View From The Middle
Deadbeat FBI Spies Lose Wiretaps; What's Next?
By Charles Rogers

Did you read the report last week where the FBI was ordered to discontinue the use of certain eavesdropping surveillance operations recently? The reason had nothing to do with the Patriot Act or even our certain inalienable rights to not allow anyone else to mind our business but ourselves. It didn't even have anything to do with Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson or that other guy, George Washington. Yes, that George Washington.

Turns out the reason, according to the Associated Press, was that our esteemed Federal Bureau of Investigation - yes, that Federal Bureau of Inves-tigation - had repeatedly failed to pay its phone bills on time.

The Justice Department released an audit as part of an oversight operation and found that the turnoffs included a setup in investigations on suspected terrorists, which is permitted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Can you picture it?

Agent 007 and Co. were secretly listening in on somebody from a foreign country - real sneaky spy stuff:

"Ya. Ve haff the documents. When and where shall ve meet?" the suspect says to his confederate over the wire-tapped phone.

The FBI agent picks up a pencil as he adjusts the volume on his earphones. This will do it. Once he finds out when and where the transfer of classified Top Secret documents are to take place, he'll arrange for his fellow agents to arrest the culprits who want to do us all harm and the free world will be saved!

"Vell, I think we should meet at about 7 o'clock at the...."

"I'M SORRY, WE HAVE TO INTERRUPT YOUR CALL BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT MADE YOUR PAYMENTS ON TIME. PLEASE CONTACT A TELEPHONE COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE!"

Fuhgeddabout that world-saving effort!

Of course, it's obvious that somebody in the Accounts Payable section at the head office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington is not exactly holding up his end of the deal. It just shows you that, hey, everything you do can "trickle down" to the next guy and, for want of a quarter-or-so per phone call, the free world might have been destroyed.

Well, maybe that's a little far-fetched - But who knows?

Meanwhile, it does say something about the human-ness of even the FBI. What the hell, they make mistakes just like everyone else - even the big wheels at the Defense Department (But Donald Rumsfeld was such a nice guy) and the State Department, not to mention the CIA.

Now there's an example of almost inhuman inept-ness. We don't have room enough to talk about the CIA's mistakes - which are not necessarily considered in the same genre as, say, bookkeeping. I mean, these are BLUNDERS!

For instance, a report attributed to the Washington Post tells us that the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 might have been avoided if the CIA agents in charge had not whispered to President Kennedy, "Nah. They ain't got no missiles there. It's just not something the Commies would do, 'cause they're chicken!"

Of course, a month later we sent a U-2 plane flying over Cuba and, whadya know? There were all those missile sites.

There are virtually hundreds (maybe more) of instances where our secret agencies have goofed, such as the biggie we like to call the IRAQ WAR.

Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) premise where the CIA told President Bush - and the United States Congress - that Sadam Hussein would be ready with his nuclear bomb within a year if we didn't do something?

Or how about the latest one, where we were told essentially the same thing about Iran, adding that they were just about ready to advance their nuclear weapons program? Turns out, thanks to a little deeper intelligence, they'd stopped working on that particular weapons program back in 2003!

Now, thank heaven, an agency has been established that will oversee the government administrators by patriotically doing their duty and prohibiting the reckless use of the nation's money; an agency that will listen in on secret conversations and consult frequently with intelligence authorities; an agency that will incur fear in the hearts of any person or entity that dares to errantly come in its path.

It's called the telephone company.