LIFE IN WITNESS PROTECTION: NO FRIENDS, NO JOB AND NO SECURITY

Police Informant Tells Jeff Sallot He Panics When He Sees Someone He Thinks
He Knows

Growing up on the mean streets of a British Columbia lumber town, Al Young,
a drug dealer, cocaine addict and police informant, had been in tight spots
before.

But nothing had prepared him for the shocking news one chilly March morning
in 1995 that his cover as an informant had probably been blown, a dangerous
biker gang was likely gunning for him and he would have to assume a new
identity and make a new life somewhere far from home.

Leroy, the code name used by his RCMP handler, told Mr. Young that an
undercover police car, a Mustang with sensitive RCMP files in the trunk,
had been stolen.

"I felt I was a dead man," Mr. Young recalls. He's been on the run or in
hiding in the witness protection program now for seven years.

Mr. Young says he's broke, unemployable and is being treated for severe
depression. He has changed his looks and is living in hiding with his
girlfriend, Jodie Fitzgerald.

"We're living like ghosts," Ms. Fitzgerald says.

(The informant and his girlfriend chose to use the pseudonyms Al Young and
Jodie Fitzgerald for this article to protect their security.)

Mr. Young says he's kicked his cocaine and heroin habits and wants to be
able to go back home some day, using his real name.

The stolen files incident was one of the most serious RCMP security
breaches in decades, law enforcement sources told The Globe and Mail. The
names, addresses and telephone numbers of at least 10 plainclothes police
officers, and documents that could identify confidential informants,
including Mr. Young, were lost.

The RCMP have acknowledged only the theft of the car and the loss of a gun
and "profile sheets" of known criminals.

"That stuff never should have been in that car. That cop's mistake has
ruined my life," Mr. Young, 35, said in a recent interview.

Life was never easy for a poor kid growing up in a tough B.C. town.

Many of his friends' parents grew marijuana in back yards.

As a teenager, he stole some of the plants and made his getaway on a
skateboard.

By age 15, he was dealing hash and cocaine. He was kicked out of school for
fighting.

His first run-in with the biker gang came a few years later when he was
peddling 10 kilograms of South American cocaine, undercutting the bikers'
prices. He was beaten up, but didn't go to the police. His father always
said never to talk to cops about anything.

He turned police informant at age 18. He needed help with a nasty cocaine
smuggler who was demanding a debt be paid.

Mr. Young was assigned a confidential source file number and was involved
with the RCMP from 1985 to 1995, federal sources say

In time he was turning in dealers and marijuana growers, including a
friend. "I'm ashamed of myself."

The police, he says, pushed him to infiltrate deeper into the biker
underworld to get information about cocaine, heroin and other hard drug deals.

He moved, stopped meeting Leroy, but was busted with four associates in
1993 trying to sell 50 pounds of marijuana to an undercover cop. He was
fined $4,000 and placed on probation.

The police were soon back in his life, hoping he could find information
about two drug-war murders.

Then came the fateful phone call on March 31, 1995.

The police put the family home under 24-hour surveillance and whisked Mr.
Young out of town immediately with an entourage of police bodyguards.

He left town with some clothes, a Grade 12 math book -- he hoped to take a
correspondence course -- and a picture of his dog.

The RCMP kept moving Mr. Young to different parts of the country -- a few
weeks here, a month there -- while they tried to figure out what to do with
him. During a sojourn in Alberta, Mr. Young hired a lawyer who eventually
negotiated a $200,000 settlement for him. Under the witness protection
program, he was given a new name and identification, but his old criminal
record was attached to the new identity in police data banks.

Mr. Young was not happy. He didn't have enough money to start a legitimate
business, and couldn't get loans without references. He says he signed the
settlement under duress. "I was at their mercy."

He settled in Collingwood, Ont., on Georgian Bay, knowing nobody, and not
realizing that Wasaga Beach, just down the road, was a big biker hangout.
But one weekend he spotted an old acquaintance from the B.C. biker gang
before the biker spotted him. "I knew I had to get out of the country," he
said.

He had used some of his relocation money for scuba lessons and wanted to go
to the Cayman Islands for an advanced course. The Mounties said that if he
left the country he was on his own forever, he says.

He went anyway, the start of an expensive journey to diving schools and
holidays in Tahiti, Fiji, Singapore and New Zealand.

There were brief friendships along the way, and even a romance with an
American woman at a Cayman resort. But he wasn't good at lying. When he
finally told her he was in the witness protection program, she dropped him.

He eventually earned an advanced scuba instructor certification. "I thought
I was employable at last." In Fiji, he applied to emigrate to Australia.
But he was rejected, not so much for his criminal record, but because he
couldn't provide references in his new name to explain what he had been
doing for the past five years.

With his cash dwindling, he returned to Canada to plead with the Mounties
for more money, or at least some job references. He says he was turned down
flat.

Still hoping for a career in diving, he took a video course to be able to
make underwater documentaries.

He met Jodie Fitzgerald at the TV school. They fell in love and were soon
living together. Mr. Young kept his secrets as long as he could.

But in 1996, while they were travelling in British Columbia, Mr. Young
again spotted one of his former associates from the bikers. The man was
going down a line of cars waiting for a ferry, obviously looking for someone.

The incident spooked Mr. Young.

As they sped away, he gave his girlfriend a quick explanation and stopped
at the nearest police detachment to report the incident. A constable took
Ms. Fitzgerald aside and advised her to get away from Mr. Young.

But she was waiting when he came out. "I said, 'I guess this means it's
over.' She said, 'It doesn't have to be.' " They've been together ever since.

They settled at a new location and Ms. Fitzgerald found a job. Mr. Young
had no such luck. "I can't work anywhere dealing with the public. I have
panic attacks when I see someone I think I know."

He worked briefly as an airport baggage handler, a job he loved. But he
couldn't get a permanent security clearance because of his old criminal record.

"The day I was fired I went to the RCMP office at the airport and started
yelling, 'Go ahead and just shoot me, right now. Put me out of my misery.' "

He went home and cried.

He says that with one brief relapse last New Year's Eve, he's been off
illegal drugs for more than five years. He's on antidepressants and is
being treated for stress, anxiety disorder, depression and heart palpitations.

"I got a contract on my head. No pill will fix that. You're waiting to be
shot every day."

The couple have few friends. In their six years together, they have never
invited anyone home. They spend most evenings talking about security
precautions.

"There are days I can't get out of bed to go get the mail," he says.

With his dark sense of humour, Mr. Young jokes that he's going to write a
book called The Witness Protection Program for Dummies. Lesson one: The
police can never promise to protect your identity forever.