A Life Wasted

Mary vs. the FBI

In an early morning raid, the joint task force hunting me upended my family's home. With the Pennsylvania State Police there, members of the FBI, United States Marshals, ATF, Secret Service, and Postal Service executed a search warrant on our home. They pulled Mary and the eight children who lived at home out into the yard, split them up to interrogate them separately while another team tore our home apart.

The purpose was to intimidate my family. All those big bad federal officers against a housewife and eight children ranging in age from eight to eighteen. If I sound like I am still upset about this, it is because I am. The authorities knew I wasn't home. They knew I hadn't been there since before my arrest two years before. The sole purpose of that raid was to upset me, which it did, only it didn't upset me then because my wife was smarter than the FBI. Mary didn't tell me what happened.

I have to go forward for a moment and tell you about a post-arrest discussion I had with an FBI profiler. This guy was a professional senior profiler who used my case to open up a new division in the FBI's fabled Behavioral Science Division called "Threat Assessment and Domestic Terrorism." This guy wrote the book on lone wolf terrorists and he used me as his first case. Having profiled me, he knew the best way to get to me was to attack my family. None of us knew this at the time, but their plan, designed by this profiler, was to upset Mary so bad that she would raise cane with me, which they believed would cause me to make a mistake. So this was the reason behind this early morning raid on our family and the reason federal officers tore our home apart.

As was my habit, I called home regularly. Generally, I would call every week unless something prevented me from doing so. I had devised a system that allowed me to call without my calls being traced, so I would often talk for quite a while. The FBI monitored these calls and I have it on good authority that they hated me for making calls they could hear but not trace. These regular calls were a big part of the reason the feds set up their cruel plan. They fully expected my humble housewife to tell her husband about the attack on her home and children.

Perhaps I had developed a pattern for my phone calls that I wasn't aware of, or perhaps it was just by chance that I called home the night after the raid on our home. Whatever it was I am sure the FBI profiler was happy I called that night. As soon as Mary answered the phone I knew she was upset about something. So I immediately asked her what was wrong. Mary blew out a deep breath, releasing her frustration and told me it was nothing. Just that the house was a mess and she couldn't get the kids to help her clean up. Then she changed the subject and asked me how I was doing.

As I would later learn, the FBI was furious with her after this call. They had put a great deal of time and energy into creating a scenario where Mary would tell me what they had done to her. They had staged a huge multi-agency raid, intimidated children and tore up a home all for the sole purpose of having the lady of the house complain to her husband. They had even gone so far as to have the lead FBI agent give Mary a card and said that if anyone has a complaint to call him. Of course Mary was supposed to give me his name and I was supposed to call on him to avenge my family. It was a neat little trap they had set. I'd even obliged by calling home that very night when Mary would have been at her most pissed off point.

Everything went perfectly except Mary didn't do what they were sure she would do. She didn't vent to me.

The next day the FBI leaked the story about their raid on the home to the press, even went so far as to make it sound like it was a bad experience for the family and that the house was left in shambles. That story was picked up by the wire services and I read it out of a newspaper somewhere. As soon as I read the story, I called home. When I asked Mary about what had happened she played it down. Yes, they searched the house, and yes they talked to us, but it wasn't a big deal. I mentioned the article I had read and how bad it sounded. To this she flat out lied to me. My wife told me that she read the article too but it was all a fabrication. She assured me that the FBI hadn't done any of those things. Again she changed the subject and asked me about my day.

The post-arrest discussion about this with the FBI profiler was the first time I heard the truth of this event. He said, "It was a great plan that would have worked. You weren't doing anything predictable and you weren't making any mistakes. So we had a plan to bring you to us. It would have worked. We had you figured out. Had you cold. If you had known what happened that day you'd went after the lead FBI agent and we'd have caught you. It would have worked had your wife responded as most women would have. She taught us a valuable lesson. Next time we profile the wife too."

The FBI wasn't the first to underestimate Mary. Everyone does. Mary seems sweet and soft and ever the obedient wife. But what they always miss is that she chooses to be this way. Underneath that woman is strong, smart, secure, and confident in who she is. She's always been like this. It took me years to figure this out about her, so I don't think less of the FBI for underestimating her.

On a visit a few weeks after I heard all this I asked Mary about it. She laughed and said she wasn't surprised. She didn't know it was all a set up, but she did know what my response would be had I known what they had done to her and our children. She knew I would respond to an attack on her, so she didn't tell me about it. Seems everyone knew me better than I knew myself.

One final note about that raid on the house, this one a post-arrest story I heard from a United States Marshal that was there. He says that no one who was there liked what they were doing, but the higher ups in Washington were calling the shots so they had no choice. For the record, I believe this. These guys don't like messing with innocent people and they knew Mary was innocent. So during the raid he and two other federal agents in full tactical gear had my son Colt off to the side to interrogate him. Colt would have been ten at the time. They told him his mother was going to jail and that one of his brothers had already told him the truth. So if he didn't want to lose his mother he had to tell them everything he knew about his dad. According to the Marshal, ten-year-old Colt crossed his arms and looked him in the eye and said, "I ain't saying nothing. I want a lawyer." The Marshal said that none of the federal agents were able to hold it together. They all turned away from him and cracked up.