Chapter 311: Negotiating Upwards

Late-May to Thursday August 10, 2006 (Continued)

The inner-circle was getting very annoyed at their increasingly lame duck of a President. The moron couldn't even hide a tiny $100,000 transaction. The Canadian Prime Minister had just canceled a scheduled state visit, saying, "Sorry, I'm too busy." Letterman, Leno and the like were laughing it up. Snubbed by CANADA!

The inner-circle was very displeased. How on Earth was Bush going to be able to talk the rest of the world into standing on the sidelines while America brought the benefits of democracy to Iran, including efficient oil production, when even Canada didn't want to listen to him? "For fuck's sake Dubya, stop fucking around with the Anderson fiasco. It's got nothing to do with anything, so buy them off so we can move on. As it is, it's going to take us weeks to dig you out of the hole your mouth made." ("Dubya" is one of George W. Bush's nicknames, being the way Texans pronounce "W". The name distinguishes him from Bush Senior.)

So the Government's lead lawyer approached our lead lawyer, "To see what it'd take to get some forward momentum happening again?"

Our lawyer responded, "I don't believe our clients are interested in 'forward momentum' at this stage. You can submit an offer if you like, but I doubt they'll bother reading it. We're concentrating on preparing for the case. I must say that I'm looking forward to that very much. I'm going to be the lead lawyer for the biggest award in legal history, one that'll bankrupt the Federal Government. That's going to be a bright spot in my career. If I were you, I'd make sure you get your bills paid before you go to trial, because your client might not have any money afterward, haha."

The lawyer he was dealing with knew how the game was played, and correctly interpreted our lawyer's statement to mean, "Make an offer, but it better be a very good one, or else."

Given the terrible pressure the Government's lawyers were under, they were forced to assemble several hardworking teams to suggest negotiation offer components, analyze their appeal to the Andersons, fine tune their values, check they were self-consistent, etc. As one example, the firm had dozens of lawyers who dealt with civil engineering matters, several of whom were grabbed and forced to work an all-nighter to come up with appropriate negotiation offers in their area of specialty. As just one of the themes in their one area, they pursued the idea that Mark's legacy seemed to be my family's biggest priority, which led to their suggesting:

• Getting the state government to change Corvallis's name to "Andersonville", "Markstown", other variations on that theme, or simply let us choose any name we wanted. Governments love to name things after people, as if that actually achieves anything.

• Because we lived on the other side of the river from the city, maybe building a fancy, new "Mark Anderson Bridge". I'd like to denigrate the Government by writing, "Corvallis didn't need a new bridge," but in fact, Corvallis does need a new bridge. The one leaving town going east is only a single-lane bridge, quite old, and often a bottleneck. It's overdue to be replaced with a two-lane version. I doubt the Government knew that though, so I still consider it denigrated.

• Because studying had been important to me, maybe a major, new "Mark Anderson Building" for OSU.

• One particularly imaginative lawyer (or, by the look of his mannerisms, probably a homo who was excessively inspired by my far-too-frequently shown Speedos photo) suggested a statue of me so high that its legs could span the Willamette River, so it'd look like the Colossus of Rhodes. I cringed (I was sitting on the top of the building and watching most of these discussions, reading their notes, etc. It's a useful tactic in a negotiation).

The law firm was forced to put in over three hundred thousand dollars' worth of hard-worked, highly billable hours, but it was worth it. Tired after their night's work, the three lead lawyers were ready to present their ideas and recommendations to the President the next day. For assorted practical reasons, I wasn't sitting on top of the President's roof during that discussion, so we had no knowledge of what the President thought until our lawyers got the baddies' offer later that afternoon.

Their new offer:

• Increased MAF's endowment from $5 to 7.5 billion.

• Increased Benton County's payment from $360 to 500 million.

• Increased SE Peoria Road property owners' payment from $50,000 to 75,000 each.

• Increased The Family's payment from $120 to 250 million.

• The President PROMISED (honest!) that the $100,000 would come from his own pocket, and suggested what looked like a good way of ensuring that it did.

• The rest of our proposed settlement agreement was agreed to, subject to finding a solution to the "No income tax" problem.

• Plus there was ALL SORTS of miscellaneous crap.

Fortunately, they'd not suggested a Statue of Liberty-sized, Speedo-clad, river-straddling "Colossus of Corvallis", although the girls were very disappointed about that. Seeing my reaction to their complaint, Julia suggested fixing my objection by asking them to make it without the Speedos I objected to so much.

Carol pointed out, "That'd make an EXCELLENT location to tie a rope swing to."

I wasn't swayed.

I'd already told my family many of the ideas I'd seen the Government's lawyers discuss, but they were funny all over again when we saw them being proposed in writing. The baddies hadn't known what to offer us, other than money, so they'd used a shotgun approach. 80% of their new suggestions I would've paid them NOT to do - anything with my name on it for a start - but some of the ideas appealed to other members of the families. Fortunately nothing embarrassing; just small useful things for the community. In the grand scheme of things they were irrelevant as we weren't going to accept the offer anyway.

After some good laughs, usually at my expense, we put their offer away and went about our daily business (school for the kids, gardening work for me, embarrassing the Government for the parents). We didn't have to call our lawyers because we'd already told them how we'd respond to any offer.

Early the next morning my parents got the helpful TV networks to film Mom and Dad saying, "We received another offer from the Government yesterday afternoon. We would've mentioned it earlier but we've been too busy laughing. We have serious doubts about the intelligence of the people in DC because important parts of their offer include their making promises to do things. They kidnapped and killed our son, the DHS repeatedly lied that they'd released Mark in Portland, the President lied about knowing about the Fort Dodge lab and he was lying about agreeing to pay the $100,000 out of his pocket, and unbelievably, they're STILL asking us to trust them!

^-- "We can't decide whether they really are that stupid, whether they're insulting us by thinking we're that stupid, or whether they've been dishonest and untrustworthy for so long that they've forgotten what honesty actually is. I've got news for you Mr. President, we do NOT trust you. You're a liar, and your administration is corrupt, abusive, dishonest, criminal and immoral. Even our 13-year old daughter laughed when she heard you were asking us to trust you. Maybe you're used to dealing with the other simpletons in DC, Mr. President, but you can't fool even a 13-year old girl here in Oregon."

After that'd been played and replayed several times around the country - especially in Oregon - back in the DC inner-circle: "For God's sake, Dubya, we said to buy them off, not give them more ammunition to make you look stupid."

Dubya was considerably less polite to his side's lawyers.

The Government's head lawyer called our head lawyer, to ask, "From what I've heard, your clients weren't happy with our offer?"

"You've heard more than I have. I've not talked to them since we forwarded your offer to them."

"When do you expect to hear from them?"

"Some time after the President proves he's trustworthy."

"Is there an alternative way we could move forward?"

"You could remove the need for trust."

"What have you got in mind?"

"The situation is simple: our clients don't trust the President will pay the $100,000 out of his pocket or that he'll deliver on their tax exemptions after the contract is signed, so they're not interested in signing. So I suggest the President gets busy on delivering on them. That will clear the trust issue and demonstrate some good faith."

"BEFORE the contract is signed?"

"Yes."

"That's highly irregular."

"Demonstrating good faith is 'highly irregular'? Don't bother answering, we both know the answer to that. The Government kidnapped and killed their son while lying about it the whole time, so I think it should be able to handle a small additional irregularity."

"The Government didn't kill Mark Anderson. That was by unknowns."

"I'll pass your comment on to my client. I doubt it'll get the settlement moving again, but maybe you understand the psychology of bereaved parents better than I do. By the way, everyone here is hoping you advance that piece of disingenuity in court."

"You've made your point. The President can write out a check tomorrow for his payment, but..."

"You'd better include the other two, AND submit a copy of the speech he'll give, AND hire independent auditors to confirm the money came from his personal account. You're underestimating the contempt and suspicion my clients have for the President."

"I'll pass your suggestions on. As you know, we've still got the more serious problem of the tax exemption. Your clients have shot down every idea we've floated."

"That's because you don't understand their psychology. They're ordinary, salt-of-the-earth people; not the politically astute types you're too used to dealing with. Your working for who they think of as the murdering bastards who killed their son predisposes them to distrust everything you suggest. The President's repeated lying hasn't done their perceptions of your suggestion any good either. From what they've told me, they automatically disbelieve anything that comes out of his camp.

^-- "I can think of one possible approach. I could suggest to my clients that I draft a law change that, when enacted, would give effect to what they want. That might get them interested in moving forward again. I warn you that I'd be doing it for my clients, so it'd be in their favor, and if it's passed into law with a single word changed they'd refuse to consider settlement. They don't trust your client an inch, and they don't need to because they'll triumph in court. Let me know whether your client agrees with my suggestion.

^-- "By the way, now that we have a court date, we'll be issuing a subpoena duces tecum for the President tomorrow over the extent of his prior knowledge about the DHS's and CIA's human experimentation programs. You're authorized to receive service on the President's behalf, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Later that day, our lawyer got the word from the other side to start working on the law change exempting us from having to file personal tax returns. He got hard to work on it, which is to say that he pulled the first version out of his filing cabinet and went over it again more carefully, now that it looked like it'd be used.

The next day he had the subpoena delivered to the President's lawyers' then held a very well attended press conference to talk about it. "It was clear from his leaked memos that the President had prior knowledge about the Fort Dodge lab. We know that two independent agencies - the DHS and CIA - both had dozens of scientists performing experiments on Mark Anderson, so the inescapable conclusion is that authorization for the kidnapping and torturous experimenting on American children had been granted to them from the highest levels. We have today subpoenaed the President to appear at the July 12 date, together with all relevant documentation, to answer questions about that. He can hardly hide behind national security now that the practice of human kidnapping and experimentation has been exposed and Fort Dodge lab destroyed with all of its secrets stolen by an unknown, presumably foreign, power.

^-- "It's too late to save Mark Anderson, but I urge parents who have missing children to do everything they can to find out whether the DHS or CIA have kidnapped their children to experiment on them, possibly under the instructions of the President." Whether other missing children might've fallen into the kidnapping clutches of the DHS and CIA had already received a great deal of press. The DHS and CIA had denied it of course, but the DHS's several lies about releasing me destroyed the credibility of their denials, and the possibility of the CIA telling the truth had never occurred to anyone in the first place. Mentioning the "Missing Children" issue again now was such a good way of causing discomfort to the politicians and President that it was irresistible. The howls it'd again cause would filter upward. Reporters have previously loved asking the President whether he'd ordered the CIA and DHS to kidnap and experiment on American children, and no doubt they'd love doing it again if they were given half a chance. It made for Great TV.

The President and the Directors of the DHS and CIA made their 'contribution' to Corvallis's coffers. The City of Corvallis loved the scandal, and rubbed its municipal hands together in anticipation of getting those hands on millions of additional dollars. The city councilors were still thinking $360 million as my family hadn't divulged any details of the latest offer. They knew we'd rejected the first and second offers, but they were still eagerly counting 360 million chickens before the eggs had been laid.

My families were still embarrassing the Government terribly with their interviews. Dad was playing the pissed-off jokester, for example, "We've been beaming my family's well-known mind-control powers to DC, ordering the President to do something intelligent for a change. But either DC is out of our range or the President's intelligence is so low that even after we increase it he still seems stupid. Our daughter Donna's horse has learned to open its gate though, so it seems easier to increase the intelligence of dumb beasts than dumb Presidents."

Mom was playing the concerned mom, Vanessa commenting on the Governments lack of ethics, Prof giving rational commentaries, and the girls providing many sympathy-getting, humanizing details about "Mark The Man". Even Patch had been on TV several times, although he'd rather have been fed some apricots (he had a strange favorite food).

The press asked my families to respond to the three gifts to Corvallis and to the President's statement about his $100,000 contribution, but my families didn't say much about those, mostly along the lines of, "It was the least they could do considering the harm their departments did to our lives."

During his after-work interview, Prof asked the reporters a little something we'd been saving for the right time, "The next time anyone from your networks is interviewing the head of the DHS, would you please ask him whether they're going to be pressing terrorism charges against Mark."

The reporters laughed.

Prof insisted, "I'm serious. On January 19 the DHS raided our home with a warrant authorizing them to remove equipment and papers that might prove Mark was a terrorist financier. They removed tens of thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment, all of our financial records, and many other items. It's been nearly six months and they've not returned any of it, nor pressed terrorism charges against Mark, nor told anyone what they're intending to do. I know Homeland Security is staffed by extremely incompetent people, but surely even they should've been able to decide whether or not to charge a dead boy with terrorism five months after they sent him to his death."

Our stuff had been gathering dust in the DHS's storeroom. With the crap that'd exploded in their face because of their role in my presumed death, the DHS had gone into deny-and-hide mode, hoping everyone would focus on the CIA. The DHS were actively trying to forget we existed, so nothing was being done to advance their investigation into the Andersons and Williamses. After Moran's death, no one wanted to touch our file.

The evening news had Prof's interview, with the networks' commentaries containing obvious ridicule for the DHS, sometimes not even between the lines. The late night chat shows had jokes about the DHS, like their being "hot on the trail of the Wright Brothers for conducting flights without DHS-approved lockable cabin doors. The DHS are expecting arrests any decade now."

The head of the DHS called Prof that evening, promising to have our stuff returned early the next morning. We were actually somewhat impressed that he'd had the balls to do that, as no one else in authority had contacted us directly. Not that his doing so would stop our attacks on the DHS. His phone call was a drop in the ocean in comparison to the harm they'd done to us.

Prof invited the networks to attend the DHS's returning of our stuff because he wanted the cameras to record him teasing the DHS people about why they'd had to seize mouse-pads and other stupid things like that.

In the morning, in front of all the cameras, it didn't take Prof long to notice that the DHS had returned only five of my eight 30" screens. He asked the delivers' boss, "The DHS seized eight of those large screens. Why have you only returned five?"

"Ahh. We couldn't find the others."

Mathematicians enjoy sarcasm and facetiousness - those forms of humor must be indications of intelligence - so Prof had a GREAT time responding to that development, and the media had a great time reporting it.

The DHS did return the cash I'd kept in my safe, as well as Ava's naked photographs and her letter. That was a relief because I'd been worried about having to tell her that her private stuff was missing. I could joke that the choice of loot implied the thief/thieves were computer nerds, but I've met computer nerds before and they would've kept Ava's photos too.

We milked the DHS's screw-up for several days, demanding our original screens back, demanding an explanation for their disappearance, asking the DHS via the media, "How were you hoping to spot our son's spending millions of dollars financing terrorists when you can't even count to eight?"

The event perfectly captured the public's opinion of the DHS, so it became an iconic fountainhead of jokes about the DHS's incompetence, e.g., a bunch of oblivious DHS agents being crept up on by several terrorists holding up a computer monitor each, pretending to hide behind them as if they were hiding behind a camouflage bush; or various jokes based on the DHS's inability to count to eight, such as Iraq having lots of WMDs but all hidden behind doors with combination locks that required too-difficult numbers, such as "8".

[The DHS did catch the guy who'd stolen my screens. He'd stolen them one by one and sold them. Over the last year or so, he'd stolen quite a lot from the Evidence Room's inactive cases. As per Vanessa's advice, we played it very straight. The reporters were surprised we didn't milk it, but we explained, "Government departments should ALWAYS be sincerely congratulated for uncovering and prosecuting employee crimes. We want to encourage them to do so, and to thank them for acting responsibly about it. Ridiculing departments for exposing crime is foolish because it'd push them toward doing cover-ups, which is the last thing you want."]

We'd replaced most of our needed equipment already (sadly Ron didn't need much), so we didn't have any use for the returned gear. We didn't trust the DHS not to have planted bugs. Surely that had to be extremely unlikely, but that was assuming the DHS wasn't stupid so we worried about it. It wasn't worth getting the gear checked over by experts so we wiped the disks then donated everything to charity, including the five 30" screens. We chose a charity that dealt with partially blind people, so they'd now be able to use REALLY BIG font sizes. We got the refund check from the DHS for the missing three screens made out to the charity too. Why should they miss out because the DHS were incompetent at keeping their Evidence Room secure? More accurately, we were in a PR campaign to show that we were the good guys and the Government was the bad guy. It was a very easy campaign.

After three more embarrassing days, using the DHS and other sources of inspiration, the Government's lead lawyer called our lead lawyer again, to inquire "How's the draft for the new law coming along?"

"I'm not writing the draft but the final version. As I told you last time, if you change what I write, my clients will suspect you've inserted something to make it ineffective. Even if I assured them otherwise, they're just going to believe that I've been outsmarted and they'll lose interest in settling. It's impossible for me to overstate how little they trust the Government. But to answer your question, I have done some work on it, but not much. The President screwed up paying Corvallis so badly that my clients are much more interested in preparing for their day in court than in settling."

"What do you mean? He did exactly what they asked for."

"What they asked for in the FIRST settlement proposal. Since then the President was caught concocting a scheme to cheat on the agreement by avoiding paying for it while still publicly claiming that he had. When you last called me, I told you I hadn't talked to my clients since they'd received your settlement counteroffer. I have now, and it's clear they hold the President in even more contempt than they did before. Every monetary amount in his counteroffer was an increase over the first's, all at the public's expense, except the President did not increase his personal contribution. They interpreted that as his refusing to take responsibility for his actions, and proof that he believes he can get caught planning to breach his agreement with them and carry on as if nothing has happened. Vanessa Williams lectures on ethics for goodness sake! How did the President think she was going to react to his refusal to accept he'd done anything wrong? All he did was provide them with even more reason to hate and distrust him, so they're even less interested in settling than before. Didn't you advise the President to increase the amount of his 'fine'?"

"You know I can't discuss that. So where are we at for getting settlement?"

"We've done some work on the tax exemption issue, but it's more of a theoretical exercise than anything else. In their eyes the President keeps slapping them in the face and proving how contemptible he is. His actions rendered the counteroffer ineffective, so they're more interested in inflicting punishment on him and his administration than letting everyone off the hook by settling. Rarely have I acted on a case where one side was sabotaging themselves so effectively."

"So settlement's impossible?"

"I didn't say that. Lying may be an expected part of the game in DC, but that's not the way my clients expect people to behave. My clients are very moral people, which is something the President's advisors should've taken into consideration. He was caught planning to cheat on the settlement contract, so he dug himself into a deep hole. Now he has to 'accept responsibility for his actions and make good' - to quote a comment of my clients - in order to get out of that hole."

"How would you suggest?"

"I don't know and I'm not going to ask my clients. They'd tell me that making good doesn't have any value if the person has to be told what to do. They take morality very seriously. The President has to make good in some way, and he has to submit another settlement offer because the previous one was nullified by the slap in the face he gave them at the same time. Then, maybe, my clients might be interested in replying to my emails about the tax exemption bill."

Nothing in the poor President's political career had prepared him for doing something moral. He could stand in front of the cameras and look wonderfully moral while reading a carefully prepared (by someone else) speech off a teleprompter, but actually THINKING of something moral himself, that was asking too much. His lawyers obviously wouldn't be much use, and his inner-circle was even worse: they just told him "I thought we told you to take care of this ALREADY, Dubya. Stop fucking around." Fortunately for him, the President had access to a large number of advisors, some of whom hadn't been in DC so long that they'd forgotten what morality was. [[You may think I'm exaggerating facetiously, and you'd be partly right, but it's still distressing how close to the truth those jokes were ("were" - past tense - because I said those jokes at the time I'm writing about). Thinking morally is an approach to their professional life that simply didn't occur to them after so many years at those echelons of power.]]

Being the generous guy he is, the President sent another personal check to Corvallis, for another $150,000. (By "being the generous guy he is," I meant that he did it, but it HURT.) The check's accompanying letter was very well written (i.e., by someone else). It explained, "On further thought, I realize that my first donation didn't adequately express the anguish and sorrow I feel over the blah, blah..."

The President announced a drive to significantly upgrade the nation's Missing Person Register, to assist all those poor parents who were rightfully concerned over the welfare and whereabouts of their missing children. He very emphatically insisted that there was no need for it, but he also created a new function for the Department of Justice: to inspect federal buildings for people being held against their will. The inspectors would be given top secret security clearances and have the right to visit any federal building without notice. By implication, even CIA bio labs, but the President didn't make that explicit because he was busy pretending they didn't exist in an attempt to distance himself from that fiasco.

Also, at long last, the FBI 'swooped': arresting all the individual defendants of our suit, charging them with kidnapping and other offenses. The President publicly explained the delay with, "The crimes they're charged with are so heinous that I wanted the FBI to have all the time it needed to do a perfect job. I don't want anyone to get off because of a lack of evidence, technicality or procedural mistake. I am very pleased to announce, that as of last night, the FBI are confident that, blah, blah."

The Government also submitted a new settlement offer to my family:

• Increased MAF's endowment to $10 billion (up from 5 and 7.5).

• Increased Benton County's payment to $750 million (up from 360 and 500).

• Increased SE Peoria Road property owners' payment to $100,000 (up from 50,000 and 75,000).

• Increased The Family's payment to $400 million (up from 120 and 250).

• In addition, it offered to pay $25,000 to every property owner who lived in Linn County (the country we lived in) within five miles of the two bridges into Corvallis (the bridges are close enough together to be considered a single bridge for most purposes), accumulative with the SE Peoria Rd payment.

• It reconfirmed its agreement with the non-monetary provisions: caring for Mark Anderson if he is found and destroying all improper records of him, not to surveil The Family and to grant us immunity from prosecution for any previous crimes, and to criminally prosecute all the individual defendants.

• It added several more minor, non-Colossus of Corvallis shotgun offers.

Every now and then my brain would go into "Massive Disbelief Mode", whenever I thought that a billion was a THOUSAND MILLION dollars! And the offer was now for over eleven of them. It was INSANE!

The Government's latest offer was worth just under $11.2 billion. The "point 2" seemed irrelevant, but it was two HUNDRED MILLION, for God's sake! If we deposited $11.2 billion with our local, friendly bank manager, we'd earn $1.5 million day after day. No tax either, so we'd get to keep it all. How on Earth could anyone spend $1.5 million per day? Even females would be hard pressed to do that, other than on the days when a new season's range came out.

I'd freaked out when Vanessa had first told me five billion (with a "b"!) for my foundation, and I'd had trouble believing the Government wouldn't laugh in our faces. Actually, I'd thought our own lawyer would laugh in our faces and our demand would have its spelling error corrected even before it got to the Government. But it was happening with the "b" still in there. Vanessa had been insane, our lawyers either insane or inattentive, and the Government was DEFINITELY insane. It had taken our insane first offer and had now doubled it. I'd thought that in negotiations the other side was supposed to talk you DOWN, but Vanessa was deliberately manipulating the Government into looking like a bunch of assholes who didn't care how much of the public's money it threw away (showing the public that is one of her goals, as will emerge later).