my afternoon with the secret service

My Afternoon with the Secret Service

The irony of the situation suddenly occurred to me; there were two armed people in my living room asking me if I was a violent person.

Last Friday I was visited by two Secret Service agents who didn’t think my AOL screen name “BushMustBkilled” was as humorous as I did. In fact, they consider it a threat and informed me that I am currently under investigation.

I was aware that someone had reported me, but never imagined such a thing would be taken seriously, I mean, if someone was actually plotting to kill the president they certainly wouldn’t advertise it on the internet, that is, unless they were insane.

The agents, a man and woman, appeared on my porch seemingly at ease, which leads me to believe that they knew I was no threat. I knew right away why they were there when they flashed their badges. They offered to interview me outside but I felt I had nothing to hide, at least from the Secret Service anyway, so I let them in and offered them coffee, to which they naturally declined. They suggested I delete the screen name so I did it in their presence, and then came the interview.

The woman had a multi-page form to fill out and sat while the man remained standing. The agents were remarkably friendly and of good humor. The questions were mundane and didn’t appear to be loaded. Do you own any firearms? No. Have you had any special weapons training? No. Have you been hospitalized for mental illness? No. Do you belong to any organizations? No. Do you want to assassinate the president? No, and so on and so forth. I answered the questions as honestly as I could under the assumption that they knew everything about me already.

They asked me if I had ever written an e-mail to the Whitehouse, and indeed I had. When questioned about the letter’s content I told them what I remembered about the e-mail, although my memory of it is not very good having written it quite late at night as I recall, but it certainly wasn’t a threat, and I’m not the only one critical of the man in office. The woman seemed to know what the content of that e-mail was, which was not written with the e-mail account in question (suggesting that all of my internet activity is known), by her nonverbal communication, but did not vocalize it.

Beneath the friendliness the agents had that law enforcer presumption of guilt attitude about them, especially the man. I had been a naughty citizen. They informed me that they weren’t going to press charges but that a case had been opened on me. The man said the most peculiar thing. He said that if I were to make another screen name “such as ‘I killed Bush,’” then they would have to pay me another visit.

Needless to say, I have no desire and no means by which I could or would, even possibly, bring bodily harm to the president. I think the agents who visited me last Friday knew that quite well, hence my ability to tell this story. They are interviewing my immediate family right now, which has worried my mother to no end. The question remains, why are they investigating me? One would assume that the Secret Service is a bureaucracy and the agents assigned my case are merely going through the prerequisite motions, but perhaps there is an underlying message: “big brother” is watching you. If I am guilty of anything it is an ideological crime; I am opposed to the killing of innocents and the blatant racial discrimination involved in the current crusade. Once that becomes a crime, we’re all fucked.

-David V. Immel, Santa Rosa California