Chapter 5: The Informant

Dale arrived in Alpine in early 1991.

There were no big cases on his desk, no pressing issues he needed to deal with.

So he went around the Big Bend region and got a lay of the land.

A lot of that, it involved talking with local law enforcement, picking their brains for useful sources of information, getting recommendations on who he could trust.

It wasn't long before a familiar name was mentioned.

Some people had suggested that Robert Chambers would be a great confidential informant for us.

A local border patrol agent set up a meeting for Dale to talk to Robert so he could assess this potential informant for himself.

Robert picked the location.

It's sagebrush.

It's yellow dirt.

I drove 10 miles down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

There was no houses.

There were no people.

There were jackrabbits.

So the only witnesses to Robert and I meeting back then are a family of jackrabbits.

Because he didn't want to be seen talking to me.

As they talked, Dale was puzzled.

It was very nebulous what he could offer.

He said, I know a lot of contacts.

I can do this.

I can do that.

I can get you loads of marijuana.

I'm thinking we're getting overrun with loads of marijuana that the U.S. Border Patrol is doing a very good job of catching.

I don't know how much more marijuana we need.

I'm interested in cocaine and heroin.