Six Hours A Week:
Adventures of a Sudden Patriot

...You may find yourself on "the list." Is it possible that a high school grudge can result in costly and surreal political pay-back? Maybe.

Until a few days ago I had never heard of Chuck McGee or the New Hampshire phone jamming scandal for which he served prison time.

Last week a high school friend inadvertently indicated that a woman we went to school with is very likely involved in some aspect of my surveillance/harassment situation. Because my case is so epic and absurd, there were many times when I wondered if there was a personal vendetta at play. This woman, Carrie, was my then best friend's twin sister and hated me with passionate intensity. She was a right-wing and militantly pro-life Catholic, and though most of my friends were evangelical or Mormon, Carrie always seemed to have the least tolerance for my pro-choice, gay-friendly, and nearly all other views. (There were personal aspects, having to do with her sister's and my friendship, and our shared school activities, that seemed to propel her anger in ways I didn't understand.) The last few times I saw her she didn't speak to or acknowledge me. When I heard the things she said about me, I was always baffled.

I knew that her husband was a Republican big wig in New Hampshire, but that was all. During my reunion weekend in 2003 I stayed at her sister's house, where a picture of Carrie and her husband with President Bush hung on the fridge. This didn't surprise me. Such a trajectory totally made sense for her. I thought about Carrie rarely -- in the course of reflecting on my relationship with her sister, occasionally through my academic work, and the personal process of trying to  break out of conventional left/right thinking and build my own tolerance for people with very different views.

For the last month plus I've dealt with a new wave of elicitation centered around Christians, Mormons, my mother's finances, and a local ski area developer. (It's kind of a Keystone Cops situation -- I don't understand why they don't think we'll notice when multiple people attempt to get our thoughts on these topics in quick succession. Especially people who are supposed to be installing tile or kitchen cabinets rather than playing 20 Questions.) This thread is not new -- my surveillance seems to have been funded by anti-environmentalists and the religious right, as well as tax payers -- I've noticed multiple attempts to get me to malign evangelical Christians. (I think perhaps private contractors use these recored conversations for fund-raising purposes.)

It was reflecting on this most recent wave that led to my friend's inadvertent revelation about Carrie's possible involvement, which led me to find out exactly who her husband is. Who knew he would turn out to be notorious? In the course of my research, I found this summary from Chuck McGee's interview with the FBI, detailing the genesis of his plan to prevent Democrats from voting:

McGEE stated a few weeks before the election in November, 2002, his wife CARRIE showed him a flier that came into the mail from the Democratic Party. This letter gave information for voters on registration and voting procedures. It also included information on prescriptions and Medicare. McGEE stated that over the years he had decided to keep all the opposition mail that he received at his home. He remembers placing that particular
advertisement in his pocket. He remembers there was a number on the paper to be used on election day, something like 1-800-WIN- DEMOCRAT. During that same week, he remembers hearing the Democrats had hired 6,000 students to go to the polls on election day. He also heard there were several people going door-to-door the weekend before the election. McGEE said he was "torqued" by this idea and because of his military training came up with the idea that "communications is as important as beans and bullets." McGEE stated he may have talked to his wife about this idea.

Several aspects of this passage are remarkable to me. I've used the word "enemies" (in quotation marks) to describe oppositional interests. But never in a million years would I want to interfere with "the opposition's" democratic participation. Seeing fellow Americans as "the enemy" in a militaristic manner doesn't make sense. I guess I can relate to it insofar as I encouraged an anti-corporate boycott in response to the Iraq invasion, but that was because the democratic process seemed to have been so perverted, and Bush was encouraging us to shop on the eve of creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and PTSD-suffering veterans. The point was that our elected officials weren't listening to the majority of us, that we were obviously being lied to by the highest office holders. I guess what I'm saying is that it wasn't about "winning." It was about the need for truth and open debate.

"Winning" at the cost voter participation seems profoundly un-American. Given what I remember about Carrie, that Chuck may have discussed it with her (indeed, that she brought the offensive get-out-the-vote effort to his attention), and she didn't immediately squash the idea, do not surprise me. I never got the sense from her that we were free to be you and me. I wasn't simply "different," I was "the enemy." In my experience, people with this sort of win/lose with us/against us thinking project it onto others. If they were ok with a veering toward a somewhat sociopathic plan to disenfranchise people, what did they fantasize me capable of?

Living in a pluralistic society, I see those who vote differently than I do, or lead different lifestyles, as part of the mix. We're always trying to balance respective rights and liberties. This is why I always had a hard time understanding attempts to convert me to various strains of Evangelical Christianity, or a complete inability to even hear my political or philosophical point of view. I was fine with other people being Saved or speaking on tongues. Why was it not ok with them that I supported Clinton? Or didn't know which god I believed in?

It's not surprising that the Department of Justice may have delayed prosecuting McGee for political purposes. Unfortunately, it's also not surprising that a personal vendetta could have grave consequences for someone like me within an administration rooted in cronyism and devoid of accountability. Growing up during the Cold War, we were meant to love all that made us different from the Soviets: our supposed freedom from the dictates of propaganda and petty, repressive politics.

This is the United States of America. High school grudges should not contribute to the waste of millions (yes, it has to be millions by this point) in taxpayer dollars, what has amounted to wrongful imprisonment, and a complete arrogation of 4th Amendment rights. They just shouldn't. I can only hope that no one continues to cook up a way to justify it all. Enough is enough.

~~

I haven't blogged in a while, as I've needed every spare hour to piece my life back together after surviving a 4th Amendment-free year.

This Wired article inspired me, though. Netroots activists are pissed at Obama's FISA flip-flop. So was I.  I'm glad that MoveOn and the independent activists who have generated support and money for Obama are trying to use their leverage to influence him now. But why did they hop on the "Change" bandwagon so nimbly and readily in the first place?

Though Hillary lost my primary vote once and for all when she didn't bother to show up for the February FISA vote, I wasn't ready to throw myself into the Obama camp. In fact, I'll be so self-congratulatory as to quote my February self:

If you're feeling the warm and fuzzy Obama-as-second-coming vibe, I hope you'll cool down and make sure he knows that you're in his corner because he believes that a renewed America means an unwavering devotion to our founding documents. "Change" must mean the restoration of our democracy.

Later, I hoped that action on the Homegrown Terrorism Bill might prove a decent litmus test. Nope.

I remember feeling bummed when I received the MoveOn endorsement ballot. Shouldn't there have been a set of criteria? Why just give away the endorsement without it meaning anything? And then, why continue to flood our inboxes with the cheer leading Obama "Change" rhetoric?

When we suddenly say we're all about Obama and "Change" don't we put ourselves in a sort of ridiculous predicament? For one, we assume that people can't be motivated to vote with the truth: the man is a politician. No matter how noble his intentions, we can bet that many of his life decisions (like turning down lucrative positions to move to an electorally significant state to create a grassroots support base) have been calculated. He will disappoint us because he can't possibly be all things to all Americans. Just because he may be the best option right now doesn't mean we have to leap into absurd fairy tale rhetoric about his somehow having magical powers to enact sweeping change. Once we give over to the rhetoric, anything he does to deviate from our fantasies of what he stands for invariably disappoints.

We've already been to a place called Hope. Young voters don't know what it's like to have a preternatural politician grab their hearts with rhetoric and then become a whopping, co-opted, double talking disappointment. Are our memories so short? Do we really want to do that again and lead another generation to the kind of apathy that allowed the current administration to enter the White House?

Let's be honest. An Obama administration will mean a world of difference no matter what. But he's a politician. We are the change agents. We can't just walk to a voting booth, dimple a chad, and expect America to be a safer, fairer, more just place. We have to change. We have to get out of our comfort zones, and remain active, engaged citizens.

The moment our 4th Amendment protections truly become more important to Americans than our sofa patterns or TV schedules, we will see what change means.

~~

Now I have an inkling of how it feels to be Britney Spears. The girl is a walking economic stimulus agent. Her very existence supports thousands of individuals -- from paparazzi to copy editors to advertising executives. My case has been that of an unwitting commodity for intelligence contractors who have given nearly everyone in my life the opportunity to make some cash off of information, solicitation or entrapment.

These are people with bumper stickers like "Live Simply So Others May Simply Live." People who take their dogs on generous afternoon hikes on the sides of mountains before studying the I Ching. Individuals who ride their bikes, buy organic, and play benefit concerts in their quasi-hipster alt-country bands. Who among them would like to think of themselves as akin to Nazi collaborators? I can't even simply equate them with "Good Germans" who stood by and did nothing as the Jews were dehumanized and eventually carted off. They were/are modern day willing executioners.

I don't know many veterans yet. I will. 

Surviving a year of intense government-sanctioned spying has changed me. Post-traumatic feelings of safety and trust will be hard-won. The pain of constant betrayal twinned with the stigma of seeming crazy to those who can't fathom it are difficult to describe. Though I was never suicidal, there were times last summer, as I began to realize the enormity and ubiquity of the betrayals, that I wanted to die -- to stop being just so it would be over. After the entrapment attempts, it's challenging to get out of fight or flight mode when doing something as simple as buying shampoo. My hair is graying, my face has noticeably wrinkled, and I've gone through phases of insomnia. I've variously been unable to eat and had digestive problems. At times my weight has been lower than at my thinnest in high school. I don't know when I'll feel safe again. I have no idea how I finished my thesis, a Russian Language exam, and published and blogged -- seriously, how? Maybe I would have lost it without those to focus on.

So, I know how much this has impacted my life and how much time and effort it will take to recover, and how I'd just like to live in a spa for six months. Looking at it in relative terms, I was under a sort of cushy guerrilla house arrest -- as long as I was at home and not being manipulated or lied to by "friends" I was safe (though constantly monitored). I had the love of my cat and my mom, an indispensable psychologist (before having to flee one home when it no longer felt safe in my community -- then we had to have monitor-able phone sessions), and I got to watch the television shows I wanted and eat the food of my choice. 

I was never cold or hungry or exposed to depleted uranium, or dodging sniper fire. I didn't have to see friends and civilians killed, or hear agonized screams and cries. I wasn't required to kill.

Imagine recovering from combat. How do people come home to their families after facing such unending stress and horrors? How do they ever find "normal" again? Deal with becoming disabled and struggling to pay the bills, or being stuck at Walter Reed? We have over 300,000 troops suffering from PTSD and a veteran suicide epidemic.

Veterans should never have to want for anything again. They should finish their days in absolute comfort, have the best medical and psychological care, housing credits, and scholarships for their children. Veterans should not be homeless. That it took domestic, government-sanctioned repression for me to "get" to some small degree what it would be like to recover from military work is one of many unexpected gifts and ironies.

I don't know exactly why I didn't submit an NSA FOIA request when I became aware of being spied on. Looking back at all of the articles about domestic spying, it would have been the obvious choice. Since all of the craziness seemed so connected to my international travel, I assumed at first it was the CIA. Wanting to cover my bases, I made requests to a variety of agencies last summer, getting the runaround from the FBI (sending me to a variety of field offices, giving conflicting responses), semantic weirdness from the CIA (something akin to "we have nothing filed under your name in our automated indices"), and denials elsewhere.

Finally, last December I realized the NSA was most likely the agency offended by my Jackie Kennedy costume and Jesus shopping bag and so asked my lawyer to make a request. Until a few weeks ago I thought he had. But he only pretended to. That's right. When he was unable to produce either correspondence with the NSA or a Case Number, I made my own request (after firing him, of course).

Yesterday, I received my very own Glomar Response. Never did any of the other agencies I sought records from use Glomar. This means that, yes, I've been spied on with the NSA's blessing (seemingly by off-the-charts unethical and unprofessional Booz Allen Hamilton employees for the most part). But the details of just how my 4th Amendment rights have been completely disregarded and I've pretty much been imprisoned for a year without having been charged with any crime (etc.)? Those are too precious to national security to divulge.

Read all of the fun government speak after the jump. And, if you think you've sniffed out spooks in your midst, do your own FOIA request. Those of us who have been Glomared under this administration will have recourse one day, methinks.

Last fall I read about a man in Georgia whose Operation Rescue truck was impounded because it displayed mangled fetuses. This alarmed me. Though I wouldn't want to see a Truth Truck, I believe in an individual's right to one.

Bob Roethlisberger was arrested and jailed over Thanksgiving weekend in a northern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, on the charge of "Disorderly Conduct" for driving Operation Rescue's Truth Truck bearing signs with photos of aborted babies. The Truth Truck was impounded.

Gwinnett County Police Department officers arrested Roethlisberger Saturday after telling him that signage on the Truth Truck was "vulgar and obscene." According to Operation Rescue, officers ransacked the back of the Truth Truck without a warrant and ordered Roethlisberger to change or remove the signs. When he refused, he was arrested and incarcerated for three days before being released on $1,000 bond.

Disorderly conduct charges were eventually dropped by the county Solicitor:

"I have reviewed the evidence and law in this case and concluded that the physical display of the images in question—as shocking and offensive as they are—does not constitute 'obscene and vulgar or profane language' as specifically prohibited by this statute."

This story was covered extensively by pro-life and religious blogs, but elsewhere not so much. It's a bummer when we let ideology blind us to what binds us. While we disagree profoundly, our rights to free speech unite us as Americans.

Operation Rescue wasn't alone in dealing with not-so-peachy speech restrictions last year. The ACLU of Georgia advocated for residents of a community called Avondale Estates that prohibited the display of signs on residents' property.

Ultimately, the Court struck down some of the sign ordinance provisions as unconstitutional.  In addition, the Court has awarded the ACLU of Georgia $142,329 in attorneys fees and expenses.  This ruling is significant because it analyzes and deals with the scenario where defendants may attempt to avoid fee liability by repeatedly and unilaterally changing ordinances.

Sheesh! Nonstop signage interference!

The bummer is that a lot of free speech advocates may turn up their noses at defending Operation Rescue.  When I mentioned the Truth Truck issue to a politically engaged left-leaner, she couldn't get past the anti-abortion aspect. On the flip side, isn't it likely that pro-life advocates won't be able to look past the ACLU's church/state separation agenda?

This divisiveness is disappointing when we all want safe, free, happy futures. It sounds as though evangelicals are turning more toward issues of racial disharmony, poverty, and the environment. It behooves those on the left to ensure that our free speech advocacy is as inclusive as possible -- even of people who might find our art offensive, or don't approve of our lifestyle choices.

~~

Since I've revealed that I have traced the IP addresses of two individuals who I believe to be Booz, Allen, Hamilton employees, and that I want to document the hacking of at least two of my computers, the stress in my life has compounded. Last week was a bad week.

Among a lot of ridiculousness: a (formerly) trusted individual tried to get me to admit to smoking pot (it was one of the most bizarre and awkward conversations ever -- he was clearly taping it). Now, this is odd, since the person already knew I was not a pot smoker. Last summer, when the hellish aspect of this adventure began, pot smoke wafted into my Las Vegas hotel room through the vent of an adjoining room, ala that scene with the hotel reviewer in Ocean's 13. This wasn't "The people next door are toking up" smoke. This was, "My God! It's like my bedspread has been sprayed by a skunk!" smoke. I called the front desk. So much weird stuff had happened, we just wanted to let them know that we were not the source.

As with the case of the gun opinions solicitation, someone trying to elicit drug use confessions makes me nervous. I can probably count on both hands all of the times in my life I've used pot. It messes up my head (I can't think well for days after), so I avoid it. On a few occasions I've eaten pot brownies. I have never done any heavier drugs. I have never purchased any drugs besides alcohol. I smoke cigarettes occasionally after a few drinks. Since I've lost so much weight from the stress of all of this I've discovered my tolerance is tiny, and I don't like to be in any way out of control, so I don't drink.

On Friday, after my dentist appointment, I opened my car to see that the plastic covering for the seat adjustment area on the left side had recently been tampered with. It was pulled away from the seat, and there were little shavings where other bits had been pried open. We still haven't been able to replace it properly. I don't know if something was removed or added. But the fact that individuals are clearly able to enter my car without alarming passers-by (obviously not setting off the car alarm) makes me worry about this drug thing.

After the Vegas fiasco, I told people I was scared that the pot wafting was some form of entrapment -- that our room would be entered and drugs would be "found." Most said that it would be such a minor infraction that I shouldn't worry. Now I am worried. Will it be planted in my car? What next?

I start thinking things like, "Did that guy on Digg who always dugg my stories and sent me marijuana legalization stories to digg in kind have some ulterior motive?" It's amazing how events like this force you to examine everything with a fine-toothed comb. Clearly, thinking the "drug war" is wasteful and leads to far too many unnecessary incarcerations is different from wanting to justify any sort of addiction.

When I can step back out of my own stress, it is fascinating to see how this all works: the mechanisms of fear and intimidation. How many people is this happening to?

~~

Today there has been much reflection on MLK's assassination. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be alive then, losing both him and RFK in quick succession.

Someone also asked today what would have been "done about Bush" in an earlier era (meaning -- how he would have been violently overthrown). I think these sort of questions miss the point, and are very contrary to Dr. King's Gandhian and Christian teachings. 

There have been extraordinary abuses of power in the White House, but the people -- citizens in all strata of society -- have allowed them. We have not held our leaders accountable. Taking one man's life would not add a bit of good to the world or correct a corrupt system. In fact, I imagine that any sort of attempt on anyone in the White House would only result in more draconian security measures and civil liberties abuses.

I don't think I actually condone killing of any sort except in extreme self-defense, if I felt my life was in danger (even then, we're in very theoretical territory here -- my fingernails are my most viable weapon). When a friend and I once discussed the possibility of my learning to use a gun, I could only imagine doing so in self-defense, to injure, which apparently is an unrealistic expectation (I have never been so scoffed at in all my life, actually). I don't remember having handled a gun since I shot a sparrow's eye out with a BB-gun at around age 8. I had to put it out of its misery and felt guilty for weeks.

One of the people who recently entered my life under false pretenses did a lot of talking about a friend of hers who runs a gun control organization out of the U.K. -- brought her up every time we met. Like much of what she said, this apparently was designed to elicit some sort of incriminating self-disclosure from me (instead, I expressed interest in interning with the organization before commencing the study of human rights law). Reflecting on her motivations makes me want to be very clear in case my passions for civil liberties and civil rights have been misunderstood.

When it comes to "martyr-like" characters responding to fascism (and we in the U.S. luckily still have the opportunity to ensure we don't go Germany's route), I would relate much more to Sophie Scholl than Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whose story a friend introduced me to last fall). Scholl expressed her political views in a rather unobtrusive manner, trying to influence through words, and was subjected to a kangaroo court and then execution. An example was made of her and two others in the White Rose resistance. I admire her courage, fortitude, and loyalty and would expect nothing less of myself. I strive to be the kind of person who would have the will to face my fate with such resolve.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, was a Protestant minister who was part of the resistance that attempted to assassinate Hitler. At this point, the war was raging on, and, the way I see it, this was more of a tactical/militaristic decision. For him it was also one of faith. I have no military training, or mind, and would certainly be the last person to ever do well in any such undertaking. I can see the value of having Hitler gone, but don't see how that situation at all applies to our current one. Again, we are still in a place where we have the ability to prevent something like Nazi Germany from fully flowering on U.S. soil.

King's sentiment seems the most effective:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

People are at the heart of King's dream. We aren't meant to kill them to get there.

~~

The most "radical" act I have ever taken part in is one I organized. It was a miserable failure, and I was embarrassed by it. I write about it now not out of pride, but as a way of letting readers know what it takes to get "on the list."

You may remember the lead-up to the Iraq war as a frustrating, heartbreaking time. Many of us believed that preemptive aggression was a way to further agitate people who hated the U.S. and would only make future terrorist attacks more likely. We could see right through all of the pretextual explanations for war. At the same time, as I wrote last fall, the anti-war movement seemed frustratingly ineffectual.

So -- what was my brilliant response to the impending bloodshed and the lackluster antiwar movement? To dress up like Jackie Kennedy and carry around shopping bags with Jesus on them. Though this may seem a bit off, I think history will prove this brand of "radicalism" much more sane than Dick Cheney's. Why the Jackie Kennedy imagery?

I first posted this in November and then removed it because it seemed too personal. Recent events have compelled to put it back up. We all want to be safe. The specter of terrorism does require vigilance. But destroying individuals' personal relationships and creating a general sense of fear and distrust cannot advance the cause of liberty. No one should be, in effect, imprisoned without having committed any crimes, or been tried for crimes. We all must be aware of the human element of the vast surveillance apparatus before its cancerous growth metastasizes beyond all control.

Yesterday's Wired Threat Level pointed out what it means for our government agencies to have total access to our communications. Ryan Singel lists the reasons there is a difference between your ISP and the government having access to your private information. Among them, the government can: put you on a watch list, find a tenuous connection between you and suspected bad guys in order to justify further surveillance, and build secret files on Americans' First Amendment-protected political activities.

This inspired me to reflect on some of the things I've learned about what sucks most when the government intrudes on one's daily life.