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None of them has had previous acting experience -- or any experience as criminals. They are carefully screened to make sure that their records are clean. Explains Pledger: "We don't want real felons on the job. This is not a training ground for bank robbers or dope dealers. Also we don't accept anybody from the Soviet embassy."
The impersonators seem to love their work. Suzanne McGohey of Dumfries, Va., was a schoolteacher until she started impersonating a hooker at Hogan's Alley. Given the alias Wanda Lust, she swaddles herself in a mink coat and pearls that the FBI seized in a drug raid. Says she: "Where else can you act like a sleaze and get paid for it? It enables you to be deviant in a healthy way."
Across town at the pool hall, three crooks sat around a card table playing a desultory game of seven card no peek, while waiting for the fuzz to arrive. In between dealing hands and looking for ways to cheat, Brett Langenderfer, 27, of Woodbridge, Va., explained that he was pretending to be wanted on a charge of interstate theft. When the agents stormed the building, Langenderfer tried to flee down a back stairway. "They call me the 'Rabbit' because I always run. It really gets the adrenaline going when the cops arrive, almost like rushing out of the locker room for a big game."
Most of the trainees are in their late 20s and look toward the FBI as a second career. Few have previous law-enforcement experience. Although the agency once tried to recruit lawyers, Pledger says the emphasis now is on hiring accountants. Their main mission: to track the drug trade. "We use financial investigative techniques to audit books and seize assets," says Pledger. "It's the best way to put the dopers behind bars."
Each class of about 46 agents moves through an intensive 14-week training course that begins with lessons in surveillance. They track a suspect from his home, then observe him at a shopping mall as he sells a small bag of phony cocaine. Next comes a class in simple arrest, when agents burst into a fleabag motel to capture an unarmed John as he lies in bed with a make-believe prostitute. Agents learn how to frisk suspects, read them their rights, and complete arrest forms. Instructors, all of whom are former agents, carefully critique every arrest, providing pointers on how best to subdue a struggling suspect or slip on handcuffs. No detail seems to go unnoticed. At one recent training session, a future agent was told he should go home, stand in front of his mirror and practice shouting in a forceful voice "Freeze! This is the FBI!"
Nine weeks into the course, trainees practice arresting an armed felon. They then investigate an assault on a judge and conduct a court-authorized wiretap. Their final lessons are held in a mock courtroom, where they face actors who pose as a tough team of defense lawyers. "We really let the sharks go after them there," says Pledger. "Having to eat your paperwork and watch the criminals go free teaches you to do everything by the book."
On average, three fledgling agents in each class flunk out of Hogan's Alley. The standards are exacting. Says Pledger: "Anyone who shoots a fleeing felon in the back doesn't have what it takes to be in the FBI."