Chapter 310: Keeping an Eye on the Other Side

Late-May to Thursday August 10, 2006

The Government's lawyers didn't rush away to get the just-modified agreement signed. It was never going to happen like that, Vanessa assured us. She would've been disappointed had that happened, as this was meant to be just the first round of several. She was hoping to get the Government dancing to our tune, and they weren't on the ropes enough for that yet.

Despite Vanessa's saying she'd be very disappointed to get exactly what we had told our lawyers to demand, I wouldn't have been at all disappointed. I'd be too busy running around in circles and yelling "Yippee!" to be disappointed. Each of us got his or her own TEN MILLION dollars! That was worth at least one "Yippee!", and possibly even two. I could see that it would disappoint Vanessa though, so I asked her, "Why are you so sure they won't sign?"

She had several good reasons (they're mentioned just below), and described some of her intended tactics. She achieved something I wouldn't have thought possible: she convinced me to be disappointed if the Government signed our $5.5 billion deal!

Vanessa had assured us, "No one accepts first offers, especially not politicians who love to have the last say to prove how important they are, and not lawyers who're advising them and have to make themselves look smart. Any lawyer that recommended accepting our first offer would be ridiculed and would likely lose his client. They'll maneuver enough that they'll create an opportunity for us to tell them to submit a better offer."

Another reason was that a ridiculously large number of people in the Federal Government had to review the agreement and render their opinions on it, point out problems with it, suggest changes to it, etc. That process had already started, but it was by no means complete. In the Federal Government, the review of even a ten-page document could very easily generate two or three hundred pages of suggested changes (that snippet of information had been provided by our lawyers).

The last reason the Government wouldn't sign immediately was because there truly was a problem with the agreement. Even if it decided to sign, it couldn't, because the agreement required it to agree to things it couldn't provide. There weren't any more negotiation meetings, but there were legal discussions between their lawyers and ours about the implementation problems and details. It's amazing how many details a team of lawyers can think of when their firm is charging several thousand dollars an hour for their time.

One problem was our blanket immunity to crimes up to the date the settlement agreement was signed. As the Government's lawyer said, "The Family could go on a crime rampage the day before signing. We should change the date to a couple of weeks ago."

Our lawyer answered, "You're accusing them of having criminal intent. They're the innocent victims of months of egregious criminal activity carried out by the Government, while representatives of it stood in front of cameras and lied about the fate of their son. But I'll pass your comment on to my clients. I'm sure they won't be the least upset by your slur and it will help them reach an amicable settlement with your client."

"Don't bother. It was merely a theoretical consideration."

We didn't want to fix that immunity 'problem' because I was already going on somewhat of a "crime rampage": I was doing lots of snooping. Getting immunity for that seemed like a good idea, just in case it was ever pinned on me.

Our tax-free status was by far the greatest problem, as Vanessa had planned for it to be. The Federal Government couldn't contract to provide that because it stepped on State and County toes. Potentially a large number of such toes, as individual members of The Family could be expected to reside in many different parts of the country during our lifetimes. There were laws all over the country that citizens had to file tax returns, and it'd require a massive amount of work and much time to modify them all.

The other side suggested that the easiest fix would be for us to file and pay for our taxes normally, and then for the Federal Government to reimburse us. We inexplicably and unreasonably refused that simple solution, which caused the lawyers to clock up tens of thousands of dollars of additional billings trying to work out another practical solution. We'd refused partly because we liked the idea of not having to account to the Government, but mainly because Vanessa had a large trick up her sleeve.

We let time pass while we continued to pressure the Government. Vanessa was particularly enjoying making sure the pressure mounted to high levels. She got us - excluding me - to give many interviews that sent shivers up the Government's spines (oops, I forgot that politicians don't have spines). Vanessa herself talked about how she'd handle things if we bankrupted the Federal Government. She'd done some good research, talked to many of the Political Studies people at OSU, etc., and had many very attractive sounding ideas. For example, "Look at the CIA. They pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a hole in the ground to develop illegal and immoral weapons, then they let some foreigners waltz in and steal everything. How hard can it be to keep foreign soldiers out of a hole in the ground in the middle of America? The CIA couldn't even catch them after they left and it STILL doesn't have a clue who the attackers were. The CIA couldn't even build a lab that wouldn't be a total write-off if someone started a fire in it.

^-- "I can't think of a single thing the CIA has done right since before the Bay of Pigs. It looks to me that if we halved the CIA's budget, they'd commit half as many illegal screwups and we could use the billions saved to do something useful about our health care system. That seems very appropriate seeing as how the CIA killed our chance of being as healthy as Mark Anderson was. No sane person would disagree that we'd be better off spending the CIA's budget on health care than using it to develop diseases that could uncontrollably kill hundreds of millions of innocent people."

Dad had fun, saying in one interview (for an example of the tone he was using in his interviews), "I wish I knew who the guy was that killed Robert Moran. I'd like to shake his hand and thank him for taking out the garbage. It doesn't look like they're going to catch him though, I guess the DHS are too busy kidnapping teenage boys who've got X-ray vision, or whatever the DHS's crackpot fantasy is this week."

Prof chose a nationwide show to say, "Let me take this opportunity to thank whoever it was that leaked the initial documents from the CIA and DHS. I hope you're listening, because everyone in my and the Anderson families would like to give you our heartfelt thanks. Because of you, we know what the criminals we call our Government were doing to Mark. It was too late to save him, but I urge you to use your access to this Government's secrets to expose as many of their criminal activities as you can." Causing another horrible chill to go down the politicians' spines. (Or maybe to go up; it's hard to tell the direction when the spines are nonexistent.)

Mom pointed out, "The DHS showed their inability to hire good managers by putting Michael Brown in charge of FEMA for New Orleans. Portland is just about as far away from New Orleans as it's possible to get in America, and still the DHS managers are criminally incompetent. The senior management of Homeland Security are terrible. Same with the bosses at the CIA. When we win our lawsuit - as we're certain to because everyone knows the Government committed those crimes - then we'll have the power to bankrupt the Government, or allow it to continue with our having control over the purse strings. I think we should look closely at all the senior managers in these departments, and maybe let the Government have enough money to operate provided some VERY major management changes are made. I'll have to think about that.

^-- "Although one thing's for sure, 'Bushie, you're doing a heck of a job.' No wonder you were impressed by Brownie's disaster relief efforts Bushie; he was far better at his job than you are at yours. At least he didn't create Katrina, whereas you're creating disasters everywhere you turn. When we win our lawsuit, does anyone know whether we'd be able to force that lying scumbag to resign? Or maybe to force the Republicans not to contest any elections for the next few decades? There are a lot of possibilities, aren't there?" (The references to "Bushie" are a play on Bush's endorsement of "Brownie", a dated reference to the New Orleans Katrina debacle.)

[[Mom had actually supported "Bushie" for his first term, so there wasn't really anything personal in her personal attacks. If a Democrat had been President, nothing would be significantly different. If a system is allowed to be corrupted, and there are gains to be had from doing so, then it'll be corrupted. "Bushie" was merely the current product of a corrupted system.]]

From the Government's point of view, it was one thing to pay my family a whole lot of the taxpayers' money, but it was ENTIRELY another thing to let my family have ANY degree of power over the political process itself. GOD KNOWS what sort of disasters politically ignorant civilians could cause if they had that power!

There was a huge amount of ammunition my families could use to embarrass the Government, plus everyone else was hammering it too. When John Bolton carried out his instructions by trying to verbally rail against Iran's nuclear program in the UN, rather than building support for America's pressuring Iran like his speech was meant to, he was laughed down and ridiculed because of the US's bioweapon programs. Iran was MORE POPULAR THAN AMERICA! IRAN! What was the world coming to?

Bush's inner-circle couldn't care less about a few billion here or there, although they were genuinely horrified that we were demanding that Bush pay $100,000 of his own money. They knew he wouldn't use his own money of course, but it was the principle of the thing. The public's money wasn't an issue that mattered to the inner-circle, but they did very much care that their big plans were being held back, so they told their lawyers to get the settlement done. Didn't we realize how much oil Iran had, how inefficiently it was being extracted, and how much oil America would need it in the coming decades.

Our lawyers were very experienced at the DC game, so they quickly picked up on the new sense of urgency. We'd asked them to keep us informed of any changes in the other side's attitude, so they passed that news on. One thing Vanessa knew for sure about negotiations (and she knew a LOT about them), was that when the other side wants to go fast, you should go slow. Vanessa had some slowdown excuses ready to choose from, but I'd recently found something that I thought might be ideal, based on what I understood about Vanessa's strategy. She agreed.

^

To explain how I'd made my discovery, I need to explain that the four parents and I had thought that I should do some snooping. We had a number of reasons for this:

1. When you're negotiating with someone, it's quite useful to know what they're thinking.

2. We wanted to put pressure on the Government to settle quickly.

3. We wanted to divert the authorities away from thinking that the leaker of the Fort Dodge files and the defendants' new employment locations was closely connected to us.

To achieve those goals, I was visiting DC roughly every second night, and sometimes staying the day.

To keep up with the Government's thoughts on our negotiation, I snooped the offices of the external law firm they were using. I had their address, and easily saw that the roof of their building only had security on its door, so I hid myself among some air-conditioning vents, safe from anyone's observation and where I'd hear or proximity sense anyone coming in time to avoid them. There are a lot of street-level video cameras around central DC, so I preferred to work from above as it made approaching and leaving very easy.

Our lawyers had supplied us with the names of all the lawyers on the other side acting on our matter, including describing each of their functions and relative importance, so finding their offices would be easy for me. I started with their lead partner's office.

A careful check showed me that there were no cameras, motion sensors, alarms on any of the filing cabinets, or any active or passive security inside the partner's office. The law firm's security was even more wonderful than the DHS's. He had a fairly large office safe that I couldn't open, but that just meant I could read only one of its files at a time.

Having only one sight blob, I started with the safe. I sent the sight blob into the safe with two more light blobs to give me white light, then I opened the top file and browsed through it. It wasn't about us, but I was in no hurry and was curious about what else these lawyers did that needed to be kept in a safe. When I'd finished skimming the first file, I rotated it to the bottom and read the new top file. It took about half an hour to rotate my way through everything in the safe.

There were reams of paperwork in the office, and it was stored in cabinets that were trivially easy to open from the inside. I unlocked the first filing cabinet and pulled its top drawer open. I browsed through the drawer, pulling out any file that had an interesting looking index tab. I looked at the top page to see how old it was, and if current, I put it on the floor. When the floor had thirty one files open on it, I started reading them all simultaneously. I didn't understand most of it, but I wasn't interested in the details anyway, except about our negotiation. When I found that file, I read it avidly.

From time to time I returned files back to their place in the cabinet and replaced them with new ones. The vast majority of the files weren't of immediate interest to me so I just skimmed them. Skimming and being able to read thirty one sources at a time meant it didn't take me long to read everything I wanted to read in the office. I'd picked up a good overview of the sort of work this guy did.

I repeated the process in office after office until the early hours of the morning, when it was time for me to leave. I wasn't worried about anyone arriving while I had files spread all over an office's floor because they'd turn on the corridor lights first, which I'd easily be able to notice under the door. I was using a very large sight blob, so a light going on anywhere nearby would be like a flare going off (why do lights go "on" but flares go "off" when they're triggered to emit light?). I'd immediately start putting stuff away. In the unlikely event that the very first arriver came to the office I was snooping, he'd find it impossible to open the door until I was ready, which would only take a few seconds. At worst he'd think his door was sticking, which I could easily confirm by using NP to make it seem sticky when he tested it the next few times.

Near the end of the second such DC visit, I'd read all the paperwork I wanted to, so I found a safe location to descend to street level several blocks away, then walked back to the area. I was naturally bundled up against the cold, which hid my face and body nicely. I picked up several computer passwords as people arrived at work, which I used on subsequent nights.

After that, the easiest way of staying current was to use their computers. The lawyers themselves did very little computer work; their secretaries doing nearly all of that for them, so it was the secretaries' computers that were the best for me to use. There was no effective security on them - they had security, but it wasn't effective against me - so I had no trouble getting in and looking for recent inward and outward emails, as well as new word processing documents. I knew what "Matter Numbers" I was interested in, so finding their documents was a simple procedure. Or I could search for "Anderson" and look at recent documents. It was so easy I had plenty of time for miscellaneous snooping in that law firm, and after I'd exhausted it, in many other firms - which takes me to the second and third bullet points several paragraphs above.