When the draft registration thing started back in 1981, I wrote a letter to the Selective Service System announcing my intention not to register for the draft. The letter included my name and current address. I sent a copy to the Office of the US Attorney in Buffalo.
A year later, I moved to Berkeley and I wrote another letter informing them of my change of address, and reiterating my intention to refuse to register for the draft. The Selective Service System referred my case to the US Attorney, who instructed the FBI to investigate to determine whether I had in fact committed the felony of refusing to register.
The FBI began to try to interview me.
Their first step: Obtain a copy of my birth certificate, go to the address listed for my parents on that birth certificate, and ask the tenants if they knew where I was. My parents had bought a house and moved from that apartment twenty years earlier.
I know this because — aside from reading it in my FBI file when I got it in 1994 or so — they told my father when they finally found him at his house outside Buffalo. They asked him where I was, and as I recall it, he told me he said something along the lines of “hmm. I don’t have his current address. Let me tell him you’re looking for him next time he calls.”
They left a business card, drove away, and he called me. I said “give them my address? They have my address, the dumb fucks.” I’d also recently been arrested for trespassing at the White House, during which process I gave the Secret Service my SSN and Buffalo address, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, when the Air Force got my SSN and Berkeley address. In other words: one hand didn’t know where the other thumb was wedged. I told him I didn’t mind if he told them where to find me.
He called them. They came back out to his house. He gave them my address, as I’d directed. He told the agents “my son was surprised you didn’t have his address already. He said you should have it from the letters he’d sent the Selective Service System and US Attorney. I told him that that made too much sense.” They agreed. “We don’t work that way.”
The rest of the story is anticlimactic. They stopped by my apartment in Berkeley, and I agreed to speak with them on the conditions that my attorney Carol Delton was present, that she could record the interview, and that it take place in a public place. (I had in mind The Old Mole, a lefty bookstore-café in Berkeley, whose owner was touched that I would think of his joint as a copacetic venue for such a thing.) They had to check with their superiors, who nixed the idea. Though they eventually prepared a rock-solid case against me despite the absence of espresso and Sylvia cartoon books at any point in their intelligence gathering. I was never indicted: the Justice Department ended prosecutions of registration resisters in 1985.
There are plenty of people arguing, these days, that intelligence gathering requires law enforcement people be allowed the use of physical coercion, pain and fear compliance techniques, indefinite imprisonment without recourse to writs of habeas corpus, torture. The ticking time bomb scenario gets brought up in such discussions. “What if traditional law enforcement techniques are insufficient?” some people ask. “What if the sheer scale of damage and close deadline make normal police work impossible?”
I might find this a more compelling question — probably not, but it’s barely possible — if my experience with the federal law enforcement agencies had persuaded me that they were capable of normal police work. If the FBI was that inept in the first year of the Reagan administration, what’s happened to it after five years of the Cheney Cronyocracy?
To you who shiver in your National Review Online Aeron Chairs at the thought of terrorists: I have a suggestion. Rather than tossing out both the Constitution and your last shred of human decency so that terrorist acts might be stopped, why not just get rid of the incompetent fucking nimrods in the FBI that couldn’t find their ass with both hands if they had night vision goggles and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy?
If your G-men don’t have the research and deduction skills that Terri Schiavo had in 2003, then any talk of last resorts is a little premature. Thank you.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
9 comments on "The last two letters in the acronym stand for “Brainless Idiots”"They were still recovering from the damage Hoover had wrought. But I hope you’re right.
I remember dad saying that when he told them you were surprised that they didn’t know where you were, one of them said something like “he’s giving us too much credit.”
I had a couple of friends who were in the FIB. Intelligent, capable people, well educated, and serious about their work. Who also felt much hampered by the system (sic) they worked against.
I suspect that dealing with a ‘crime’ that is not enforced, but must be investigated, is farmed out to the dimmest slackers. And the ones most likely to be tortured are the ones most likely to be innocent - the agents sent to deal with them the least effective.
There is no excuse for this. The Bureaucracy must be kept in check, seeing as it is blind and mindless and cruel by nature.
In the earlier days of Guantanamo, weren’t the FBI the “good guys”, as in expressing concern at the prisoners’ treatment? Maybe these were the more, um, competent ones.
Sad thing about bureaucracies everywhere - mediocrity thrives, and the good’uns get frustrated. Add cronyism and lack of any real policies, and you got U.S.A. 2006. God help you.
>> get rid of the incompetent fucking nimrods in the FBI that couldn’t find their ass with both hands if they had night vision goggles and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy
They found you, didn’t they? And should you say that they found you because your father relayed to you that FBI agents were looking for you and you assented to his disclosing where you were lving, well isn’t that how FBI agents are supposed to investigate? Shouldn’t they go out and ask questions, do some legwork? You really don’t want a super-efficient law enforcement bureaucracy, one that can determine by a few clicks of a keyboard, our residence and whereabouts, our associates, our financial and employment status, do you? I prefer my FBI to be slow and plodding.
Actually, this right-wing, troglodyte fascist is appalled at the idea of giving government authorities the legal authority to use coerceive means. It sours my stomach to even imagine the sadistic delight that, say, Howard Dean, would have in using any and all coercive means against his adversaries. I’m with you on that one.
>> Though they eventually prepared a rock-solid case against… I was never indicted:
Maybe because you broke no law. If I recall correctly, when registration was reinstated under Reagan one only had to register when one turned 18. Those 18 or over (or was it 21 and over?) were grandfathered under the new selective service registration requirements. I might be wrong on this point, but I don’t think so. Anyway, the justice deparment had almost no interest in prosecuting those who didn’t register.
Thanks, Vince.
You are in fact in error as regards the registration requirements. All men born on or after January 1 1960 were (and are) obligated to register, which as the law took effect in 1980 (under Carter, not Reagan) covered 20- and 19-year-olds. I got abundant “face time” on media across New York State in the next couple years for my refusal, which would have been less likely had I not actually violated a law.
It may be that the Justice Department had little interest in prosecuting registration resisters, but my cohort Ed Hasbrouck has compiled a list of those who were prosecuted.
In any event, I agree with you about the nice secure feeling of an inept FBI from a political viewpoint, but I really don’t have any problem with police working to stop people from committing acts of mass murder, and I’d prefer that in doing so they act intelligently.
this right-wing, troglodyte fascist
You’re not a fascist.
It sours my stomach to even imagine the sadistic delight that, say, Howard Dean, would have in using any and all coercive means against his adversaries
Is it a winger requirement to put at least one jaw-drop-to-the-floor, where the fuck did that come from?, utterly stupid sentence in every post/comment?
Oh wait. This isn’t more of that irony shit, is it? I’m getting too old for this.
my son has the misfortune of being 19 right now. he’s been getting mail from the SS since a bit before his 18th birthday—and he did register, at least twice before this week [once online, and he didn’t save a copy; and a written response that mom insisted on copying]. this week, my son got a lovely letter from the director of selective service, advising that his name has been forwarded to the department of justice for prosecution.
he did what they wanted. they are past threats of prosecution, and on to action toward prosecution—not because he is breaking the law, but because they cannot freaking keep track of the mail they get. how pathetic is that?
this all makes me ill. it is only a matter of time before the draft is reinstated—c’mon, everyone has to realize that by now, with our elective wars raging on and the military so strapped that [a] even the national guard and reserves are doing extended and back-to-back duty, and [2] the army won’t submit a budget because it can’t do what it is required to do on the budget the white house wants. oh yeah, and [c] we got casualties out the wazoo, and it’s far, far worse for the civilians whose freedoms we are supposedly protecting. and then [d] i can’t even talk about the affronts to human rights, civil rights, and our own constitution—what has happened to us?
my kid is prime cannon-fodder for this terrible, bloody, mis-guided folly. my historic memory is going fuzzy—has there been a vanity war before, on this scale?