PART III:
BRAINFREEZE
Chapter 3: Ok, Now Who Are You?
I remember leaving early in the morning on Friday, April 15th.
No one pulled out from the street over, and the county road at the end of our
street was completely void of other automobiles. After returning home from a
morning photography shoot, there was a Jetta that circled the block in the
opposite direction as myself two times. He slowed down, looked at me in the
face with direct eye contact, smiled, and then he drove away. A bit later in
the morning when I left, it was traffic as usual with no stalkers. Telling
Bruce, our DA, neighbors including Ann and Dave, and a Democrat named Jeanne
that I called the FBI was effective in getting whoever was following us to
leave us alone.
My partner and I presumed it was life as normal after the “crazies,”
as my State Senator referred to them, disappeared. However, I had heard
nothing back from the FBI. The next weekend we went to our local gay bar. Jim
and Kerry, one of two gay couples we had been friends with for years, were at
the bar. I told Jim what had happened, and as if he already knew, he told my
partner and I to stay in the pool and piano sections of the bar versus the dance
area. We would stay in those areas when we went out on the weekends for about
a month before becoming less concerned.
There was one particular night at the bar during the month
after my call to the FBI that I noticed an unusually high volume of water
bottle sales. This would continue for some time. We had been regulars at this
“neighborhood” gay bar for seven years, so all of the new people drinking only
water was extremely odd. In addition, there were always people standing next
to me. I did not really know if they were friend or foe as the FBI never told
me they took the case. What I knew at this point was that we had car stalkers
that left, and then we had human cling-ons in public.
For my birthday, my partner chose an Erasure concert that
was held in April. He purchased the tickets from a man on his company’s
internal purchasing network. Hal and Ed, the other gay couple we were friends
with, invited us to stay at their place and walked us to the train station that
would transport us to the downtown Chicago concert. When we arrived at our
concert seats, there was a group of about five people to my left and one man to
partner’s right. The remainder of the row was vacant. The five people to my
left moved after a few songs, so there were only three of us with an entire row
block in a sold out Erasure concert.
I believed that we may have protection at this point, but
why was it unspoken? Once the weather improved, we put our season passes to
work at a local theme park. That was when I received another clue. A civilian
clothed gentleman going through the metal detector right before me had to take
his badge out of his pocket and put it into a bucket. He looked at me in hopes
I did not see, but it was impossible to miss.
The next time we went to our local gay bar, I had another
group of human cling-ons that seemed to always hang around in my general
vicinity that were drinking water. I asked one of them if he was FBI. He said
yes. I asked him if he knew who I was, and he responded no. So, I asked him
how he could possibly be FBI and not know who I was, and he then admitted he
knew who I was.
I told him that I thought something seemed different, and
that it had made me a better person to a certain standpoint. His reply was
interesting. He said, “Just realize someone will always be there.” At that
point I was relieved and said, “Thank God, I’ve been terrified!” A little
upset he lied to me at first, I also said, “Be honest, or I will lie.” In
hindsight, that was a really stupid thing to say to the FBI.
Our mailbox had been hit a multitude of more times since I
contacted the FBI, and now that I knew who the human cling-ons were, I reopened
“blind” communication by sending two more emails to the regional FBI field
office. I say “blind” communication as I would have expected a detailed phone
conversation or a face to face discussion before three months had passed.
I took recent video clips we had of two automobiles hitting
our mailbox and emailed them to the FBI on June 1st and 9th
of 2005. Oddly enough, one of the vehicles stopped at our Northern neighbor
Steve’s house after hitting our mailbox. It had a handful of young men going
inside that were all dressed alike, but they were not in suits. I never heard
back from the FBI regarding the videos.
Also in June, my partner and I were in another state for a
wedding of one of his cousins. We stayed with my folks, and while everyone
else was asleep, my mom and I sat on their back deck talking. We spoke again
about what had happened in April and why I called the FBI, and the conversation
turned heated.
My mom asked, "Why did you invite these people into
your life? To make yourself feel important? They will kill you!" I
replied, "Mom, someone already tried. What did you expect me to do?"
I did not realize my mom was such an FBI expert in knowing they would kill me.
She was also trying to get me to not run for office again saying that it was not
worth it and I could not stop the GOP. She said, "After they kill you,
what do you expect me to tell people?" I replied, "You can tell them
that I stood up for humanity."
Things were difficult enough, and not having the support and
understanding of my folks made things even more strenuous. My partner was
oblivious to his surroundings and would continue to be for years. I was
basically alone, and funny enough, my mother would later criticize me claiming
that not running for office a second time made me look guilty. It was a no win
situation with guessing games and continual degradation.
Nearly three months after I called the FBI, I was finally
urged to have a discussion regarding what happened in April. But not like a
normal person would share information, it was “DOJ style.” What does “DOJ
style” mean? Well, we arrived at our local gay bar early and were having some
drinks near the dance floor. There was a middle aged gentleman who walked in
with a suit on. He had an unsightly wart on his left cheek, but he was otherwise
an attractive man. He sat at a table about ten feet away, and he was facing
us.
Then, some other folks walked in. One of them had a black leather
case the size of a shoe box. He walked into the private area where only bar
employees can enter, but he was not an employee. The gentleman who first
walked in looked at me, looked at the black case, and looked back at me as if
he was saying, “look at that guy with the black leather case.” Three others
sat at a table on the other side of us. We had been regulars at our local gay
bar since moving to the area in 1998, and I had never seen these folks before.
The bar was almost empty, and several members of the staff had changed.
About ten minutes passed, and the middle aged gentleman who
first came in kept looking at me and grabbing his left ear. That is when I
realized he could hear us. I said to my partner, “he can hear us.” The
gentleman, who would later introduce himself as John, gave a slight nod and
opened a paper tablet on the table with a pen handy. So, my partner and I
started talking about who our stalkers could have been, and John wrote the
entire time. He immediately put his paper tablet and pen away when my partner and
I were finished discussing our possible stalkers, and we then walked to the
pool area where we would spend most of our evening. Until we stopped regularly
visiting the bar in 2006, John would sit at the exact same table every night we
were there.
The local gay bar was owned by an older gentleman named Bob,
but it was sold in 2005 to a younger man named Clint. Perhaps Bob realized the
surveillance at the club, or perhaps he was pushed out. Clint apparently
inherited money from the death of his folks, and he was good friends with Jim
and Kerry who befriended us in 1999. Combine this friendship with seeing Clint
on the road and at destinations including the mall, I realized Clint was a
federal agent. Clint renamed the bar after about a year.
I would talk with John, who gave the “DOJ style” interview,
every once in a while asking if they had made any headway. As there was a fair
amount of chatter of me being a “natural born agent” as well as me taking a lie
detector test, I told John that I would only take a lie detector test if they
made me an agent. I had been to the FBI’s website, and this was a condition of
employment. John walked over to Dell, the main bartender, and told him what I
said. John and Dell laughed, and it was news to me that Dell would be an
agent. Why else would John talk with Dell about such a matter?
As birds of a feather flock together, it would not take long
for me to connect the dots between the other frequenters at the gay bar who
were federal agents as a result of this and other instances. At the time,
however, I thought everyone was FBI. I had found out that you were able to
keep earnings from your “cover” job that hid your identity as a federal agent,
and I was intrigued. Not my first career choice, but safety in numbers made
sense and the money would be an improvement based on current day. I would
later realize, however, that not everyone was FBI. In addition, they did not
operate ethically or professionally.
I had entered the spy world as an ordinary citizen, and what
started as a hobby in federal agent identification eventually turned into a
mandatory objective. We did have protection from time to time, and
differentiating between those who arrived upon my contacting the FBI versus
other federal agents would become a daunting task. All agents wore plain
clothes with an attempt at keeping identities hidden, so my investigations of
them would come from conversations, actions, body language, repetition, online
chats, deceptive language, and overhearing others.
Not all Homeland Security agents that I know of are
mentioned in this book as I do not believe that they are all corrupt, but not
blowing the whistle on corrupt agents makes an innocent agent guilty as well.
That is their rationale, so their own principles should be applied to
themselves. It is important the general public knows where and how
approximately 700 billion federal dollars are spent each year on Homeland Security.
In my particular case, it was State sponsored terrorism.
