There's An Army Of Federal Agents Who Pretend To Be Killers For Hire

GQ has a gripping new article that profiles a federal agent whose job is to go undercover as a hit man.

"Special Agent Charles Hunt" (not his real name) belongs to an army of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agents "whom nobody has ever heard of and nobody is supposed to know about," Jeanne Marie Laskas writes for GQ.

The ATF won't say how many of its 2,500 agents have done murder-for-hire undercover work, Laskas writes. But she has been able to deduce that these guys are part of an odd family who know each other and trade tips. It seems like an unbelievably stressful job, to say the least.

Agent Hunt usually goes by tough names like "Thrash" and wears a wire so he can record customers incriminating themselves. Hunt asks the customers if they're absolutely certain they want the hit carried out; that way a jury will be more convinced of their guilt.

(The GQ article doesn't go into great detail about how Hunt gets his customers, presumably because revealing that information could hurt his investigations.) Hunt, for his part, is haunted by some of the cases he works on, Laskas writes. One case involved a teacher in the Southwest who was willing to pay $5,000 to have her former son-in-law killed.

The reason? The son-in-law was allegedly molesting the woman's granddaughter. The teacher was charged with federal murder for hire.

Head over to GQ to read the full story.