Looking For Love; The FBI and I

AMONG MY RECENT RESOLUTIONS  is my intention to learn to like the federal bureau of investigation. So far, no luck, but its still early, and I've plenty of time (i hope). When world war two broke out for the united states, my father was twenty three years old, single, a newly minted attorney at law, employed by my grandfather in their tort oriented law firm.

It was a cinch my dad would get the call, so he tried something creative; he applied for employment with the, you guessed it, FBI. They turned him down flat, as in feet. I don't know the real reason, presumably they knew a draft dodger when they saw one. So, my father, undaunted, enlisted in the U.S. navy, and spent four years as a lt jr grade, drilling a platoon near the defense worthy panama canal.

my dad was about as much a natural military officer - man as i am, which is to say, not much. But, being a lawyer, he was made into an officer, and discharged honorably after four years of service, for which he received a pension the rest of his life. So, it all worked out. At least, we won the war.

He told me that while in panama he could smell an approaching crippled warship before he could see it - burning fuel, burning bodies. the funniest story involves a training mission, in which my father was teaching a young seaman how to fly a steerman plane, out over the carribean, on a bright and sunny day.

A sudden noise and jolt; the wing had a smokin'  hole in it. Down below, a U boat was sitting there,black, menacing, and doubtless bored. The recruit wanted to engage the enemy; my dad had the good sense to point out that one does not engage a german U boat with .22 caliber pop guns on both wings. A cock pit scuffle ensued, my dad won, but in so doing put a scratch on the youngster's face; for which the kid put in, and received, a purple heart. True story.

But I digress. Back to the FBI. In 1990 i thought they kept a bit too close an eye on our peaceful anti war in iraq demostration. I didn't like the binoculars. Then, in 2010, the storied investigative agency made my close friend a "person of interest" in their investigation of some serial killings. They doubtless had their reason, most of which turned out to be mere coincidences. He happened to be in the same place, at the same approximate times, and so on, and so forth.

but the investigation dragged on inerminably, far too long, and disrupted my good friend's life too dramatically. Seizure of passports, seizure and damage to personal computers, streetside surveillance, phone tapping, repeated interrogations, the whole ball of wax.

So i walked into the FBI branch of my town and asked, politely, i thought, "what the hell?". The young, well dressed man with the sunglasses and lapel pin looked at me a bit sternly, i thought, then told me that he really couldn't help me, that these things take time, they always run their course, and, if my friend is innocent, in the fullness of time, it will be revealed, which it was.

Of course, everybody who knows my friend coulda told 'em that right off the bat, but hey, what can you do.... after a futile attempt at some small talk and a joke or two, i left the building, while i still could, grateful for the opportunity.

I have read john grisham novels, all of them. According to grisham, the FBI at times plays hard ball a tad too hard, and that's good enough for me. The wiretapping of martin luther king having lawful sexual intercourse with his lawfully wedded wife, i can overlook. likewise forty years of j edgar hooverian tyranny, keeping his director job by holding dirt over the heads of presidents, i can overlook.

But anybody who turns my daddy down for a job, thus forcing him into an unwanted albeit brief military career for which he was uniquely unsuited - that tears it. Hell, that german U boat coulda aimed just a bit better, then where would I be?

So, I will keep trying. Having read all of john grisham, he can do nothing further, for the moment, to spoil my image of hoover's bloodhounds. And, until the next foreign war of american aggression, i won't be out protesting again - though likely as not I won't have to wait long. in america, one never does.