My Dad and the FBI, Part 1.

One night, a friend of mine mentioned a revealing conversation he had at a backyard barbecue about five years ago with an ex four-star general. Care to join in? I mean, why not? It's just a friendly Chicago summer barbecue with plenty of drinks and conversation! Come. Join in and take the red pill with the green beer sunny ...   

And somehow, somewhere in my mind, I'm drifting into my own familiar thoughts of endless childhood stories while growing up as the son of someone whose life was probably not so unfamiliar to that of the four-star general.

My Dad and the FBI, Part 1.

Secretly as a child, while dad was away, I would sometimes sneak into the den and look around for hidden treasures. My favorite stash was a bunch of pictures and medals he had stored in a sharply varnished wooden box with a metal latch. That's also where he kept his dog tags from Vietnam, and I'd always have to put them around my neck when carefully looking through Dad's treasure.  

And in a flash upon hearing the slightest sound coming from the driveway, I would always make sure to return everything to its exact position, quickly ducking under the desk in front of the bay window as I tiptoed out into the hallway just before the front door opened.

Occasionally, I would even convince him to tell me one of his many stories. And this is how this one begins ...

A relative prodigy of sorts, young Fred eagerly starts UW at just 16 years of age. Even though he immediately tests out of all but the highest level courses, it takes him eight long years to finally earn his Bachelors degree while never dropping, or flunking a class.

His purpose, he used to joke to all who would listen (including the Chancellor), was in trying not to graduate at all. It was the dream of the eternal 4.0 college student. After switching majors to practically everything but Home Economics, he gets snagged in some bureaucratic technicality and they regretfully make him anyway.

As the years passed, I would want to hear more about his extravagant life and slowly the pieces would begin to fit into place, but only in their own time. When he seemed ready.

How hard it must have been! Eight long and grueling years of spring-time panty raids at the girls dorms, and sledding down the hill in front of Bascom Hall on food service trays in winter. Often chuckling about his close friends who were always up to no good. Oh, and don't forget all those late nights, fun filled student-activist protests, and anti-war riots.

It was only later that I learned of the role he played in the FBI and his job to infiltrate various student organizations, reporting upon individuals of interest and their activities within those groups.

Sometimes, I still try to remember him mentioning this little fact to me and I can't.  He never did. At no time did he ever say to me that he worked with the FBI. And in a way, I'm glad that he didn't.

I do remember clearly the first time I saw a photograph of the SR-71 Blackbird just after it had been declassified. It was a warm Saturday morning and I was eagerly pointing to a poster of one in the classroom at a gifted and talented chess camp. "Look Dad! That's it! That's the one!" Smiling, somewhat patriotically, he calmly patted me on the head and told me that even though it was new, it was already 20 years old. They were now building a much better one in the desert where they made that one, he said.

"Where in the desert dad?" Thinking of how vast the desert was in Australia. "In America?"

"Yes," he turned to look down at me, meeting my eyes saying, "but that's the secret."

Years later, after he passed, I happened to find a document that looked like a formal report he wrote in another box I had probably helped him move countless times over the years. At some point while attending UW, he delivered an unusual paper to the FBI which detailed new methods in group subversion and population control techniques among other things. 

So much time had passed between the formulation of those documents, to his bedtime stories and then finally the opening of that box. It was my own little family time capsule of conspiracy staring me right in the face. This must be after he wrote that book with Noam Chomsky, I thought. Yes. That was after Vietnam.

The language was clear in its own typewritten beauty, and ended almost as briefly as it began. You, this, without ending was the message. It was fascinating to see the youthful words of my father and the formation of philosophical thought emerging within the FBI. 

I imagined the youth of the organization. Growing, learning. By graduation, he was flying to D.C. almost once a month. These were the last days of our innocence before Kennedy's death; of black and white TV, and propeller-powered passenger planes. Of course, Dad was well used to flying regularly by this time from his years of service in the Civil Air Patrol as a young boy.

Silently, reading that paper I felt like a child all over again. Sneaking, watching my breath. I didn't know what to think, other than to simply know how wide-spread these and other techniques are now commonly being used in America and around the world.

Closing my eyes, I felt as though I were swimming and put the booklet down on my lap.

I was standing upright underwater holding onto an electric eel, but not being electrocuted. Odd, I thought as I rubbed my temples and continued staring at the creature as it glowed brightly in my hands.

"Do you want another beer?" I heard someone say off in the distance. Somewhere above me. "Beer."

"I'll take one. Sure." I replied.