Cole Family Still Feels Aftershocks Of FBI Raid -- Although Probe Seems Fruitless, No Answers Given

CURTIS, Neb. - The evening was winding down for the Cole family.

Ed Cole, general manager of the Curtis Telephone Co., had dozed off on the living-room couch while 14-year-old Amanda was watching television. His wife, Carol, was running water for her bath. The 10-year-old identical twin daughters, Stephanie and Jennifer, had gone to bed. Amanda, 14, was watching "48 Hours" on television in the living room.

"It had something to do with fingerprints and catching criminals," Amanda remembered of the TV show.

But at 9:40 p.m. their peace was shattered when Amanda answered the door and the FBI marched into their lives. Thus began a year of fear, anger and uncertainty for the Coles.

Carol Cole, 40, still has nightmares about the night of May 13, 1992, when federal agents stormed into her bedroom, startling her as she was undressing for her bath, naked from the waist up.

"I used to go to bed and sleep the whole night," she said. "I can't anymore."

NOTHING FOUND

Federal agents did not find the illegal wiretapping equipment they were seeking, and a year later no one has been charged. The agents seized nothing and later returned the cassette tapes they took from the phone-company office.

Ronald Rawalt, the FBI agent in North Platte, Neb., who headed the investigation, declined to comment, referring questions to the Omaha office.

Agent Doug Hokenstad of the FBI's Omaha office would not comment on a pending investigation. If the investigation comes up empty, he said, "we normally don't make a statement at the end of the investigation."

That infuriates Ed Cole, 39, who says the raid cast suspicion on him and the phone company and left them with no way to clear their names.

"Either file charges or say there's nothing there," he said. "This was done in a highly visible manner, and there was no finality to it."

Ed Cole has asked Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., to investigate. Beth Gonzales, Kerrey's press secretary, said the senator is assessing the situation.

A SQUABBLE

The case that brought FBI agents from around the country to this tiny southwest Nebraska town apparently started with a personnel squabble at work.

Ed Cole said two women complained of their treatment by two other workers. The women who complained threatened to quit if the company did not take action against the other women, he said.

Ed Cole and his assistant manager, Steve Cole, who is not related, said "the same two making the ultimatum were the aggressors," Ed Cole said.

He gave the complaining employees written reprimands, and they quit Jan. 16, 1992. The two women contended in a hearing concerning state unemployment benefits that personality differences with Ed Cole led to the reprimands and their resignations.

Both women declined to comment.

But in March 1992, in an affidavit filed to obtain the search warrants, agent Rawalt said one of the two, Carol Zak, told the FBI in March 1992 of "unusual electronic noises (tapping noises) on her telephone line at the inception of a call received."

The noise, according to Steve and Ed Cole, is a 300-hertz tone caused by a defective 5-by-7-inch circuit board, or card. The defect is common, and the company replaces the card if a customer complains.

The tone is not heard if a customer answers between rings, but if the customer answers during a ring, the tone blares into the ear piece for about the duration of a ring. Ed Cole, who has placed wiretaps for law officers with warrants, said wiretaps don't cause such a sound.

After Zak told agent Rawalt of the noise, the FBI began recording her calls, according to the affidavit. On April 30, the affidavit says, the FBI began a surveillance of Ed Cole.

The affidavit says agent Robert Howan, an electrical engineer from FBI headquarters, analyzed tapes of Zak's phone calls and concluded a wiretap on the line "is controlled from the residence of Eddie Cole Jr. and is facilitated through a device or computer program at the Curtis Telephone Company."

Based on Rawalt's affidavit, U.S. Magistrate Kathleen Jaudzemis in Omaha issued warrants to search Ed Cole's house and the company offices.

When Amanda Cole opened the door, she said, "The first people that came in just went past me." They rushed through the living room into the kitchen to let more agents in the back door.

NEIGHBORS NOTICE

Neighbors and passersby began to notice the commotion as agents searched the outside with flashlights.

The agents showed Cole the search warrant.

Three agents told him and Amanda to stay in the living room and headed upstairs to look for the rest of the family.

Rather than flipping the hall light switch, the agents went down the darkened hall with flashlights, "like they think my kids are going to jump up and shoot them," Cole said.

The twins recalled that they were puzzled, then scared, to wake up to FBI agents shining flashlights on them.

Farther down the hall, the agents found the embarrassed and angry Carol Cole.

As agents searched the house, Ed Cole said, Rawalt told him to step out on the porch.

Ed Cole said Rawalt interrogated and berated him loudly on the front porch, creating what he considered a "public spectacle."

"I've lived here 15 years. I've built up a reputation," said Ed Cole, who is president of the Curtis Housing Authority, chairman of the Nebraska Telephone Association and coach of the twins' softball team.

Ed Cole said Rawalt tried to pressure him to admit he was wiretapping and tell where the equipment was.

"He pointed at my wife and kids and said, `Look at what you're putting them through,"' Ed Cole said.

Ed Cole said it would take 20 minutes for an expert to examine the phones in the house - a teen line, the main line plus two extensions, a 24-hour repair phone that rings at his home as well as the main office and an alarm that rings in from the central office.

OTHERS QUESTIONED

At the same time the Coles' house was being searched, agents visited Steve Cole and Roger Bryant, a phone-company employee who is a neighbor of Zak's.

"They insinuated I had broken into my neighbor's house to put in a wiretap," Bryant said.

The agents "asked me if I knew if Ed was making electrical devices in his basement," Bryant said.

Cole said he wasn't. Agents found no such devices.

The agents told Steve Cole to take them to the phone-company office so they could search the switch room.

When the search of Ed Cole's house ended three hours after it began, agents left empty-handed and took him to the office.

An hour later, agents told Steve Cole about the 300-hertz tone.

"The minute they told me, I knew what it was," he said.

He said he quickly found the defective card for Zak's line, demonstrated the sound for the agents, then replaced it and showed the sound was gone.

"I demonstrated it, and then they both got white," Steve Cole said.

Howan then went to Rawalt, who was with Ed Cole outside the switch room, and explained what had caused the tone, Ed and Steve Cole said.

"I'm jubilant," Ed Cole recalled thinking. "I've been exonerated."

But he said Rawalt told him: "I've investigated this two months. I've flown agents in from around the country. . . . I may charge you on circumstantial evidence."

Ed Cole said the searches should have been conducted without the embarrassing fanfare - during normal business hours, while the children were in school and his wife was at work.

Because of the highly public nature of the raid, Ed Cole said, the company has hired a lawyer to investigate the investigation. The company is trying, with little success, Ed Cole said, to get information from the FBI so it can reassure regulators, lenders, stockholders and customers of the company's integrity.

Rawalt visited Ed Cole's house again in January to return tapes seized in the raid. He said the circuit card was still at the FBI lab being analyzed.

"The FBI, the most respected law enforcement agency in the world, has had this card in their laboratory in Washington, D.C., for almost one year, and they still cannot determine if it has a tape recorder strapped to it," Ed Cole said.

The bureau also has refused to give the phone company its tapes of Zak's phone calls, which could show whether the sound on her line was the tone from the defective card, Ed Cole said.

"It makes one wonder if they'd put a family and a company through this just because they don't want to admit a mistake," he said. "If they'll just give me my life back by making a public statement, it would be over."