The Liberty Bell Files: J. Edgar's Demons

By John Beatty

The Liberty Bell Files: J Edgar's Demons is a work of fiction...seriously. Neither the Liberty Bell Project nor "the Files," nor The Special Projects Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

• Language: English
• Publisher: JDB Communications, LLC
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781734795271

Book preview

How We Got Together

Or, Building A Team From Scratch

The note slipped under my door read:

Report to Room 12B in Building 62 at 1800 hours. Tell no one.

Huh, I thought; more bullshit of the cloak-and-dagger variety. But what else was I to do?

So, I went…and my life changed utterly.

I arrived two minutes early—5:58 PM. I did not expect to see two of my classmates—Julia Parkinson and Ellen Drew—in the basement corridor outside 12B. But there we were that early May evening; three soon-to-be graduates from the first FBI Academy class of 1980.

"Should we knock," Ellen (nicknamed Nancy, of course) asked, hand poised. Ellen usually wore business attire with shoulder pads that hid a pretty figure (but nothing like the girl-detective) when not in uniform. She had permed brown hair that barely moved and blue-green eyes that seemed dull. So did Ellen, for that matter, seem dull. She had evinced no sense of humor at all in the weeks we’d trained together.

Well, I said, "they said to report. To me, that means…."

Julia pushed the door open. Room 12B was just a 10x10 room with better-than-average GSA furniture along the walls and a little table in a corner with a warm coffee pot (so someone had been there). A small refrigerator sat in another corner. Windows high on the wall let in diffused sunlight to add to the fluorescent lights in the acoustic ceiling.

But, there was no one to report to when Ellen checked her watch. 1801, she sighed.

"A joke," Julia grinned. She had an infectious grin, blue eyes, titian hair, and always gorgeous figure. She and Ellen were the only women in our class.

"A test, I mused, to see if we follow orders…."

"You don’t think the past seventeen weeks have shown that, Ellen snapped. No: this is something else."

Did I say that Ellen lacked a sense of humor?

At that moment, a woman and a very big man we’d never seen before came through the door. "You’re early," the man frowned. He was about six-eight, with a ruddy complexion, enormous hands, and teeth like bathroom tiles.

No, Ellen declared, "we were here at 1757."

She also had a tendency to do that.

No matter, the woman said. She looked like a grade-school teacher: prim and proper and about five-five. We’re all here now. Please, be seated. We sat on separate chairs—the three of us on one side and the two of them on the other. Each chair was a different shade of green or yellow—the General Services Administration’s color palate is as limited in their choice of materials. Nearly all GSA cushioned chairs are Naugahyde, chosen for their lack of durability and the fact that, unlike cows, Naugas shed their skin with factory-like regularity.

I’m Gwen Forsman, Deputy Director for Personnel, the woman said. "I decide where you go after graduation." This week, we would be told where our first assignments would be, so we were on tenterhooks, vibrating with anticipation…

"Senior Special Agent* Ernest Packard, the man declared, Special Projects Division.** You have been selected to work for me."

And we were stunned.

Ellen frowned. Special Projects? She was an FBI Brat—born to it like a military brat—so she knew the Bureau. We got classes on FBI organization during Week 1 at the Academy. That Friday, the instructor said… "And there’s the Special Projects Division. Mandatory tour of the Smithsonian tomorrow; bus leaves at 0900 from the front of the building. Be there…"

"What does the Special Projects Division do," Julia asked.

"I can only tell you that after you change your Desired Assignments Form," Ernest said.

"I wanted New York, Ellen said, rather loudly, and I was given to understand that I could choose my detail because of my class ranking."

"That’s true, Gwen smiled, but the requirements of the Bureau are such that you are being asked to change your Desired Assignments."

If you were among the top 5% in the class, you got the first of the three postings/details you selected on what’s called the Desired Assignments Form known as Your Dream Sheet. Like most dreams, they don’t often come true.

"I’d wanted Detroit, Julia declared, and as the top graduate, I believe…."

"Once again, Gwen smiled, we are requesting that you change that."

And me, I asked meekly. "I’m nowhere near their rankings." I had no illusions about my (lack of) class standing. I expected to be sent wherever they needed me.

"You’d come to me regardless," Ernest said.

"But why are Julia and Ellen…" Julia and Ellen were Numbers One and Two in the class: they posted the class rankings every week

"Because," Gwen sighed, not unlike a frustrated mom.

Well, Ellen declared, "I wanted New York and New York I shall…."

"Not get, Gwen interrupted. Choose Special Projects, or you’ll get Anchorage or Omaha." For weeks our instructors had been telling us, screw this up, and you’ll spend your career in Anchorage–or–yep, it’s Omaha for you—both said to be the depths of FBI Hell.

"So changing preferences for us is…." Julia pursed her lips.

"Still optional, but, Ernest said, SPD, Anchorage, or Omaha. If it helps, I got to Special Projects from Omaha. I arrested Salvatore Guarani there in 1964."

"You, I said, rather loudly. We saw that movie on you and Sal the Snake…Number Five on the Most Wanted list then."

I’d been in the Bureau less than a year, and I saw him in line at the Post Office right next to his wanted poster. Put the cuffs on him right after he’d mailed the box tops for his kid’s Space Cadet uniform.

Which was not what the training film depicted…at all.

"Spectacular arrest, Gwen said. Made Ernie’s reputation as a fast-thinking agent."

"And as a non-game player, Ernest/Ernie groused. My Special Agent in Charge*** wanted to give it to somebody other than his greenest rookie. I said I wouldn’t fill out the reports like that. He filled ‘em out the way he wanted; I griped to his boss, and next thing I know, I’m in the SPD."

"For the betterment of the Bureau, Ernie, Gwen replied. You know what kind of man J. Edgar was looking for then."

Yep, Ernie agreed. "Yes-men…except for those he drew into the SPD."

And so…Julia, Ellen, and I changed our Desired Assignments and repaired to our barracks/dorm rooms to contemplate what had transpired.

And to wonder just what was so special about the Special Projects Division. We just didn’t know each other well enough to talk about what we’d volunteered for/been roped into…

Yet.

✳✳✳

After graduation the next week, we had three weeks before we had to report to our details. Getting stuff packed up and saying goodbye to everyone at home took me two weeks. I waved my stuff goodbye on the moving truck on Friday, and on Saturday, I drove my Buick out of Hell.

Hell is a neighborhood in Pickney, southwest of Detroit—only it’s not really there. Hell got its name in the 1800s from a local mill operator on Hell Creek—extinct since—who paid his vendors in the whiskey he made. Wives would complain, ‘Father’s gone to Hell again’ when they came home roaring drunk. We got that story growing up, and it makes more sense than the others, which are legion.

Hell became famous in the 1940s when the dam holding back the last vestiges of the creek failed, flooding Pickney’s Regency Avenue on a sub-zero January night. Newspapers printed Hell Freezes Over headlines and reports of bread landing butter-side-up and other rare happenings all week. No investigative journalists were going to refute the nonsense then; everyone knew it was a joke, but the Chamber of Commerce has taken it seriously ever since.

Without fixed boundaries, it’s hard to tell precisely just how many people live in Hell. Traditionally, it was the ten blocks of Regency Avenue between 4th Street and 16th Street (don’t ask about the math) that the Chamber of Commerce calls Tartarus**** Road. On Tartarus is Gunga Din’s Bar, Grille and Gift Shoppe (from the poem: I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din); Beelzebub Press, where the souvenirs come from; and Inferno Motors, my dad’s used-car lot/brokerage on the eastern end. Other businesses with related names—like the Gate of Salvation Baptist Church at the west end of Tartarus—and unrelated, like the Piggly-Wiggly in the middle, and several homes rounds out what Mahoun***** Realtors calls Hell’s Hundred Acres.

It took me two days to drive to my new home in Dumfries, Virginia, where I had wrangled a one-bedroom apartment. Ellen and Julia had apartments in the same building two floors above me—fittingly and depressingly. We met our stuff there Monday morning: Ellen’s from Albany, New York; Julia’s from Southfield, Michigan.

I furnished my 15x12 living room with a pre-Columbian corner sectional sofa that had been in our basement. To this, I added a worn chair with a leg that cracked in the move, a 13" color TV that had been in the garage, a couple of beat-up little shelves, and a scuffed sofa table. My parents’ old queen bed and my childhood bedroom furniture sans twin beds populated my bedroom. Some pots and pans, utensils, odd crockery, a used toaster, and mismatched tableware Mom was about to take to Goodwill adorned my kitchen. I satisfied myself that my brother Steve got less when he moved out in ‘67. My brother Dean bolted in ‘66, so he got nothing at all. When it came to be her turn, little sis Bridgit would get to haul off what’s left that the folks want to unload.

I had books on nearly every horizontal surface and in boxes stacked on the floor of my new digs. And upon one of those stacks of boxes rested my only lamp—with a three-way bulb—under which I had to do everything requiring light.

I needed furniture…and so much more…

Until the first time you’ve had to do it yourself, you have no idea what it takes to put a household together. In retrospect, you feel like an idiot for having assumed that dish drainers, toilet-bowl brushes, shower curtains—with rings—and coat hangers would be included in the lease. I went out Monday night…and Tuesday morning…and Wednesday afternoon…and got a few essentials. I was even mildly—stupidly—surprised the apartment did not include a vacuum cleaner or a broom….those I got Thursday.

After my phone was connected Friday, I called my family. I scribbled my number on my little whiteboard in the kitchen, and I wrote it down on a slip of paper and stuffed it in my wallet. I hoped that someone would ask for it…someday.

Late Friday afternoon, I was making a list of still-needed stuff and a grocery list. The knock on my door sounded somewhere between a retiring could I borrow some sugar and an insistent turn that damn stereo down …which I didn’t have. Something told me it was…

"Hey, Julia, Ellen," I said while opening the door. Julia was in cutoffs and loose tank-top over a flouncy camisole, her hair in a ponytail over her shoulder. Ellen, behind her in a short skirt and a crop top, sort of smiled. I’d seen them in business suits, training uniforms, athletic uniforms, athletic uniforms in the pool during drown-proofing, and in some more leisurely attire in the cafeteria and sightseeing tours around Washington. But I had never seen that much of Ellen’s or Julia’s arms…nor legs, nor abdomens…before that evening. Nor had they of me as I greeted them in my ragged, holey cutoffs sans drawers.

There are two kinds of people who spend their weekends studying: those at the top of their class and those at the bottom. The three of us kinda got to know each other because we spent many of our eighteen weekends studying in the dorms.

Fair warning: I had not had sex—or even made out—since ‘78. And I thought both my classmates were attractive.

"Hi, Dave, Julia grinned brightly. Can we come in?"

"If you don’t mind my slight disaster," I sighed. I’ll be working with them. They may as well get used to MY version of domesticity.

"You should see my place," Julia said, glancing but not looking around.

"Just like ours," Ellen sighed as they turned right—as if instinctively—toward my tiny kitchen, with its 3x4 island counter that was more like an ait—an Olde English term for a mud flat.

"We’re going to dinner, and you’re coming with us," Julia declared, scanning my books. She would have done any centerfold proud, and I’d have bought every issue I could find.

"Get something decent on, Dave, Ellen sighed. A&W tonight. And before I forget, give us your phone number. Here’s ours." She handed me a note with their numbers in tidy block-letter copperplate.

On that humidly-balmy evening, we walked two blocks to the A&W drive-in. We talked about ourselves because we had no idea what was ahead of us. "My dad’s an engineer, Julia sighed. Home every night. Mom, though, she’s been in law enforcement since I started school. First Pontiac PD, now Oakland County Sherriff’s Department. Between shift work and overtime, I didn’t see her for months at a time. She grinned brightly. Didn’t keep me from wanting the FBI: have since high school. How about you, Dave?"

"My father is a used car dealer and broker, home nearly every night except Thursdays when he goes bowling with his high-school buddies. Mom was a legal secretary, but she’s been a temp with Bridgit still at home. You have brothers and sisters?"

Nope: only child. You?

"Two older brothers, younger sister. Ellen, you…"

"FBI all my life. Two older brothers; two younger sisters. My family has lived in Albany for the last ten years. Now I’m here; Ben owns a boat brokerage on Long Island; Harry’s still at Princeton…."

"What did your dad say about the Special Projects Division," I asked.

"He said he’d never worked with them, or for them, or had much contact with them."

We were in a new town, quaffing root beer and foot-long hot dogs in Friday-night-hang-out rags with the only other people we knew well enough there to do that with. It was nice; it was chatty; it felt intimate…until then.

We were quiet as we walked home, but not the cold, eerie quiet of the end of a bad date. This was a silence of mystery, as in what have we got ourselves into?

✳✳✳

Saturday noon, I got back from the store with two armloads of groceries, planning a tenderloin filet for dinner. Of course, I had no thought whatsoever of opening the door…

And Freddie held it open, smiling cheerfully. Freddie was a blonde moppet with a wide grin for everyone and everything, like all Down’s children. I’d met her while I was moving in and knew she lived with her little brother and her parents somewhere in the building. Thanks, Freddie, I said.

You’re welcome, she said, following me to my door. "I can open that," she smiled, grabbing for my keys. She stuck the right key in the deadbolt, then in the knob…picking just the right…

"You’ve done this before," I said, slightly alarmed.

I watched you, she said, opening the door and following me in. You’re friends with the new girls.

"I work with them." I put my groceries away while she scanned around the kitchen and living room. I had interacted with some special kids in school—mainstreamed, they called it—but never with a Down’s kid. I wondered what she was interested in, how literate she may have been.

She lit on my little workboard with airplane subassemblies on it. You’re good, she said.

Thanks, I smiled, do you build models?

I make pictures, she answered. She’d snatched my kitchen phone pad and my phone pencil and was sitting on the end of my sectional by the porch door. Daddy makes kites. Mommy makes food. Jimmy makes poop and pee. She wore a t-shirt and jean jumper that her free hand absently fiddled with, crossing and uncrossing her bare legs as she drew.

Ah, I said. "How old is Jimmy?"

Five, she said, dropping my pencil and getting up. Bye, she waved and went out of my open door. She left a most detailed sketch of the view out my porch door, including the leaves on the trees around the parking lot, the signs on the little strip mall across the street, and the rust chips on my railing.

That evening, the knock on my door was my building super, a beefy black man, and Freddie with a large basket. Welcome from building management, he said.

Well, thanks, I said, "and thanks, Freddie."

Welcome, she smiled, handed me the basket, and ran off.

She’s a good girl, I said. Where does she live?

At the end of the hall, the super answered. I’m George Mackenzie, her step-father.

Pleased to meet you, I said, trying to hide my surprise. Freddie draws well.

"She does, George agreed, whenever she can. She drew your view from the living room?"

I take it she’s done it before.

"Every apartment she gets into, and that’s nearly all of ‘em. If you need anything, leave a message on my machine or a note on my board. I do minor maintenance, but if there’s an emergency or something big, call this number." He handed me a card. "They do major services in an hour or so, 24 hours a day. You know where your shutoffs and your circuit breakers are?"

Right here, I pointed at the closet by the door. The salesman showed me when I signed the lease.

"Good. They don’t always. Be seeing you. He started to leave, then stopped. Freddie’s not…."

A typical kid, yeah.

"No, not what I meant. She’s twelve; what they call mosaic. She has a very high IQ—higher than mine, even. Don’t talk down to her; it can upset her."

I’ll remember that.

✳✳✳

Sunday morning…quiet. No good idea why, but Sundays are often quiet.

Screaming, roaring quiet.

It struck me that first Sunday, truly on my own—college dorms hardly counted—how that particular day drove home just what living alone meant. It meant that the rest of your life is out in front of you…alone.

And on Sunday…everything was on hold…except perhaps your upstairs neighbors having boisterous wake-up sex right above you…

Church-goers can content themselves in a haven of group solitude. Mom took us sometimes. I had my baptismal certificate from the Gate of Salvation Church. I’d read the Bible, but I’d also read the Koran and Bhagavat-Gita, Mein Kampf, and The Communist Manifesto. In high school, there was Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion. I’d had to study The Wealth of Nations and Das Kapital in college. I’d also read The Book of Mormon and Atlas Shrugged; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Dianetics; The Book of Five Rings and Siddhartha, Voltaire, Einstein, and lots in between. What people believe, how they believe it, and what they do about it interests me.

To paraphrase Jethro Tull, my God was not the kind you had to wind up on Sundays. This meant that getting out of bed on Sunday mornings was optional.

Then, someone had to knock on my door at 9:06 that Sunday morning.

"Coffee, Dave, Julia grinned, pushing a box of doughnuts into my hands. Need coffee."

"Knife for the rolls, Dave, Ellen demanded, striding by me with an armful of groceries that smelled deliciously like fresh bread and warm baked ham. Some mayo, some mustard?"

Coffee, I stammered, "sure. Haven’t made it yet…bread knife? Drawer left of the sink. And mustard…"

"No coffee yet, Dave, Julia accused, fists on hips. And where’s your sweetener? Do we have to do everything, Dave?"

"Not everything, no," I answered. Remember here that I’d just crawled out of bed, and there was a hint of a grin on those faces as I stood in my own apartment in my sleep-skivvies, complete with holes in revealing places. "But, I’ll just go back to bed, and you guys can do whatever you want…."

"Don’t you dare, Ellen declared, we’re going to the matinee of The Empire Strikes Back. I haven’t seen it yet, so don’t spoil it…why aren’t you dressed yet, Dave? She wielded my bread knife with the rattling handle as if it were a scepter. Get a little more decent, Dave. Breakfast will be ready by the time you’ve at least got a shirt and some decent pants on."

My partners smiled at me despite my disheveled appearance. My favorite lyric is from Manfred Mann:

To her Cheshire smile, I’ll stand on file

She’s all I ever wanted.

I never had high socio-sexual expectations. I was told I was good-enough looking, but I was socially awkward and sexually inexperienced. The one thing I liked from any female was a smile.

I hadn’t seen the movie—it came out just a month before. Seeing the second Star Wars saga with them—surrounded by kids and teenagers wowing every explosion and twist of the plot—was fun.

Since my partners were in culottes and tube tops****** and I was no more formal, we went to The Crab Shack for dinner, a strip mall seafood joint that didn’t serve crab at all.

By 6 that evening, we agreed that we should take our own cars the next day because we had no idea what we would be doing for our first day.

I understood why Yoda said, "Do. Or do not—there is no try." We would be working together; we had to be doing together. We needed to be a team. We knew that even if my partners had taken most of the initiative so far. And we seemed to be getting along just fine. They even smiled indulgently as they rolled their eyes whenever they spotted me admiring their legs.

And my partner’s legs were breathtaking works of God’s art, and I did believe enough of Him to have that power.

I thank Him profusely for sharing those lovely visions with me.

---

* Abbreviated SSA.

** Abbreviated SPD.

*** Abbreviated SAIC.

**** A Greek name for the underworld. Mail was delivered to either Tartarus or Regency Avenue.

***** The guy’s name was Mahoun, a Scottish word for the Devil.

****** It must have been a uniform code for that day. Women and girls all over town wore exactly the same thing, regardless of what they looked like in them.

The Special Projects Division

Or, The Outfit that Doesn’t Exist

Quantico is one of those quaint suburbs of Washington DC where practically nobody lives permanently. Still, thousands of people pass through, reside and work briefly, and leave. In Quantico, there’s the Marine Corps Museum and a score of motels. There’s also the Naval Investigative Service HQ and gun shops on every corner. Too, there’s the FBI Academy and used car lots everywhere. Besides that, there’s the Marine Corps Base Quantico and more than a few pawn shops. Finally, there’s the isolated two-story concrete-and-glass warehouse-like building in the middle of an otherwise vacant block that houses the Special Projects Division of the FBI.

We walked into the glass-enclosed lobby from the parking lot. There was no big sign out front like was there was for everything else the government owned in Northern Virginia, DC, and eastern Maryland. There was just an FBI seal on the lobby’s outer door with Special Projects Division under it in white peel-on letters. Julia and Ellen were in fashionable business suits with tasteful skirts and sensible, high-neck blouses. I, of course, was in my best blue pinstripe with a tie but no snap-brim fedora. They told us that those were discarded when J. Edgar died, but some older agents still had them hanging on their hat racks. One of our instructors wore one to show how to be spotted as an FBI agent.

A uniformed GSA guard stood at a podium just inside the door, standing next to a pass-thru metal detector. He glared at the three of us in turn. "Help yuou?" He was as friendly as an annoyed skunk.

We’ve been assigned here, Ellen explained.

The guard looked at my classmates suspiciously. "Nu vimmee-aissigned here-a. Yuo ire-a meesteken." He sounded just like the Swedish Chef, making him hard to understand quickly.

"They’re assigned here just like I am," I said.

"Und yuo ire-a vrung, the Swedish guard declared. Now go."

May I speak with your supervisor, please, Julia asked so nicely, unbuttoning her jacket. She had a way of convincing people; she would have made a great cult leader, serial killer, or both.

"One-a-man poost, the Swedish guard snapped—hard to do when sounding like a Muppet. I answer to noboody. Now yust turn around and…."

"Everyone answers to somebody in this town, I interrupted. Now, get whoever you answer to on the phone, or let us talk to Senior Special Agent Packard…."

"No such person here-a," the Swedish guard declared, a little more like English.

There was something not right about the guard’s uniform. "When did GSA start issuing Sam Browne belts? And, why are you wearing it over the wrong shoulder?"

"Oh, a smart guy, eh, the Swedish guard snarled, his accent suddenly devolved into something incoherent. What shoulder am I supposed to…."

"The right: it was designed to help hold up the sword on the left hip…."

"I’m left-handed, smart guy, the suddenly-American guard grinned. So, just pack up your girlfriends…."

"It doesn’t matter with a Sam Browne," I explained, carefully weighing my gun-pulling options. I could get my weapon out fast enough to graduate, but not as fast as all my classmates.

I just started to brush my coat back, hoping I’d give Julia and Ellen a chance to brace this guy after he shot me when… "That’s good, Fred, a tinny voice sounded from somewhere in the room. Don’t want you to get shot again."

OK, Dusty, the guard smiled, extending his hand. "Fred Macon. You’d be Ernie’s rookies?"

"We would, I sighed. Hazing?"

Hazing, Fred smiled, revealing two gold teeth. "There will be more. Good catch on the Sam Browne: you’re the first. Go on through."

✳✳✳

"Welcome to the Special Projects Division, declared a little man with a big mustache just inside the double doors off the lobby. I’m your Special Agent In Charge, Dewitt Harris. They call me Dusty, but you’ll just call me sir for now. Come on in."

We’d had a class in Week 18 called Welcome Aboard! It was all about our in-briefings and our introductions to our fellow agents and administrative staff. They even talked about how we’d be told who to answer to…

But…

"This is us, Dusty swept his arm widely as we walked into a room the size of two basketball courts with a high acoustic ceiling. Several people lifted their heads or turned to look at us idly. Fifty-five agents for now; four administrative staff." The big space was divided into untidy, unequal areas by baby-puke-green, fiberglass-and-steel movable walls, filing cabinets, banker’s file boxes, tables, whiteboards, tall steel carts, and shelves laden with boxes and binders. A basketball hoop—sans backboard or net—hung on the wall, forlornly crooked, at the far end from the entrance. "Some wiseguy hung that thing up there, and we just never took it down. Down here, Dusty led us along one side of the big, relatively quiet room that smelled of dust and, vaguely, mold, is where Ernie hangs out."

Ernie looked up from a long steel-leg table scattered with files in a room twenty feet long and about ten feet wide, with shoulder-high windows that let in soft, even light. Ernie grunted, thanks, Dusty. He got up, extending his hand. We shook it; it seemed uncharacteristically flabby. Maybe he knows his own strength. Grab a seat. We wheeled office chairs up to his table.

"Now: what they fed you in the Academy about your on-boarding? Yeah, everywhere but here. Except for the occasional wrong number, we don’t answer phones with civilians on the other end. We now answer to just two voices: the Attorney-General and the Director. Even the President doesn’t give us orders directly."

Ernie made a sweeping gesture. "What we do here most of the time is clean up what one guy feared in the dark of night, what kept him awake for decades: the Liberty Bell Files."

Impossible, Ellen pronounced loudly. "Helen Gandy destroyed all those files. They no longer exist."

Ernie smiled slowly, spread his hands on his table. "Stop…right…there, Special Agent* Drew. Miss Gandy destroyed only what she knew of J. Edgar’s personal files. She didn’t know about, he swept his arm, …these. We’ve been working on them since 1972, and their number was orders of magnitude greater than Miss Gandy even dreamed. Your self-assuredness is admirable, but do not presume to know more about your new job than the detail that’s been doing it for eight years. Are we clear?"

Crystal, sir.

"Good. These had been stored at field offices all over the country. They’re still being located from time to time. Files on organizations, individuals, UFO sightings, supposed subversive activities couched in TV shows, radio commercials, newspaper cartoons, and even circus performances. He grabbed a file. Here… he pushed it to Ellen. Read the first-page summary." She opened an old brown cardstock folder; an aged piece of thin paper was stapled to the inside, which she read:

File Number Ending 067265-LIB

File Created 6/7/42

File Name: Edward Steven Copenicium

DOB 6/25/1901, Evans County, Texas.

Subject expressed disloyal opinions June 1942 in Dallas, TX. Stated if this war needs us, they’re really hard up, while not expressing mirth.

"This poor guy had a file on him because he didn’t laugh at his own joke. So now we have to look all these people up, see what they’re up to, see how subversive they are now—if they’re still alive—close the files and send them to Central Records for microfilming. Here… He pushed one at me. Read for the class." This file folder was a battered manila; the paper inside yellowing, the type fading. A typed label on the tab bore the letters LIB preceded by an overlong, hyphenated file number:

File Number Ending 651925-LIB

File Created 12 Dec 67

File Name: Fauna

DOB unknown (probably 1964). Large feline won biggest cat in Idaho at state fair September 67. Unnaturally large (over 40 pounds) for a domestic feline. Owner is Laurencia Smith Newman nee Flannagan (DOB 1932), an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war and the current military draft who has visited Sweden, Switzerland, and other pacifistic countries. Possible lines of investigation include radiation-enhanced animal breeding.

"The cat’s almost certainly dead, the owner’s pacificism irrelevant, and the need for the file moot. But we look them up, write another report for the file, close it out, and send it to Central Records. But…" He read himself…

File Number Ending 239601-LIB

File Created: June 12, 1931

File Name: Church of Idiot Worshippers

Founded by one Salaam Morori, AKA Sam Morris (B. 1881?) ca 1915, Grand Ledge, Wyoming. Organization formed in large storefront. Uses the term idiot in the ancient Greek sense, meaning one’s own, referring to one’s unique inner self, or the Russian sense of holy fool.

1935: Membership hit nearly 1,000