Rick Howdy was like going back in time. The sheriff and his cronies ruled with iron fists. The

penalty for crossing any of them was severe. And I thought about how do I introduce myself into

this culture. I'm not a street guy. Yes, my life has been about that undercover. I can come off as a businessman.

So I hit town and I attracted a lot of attention.

Welcome to episode 392 of FBI Case Fall Review with Jerry Williams. I'm a retired agent on a mission to show you

who the FBI is and what the FBI does through my books, my blog, and my podcast case reviews

with former colleagues. Today we get to speak to former agent Larry Wansley,

who served in the FBI for 10 years. In this episode, Larry, one of the FBI's first long-term

deep cover agents, reviews the early days of the FBI's undercover program when in 1973, he and a handful of

agents, including the equally legendary Joe Pistone, began using the investigative technique that

had been forbidden by the late FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover, who died in 1972.

Larry and his UC contemporaries were part of a behavioral science study to establish standards

for UC agent selection qualifications and operations. For his case review, Larry shares the details of his

most life-threatening assignment, which took place in rural Texas. The elected sheriff of Greg County,

Texas, Tom Welsh, was essentially a redneck southern crime boss, and he and his deputies were eventually charged and

convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, civil rights violations, and facilitating illegal gambling.

Prior to joining the FBI, Larry was a detective in the Compton, California Police Department.

His first office was San Antonio, and after a brief stint there, he went undercover in LA

and accepted assignments as a long-term deep undercover agent based out of the Dallas

division for the balance of his bureau career. Larry left the FBI to accept a

groundbreaking role in establishing player counseling and team security for the Dallas Cowboys. During a

leave from the Cowboys, he also served as security director for Whitney Houston's World Tour. Later, he became the head of global security

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