"I got the call late at night, guy calling to report a bribery attempt," says Alex Kassatkin, a retired special agent who at the time was assigned to the Office of Internal Affairs. "It was in the mid-1980s, in the middle of winter. A blizzard had hit Chicago, and another was on the way to North Dakota. The phone lines were kind of messed up, so I had a hard time hearing the guy. I asked him what the commodity was.

"I thought he said 50 pigs."

The "guy" was the Customs inspector at the Dunseith, N. Dak., port of entry, which at the time reported things of this nature to the then-regional Internal Affairs office in Chicago. Dunseith is a micropolis about a mile and a half in diameter, population just over 700, on the Canadian border.

Earlier that evening, the inspector had an interesting conversation with another guy in the local VFW hall. The other guy was a school-bus driver - that is, he owned a surplus school bus and he drove it. It was unclear what he actually did for a living.

But one thing he did was help members of a nearby farming commune transport their pigs to American slaughterhouses. And in this regard, he asked if the inspector could do him a favor.

"I need to bring some pigs in from Canada, and with this blizzard and all, I might have a problem," the guy explained.

The inspector immediately recognized a not-well-veiled smuggling request.

For readers who are wondering why someone would want to smuggle pigs, there are strict government-certification requirements for imported livestock. The "bus driver" had none of the required paperwork, so he offered the inspector $100 to wave his pigs through. Dutifully reporting all this to the Internal Affairs agent, the inspector asked what his next move should be.

Kassatkin knew that an IA agent would have to be present to help collect evidence that would stand up in court. But the blizzard, which proved to be just as unforgiving as it had threatened at the outset, had grounded the planes, so there was no way he could leave Chicago that night. He asked the inspector if he could stall the guy.

The following day, Kassatkin flew to Grand Forks, rented a car, and started out for Dunseith. When he arrived, he made the requisite contacts with other law enforcement agencies, including Canadian Customs, to conduct a stakeout.

The inspector started his shift about nine o'clock that night. "I had my equipment set up - tape recorder, still camera, other investigative equipment - so now all we had to do was wait for the guy to call."

After a two-leg trip that included driving the 300 miles from Grand Forks, Kassatkin was exhausted, but "we had to do this thing as quickly as possible, because in a town that small, news of our plan could leak out in no time." While waiting for the alleged briber, he put his head on the desk and fell asleep.

He awoke a short time later when he heard the inspector explain to someone at the Customs booth, "Oh, don't worry about him. His car broke down and he's waiting for a lift."

"Then I hear, 'okay, I'll go get the pigs. I'll be back around one [a.m.]' I look outside and I see a yellow conversion-van school bus idling in the northbound lane, with "Turtle Mountain Independent School District" painted on the side. I called Pembina [the Regional Agent in Charge] for backup." Asked why he would need backup for a nonviolent pig smuggler in a 700-person town in sub-zero weather, he says, "I was doing a one-man surveillance. He could have come back while I was in the bathroom."

With the inspector wired and cameras set up so Kassatkin could surreptitiously take photos, they waited for the pig man to return.

One a.m., two a.m., three a.m....
Canadian Customs is only about a football field away from the Dunseith port of entry, so Customs officers from both countries often communicate by intercom. "Sometime after four a.m., Canada starts talking to us on the intercom.

"'He's here, he's here! The pigs are in the van!' I look out the window through my field glasses, and sure enough, the bus is approaching. I've got the telephoto lens set up, and all systems are go."

The bus driver pulls up to the Customs building, hands the inspector a wad of cash while Kassatkin snaps pictures through a crack in the door, and drives off.

"He stiffed me!" the inspector yelled. "He said a hundred dollars! There's only fifty here!"

Meanwhile, agents from the then Office of Enforcement (now Investigations) followed the van to be sure the subject had actually entered the United States. In the rear, Kassatkin watched as they turned on their blue lights and pulled him over. Then, "Everyone gets out of the cars with weapons drawn. I yell at the pig smuggler, 'Get out of your car!'"

And as he does, liquor bottles fall out of the van. He's having trouble standing.

"Put your hands up! You're under arrest!"

"Under arrest for what?"

"Pig smuggling!"

"But my truck's empty."

The van is rocking like crazy, steam is pouring through cracks in the windows, and the agents could smell the pigs. But you couldn't see them because the driver had placed floor boards over the passenger area. The pigs - not 50, but five -- were underneath.

The pig-toting bus driver could no longer deny their presence. He told the agents, "I wasn't coming from Canada. I just drove up to the port and back. I was taking the pigs for a ride."

Now in possession of all the evidence he needed, Kassatkin figured the investigation was over. He looked forward to a quick return to Chicago and the sleep he'd clearly earned.

The agents took custody of the subject to bring him before a magistrate. The pigs stayed on the bus because they were, well, pigs, and the agents didn't know how they'd get them back inside if they let them out.

Alien pigs
Kassatkin got custody of the bus. He figured his last official task would be attending to the entry requirements. Pigs are considered wasting assets because if they don't get to market on time, they're useless. No problem, he thought. He'd simply drive them to auction.

He called the local USDA office to find out about official disposition procedures. Agriculture asked about the pigs' health certificates. They had none. Canada wouldn't take them back because they lacked health certificates, and the United States didn't want them either.

"We had pigs without a country," says Kassatkin. Undocumented alien pigs. Auction was out of the question.

Someone told him to call a veterinarian in Iowa. The vet found the idea of an internal affairs agent stuck with five pigs quite hilarious, but "I'd gone almost two days without sleep, and I wasn't amused."

The veterinarian suggested he drive the pigs 300 miles south, to Bismarck, where a slaughterhouse would inspect them, certify them, and probably give Customs market price for them. Kassatkin once again started feeling optimistic.

The counter employee in Bismarck asked, "Are you the guy from Customs with the pigs?"

"That's me."

"So where are they?"

"Out in the van."

"George, go out there and help this guy get the sows into the pen."

But, says Kassatkin, "I've long since lost my sense of humor, and I say, 'They're not sows.'"

"Of course they are. Sows are female pigs."

"I know what sows are. You can tell from 25 yards away, these are not sows."

"Then we can't take 'em."

Says Kassatkin, "I thought I was in the twilight zone."

The employee explained to Kassatkin that the slaughterhouse was only rigged for sows. Boar meat is much gamier, so, according to the employee, "They're only good for pepperoni." And he knew of only two places that took boars: Dubuque and Chicago.

"I was not driving to Dubuque, and I sure as heck wasn't taking them back to Chicago," says Kassatkin.

They called the Department of Agriculture to referee; Agriculture said Kassatkin could leave the boars as long as they were destroyed under Customs supervision: He had to witness the slaughter and wait until the truck from the rendering plant came for the carcasses.

Meanwhile, in another part of town...
The pig smuggler had made his initial appearance in court in Grand Forks and was released on bond. With his school bus confiscated, he had no way to get home. He walked to the highway and stuck out his thumb. A trucker picked him up.

The entire way back to Dunseith, he complained of how Customs had taken advantage of him, how his school bus had been seized, how he'd been smuggling pigs for the commune all summer with no problems, that everything was fine until the weather got bad because he'd been able to use the back roads and escape Customs detection. But once winter set in, he had to use major roads because they were the only ones passable, so he'd been forced to bribe a Customs inspector to let his pigs through, and the inspector had double-crossed him.

In telling his story, he earned one more witness for the prosecution: The trucker's wife was the investigative assistant for the Pembina RAIC.

* * * * * * * *

Aftermath: Though small, the bribe was still a federal offense, and the assistant U.S. attorney, like Customs, wanted to send the message that bribery attempts at the world's longest open border would not be tolerated.

Considering that he had been caught completely and utterly red-handed, Customs thought the smuggler would at least strike a plea bargain. But he insisted on a jury trial, where inspectors from the U.S. and Canadian customs services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as agents from the Offices of Enforcement and Internal Affairs all gave testimony. He was found guilty and spent a year in jail.