William Gately is a Vietnam veteran and former vice-cop from the Metropolitan Police Department (Washington, DC).  In 1970, after a three year enlistment in the Marines and tour in Vietnam he took the oath of police officer in the nation's capital.  For the next eight years he served as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department.  On June 17, 1972, William Gately was assigned to the Metropolitan Police Department tactical unit that surprised the Watergate Burglars.  After leaving the joined the U.S. Customs Service, eventually rising to the rank of assistant Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Customs in Los Angeles.

William Gately co-authored Dead Ringer: An Insider's Account of the Mob's Colombian Connection.  According to publisher’s weekly, “Gatley, an employee of the U.S. Customs Service; Joe Caffaro, a Sicilian-born businessman with Mafia ties; and Leo Fraley, an American career criminal who became involved in Colombian drug-smuggling--these men are an unlikely trio to be the subjects of the same book. Yet all played major roles in court cases which tied the Medellin drug cartel to the mafia in Sicily and thence to the U.S. mafia. That the tie exists is no revelation to those who read news stories about organized crime, so this volume by Gately and freelancer Fernandez is hardly eye-opening; nor are their portraits of American mobsters as stupid and greedy and Columbian drug lords as cruel and merciless anything new. What readers will find informative is the depiction here of inter-bureau rivalry among the FBI, the DEA and Customs, bureaucratic infighting which does not augur well for the drug war.”