I watched 24 lastnight and it got me to thinking again if there really are couriers that use brief cases that are handcuffed to them.  Who are they?  Who do they work for?  What are they carrying?  Do they ever get their hands chopped off?

So... does anyone have any good first hand stories?  Second hand?

Here's mine, but it doesn't deal with a handcuffed brief case:

 I used to work with a guy who claimed to have been in the Air Force at one time.  He said he was for some reason assigned to the color/honor guard at some AF base.  He was approached one day and asked to volunteer to do something.  He said 'Yes'.  So he's taken to the airfield where some people ask him to lift his uniform shirt up and they proceed to tape an envelope to his chest and belly.  He gets on a small military business type aircraft and flies somewhere with two other guys 'watching' him.  They tell him he has to simply do what they tell him.  They flew somewhere, land, some other guys come on the plane and tell him to stand up.  He stands up, they lift his shirt up and proceed to tear all the tape off him and remove the envelope.  Then they turn around and fly back to the original base.

He also told me that sometimes he would do this in civilian clothes and fly on civilian commercial passenger flights.  There was always two other people with him. They would drive to the airport and drive right up to the airplane bypassing all the security inside the airport.

He told me that he never knew what was in the envelopes, who any of the people involved really were and that he was told he'd be shot if he ever tried to remove the envelopes from his body.

It's not a story that I'd bet my life on, but then again it's not your typical "I used to be a Navy SEAL..." story either.

So does anyone have some good ones???

tag

wonder why they didn't just tape it to one of the two tag along guys?
one less person to know about the  envelope.

Quoted: wonder why they didn't just tape it to one of the two tag along guys? one less person to know about the  envelope.

Checks and balances.

Why not just overnight fedex the damn thing?

I've seen guys with briefcases handcuffed to them in Europe and the Middel East, but never in the US. In each instance, it appeared to me that the guy with the case was a subordinate to a VIP.

I saw a guy handcuffed to another guy in the OKC airport once! He was a prisoner being transported on a commercial airline.

I've seen it in Vegas.  In Vegas, when a foreclosed property is sold, the buyer needs GREEN, right then.  Saw two old guys with briefcases handcuffed to them and 1 bodyguard each.  Wouldn't you if you had roughly $200k in cash on you?

I've heard the "envelope taped to the chest" story as well.

I remember watching a Discovery show about the Presidents daily security briefing.  If I remember correctly, the guy that briefs the President had his brief case handcuffed to his wrist.

Back in the day in the Corps I got sent to help pick up the cyrpto stuff and codes for our unit a few times, the method they used to transport this very very secret stuff to the different bases was pretty darn cool and really smart when you really thought about it.

I'm sure they use a much different method now.

ETA- I wasn't part of the cool thing, I just drove the truck or hummer on base, while the staff NCO or O and the intel guy jointly signed for the unit's stuff from the collection point, which wasn't any HQ building.

Not a "story" but I used to run gem stones in NYC mainly on foot. Would have a cuff with a metal cord linked to a metal box, concealed in a dufflebag. I never had a grab and run but fiqured I'd go for the ride along with the bag.