By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com It was February, 1980 in Detroit. I was assigned to the FBI surveillance squad (with apologies to Jack Webb and his introductions to “Dragnet”). It was very cold in the back of the van. We hadn’t yet installed a heater that would work when the van wasn’t running. I had been…
I joined the Detroit FBI surveillance squad in 1977. Two years later, on June 11, 1979 , we witnessed an event- its historical significance and ramifications would not be clear until many years later. But before I get to that, a little history. In the early 1970s, the FBI’s Detroit Field Office established the FBI’s…
Listen my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy Five…. Longfellow’s poem forever immortalized Paul Revere’s ride. What the poem does not say is that Revere’s mission that night was to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British soldiers were coming to…
By Greg Stejskal A little over 20 years ago, I met with Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler to discuss a concern he had. I had come to know Bo through making presentations to the football team since 1982. Bo’s concern was the increasing use of steroids by football players. He was not only concerned about…
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com An estimated $300 billion is bet illegally on sports each year in the U.S. The underground industry has grown in good part because of the exponential increase in television coverage of games and the advent of the Internet as a betting and information forum. The most popular games to bet on…
When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes posed the question about falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, he was illustrating that freedom of speech does have limitations. In 1995, the first criminal threat case on the Internet would again test the limits of free speech. In 1994, Jake Baker (Jacob Alkhabaz) was a University of Michigan…
About ten years ago the Ann Arbor (MI) Police Department’s Deputy Chief came to me with a proposal. AAPD wanted to know if the FBI would be willing to help investigate Asian spas in Ann Arbor, and prosecute them federally. At the time I was the senior agent in the local FBI office and knew…
We just observed the 8th anniversary of 9/11. So much has changed since then. It was a watershed moment in American history and has had a profound effect on law enforcement. Priorities have changed; Federal state and local agencies are cooperating at unprecedented levels. However, not all the effects have been positive. Politics, egos and…
