Documents obtained by Yahoo News reveal details of Customs and Border Protection operation that investigated Americans including government officials, congressional members and journalists.
It was almost 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, and Ali Watkins was walking around the capital following instructions texted by a stranger. One message instructed her to walk through an abandoned parking lot near Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle, and then wait at a laundromat. Then came a final cryptic instruction: She was to enter an unmarked door on Connecticut Avenue leading to a hidden bar.
Yet documents obtained by Yahoo News, including an inspector general report on the investigation that spans more than 500 pages — and includes transcripts of interviews that investigators conducted with those involved, emails and other records — reveal a far more disturbing story than the targeting of a single journalist. The man, whose real name is Jeffrey Rambo, worked at a secretive Customs and Border Protection division.
The story Rambo tells is even stranger than the one already in the public view, which is strange enoughHis meeting with Watkins, he says, was the result of a Trump-era White House assignment to Customs and Border Protection to combat forced labor.
Rambo, however, doesn’t see his story as one of abuse. He was doing precisely what his higher-ups authorized him to do. The division’s assignments were high-level and came directly from the CBP commissioner, the secretary of Homeland Security or the White House, which in May 2017 asked the division to look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the U.S. believed companies were using cobalt mined by forced labor to produce consumer goods in China.
Rambo, who was later pressed repeatedly about why he chose to reach out to Watkins, a reporter who had never written about forced labor, said he was looking for prominent journalists with access and buzz. He told investigators he wanted to identify national security journalists who could not just tell CBP about forced labor but also publish stories thatwould allow him to “overstate” U.S. enforcement capabilities. Rambo believed these stories inflating U.S.
Rambo believed he did have the authority, and he had certainly had his boss’s approval to contact WatkinsAfter reading her story, he did something that most journalists probably don’t expect government officials to do: He ran Watkins through an assortment of databases.
Then he queried Watkins’s family members, thinking he might be related to her. Wolfe, he found, was not a family member but a senior staff member on Capitol Hill. Rambo then went to his boss. “I say, ‘This person is great in terms of access, but based on my vetting she may be receiving classified info,'” he recalled to Yahoo News.
Around midnight, as the bar was closing, Rambo paid with a credit card, and they began walking together up the street toward Kramerbooks & Afterwords, a popular bookstore and café near Dupont Circle. Inside, Watkins said, Rambo was holding up books and magazines while talking, as if to conceal his identity.Standing in front of a closed Starbucks, Rambo continued to press Watkins about her sources.
Rambo continued to ask about her relationship, and what would happen to her career if it was made public.The two continued talking outside the Starbucks, with Rambo pressing her on Wolfe and her confidential sources. Watkins by then felt “spooked,” she later told investigators. That same day, Watkins returned to the Sheppard to get Rambo’s credit card slip, which had his real name. A quick Google search led to a story about a Border Patrol agent starting a brewery. She called CBP, gave his name and asked to be connected. After a brief silence, then a click, a phone rang. No one picked up. Still, she later told investigators, she took this as “quasi-confirmation” that Jack Bentley was Jeffrey Rambo.
“It’s impossible for Arianna to comment, as she is completely unclear what her connection to the watchlist is,” a spokesperson for Huffington told Yahoo News.“The standard for placement on the watchlist is so low, and the safeguards against errors and misplaced suspicion are so deficient, that it’s no wonder the watchlist has ballooned to well over a million people,” he said. “Having a connection to someone on the watchlist is not remotely suspicious of itself.
“The Associated Press demands an immediate explanation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection as to why journalists including AP investigative reporter Martha Mendoza were run through databases used to track terrorists and identified as potential confidential informant recruits,” Easton told Yahoo News in a statement. “We are deeply concerned about this apparent abuse of power.
A former New York Times reporter confirmed to Yahoo News that they met with Dan White and others at CBP to discuss trade-based money laundering, among other issues. “They also pitched me on the labor abuse work that CBP was doing,” the former Times reporter said. “CBP does not investigate individuals without a legitimate and legal basis to do so,” the spokesperson added. “These investigations support CBP’s mission to protect our communities.”
“This is all great info. Thanks so much for your help,” one of the agents replied. “I’ll look over all of this and get a plan moving forward.” Finally, nearly a year later after his final conversation with FBI agents, Rambo’s work seemed to pay off: James Wolfe was indicted, not for leaking classified information but for lying to FBI agents about his relationship with reporters, including his travel with Watkins. What should have seemed like good news for Rambo suddenly made him a lightning rod. On June 12, 2018, just a week after Wolfe was indicted,an article about Rambo’s meeting with Watkins, identifying him by his real name.
That same day, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General launched an investigation into Rambo, who was put on administrative leave.
A spokesperson for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment. Lytle, who has since left the office, did not respond to requests for comment. In response to questions about the results of its investigation, a spokesperson for the Office of Inspector General replied: “To maintain independence in appearance and fact, DHS OIG does not participate in DHS operational or programmatic decisions.”
The same month that prosecutors told the inspector general they would not be pursuing charges, Rambo was taken off administrative leave and cleared to return to work as a Border Patrol agent. It wasn’t public vindication, but at least he had his job back. A poster identifying Rambo as a CBP agent on a telephone pole in Barrio Logan; a portion of a poster that has been ripped down.
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