It’s hard to believe that this affable man, with a frank gaze, who greets us with a warm handshake, has spent years hanging out with dangerous criminals – pretending to be one of them.
In his Memoirs, baptized ChameleonMarc Ruskin recounts his 27-year career with the FBI, including nearly 20 under false identities, tracking down fraudsters, drug traffickers or members of sordid mafia organizations, recording conversations at the risk of leaving his skin, exchanging wads of greenbacks for kilos of heroin…
To see the light that shines in his eyes when he talks to us about this time, during his brief visit to Montreal this week, we understand that Marc Ruskin has not regretted a minute of this extraordinary life.
“When I joined the FBI, I thought I was going to be there maybe five years before going back to law. But without my realizing it, 27 years had passed, ”he says in French, which is in fact his mother tongue through his mother.
The idea of writing a book was in his head long before he retired 10 years ago.
I thought it might be interesting for a lot of people to know how undercover work actually works. But also to have a window into what goes on behind the steel curtains, the real culture of the FBI, the one that is not shown to the public – how decisions are made and investigations are carried out, who is going to be targeted …
Marc Ruskin
“But I didn’t want to write another cop book,” he adds, pointing out that most former special agents who write their memoirs usually resort to a ghostwritera penman, or to a collaborator who takes care of writing the text – which was not his case.
And we can say that Marc Ruskin has won his bet: Chameleon is a real hooker (page turner) which reads almost like a whodunit.
Of course, some names have been changed, for security reasons; and the FBI had to give it its blessing before publication. “When you’re hired, you sign a binding contract that says I promise never to publish a book or screenplay without first receiving FBI clearance. And if I don’t ask for this permission, I have to give up my copyright,” he explains.
A life of adventures
Since childhood, Marc Ruskin dreamed of a life that was out of the ordinary. “I wanted to work in an intelligence service or become a soldier to join an elite team like the Green Berets. But I thought it just happened in the movies. »
This is how he first turned to law. But in his prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, he imagined himself at 50 wondering what he could do with his life. At the same time, he knew well that he could never claim the career he wanted beyond a certain age. “Eventually I realized it was now or never and decided to try to enter this world. »
Back then, in 1985, undercover missions were still in their infancy within the FBI. A single psychologist made sure to assess the personality of the agent who had to carry out this type of mission. The ideal candidate? “Someone who is very charismatic, but at the same time doesn’t need to receive a lot of emotions in return. It means you can be friends with a lot of people – people are going to like you, they’re going to want to be with you – but you can be alone and isolated from your own support group without having any problems. And there aren’t many people who are like that,” says Marc Ruskin.
Agents would then create their own fake identities and “legends” in order to build a believable story – which he explains captivatingly in his book. But was he ever afraid to reveal these identities in broad daylight?
Most criminals have already learned that I was with the federal police because at the beginning of my career as an undercover, undercover was a relatively new technique, especially in the FBI. It was only in the second stage of my career that laws were created to protect the identity of the agent, who now testifies under a number and not under his name.
Marc Ruskin
“But normally criminals won’t try to get revenge on an officer,” he adds. They don’t want to spend the rest of their lives in jail or being chased by the FBI all over the world…because if something happens to an agent, the investigation only ends when the guy is caught or dies. . »
Writing this book, he says, has been cathartic. It will have taken him two years after his retirement to reacquaint himself with civilian life, to mourn what he calls in his book his “former beloved institution” to find a law firm, and to stop dreaming of these missions. of infiltration that allowed him to “know from within” otherwise inaccessible worlds.
Inexhaustible, Marc Ruskin cherishes the project of writing another investigative book or a great novel. Or even work as a consultant. “If there are Canadian TV or film producers who want to know how the FBI and infiltration work,” he is available, he says, tongue-in-cheek.
The Chameleon: Memoirs of an Undercover FBI Agent
Marc Ruskin (translated from English by Valéry Lameignère)
Hugo Doc
500 pages