Case Closed, Informant Abandoned

The way Drew Nolan saw it was simple: The United States government needed him. And he was nothing if not a patriot.

So he didn’t hesitate when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked him to infiltrate the notorious Viper Team, a 12-member militia that had been stockpiling automatic weapons, making fertilizer bombs and, the authorities believed, plotting to blow up federal buildings.

His undercover work led to the July 1, 1996, arrest of the team in a case that prompted President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to praise federal officers for averting a terrorist attack as devastating as the Oklahoma City bombing.

Trouble is, on the same day, Nolan’s life changed forever.

He was labeled a traitor by militia groups--making him a potential target--and all but abandoned by his federal handlers.

Since then, his life has been a lonely odyssey, with a new name, no job and little chance of seeing his family any time soon.

Living in cheap apartments, one-room cabins, even out of a borrowed pickup truck, he has made countless collect calls to federal authorities, who have rebuffed his pleas for more protection and financial assistance.

Nolan’s story offers a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of federal sting operations, where agents walk a razor’s edge between revealing criminal activity and egging it on, and where citizen informants can risk their lives only to be discarded without significant compensation or recognition.

Tom Hannis, the assistant U.S. attorney in Phoenix, said: “Drew did an outstanding job of undercover work. And he got involved for good motives. The way it turned out for him, unfortunately, left him unfairly in a position he didn’t anticipate.”

Nolan, 38, would call that an understatement.

“I made this case, but guess what? I lost everything,” Nolan grumbled, staring into a coffee cup at a restaurant in nearby Mesa. “Now, I sleep with a gun. Just me and it. . . . I’m not looking for glory. I just want to be treated fairly.

“If everything had happened the way ATF said it was going to happen, I’d have no beef at all. But it didn’t. They used me and then threw me in the garbage.” Nolan, unlike most informants, was not working off a criminal charge when he offered to work for the ATF.

The stepson of a Navy machinist, Nolan served 6 1/2 years in the Air Force as a military police officer and firearms instructor. After that, he worked briefly as a municipal officer in a mountain hamlet in Idaho and then drifted south to New Mexico.

In 1987, angry over perceived “reverse discrimination” against white males, he briefly joined a Southwestern contingent of the Ku Klux Klan. “I left when I realized their racial rhetoric and hate wasn’t me,” he said.

At 28 he settled in Phoenix, where he worked as a Maricopa County animal control officer, a country music disc jockey and an ambulance dispatcher. Over the years, he was in and out of three marriages and fathered three children. A newspaper ad landed him at Shooter’s World, the largest gun shop in Arizona. To hear his supervisors tell it, the stocky salesman with thinning gray hair was always on time, enthusiastic and chummy with customers.

Nowadays, Nolan is intensely shy. Sporting a sweatshirt and Levis, he slouched in the restaurant chair and surveyed the faces of other customers, as if he were a marked man.

Nolan recalls an enthusiastic response from federal officials when he agreed to penetrate the Vipers in 1995. Key to his involvement, he said, was a promise that his cover would not be blown.

The Vipers were spawned amid an emerging movement of paramilitary groups that believe the federal government is betraying the Constitution’s original intent. Their antipathy rose to white-hot rage after the deadly confrontations with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and near Waco, Texas, in 1993.

After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, federal authorities launched a concerted effort to identify and infiltrate the most violent of the estimated 380 armed militias operating in 30 states. As a result, extremists began to be incarcerated in increasing numbers, and militia-style crimes ranging from stockpiling illegal weapons to plots to blow up federal buildings were thwarted.

Back then, Nolan was an assistant manager at Shooter’s World, rubbing shoulders with law enforcement officers, law-abiding gun enthusiasts and extremists of every stripe.

While there, he befriended fellow employee John “Doc” Schultz. Schultz later confided that he was an Arizona game warden who had gotten a job at the gun shop as a cover for clandestine operations targeting reptile poachers. From the start, Schultz seemed extremely interested in the fact that Nolan once worked in law enforcement. “He asked, ‘Why’d you quit being a cop? Interested in doing it again? Miss that work?’ ” Nolan recalled.

“He knew how to push all my hot buttons,” Nolan said. “I realize now that in the first conversations we had, he was finding out where my head was at.”

Mesmerized by the attention from an active undercover officer, Nolan offered to “pass on anything I hear” about criminal activity. Before long, he was getting an earful from customers about the Vipers. Schultz asked if Nolan could infiltrate the group.

Motivated to act in the aftermath of the truck-bombing that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and claimed 168 lives, Nolan posed as a gun enthusiast with a hatred for the federal government and managed to get himself sworn into the Viper Team in August 1995.

On Nov. 2, 1995, he signed a contract with the ATF in which he agreed to become a confidential informant. The bureau agreed to keep his identify secret and, if his life was ever in danger, to try to place him in a witness security program. ATF also agreed to reimburse Nolan for reasonable expenses and to pay him a stipend of about $250 each week during the investigation.

At the same time, Schultz was deputized by the ATF to work the case.

Under rules of the militia group, Nolan had to belong to the Vipers for six months before he could sponsor a new member. His first recruit was Schultz, who claimed to be a private investigator. Impressed by his steely demeanor and brains, Schultz was soon appointed chief of security for the Vipers.

Soon afterward, ATF technicians planted microphones and miniature cameras in lamps and fans throughout an apartment that had become a Viper hangout. From then on, every meeting was recorded. Most of their discussions were initiated and steered by Schultz and, to a lesser degree, by Nolan.

Schultz, Nolan recalled, was expert at persuading the Vipers to talk about what types of crimes they would be willing to commit in the event of a race riot, or invasion of United Nations forces.

At one meeting, according to court documents, Schultz peppered the Vipers with leading questions. “You’re talking [about stealing] food, gasoline; you’re talking about crime, yes?” Schultz said. “Why not a bank? Why draw a line?”

ATF agent Steve Ott, Schultz’s supervisor, testified later that Schultz was only trying to determine “what their mind-set was.”

On a sweltering day in July 1996, the ATF moved to neutralize the paramilitary unit out of fear that the Vipers were planning to act soon. Nolan sat in an apartment waiting for a telephone call from his handler while watching TV coverage of the largest arrest of militia members in U.S. history.

The caller, according to an earlier plan, would let him know when to prepare to be “arrested”--a move intended to confuse the suspects and their sympathizers, providing a measure of protection from reprisals and time to leave town if need be.

That plan, however, was scotched in the pandemonium surrounding the arrests that were taking place across the city. There was no time to stage a mock arrest. Instead, when the phone finally rang, the caller barked, “Drew, you’re not going to be arrested. Get the ---- out of there!”

Nolan fled, knowing that the Vipers would simply count noses in jail and figure out who the infiltrators were. By nightfall, his name and address had leaked out and were being shared by angry militia members across the country.

By week’s end, the Vipers were indicted on lesser conspiracy, weapons and explosives charges; ATF officials conceded there never was a threat to blow up buildings, and a federal judge released half the Vipers on bail, saying they posed no danger.

Given that Vipers were back on the streets, Nolan pleaded with federal authorities to give him a safe place to hide. What he got was a flea-bag apartment.

The ATF also promised continued financial help, which over the past 15 months has totaled a few thousand dollars. A month ago, he received a final payment from the ATF in the form of a $7,500 reward. In the meantime, Nolan says has run up $25,000 in debts while on the run.

At one point, ATF officials offered to place him in a witness protection program. But that would mean giving up any chance of staying in contact with his family. And besides, Nolan had come to distrust the agents.

“If I was a mobster who turned witness I could understand getting into that program,” he said. “But all I did was infiltrate and provide information on dangerous people.”

Just how dangerous is debatable. Viper Team members included a furniture salesman, an air conditioner repairman and a strip-joint doorman. Most of them had mortgages. A few served as church deacons and participated in mainstream politics.

But they also were weekend warriors who sharpened their combat skills with paramilitary maneuvers in the desert. At the time of the arrests, ATF agents seized gas masks, body armor, 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate, 200 blasting caps, several thousand rounds of ammunition and truckloads of firearms from some Viper residences.

They also obtained a videotape--narrated by a Viper--describing how to capture and blow up buildings. That tape, which Vipers had given to Schultz to destroy, turned out to be 2 years old.

Ultimately, 10 Vipers pleaded guilty to charges ranging from conspiracy to manufacture and possess destructive devices to possession of unregistered machine guns. They received relatively mild prison sentences ranging from one to nine years.

Charles Knight unsuccessfully fought charges of conspiracy to make or possess illegal explosives and was sentenced to serve 57 months in prison.

On Nov. 17, a federal jury acquitted Viper member Christopher Floyd of one count of possessing an “improvised grenade” made out of a 12-ounce aluminum can. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a separate charge of conspiracy to possess a destructive device and was sentenced to serve one year of probation.

In a telephone interview from a corrections facility in Arizona, Viper Team 1st Sgt. Knight had harsh words for Schultz, whom he regards as an “evil Judas” and a “master manipulator who played us like a harp.”

“But I harbor no hard feelings for Drew,” Knight said. “He was sucked in by Schultz, just like we were.”

More painful for Nolan is the fact that all of the public praise for the undercover effort has gone to Schultz, and even the Vipers have become heroes of sorts among militias and sympathizers.

ATF officials won’t publicly acknowledge that Nolan exists on grounds the agency never identifies its confidential informants unless and until they testify in court. Nolan was never called to the stand.

“If we were in the business of disclosing the names of our confidential informants, our caseload would drop precipitously,” said one ATF official who asked to remain anonymous.

So now Nolan has to try to start a new life. It hasn’t been easy. He is afraid to show his face in Phoenix. He has a new name but still has his old Social Security number--a conflict likely to raise questions in the minds of prospective employers.

“He won’t get any sympathy here,” said Mike Johnson, a spokesman for the estimated two dozen militia groups in Arizona. “He committed an act of treason against the people. There are people out there who do not think kindly about what he did.”

Tony Cooper, who lectures on law and terrorism at the University of Texas at Dallas, believes there is a message in what happened to Nolan: “If you know about criminal activity, don’t expect a medal from the government.

“It’s your duty to help, but you do so at your peril, and in fact may pay for your excitement and meddling,” Cooper said. “Law enforcement can be very callous about these things; one might say coldhearted.”

“But they were the professionals. They were supposed to anticipate the problems,” Nolan argued. “I’m finished. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. My regret is that I trusted people I never should have trusted.”