![]() ![]() THEY USED TO GET GREAT PERKS-LIKE BREAST IMPLANTS. While the program usually keeps the same marks, Shur recalled that some parents asked him to improve their children's grades. Initially, a Washington area school agreed to help by getting redacted records and transferring grades and teacher notes into a new file. If a witness has children, it means school records will need to be modified so educators can see grades from earlier enrollment. WITSEC is responsible for assigning new social security numbers, driver’s licenses, and birth certificates to qualifying witnesses and their families. PARENTS ASK FOR BETTER GRADES FOR THEIR KIDS. Children learning their new last names are sometimes told to practice writing it. In addition to reacting when someone addressed them, witnesses could also catch themselves signing their old name before it was too late. To help them acclimate to their new identity, Shur usually allowed them to keep the same first name and even their initials. Shur-who ran the program for more than 25 years while employed by the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section in Washington and continued as a consultant after retirement- disclosed in WITSEC that relocated witnesses were not usually given totally unfamiliar new names. In 1995, Portland police chief Michael Chitwood complained that Maine had become a “dumping ground” for criminals in the program: Local law enforcement is not informed when a criminal has been dropped off in their territory and often fear they can bring an entire network of illegal activity into an area. Different sources put the recidivism rate for WITSEC members at anywhere between 10 and 20 percent. Shur estimated that less than 5 percent of relocated witnesses are completely free of any wrongdoing the vast majority are career hoods looking to be absolved of charges for their own activities and protected from retribution. The movie trope of an innocent man or woman caught up in criminal crossfire or as an unwilling party to illegal dealings is a rare event in the real world. Within two weeks, they’re shown video of their new location. The WITSEC Safesite and Orientation Center can house up to six families at a time visitors are driven there in vehicles with blacked-out windows and locked in separate rooms to ensure they don’t see one another. If trouble happens to follow, the site can also withstand bomb blasts. Owing to the trauma of upending their lives, psychological counseling is available. To help streamline the process, the Marshals instituted a clearinghouse in 1988 for recent inductees in the Washington, D.C. In some cases, witnesses waited months for new birth certificates or social security numbers. ![]() THEY HAVE ORIENTATION.įor years, WITSEC was plagued by a haphazard method of educating enrollees on what was required of them and what they might expect from being relocated and assigned a new name. Here’s as much detail about the program you’re going to get without finding yourself in a considerable amount of trouble. With author Pete Earley, Shur co-wrote a book, WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program, on his career over the years, various WITSEC enlistees have spoken to media about the stress of assuming new identities. But that hasn’t stopped bits of information from leaking out. Marshals assigned with forging new identities for these individuals are notoriously guarded and rarely speak on the record about program specifics. But witnesses with information so provocative their life is at risk make for strong cases: Trials involving WITSEC have an 89 percent conviction rate. By some estimates, the government spends upwards of $10 million annually to keep the WITSEC program going. Protecting whistleblowers from the dangerous criminals they implicate doesn’t come cheap. It was WITSEC and the promise of a government-subsidized hiding place that convinced several “made” men of the mafia to turn their backs on organized crime and help prosecutors convict numerous leaders, from John Gotti to several members of the Lucchese family. ![]() Developed by Justice Department employee Gerald Shur and beginning in 1971, the Federal Witness Protection Program-or Witness Security Program (WITSEC)-has provided safe harbor for over 18,000 federal witnesses and their families in exchange for damning testimony. ![]()
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