In 1985, around 3,000 fugitives were offered complimentary tickets to watch a Washington Redskins game, and were told they’d also have the chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl.
The promise of a free trip to the greatest game in football seemed too good to be true. That’s because it was.
When more than 100 wanted criminals turned up at the headquarters of an alleged TV station, they didn’t claim their prize. Instead, they won a trip to jail.
This was Operation Flagship, a sting operation that saw 101 fugitives willingly gather at the DC Convention Center and effectively hand themselves in to the cops – all for the Super Bowl.
Invitations to the Washington Redskins’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals during Week 15 of the 1985 NFL season were sent out to the last known addresses of 3,000 wanted persons with more than 5,000 outstanding warrants.
The invites from fictitious TV company, Flagship International Sports Television, Inc., to celebrate ‘the hottest cable station in America,’ also dangled the prospect of a free trip to Super Bowl XX in New Orleans – the site of this year’s Big Game 40 years on.
All they had to do was turn up at a free brunch, beginning at 9:00am on December 15, 1985 at the Washington Convention Center where they would be given the tickets and free transportation to and from the game.
And turn up they did. The Redskins were wildly popular at the time, having made it to back-to-back Super Bowls in 1983 and 1984, and tickets to a game at RFK Stadium were almost impossible to get a hand on. An offer of two free tickets was a dream come true to anyone in the DC area.
Yet on the morning of December 1985, that dream swiftly became a nightmare for 101 ‘guests.’
With the stage set, the combined efforts of the US Marshals and DC Metropolitan Police ensured everything surrounding the fake TV station looked visually authentic.
The fugitives were greeted by 100 members of staff dressed in tuxedos and bearing celebratory smiles, leaving the criminals elated to be part of the function. Little did they know every single one was an agent.
Flagship International Sports Television – aka the Fugitive Investigative Strike Team or ‘FIST’ the acronym given to task forces around the country – was actually the US Marshals Service.
The ushers, caterers and cleaning staff were marshals. Even the chicken and Redskins mascot were undercover. Meanwhile, the cheerleaders welcoming them in with hugs and affectionate displays were actually female agents patting them down for weapons.
Cops smiled at bandits they usually chased. Officers congratulated criminals they were out to bust. Their mission was to kill them with kindness. It was all a smokescreen – one the fugitives fell for hook, line and sinker.
Upon arrival, the crooks would present their ID to an usher who would feed their details up to the back office where they would be confirmed via code words. A ‘confirmed winner’ was someone who was wanted. A ‘double winner’ was a dangerous person; someone who’d had aggravated assault, murder or robbery.
After checking in, they were rounded up into groups of around 15 and led into a hall. There, they were told they would receive their tickets and hear a few words from the phony network’s master of ceremonies, played by the chief of enforcement operations, Louie McKinney.
The words, ‘We’ve got a big surprise for you, everybody’s under arrest,’ were definitely not the ones they expected to hear.
On McKinney’s cue of ‘surprise,’ the Special Operations Group would burst into the room, surround the criminals and escort them out in handcuffs. In total, 101 criminals wanted for from murder, rape and parole violations were arrested.
‘We had 119 extremely lucky individuals, who, by chance, were all wanted on criminal warrants,’ Bob Leschorn, the chief deputy of enforcement in the US Marshals who was posing as the CEO of the fictional US cable TV network, recalled with a smile during a 2016 NFL Films documentary.
The operation had been so carefully curated that the criminals struggled to comprehend what had happened, even after they’d been caught.
As the buses carrying the fugitives were pulling away, one asked: ‘Do we still get to go to the game?’
No, they did not. The wanted criminals never made it to the Redskins game, nor the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
But as the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles prepare to make their own trip down to the Big Easy on February 9, the NFL’s season spectacular can still be remembered for its role in one of the largest and most successful mass arrests of fugitives by US law enforcement – even 40 years on.
