first to be similar to random emails I’d received about Le Roux over the years, but it soon became clear that this one was different. “Hi Evan,” it read. “Could you please send me a secure email ad- dress as we need to talk I believe! I can say that I am your missing link in the Paul Calder Leroux story. The one with the true an- swers on the downfall of Leroux.”

He was, he said, the man who had lured Le Roux to Liberia. What motivated him to contact me seemed to be a mix of anger over the Minnesota acquittals and a gap he’d seen in my articles on Le Roux. “Most of your story is correct and accurate and as some- one who lived the life and work with PCL I have to say respect!” he wrote. “But to make it complete and perfect you could for sure use my input and evidence.”

We switched to encrypted email, and he forwarded me docu- ments to validate his information. He told me he’d run the opera- tion in Somalia, and then unlocked Le Roux for the DEA. Then, at the end of the note, he signed off with his real name.

I’d long suspected that this man was the 960 group informant, based on fragments of information that I’d swept up over the years. But I’d never been able to locate him, or uncover any real proof. So thoroughly had the DEA kept his name out of the public case that I had seen it only twice in all the tens of thousands of pages of documents I had on Le Roux.

I exchanged emails with this man, whom I’ve referred to as “Felix Klaussen”—the use of a pseudonym was the sole condition I agreed to before he would talk—for several months, as he offered me tan- talizing pieces of his story and I tried to coax him into meeting me in person. Since Le Roux’s arrest, he said, he had become a kind of professional informant for hire, infiltrating other criminal groups and reporting back to his sponsors. He’d already worked on one other large international drug bust, he said, but now he wondered if he was willing to keep risking his life for cases. He was based in Southeast Asia for the moment, but was reluctant to meet me where he was living. Finally, he told me that he would be traveling in Viet-