of any kind; they could only assume that staffers were buying guns, ammunition, and knives on the street and storing them there for disbursement to Pure Nation or whoever else needed them.
The door to the brownstone opened at 8:44. When it did, diMonda threw his coffee cup to the right, in front of the candy shop, and fell back into the lobby. Arden, who had been waiting in the shop, made sure he stepped out when he saw the flying cup.
A young woman, dyed-blond and hard, stepped over diMonda.
"Officer!" she said. "Get this creature out of here!" A tall, mustachioed man picked the much shorter diMonda up by the shirt and made ready to heave him to the sidewalk.
"Hey!" diMonda yelled.
An agent came from the flower shop and stood behind the woman. When she went to push diMonda, the agent jumped between them and pushed her back, toward the flower shop. She screamed at him as a second agent came out and told her she was under arrest. When she resisted, two officers cuffed her and hauled her into the back room.
Meanwhile, Arden had stepped into the lobby of the brownstone.