When you're a reporter digging deep, you turn up a lot of dirt. But that doesn't mean you can put all the good dirt in the story.
I've found myself with a lot of extra, good dirt in my new role as senior reporter (hence, Señor Reporter), writing primarily for the Arizona Daily Star's Sunday paper.
Check in often, and let's see what we can turn up.
I barely looked up yesterday when I heard a retired customs agent had been arrested on drug corruption charges. The only thing noteworthy about it to me was that he was arrested in Green Valley, not Rio Rico. What hit me like a splash of cold water was hearing the agent’s name as I drove home — Richard Cramer.
In my six-or-so years of covering the Arizona-Mexico border (1997-2003) I didn’t get invited into the offices of many border-drug investigators, even though I covered the cases constantly. But Richard Cramer opened the door for me a few times at his Customs investigative office on Mariposa Road in Nogales. He also talked to me on the phone, and generally seemed to share my interest in the area’s underworld. He didn’t reveal deep undercover secrets or delve into government computers for me — nothing like that. He was simply willing to talk, and even be quoted — a prerogative of the resident agent in charge.
Apparently his interest in the underworld ran deeper than I knew. He was arrested Friday at his Green Valley home, accused by federal investigators of helping drug traffickers by providing information and investing in a cocaine load, all after he left his job in Nogales and was stationed in Mexico.
What strikes me, for some reason, is the allegation that when he retired a couple of years ago, it was to commit himself to the drug trade. Why that detail? It suggests that Cramer may have flipped completely to the dark side in his mind, unlike the agents who are tempted to wave a few loads across but otherwise continue to do their jobs.
The reporter who succeeded me on the border beat, Michael Marizco, has some interesting details about Cramer’s background in Nogales, including the fact that he had been working for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department as a correctional officer until last week. That certainly doesn’t sound like the fast life of a man who had committed himself to the drug trade.
Was he corrupt when I spoke to him in Nogales? I have no idea. I never suspected him, but of course I never completely trust that anyone in that realm is clean. (I hope that ICE is looking back at his record in Nogales now. I’d hate to have been a customs informant under Cramer, like a person from Mexico I used to know) I came to enjoy that ambiguity in the old days — especially when interviewing investigators in Mexico. You never know what you don’t know about someone.
