FBI Chief to Retire, Join Investigative Company

When local FBI chief Gary Auer walks out of his office for the last time this month, he will leave behind not only an ocean view but a career in which he nabbed a mad bomber in the 1970s, turned Soviet spy catcher in the 1980s, and spent the last decade hounding white-collar criminals in Ventura County.

After 27 years in law enforcement, the intense 51-year-old federal cop from Thousand Oaks retires May 30 to join an international investigative firm based in Westlake. There, he will seek out cheats within America’s top companies.

Trained first as an attorney, Auer capped his career by shifting the focus of the FBI’s small Ventura County office from violence and drug deals to crimes that took place behind closed doors--corruption at banks and savings and loans, environmental destruction, and fraud by giant defense contractors who ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in fines.

He also supervised the slavery probe of a Somis rancher that resulted in the nation’s first organized-crime conviction in a civil rights case. The rancher eventually paid $1.5 million in restitution to his former employees.

And when Auer’s jurisdiction expanded into the Antelope Valley, he led a rare local-federal task force on “skinhead” hate crimes that netted two dozen convictions.

“When I first came up here, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this was the safest county in the West,” Auer said last week, surveying green fields and the Pacific from his east Ventura office window. “So for the last 12 years, our primary focus has been on the major players in our society, corporate and otherwise, and on those who would harass or harm minorities.”

Tom Parker, Auer’s former boss at the FBI and his new employer, said the Ventura bureau chief made a name for himself far beyond this county.

“Under Gary’s supervision, that Ventura office investigated some of the largest, most complex government fraud cases the FBI has had in the last 10 years,” said Parker, former assistant agent-in-charge in Los Angeles.

Auer also cooperated with local police agencies to such a degree that his presence made a difference, say prosecutors and police chiefs.

“If all federal agencies got along as well with local jurisdictions as Gary and his group, you wouldn’t read stories about [conflicts],” Sheriff Larry Carpenter said. “Gary is one of the best FBI agents I’ve every worked with.”

Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who tried to recruit Auer to his own office, said federal agencies don’t usually get credit for making communities safer, but Auer should.

“Gary has made a difference,” Bradbury said. “He has such a deep commitment to this community that he always went the extra 10 miles. He helped on state investigations, and he was always there when we needed assistance on major fraud. He had great ideas in areas of crime prevention, especially fraud, that we made part of our protocols.”

Long List of Accomplishments

Auer directed the Ventura bureau as it grew from eight FBI agents in 1986 to 13 today--and expanded to include four investigators in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. That increase is a sure gauge of his effectiveness in an agency that adds agents only to offices where cases end in convictions.

For example, Auer’s office routinely leads the Southern California region by solving 80% of bank robberies.

But Auer made his reputation here mostly by pressing cases so complicated that they tested his organizational abilities--and prompted years of 12-hour days and Saturdays in the office.

Agents say Auer kept cases alive--that otherwise would have been shelved--by personally working them until agents were free for the assignment.

“I don’t know of any other FBI supervisor who did that,” said former agent Larry Dick, who retired in March.

Auer said he started cases in his early years at the short-staffed Ventura office because he knew that promising inquiries could not be ignored forever. “What’s the quote from ‘Field of Dreams?’ ‘If you build it, they will come?’ Well, the agents came.”

So intensely private that he will not discuss his family in print, Auer also hesitates to say much about his professional accomplishments, even the 1984 arrest by his counterespionage unit of a Northrop Corp. engineer trying to sell B-2 bomber plans to the Soviet Union.

“The way I measure success is: Have we made a positive impact on this community?” Auer said. “In some cases, yes we have, but in some cases, no we haven’t.

“The biggest impact we’ve had here were the defense-industry cases--the Rockwell [conviction] and five separate cases against Teledyne for government fraud,” he said. “I’m also proud of the skinhead cases and the [Edwin] Ives slavery case, because the people who suffered got their money back. Those cases made it clear to African Americans and to Hispanics that they could count on equal protection under the law.”

Perhaps Auer’s biggest set of cases was against Teledyne Electronics of Newbury Park. The defense contractor paid $20 million in fines after being charged in the early 1990s with conducting phony tests on devices that identify missiles and military aircraft as friend or foe. The company recalled all 5,900 Stinger missiles equipped with such devices.

From Ventura, Auer also supervised a 1994 international inquiry into defense-industry violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Teledyne Systems of Northridge was found guilty of selling military technology to Taiwan and paid $5.56 million in fines.

Rockwell Industries’ Rocketdyne Division also paid fines of $6.5 million in 1996 after pleading guilty to environmental crimes for illegally burning toxic chemicals at its Santa Susana Field Lab near Simi Valley. Two scientists died in one explosion.

Handful of Disappointments

Auer, along with his successes, has also experienced frustration.

When he was in Los Angeles, an agent under his command had sex with a Russian spy and was the first FBI agent ever convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets.

“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe my feelings of rage and disappointment in what that case reflected,” he said.

He is also haunted by the execution-style slaying of Thousand Oaks bank teller Monica Leech last year. No arrests have been made.

“That one’s hard,” he said. “And there are other major investigations I would dearly love to see completed.”

Those include an inquiry into whether the negligence of Thousand Oaks officials contributed to the break of a sewer main that allowed release of 86 million gallons of untreated effluent in February--a possible violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

“But an FBI agent is essentially fired at 57,” Auer added, “so I had to decide what the future would be for me.”

After age 50, agents with 20 years’ experience are eligible to retire. Usually they leave in their early 50s to begin a second career before they are too old, Auer said.

Auer had hoped he would land in Bradbury’s office. They had talked about that prospect for years. But because district attorney investigators are required to pass state Peace Officer Standards and Training courses, Auer did not qualify. And he figured it would take 1,000 hours of classes in street-policing techniques to be certified.

“It’s ridiculous POST will not accept federal law enforcement training,” Bradbury said. “Federal training is better and broader in terms of investigation. And we hire investigators. We don’t hire street cops. I’d always hoped Gary would be working here for me.”

As things are, Auer will probably make much more money in private industry.

He makes $113,000 a year with the FBI. “And it’s quite normal for agents to make as much or more in their first year here as they made with the FBI,” Parker said. Auer will also receive his FBI pension.

Auer will manage complex internal investigations of large businesses, since about one-fifth of the Fortune 500 companies contract with Parker’s fast-growing Emerald Group in Westlake.

The company, founded 4 1/2 years ago with seven agents, now has 87 employees in 33 offices on five continents. Many are former supervisors in federal investigative agencies--the FBI, Secret Service, Customs Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“I needed an additional management assistant in our headquarters,” Parker said. “Gary is a very bright, creative manager. He brings high-level fraud experience, and internal corporate fraud is about 70% of our business. He’s going to do very well in the private sector.”

Auer said it is almost as if he was trained specifically for the job he is about to take.

“If there’s something I’m good at, it should be this,” he said.

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Gary Auer’s Career Achievements

* Directed a force of 100 FBI agents in solving a 1974 case in which an extortionist repeatedly bombed electric power facilities along the Columbia River in Oregon.

* Headed Los Angeles-based, counterespionage unit that caught a Northrop Corp. engineer trying to sell plans for the B-2 bomber to the Soviet Union in 1984.

* Supervised five cases in 1991-93 against Teledyne Electronics of Newbury Park that charged fraud in the production of devices that identified missiles and aircraft as friend or foe. Recovered $20 million and had 5,900 Stinger missile parts recalled.

* Supervised the investigation of a Somis rancher initially charged with slavery that resulted in the nation’s first organized-crime conviction in a civil rights matter. The rancher paid $1.5 million in restitution to more than 200 workers who had lived in a compound ringed with barbed wire.

* Supervised 1994 investigation of Teledyne Systems of Northridge for the illegal sales of military technology to Taiwan. The company pleaded guilty and paid $5.56 million in fines.

* Supervised the 1994-96 environmental-crimes investigation of Rockwell Industries’ Rocketdyne Division. The company paid fines of $6.5 million after pleading guilty to illegally burning toxic chemicals at a field lab near Simi Valley. Two scientists died in one explosion.

* Supervised investigations of companies in Oxnard, Simi Valley and Fontana that claimed to repair parts for military and civilian aircraft, but did not. The companies also were found guilty of importing cheaper, fake parts from overseas.

* Supervised investigations into “skinhead” hate crimes in the Antelope Valley in 1994-97. A special federal-local task force convicted two dozen people of crimes and has filed murder charges in the death of a black man.