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Commentary - Feb 16, 2006 - Printable Version
- The Defendant is……Guilty?
by David Thorough Milner
Poking through WHATREALLYHAPPENED.com, while slurping on my morning coffee a few days back, I ran across a story linked from CNN.Money.com, which looked a little too familiar. To most folks, it was just another story about another CEO ripping off another company but in this particular case, I took notice that the company was Wal-Mart and the former CEO was Thomas Coughlin who, according to this story, will soon plead guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion.
No big deal. You've seen one CEO rip-off his company, you've seen them all, right? But then I took notice, as the report went on to say that Coughlin is expected to claim he was reimbursing himself for a secret scheme to fund an anti-union spy operation but Federal prosecutors had found no significant evidence that he was part of any undercover operation.
Now, where have I heard this before? No, not about another CEO ripping off his company. We hear that stuff all the time. Oh yeah, now I remember.
I'm thinking about an old friend of mine (actually, a core member of my old crew, when I was young and, let's say, “unruly”) who called me up about six weeks ago, telling me a Private Investigator out of D.C. tracked him down to question him about his “affiliation” with a former rogue “State Agent”, now deceased, who after retiring on 18 years active duty (no pension???) became a bounty hunter and worked both sides of the law, wherever the profit was.
Claiming she was representing a former CEO of Wal-Mart, who was now writing his memoirs, traveling the speaking circuit, and planning to produce a documentary about the “Agent”, her investigation had led her to my old buddy, having found that he had worked closely with the “Agent” and had first hand knowledge of his dealings.
Although there was a myriad of crimes and misdemeanors that involved this “Agent” (some he arrested people for committing, and then, some he committed himself), it seems the woman PI spent much of her time asking him about how they broke the union.
My friend was, needless to say, a little leery of the whole situation, even with the statutes of limitations far behind him and claimed to me that he didn't give her much real information, instead plying her with fragments of stories, hoping to be financially compensated for his personal memoirs, if they were actually to be used in the documentary.
Upon first hearing of the meeting, I advised my friend of the possibility that the PI could be scamming for the union busting information, possibly for the ex-CEO's own memoir research - but who knows?
After seeing the story, I called him up and also sent him the link. When I first got him on the phone and informed him of what I had found, he confirmed the name of the CEO (he actually had a picture of the CEO and his family the PI had given him) and told me that the vast majority of the questions were about the union busting.
She did however, ask him a few questions about the “good old days” and about the other two core members of our crew (me being one of them), not to mention one unrelated area that I had been personally involved in but she never did contact the third person or myself. The last thing she told my old friend before heading to the airport was that she would be calling him, but the call never came.
Ok, here's the skinny on union busting (which I am not in favor of and have never participated in). It's all very simple. Just send in two people to take minimal jobs as stockers, checkers, what have you. All they have to do is “friendly up” to the other employees and keep their eyes open. Within a couple of weeks, the moles will know enough about the pro-union employees (who's violating company policy, who's stealing merchandise or better yet, the personal stuff like who's “doing” who) for the company to have them fired or to blackmail them into quitting. That's it.
At this point, I still don't know if the PI was really working for the Feds (she did say she was married to a Federal Judge) or for Mr. Coughlin's defense team - but I do know this, in the clandestine world of “spooks”, never assume anything. I do assume, however that we've seen the last of this woman and her “documentary research”.
I have no idea if Mr. Coughlin is guilty of any or all the crimes he's accused of but I do know, there was a secret union-busting team sent into Wal-Mart, as he has claimed (not to mention two grocery chains).
Maybe Mr. Coughlin did commit all these crimes - but in the case of union busting at Wal-Mart, he may just be telling the truth. The problem with that is, Mr. Coughlin, union busting is a Federal offense, too.
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