Argus tell us: How the FBI solves its cases

Argus tells us:

How the FBI solves its cases

Now let’s try to be serious just once.  Here is what Argus told me about his exposure to FBI deal-making methods as taught at the U. Wyoming Law School.  Take heed!

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So the FBI wanted to make a deal with me.  Little wonder.  The FBI couldn’t make a case without a deal.   I remembered studying “Deals 301″ in law school.  Professor George Washington Carver Jones, the only black professor at the University of Wyoming, taught the class.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has merely fallen in line with the preponderant persuasion in America—that deals are what it’s all about—mergers, takeovers, magical paper transactions that reap immediate wealth and make the dull and unproductive instantly rich and famous. Fuck this making stuff,” Professor Jones cried as he paced in front of the class.  That’s why Professor Jones always got the highest student evaluation in the law school.  The students loved to hear him use solid words.  “Fuck this work, for Christ sakes!  Work is for (the n-word.)”  The kids loved to hear him say the “n-word.”  He was the only one who could say it.  “The money is in deals.  Deals, man!  And that’s how the FBI sees it too.

“Today, in modern America, the FBI pretends to investigate, but its agents tap phones and plant bugs under beds so they can listen to the snoring and love-making.  They’d rather hear a couple of (n-words) fuck than make an honest case,” Professor Jones said boosting his rating ten points.  “Occasionally an agent subpoenas a document, and if things get boring a couple of honkies with the collars of their topcoats turned up and wearing snap-brimmed fedoras and imitation Porsche sunglasses corner a witness and scare the living shit out of him.  But they don’t engage in detective work.  They are merely getting things set up to make a deal.

“Now when the guy is ‘ripe,’ as the Bureau likes to phrase it, when the pressure has been on the suspect for Lord-knows-how-long, and the poor bastard has laid awake for six months staring up at the ceiling wondering how to convince his wife and his kids and the old folks at home that he is really innocent, when he gets up in the morning and the first thing that hits him is a ghastly fear that makes his heart beat out of sync, then like the Chinese water torture, the fear dripping down, the terror of the unknown having captured his mind, the pain of it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day after relentless day, wearing away at him until he has endured one drip too many, well, then he disintegrates into an inglorious pile of blubbering fucking rubble at the feet of the FBI, and he’s ready for a deal!”  At the conclusion of the longest sentence uttered by a professor in our law school career, we erupted in loud hoops and applause.

Professor Jones bowed slightly and continued.  “The FBI has several classes of deals available.  The Class I deal is made with subjects who are guilty of nothing and against whom the Bureau has no case whatsoever.   But they have been harassed so long they think they’re guilty, or still believing themselves innocent, they’re helpless to defend themselves, and stupefied by fear, they’ll testify to anything or against anybody if the Bureau will only leave them alone.

“But the FBI makes Class II deals, too.  The Class II deal is for subjects who are actually guilty, but still running at large.  Usually the more guilty you are the better deal you can make.  The Class II dealee might be more guilty than the guy they’re after, but to nail the ‘target,’ the Class II dealee can walk or take ’short time’ in exchange for his testimony against the target who will likely get twenty years to life. The target could be innocent.  That is not the point.  The point is the deal.  The government isn’t in business to solve cases.  It isn’t in the business of bringing criminals to justice.  The government has but one function and one function only—to make good, solid, saleable deals!”

“Amen,” some smartass in the back hollered.  But Professor Jones paid him no heed.

“Then there are the Class III deals—for inmates.  Here the Bureau scrapes the bottom of the deal barrel.  Everybody wants out of prison, and if an inmate can conjure up a good enough story against the target, the Bureau will make the inmate a fucking deal.  I don’t use the word loosely but with legal precision, because…”  He paused with perfect timing, surveying the class.  We waited, our hearts pounding with excitement.  “Because the deal is to fuck your brother.  Deals!  Buying and selling!  That’s what life in America is all about today.  After the Class III prisoner testifies he’ll be placed on the Witness Protection Program.  A Class III deal is a peachy deal for convicts who have a good story and are good salesmen.  Most crooks are.  Most honest people are not.”

We tried to write down every word the professor uttered.  “The Class IV deal, the most common deal of all, is one in which the suspect is both the fuckee and the fuckor.  He may be guilty or not.  If he admits his guilt the government will be easier on him than if he makes the government prove its case by bringing in Class I, II or III deals against him.  When you’re the target it’s pretty frightening.  You’ve been rotting in jail awaiting trial for eight months without a single ray of sunshine once touching your sickly black hide, and they’ve got you charged with something that pulls ten to life, and you’ve got for a lawyer a honky public defender fresh out of law school with 150 other cases.  You’re just one more n-word.  You can get out in two if you plead guilty, and you get good time for the eight months you already spent in jail.  You make a Class IV deal.  I repeat:  It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re guilty or not.  The Bureau doesn’t care.  It’s another case closed.  What counts to the Bureau is that they made a deal! “

I stole a glance at the woman student sitting next to me.  Her mouth was open and her lips wet like Marilyn Monroe’s.  Her eyes were filled with love or lust.  In the excitement of the moment I couldn’t tell the difference.

Professor Jones continued, “If you want to be a success, specialize in making deals with the government.  Besides, it’s risky to try a case these days, because jurors know that the last innocent person in America was John Wayne.”

Depression and Mother Nature’s dirty little joke

I recognize that depression can be the result of an insidious chemical imbalance. I am not writing about that miserable ghoul that tries to find a home in many an otherwise healthy person.

We all suffer from depression of some kind and of severity. No one is immune from it. Usually it’s a downer, like a cloudy day that, in my part of the country, is of short duration. When we lose a job, a friend, a loved one, when we are sick or feel lonely, depression seems to be a pretty normal reaction. But is it possible that chronic depression, absent the chemical problem, is also a normal reaction?

We are taught to be joyful, taught to put a smile on our faces, taught to be optimistic and see the cup as half full, not half empty. Happiness is a cultural demand in our society. Are you happy? If not, buy a new car. Are you happy? If not, get a facelift or some other kind of lift. Are you happy? If not, drink a Coors or better yet, get drunk, or call your local dealer. Are you happy? If not, get a new spouse, experience a new love affair or come out of the closet.

Are you unhappy? If so, please do not admit it. You will be seen as sick. You will be subjected to treatment. You may even be jailed as a risk to yourself and others.

What if all of this sunshine called happiness is simply imposed on us like any other belief system? We must be happy or we are sick. We will be in trouble if the cultural imperative of happiness escapes us. Send us to the shrink at an unhappy expense to tell us how happy we should be and who will prescribe happy pills for us.

I think of our dogs. They wag their tails and we see them as essentially happy. But they are not aware of the existential truth and Mother Nature’s dirty little joke that she never tires telling: Birth, struggle, infirmity and death.

We have been given that devilish gift called awareness, some call it intelligence. We were also given the power to make choices. We are defined by our choices. We can be happy, at least cheerful, at least brave, or we can whimper and whine and plod along in our own gloomy mental cave. We can choose to enjoy and cherish that magical gift called life, or we can choose to curse the day we were born. But if we choose the latter, are we sick or simply in tune with the ultimate truth, that Mother Nature is still playing that same little joke on us?

I say we play it back on Mother Nature. Eternity would be hell. On, say, our five-hundred and fifty-seven millionth birthday, or our fifteenth billionth, and we find ourselves still no closer to the end than our beginning, one might be begging Mother Nature: “Please, oh, please play your dirty little joke on us. Please, just this once.” A beginning without an end would, indeed, be hell.

Life without the simple pattern of the flower – its tender shoot emerging in the springtime sun, its strength to rise again after some careless foot has smashed it, its willingness to endure pain as its tight bud unfolds, its incomparable beauty as a blossom and the miraculous spread of its seeds in fall winds is part of Mother Nature’s plan as well.

Perfect. And we are in sync with its magic.

Dear Friends

I am honored that I sometimes get comments that are pages and pages long.  I just can’t absorb these, nor, probably, can most of you.

I am sorry to delete some of these, but I just have to.  Hope you understand.

Gerry

Poem: First Snow

I have been gone. The first snow has come. I share a poem I wrote many years ago to Imaging:

First Snow

Together we watched the snow cover the ground

In ten minutes.

“Before it’s through

The snow will be up to the doorknob.”

Do you remember saying that?

Then we saw the golden ground give up,

The tall summer grasses, frightened,

Standing stiff

Like old men frozen at the brink

Waiting to be smothered.

“Do not be afraid, grasses,” you said.

“Already you have seeded.

Do not shiver so.

But fight.” Do you remember how you said,

“Oh, please fight!”

And then the blood of golden grasses

Turned all white.

The geese are at the pond. The snow has covered the meadow where they often graze and food is scarce. We toss out corn at the edge of the pond. But soon the geese will fly south. Winter is upon us. I share a question with the old bull elk, and with you. Will we make it another winter?