Operation Falcon (USFWS operation)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Falcon was a 1982-1984 sting operation conducted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Canadian Wildlife Service to entrap falconers and falcon breeders by using undercover wildlife officers posing as falconers to entice falconers (often law-abiding falconers) to violate either the Migratory Bird Act or federal falconry regulations that were (and still are) highly subject to a wide range of interpretation.

1 Overview
2 Canadian Convictions
3 US Convictions
4 Inconsistencies in USFWS press releases
5 Impact on Falconry in the US
6 Operation Colorado (2004)
7 References

[edit] Overview

Operation Falcon's purpose was to expose and disband a reputedly vast multi-million dollar international smuggling operation shipping North American birds of prey (specifically peregrine falcons and gyrfalcons) to the Middle East.

A small falcon smuggling operation was discovered in Canada, consisting of Glen Luckman (the ringleader and not a falconer), John Slaytor (a falconer and falcon breeder), and Jeff McPartlin (a US falconer, formerly convicted gyrfalcon smuggler, and undercover paid informant for the USFWS).

Ironically, the largest illegal falcon smuggler in the two-year operation was the USFWS, who authorized McPartlin to trap, trade, give, sell, and smuggle wild gyrfalcons and peregrines--an act illegal under the Migratory Bird Act and the exact same act that the USFWS was seeking to prosecute and halt (McKay: 200-210).

Of the nearly 500 falconers, raptor breeders, and raptor rehabilitators alleged to have committed crimes, there were only 5 felony convictions as the cases fell apart one by one in court when the USFWS's plea-bargining star witnesses' (Russek and Luckman) testimonies proved to be overwhelmingly fabrications told to the USFWS in order to escape conviction. McPartlin, the paid undercover agent working for the USFWS in order to avoid prosecution for earlier smuggling charges, was later found by courts to have worked with the USFWS agents to excessively entice and entrap otherwise legal falconry practitioners in an overzealous pursuit of convictions for a vast falcon smuggling ring that never appeared to have existed save in the minds of the three plea-bargining smugglers and USFWS agents. Ultimately, because of the entrapment tactics used by the USFWS and the unsubstantiated claims by three plea-bargaining smugglers, Operation Falcon came under scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

The USFWS sought indictments for 438 people in Operation Falcon. One by one the indictments were dismissed on the grounds of entrapment from the USFWS and heresay and unreliable testimony from McParlin, the USFWS's star informant and undercover agent (McKay: 209).

Paul McKay, in his book "The Pilgrim and the Cowboy", summarizes that "[g]iven these facts, it is difficult not to conclude that Operation Falcon was largely a [public relations] mirage--a straw man secretly set up and then knocked down by U.S. and Canadian wildlife agencies" (209). Particularly since, at the time, the USFWS's budget was in danger of being reduced and the agency was seeking a means of prosecuting a high-profile case that would endear it with the public in helping to save the peregrine falcon--currently the "poster child" for the Endangered Species Act in America and an all-around strikingly beautiful bird of prey.

Operation Falcon created a lasting rift and resentment between federal wildlife agencies and American falconers, raptor breeders, and raptor rehabilitators that lingers to this day.

[edit] Canadian Convictions

Luckman and a small-time partner from the US, Bruce Russek, plea-bargined for immunity and received it in exchange for their testimonies. Unfortunately for the prosecution, both Luckman and Russek's stories of other people's smuggling activities were shown to be falsehoods--crafted to make themselves appear to be victims and to get a lighter sentence for themselves--to the point where the judge, prior to sending the jury off to deliberate, told the court that Luckman and Russek had been proven "liars and unsavoury characters." With these two critical witnesses undermined, all other evidence was deemed circumstantial and not a single Canadian arrest was made (McKay: 171-200).

Luckman and Russek served no time. Luckman was fined $23,000--half of what he had made by selling gyrfalcons supplied to him by the USFWS via their undercover informant, McPartlin. Luckman even boasted while on the stand in court that he had actually made money by being arrested once the sales of falcons (given to him from the USFWS via McParlin for resale to the Middle East) were factored in (McKay: 171-200).

John Slaytor, the middleman and Middle East connection for Luckman, was the only person in the smuggling ring who did not plea bargin for immunity. Instead, he abandoned his wife and children and fled the country to the Middle East where he worked as a falconer breeder and trainer for royalty. As of 1989, he was still wanted in Canada (McKay: 210).

In the overzealous attempts at prosecuting possible falcon smugglers, the Mounties arrested Dave Mossop, a Canadian Wildlife Service raptor biologist working for them, as a conspirator in laundering wild birds through a gyrfalcon breeding project. (At the time, Mossop was widely considered the most prominent and respected authority for raptor behavior and biology in all of Canada.) The head of the investigation claimed that absolutely no one could breed gyrfalcons, so the young falcons being legally sold from the breeding project Mossop was overseeing must have been stolen from the wild. Mossop was accused of aiding in the papering and banding and smuggling of these birds. When Mossop took the stand in court, he produced over 100 academic publications on how numerous falconers and breeding projects in the US and Canada had been successfully producing gyrfalcons for many years. He further demonstrated that the Peregrine Fund (a US raptor breeding and conservation organization) had bred and released over 1,400 peregrine falcons between 1970 and 1986. He also presented evidence of how the breeding project he'd been supervising had managed to breed over 20 gyrfalcons in 1985 while he was being accused of lying that the same facility could not possibly have produced 13 birds in 1983--including videotaped evidence of gyrfalcons copulating while in captivity at the facilities (McKay: 197-200).

In short, the prosecution's case for the Canadian side of Operation Falcon was a complete and unmitigated disaster.

[edit] US Convictions

The number of convictions resulting in the US from Operation falcon vary wildly depending upon the source. Even the USFWS, the agency in charge of Operation Falcon, provides very inconsistent claims.

The USFWS originally claimed at the time of the sting in a 1984 press release that 77 US falconers had been arrested in Operation Falcon ([1]).

A 1988 press release from the USFWS contradicts this by claiming just 30 arrests ([2]).

The largest conviction claim for Operation Falcon is made by the Union for the Conservation of Raptors, which claims "over 300" people were charged. It should be noted, however, that this organization is run by Hari Har Singh Khalsa (aka Alan Parrot), who also played a role in Operation Falcon as an unreliable informant who made claims that a vast number of falconers, falcon breeders, and raptor rehabilitators were engaged in smuggling operations without any reliable evidence to back his claims (McKay: 112-124). Coincidentally, the majority of these persons accused by Khalsa as being falcon smugglers just so happened to be competing against him in attempting to win a bid for legally harvesting wild gyrfalcons from Canada. (See here for more information about Khalsa/Parrot's attempts to create an international wild falcon trading monopoly.) The Union for the Conservation of Raptors is largely just the current incarnation of Khalsa's continued attempts at creating a monopoly in falcon harvesting and sales and claiming that there is a vast and far-reaching falcon smuggling organization still in existence.

Regardless of the varying claims quoted by the USFWS and others, the overwhelming majority of arrests were dismissed, found to be entrapment on the part of the USFWS and McPartlin. There were only five felony convictions (out of about 4,000 licensed falconers in the US, the majority of which were investigated, inspected, and enticed by undercover USFWS agents).

One of the people accused of committing a felony was Dr. James Doyle, a man that treated over 400 injured raptors per year at his non-profit avian hospital, and which was pivotal in subsequent appeals (which went all the way to the Supreme Court) on grounds of entrapment. The case against Dr. Doyle involved McPartlin repeatedly offered Doyle wild peregrines, which Doyle would not accept unless they were banded and had the proper paperwork (as required by law). Doyle suspected that if the peregrines McPartlin had were illegally taken from the wild, the USFWS would arrest him when he went to get the proper bands and papers. Instead, McPartlin was secretly working for the USFWS and the USFWS supplied McParlin with all the bands and papers required--essentially making the birds look in every way, shape, and form as if the peregrines were completely legal and approved by the USFWS. Doyle, seeing that the birds were properly banded and papered as required by the USFWS and with USFWS-supplied bands and paperwork, accepted the now legal peregrines from McPartin. had the USFWS not been directly involved and supplying both bands and paperwork to make the peregrine falcons appear completely legal, McPartlin would never have been able to give them to Dr. Doyle. Doyle's lawyer stated at the trial, "I found this to be an incredible tale. A tale of seduction and inducement and snaring and entrapment. This can't be what we want in this country" (McKay: 204-205).

Other entrapment schemes involved McPartlin asking other falconers to "look after" one of his birds for a short while--then placing an illegally taken bird into the hands of falconers who thought they were simply doing a fellow falconer a favor by temporarily bird-sitting. Then USFWS agents would show up on the unsuspecting falconer's premises.

This entrapment extended to (or perhaps was targeted at) a number of prominent North American falconers, particuarly those who had earlier ostracized and derided McPartlin after he was convicted nearly 10 years prior for attempting to smuggle gyrfalcons to the Middle East in the 1970s.

And thus, after a two-year undercover operation and over $2 million dollars in expenditures, wildlife officials essentially pardoned two of the three members of a small-time smuggling ring that the USFWS largely supplied with the majority of falcons from via their undercover informant, McPartlin, who illegally harvested the gyrfalcons and peregrines (without Canada's knowledge of such activities).

[edit] Inconsistencies in USFWS press releases

A number of inconsistencies appear in the USFWS press releases surrounding Operation Falcon, exaggerating actual figures--intentionally or unintentionally. It is worth noting that during the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan was cutting the budget for the USFWS and the peregrine falcon had become the "poster child" for endangered species in the US (because of DDT that caused eggs to break).

The largest smugglers (the Ciesielskis--Europeans and not North American residents) did not actually smuggle wild-caught falcons. Instead, they smuggled hybrid falcons that had been legally bred in captivity. Selling hybrid falcons is not illegal, but doing so without the proper export paperwork is. Their crime was not getting proper export papers, not the illegal wild falcon harvest that Operation Falcon intented to expose (McKay: 208). The Ciesielskis did not touch a single ilegally trapped falcon.

The USFWS claimed that the falcon smuggling ring was a multi-million dollar operation, yet the largest dealings (with the Ciesielskis) accounted for only $112,000 (McKay: 207-208) and were an export paperwork violation, not the illegal trapping and selling of wild raptors that Operation Falcon was intended to expose.

The USFWS claimed that as many as 400 birds had been illegally taken from the wild. When questioned as to where the USFWS obtained this figure, they claimed it was a Canadian estimate. When the Canadian Wildlife Service was questioned, they claimed the figure came from the USFWS (McKay: 207-208). Ultimately, it appears that most of the birds that were taken out of the wild illegally were done so by McParlin with the blessing of the USFWS.

[edit] Impact on Falconry in the US

No US smuggling ring was ever discovered, though the entrapment methods used by the informant and undercover agents resulted in some falconers being charged with minor crimes--typically individuals who simply wanted to acquire a bird for personal use, not for resale to the Middle East as was the supposed premise behind Operation Falcon. Technically, the largest smuggling operation was McPartlin, the USFWS's undercover informant/agent.

Individual falconers that had been accused of crimes ("accused of crimes" but not "proven guilty of crimes") had their birds confiscated (over 100 birds in total) and many were never returned--largely because the overwhelming majority of confiscated raptors died while in USFWS custody. The USFWS was unprepared to handle the birds they confiscated. They did not have the proper facilities, experience, resources, nor personnel to handle and care for so many birds of prey. Many falconers who did eventually get their birds back largely reported that the birds had been in very poor shape or otherwise mistreated by inexperienced handlers. Many birds were injured or crippled while in the custody of the USFWS. No recompensation was given to falconers who'd had their birds confiscated.

The simultaneous, nationwide inspection of falconers by federal agents and the confiscation of birds created a lasting sense of mistrust between some US falconers and USFWS agents. Furthermore the confiscation of falconers birds, without proof or being charged with a crime, remains an ongoing issue in the falconry community. It appears to be a violation of the Bill of Rights under the context of illegal search and seizure, yet continues to be practiced by the USFWS at times.

These actions and other overzealous efforts of wildlife law enforcement agents harmed legal breeding projects (especially raptors which were disturbed during mating season or while on eggs/young) and legally practicing falconers' reputations. In some instances, birds were confiscated from falconers who had not been charged with a crime--and many of these birds were never returned.

Bird confiscation by federal agents also brings into question whether or not a falconer can own a bird--be it a wild-caught bird he has possessed legally for over 20 years or one that was bred, born, and raised by the breeder--particularly since captive-bred birds can be legally sold/given/traded to other falconers or breeders. The current interpretation appears to be that regardless of circumstances, the federal government "owns" all raptors in the US save for imported exotics/hybrids.

The alleged vast international raptor smuggling ring was never found and probably existed only in the desperate minds of plea-bargining, small-time smugglers--and Khalsa, who could have been trying to manipulate the USFWS into eliminating his competition for a gyrfalcon harvesting government contract. The small operation run by Luckman, Slaytor, and McPartlin was barely profitable the first year, operating at a loss by the second year, and was on the verge of collapse/bankruptcy by the time Luckman and Slaytor were arrested. The near lack of a black market for smuggled falcons was causing the operation to fold.

Operation Falcon, unsurprisingly, caused a great deal of strife and tension for US falconers. Paranoia regarding wildlife officials is still rampant to this day within the US falconry community.

[edit] Operation Colorado (2004)

Operation Colorado (also referred to as "Operation Witchhunt" by some falconers) was a 2004 sting operation conducted by wildlife officials in Colorado to inspect every falconer in the state simultaneously.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Colorado is the state where Operation Falcon originated with a few USFWS agents who believed McPartlin's claims that there was a vast falcon smuggling operation in the US and Canada.

Also connecting back with Operation Falcon is the re-emergence of Hari Har Singh Khalsa (Union for the Conservation of Raptors) who appears to have either sparked or fanned the flames of suspicion among federal agents by claiming (once again) that a successful falcon breeder (and thus a competitor) was supposedly illegally harvesting falcons. (See here for Khalsa/Parrot's accusations of wrong-doing.)

No falconer was arrested in Operation Colorado/Witchhunt, though several cases were "still pending a decision" because of lack of actionable evidence and confusion over regulations (even by state and federal wildlife agents). Nearly two years after the sting operation, no falconer has been brought to trial and no actionable evidence has been produced. However, several raptors were confiscated on the spot and never returned, despite obvious disputes between USFWS and state wildlife agents over the interpretation of poorly written and vague falconry regulations--including whether an offense had or had not been committed--between wildlife officers at the scenes of these inspections. As with the delays in the filing of any actual charges, the results (if any) of Operation Colorado are still pending. Confiscated birds--including birds bred and raised in breeding projects--have still not been returned.