twenty-four-year veteran and former senior executive officer (SIS-2) in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Prado’s last overt job in the CIA was as Chief of Operations for the Counterterrorist Center under J. Cofer Black.
Mr. Prado has been awarded the George H. W. Bush Medal for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.
Obviously, this Ric Prado was a very successful spy. It seemed unlikely he had any connection with Roberts’s murder tale.
I focused on other chapters of Roberts’s book until the summer of 2009, when Prado rudely thrust himself back into the narrative. It happened in June, when CIA director Leon Panetta triggered a brief media storm by revealing that after 9/11 the CIA had created a “targeted assassination unit” to hunt terrorists. The agency had breached its trust with Congress by keeping the unit a secret. Quickly dubbed the “death squad” by reporters, the unit, CIA officials promised, had never been activated. Prado’s name emerged in subsequent reports that the CIA had outsourced the assassination unit to Blackwater. Pamela Hess and Adam Goldman reported for the Associated Press that first at the CIA, and then at Blackwater, “Prado ran the death squad program.”
Could the man who ran the CIA/Blackwater death squad also be the hit man Roberts described? It seemed both too perfect and insane.
The Last True Crime Fighter
As Prado was appearing in more national news accounts about the death squad program, I found someone who was an expert on Jon Roberts’s proffer and who might be able to shed some light on the validity of his claims. I was told by an MDPD detective that Florida state police lieutenant Mike Fisten had investigated the Schwartz murder and had testified about Roberts’s proffer at his sealed sentencing hearing. At the time, Fisten had been an MDPD detective serving on a federal organized-crime task force.
I phoned Fisten and asked if the narrative that Roberts’s proffer contained was true, and if the “Ricky” named in it could possibly be Enrique Prado, who joined the CIA. Fisten replied, “Based on the evidence we gathered, the story Jon tells about the Schwartz murder appears to be true, and his Ricky is the same Ricky Prado at the CIA.”
“Why was Prado never indicted?” I asked.
“Buddy, you’re going to have to come to my house for that one. I’ll explain to you how to get away with murder in America, from the Albert San Pedro and Ricky Prado school of crime.”
Fisten’s condo was inside a mazelike Broward County development. His unmarked police Impala was parked in front. He greeted me in jeans and a polo shirt. Showing me inside his modest home, he joked about his downward economic trajectory due to a recent divorce. The living room was dominated by a birdcage containing a noisy parakeet that scattered seeds everywhere. The bird belonged to his girlfriend, a state police lieutenant (whom, over the next two years, Fisten would marry, father a child with, acrimoniously divorce, and then start dating again). The chaos of his personal relations, I would learn, was a running theme.
At fifty-two, Fisten had a bantam build, but with a wide chest indicating time spent at the gym. His hair was graying but thick, brushed back as if it was blow-dried (though it apparently grew that way). A gold chain with a Magen David was tangled in his collar. Right before I arrived, he’d changed out of his suit after testifying in court. Named Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, he’d just wrapped up a stint attached to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. His career in the state police and his work with the FBI amounted to something of a comeback. “The case against Ricky Prado and Albert San Pedro destroyed me inside the MDPD,” he said. “It wrecked a lot of careers.”
When
Mr. Prado has been awarded the George H. W. Bush Medal for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.
Obviously, this Ric Prado was a very successful spy. It seemed unlikely he had any connection with Roberts’s murder tale.
I focused on other chapters of Roberts’s book until the summer of 2009, when Prado rudely thrust himself back into the narrative. It happened in June, when CIA director Leon Panetta triggered a brief media storm by revealing that after 9/11 the CIA had created a “targeted assassination unit” to hunt terrorists. The agency had breached its trust with Congress by keeping the unit a secret. Quickly dubbed the “death squad” by reporters, the unit, CIA officials promised, had never been activated. Prado’s name emerged in subsequent reports that the CIA had outsourced the assassination unit to Blackwater. Pamela Hess and Adam Goldman reported for the Associated Press that first at the CIA, and then at Blackwater, “Prado ran the death squad program.”
Could the man who ran the CIA/Blackwater death squad also be the hit man Roberts described? It seemed both too perfect and insane.
The Last True Crime Fighter
As Prado was appearing in more national news accounts about the death squad program, I found someone who was an expert on Jon Roberts’s proffer and who might be able to shed some light on the validity of his claims. I was told by an MDPD detective that Florida state police lieutenant Mike Fisten had investigated the Schwartz murder and had testified about Roberts’s proffer at his sealed sentencing hearing. At the time, Fisten had been an MDPD detective serving on a federal organized-crime task force.
I phoned Fisten and asked if the narrative that Roberts’s proffer contained was true, and if the “Ricky” named in it could possibly be Enrique Prado, who joined the CIA. Fisten replied, “Based on the evidence we gathered, the story Jon tells about the Schwartz murder appears to be true, and his Ricky is the same Ricky Prado at the CIA.”
“Why was Prado never indicted?” I asked.
“Buddy, you’re going to have to come to my house for that one. I’ll explain to you how to get away with murder in America, from the Albert San Pedro and Ricky Prado school of crime.”
Fisten’s condo was inside a mazelike Broward County development. His unmarked police Impala was parked in front. He greeted me in jeans and a polo shirt. Showing me inside his modest home, he joked about his downward economic trajectory due to a recent divorce. The living room was dominated by a birdcage containing a noisy parakeet that scattered seeds everywhere. The bird belonged to his girlfriend, a state police lieutenant (whom, over the next two years, Fisten would marry, father a child with, acrimoniously divorce, and then start dating again). The chaos of his personal relations, I would learn, was a running theme.
At fifty-two, Fisten had a bantam build, but with a wide chest indicating time spent at the gym. His hair was graying but thick, brushed back as if it was blow-dried (though it apparently grew that way). A gold chain with a Magen David was tangled in his collar. Right before I arrived, he’d changed out of his suit after testifying in court. Named Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, he’d just wrapped up a stint attached to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. His career in the state police and his work with the FBI amounted to something of a comeback. “The case against Ricky Prado and Albert San Pedro destroyed me inside the MDPD,” he said. “It wrecked a lot of careers.”
When
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