Chapter 375: The FBI's Second Assassination Attempt

Monday, June 11, to Friday, June 15, 2007

Exam week - blargh! Especially with as many exams as I had.

On Monday afternoon, the House of Representatives announced that they were forming the "Special Committee on Resurrections". The plural "Resurrections" amused me, as trying to investigate any resurrection other than mine would be rather difficult, and mine wasn't going to be easy either. They wisely chose not to immediately subpoena anyone, instead telling the media that they would be sending us a letter asking if we'd appear before them. The media wanted to immediately know what our reply would be. That would have saved us the cost of a postage stamp, but we preferred to put some thought into the issue first. The media didn't like that process, but we stuck to it anyway.

We got the Committee's letter the next day. We discussed it among ourselves, not in any of the bugged buildings, and came up with a list of demands for our cooperation:

• In recompense for the FBI's illegal actions while we were away: each of our staff are to receive an immediate tax-free payment of $250,000; all of us (the 5 Andersons, 3 Williams and 1 West) are to be given $1 million each, which we'll donate to our choice of charities; there's to be an additional payment of $1 million to cover repairing the house, with any remaining money given to charity; plus a $20 million grant to the local hospital. In return for which, we and our staff will forgo our right to sue the FBI over the incident. We'd checked with our staff first, and enough of them agreed to that (those that didn't wouldn't participate in this). We'd also confirmed with our lawyer that it wouldn't negate the $216 billion claim we had against the Federal Government for surveilling us in breach of the previous settlement contract, which he'd already lodged and we were awaiting payment of.

• All the vehicles used by the FBI in the commission of their illegal actions are to be delivered to Corvallis Airport and forfeited to the Andersons, for donating to charity.

• The President to go on nationwide TV, put his hand on a Bible, and swear an oath to God that there'll be no future Government sponsored investigative or any other action against any of the twelve members of "The Family" or their descendants unless it is with the prior written approval of the majority of the qualifying people (The Family plus descendants). A law was to be enacted to the same effect, in perpetuity and with a mandatory 20-year prison term for offenders, our lawyer to provide the text. The President, still under oath, is to read out an exact and highly detailed description of any current surveillance or investigation actions, "current" as of the moment we emailed this document. There should be no such actions, but if there are, they are to be removed immediately after the President lists them.

The email ended with, "Once the above conditions are met, the Special Committee on Resurrections can send up to six people to our home at a mutually agreed time - which will be after exams are over - for an informal question-and-answer session. The session's duration will be at our sole discretion."

We'd debated including something about penalizing and prosecuting the FBI agents involved in the action. As a general rule that'd be a good idea, but in this case the onsite boss and the four active kidnappers had been killed, and it wasn't clear that anyone else was guilty of anything too bad. It was too easy to imagine that the FBI would blame the dead people, including the recently deceased Director and Deputy Director, so to avoid our looking weak we said nothing about this. The deaths of the five agents would've sent a very clear warning to other agents anyway.

Once we'd sent our reply on Wednesday morning, we gave a copy of it to the media, Mom making a statement saying, "Obviously we're not trying to blackmail the Government because we're not keeping a penny of the money ourselves; it's all going to our staff, charities, or the local hospital. We are concerned about God's being insistent that Mark should be left alone to live his life as he wishes. If the Committee subpoenas any of us, or just sticks their noses into our business, the angel is likely to react forcefully, and we fear that could lead to tragic deaths. But if the Government agrees to honorably provide the three items we've listed, then we believe the angel would not object. We can't guarantee that of course, because it's working for God not for us, but that's what we guess.

^-- "Clearly the FBI committed crimes against us and our staff. They rammed a secret spy plane into Steven's and my bedroom in an unmistakable attempt to assassinate us - something we consider proved by the angel's subsequent actions - and they invaded our property and kidnapped our staff. They are liable for their actions so our staff and ourselves could easily sue them for it, but we're hoping that a quick and enthusiastic settlement by the Government will make the angel happy. The President's assurances are needed for the same reason."

A reporter pointed out, "This gives you open license to commit any crimes you want."

"No it doesn't, and we most definitely don't want that. Our settlement agreements after the DHS's and CIA's terrible crimes specified what we wanted but the Government repeatedly broke that provision and illegally spied on us, which taught us that a legally binding contract is insufficient to make the Government behave properly. They've forced us to elevate that requirement to a law. The way it's worded, if one of us turned bad the rest of us would give permission for the Government to investigate and prosecute that person. Taking responsibility for our actions is VERY important to us. That's why the Mark Anderson Foundation's meetings are webcast live with all the supporting information available online.

^-- "The Government has never once accused any of us of any crime, with the sole exception of the DHS's pretext that Mark might possibly be thinking about becoming a terrorist financier, which was the lie they used to cover up their insane fantasy that he had mind control powers. Obviously he doesn't have such powers or he would've long since ordered the President to leave us alone. None of us have been accused of anything, while over three hundred Government employees have committed crimes against us and our staff. It's not our committing crimes you should be worried about, but the Government's power-mad, unaccountable agencies. The FBI, DHS, CIA and NSA have all committed crimes against us, and I'm sure against many other Americans too."

The House Special Committee on Resurrections' spokesman appeared on TV, and he was not a happy man. Apparently we were "Undermining Democracy" and other heinous sins. He sincerely stated, "For the good of the nation, it's essential that the House be able to investigate major issues of concern to the entire country, blah, blah..."

Mom's reply was, "It's their choice what they do. It could be what we suggested, or they could subpoena us, or ignore us completely, or do whatever else they think is a good idea. I can't control them and I can't control the angel, so it's out of my hands. I have no doubt God will let them know if It disagrees with their decision."

The House Special Committee on Resurrections fell silent. As they understood the risks they were facing, that was probably wise, but it was a pity because it meant we had to put up with the FBI's bugs and gas canisters. We'd been hoping there'd be some sort of action to get rid of those, such as the FBI admitting to the equipment and asking to take it away, but so far nothing along those lines had happened. The parabolic dishes were still transmitting, and the two nearby FBI houses were still occupied by a single weenie each, which meant we continued to feed misinformation to the bugs. That was occasionally fun, but it was getting old.

I had to stay up every night to guard my sleeping families from a gas attack. We didn't think an attack was likely given that the political atmosphere was relaxing significantly, but it certainly wasn't worth taking a risk over, especially when I could so easily guard my families by sitting in the living room and reading. Catching up on my sleep with a catnap during the day was easy. We covered up for my sleeplessness by feeding the mics some bullshit about my body feeling weird and going through some sort of transition which was screwing up my ability to sleep.

I had no need to use my computers at the moment, so I hadn't done anything about replacing them. I was hoping the FBI or the President would suddenly discover a startling new concept called honesty, and would remove everything bad in our house. That could obviate the need to buy and setup all my hardware and software again, but that concept was so far eluding them.

The parents had decided that they were less optimistic about getting a second $216 billion payment out of the Government than they were pissed off at having the gas canisters and bugs in our home, so Prof started talking to the Army Engineers about coming back to our home. He used an anonymous cellphone and talked away from any of our bugged rooms so the FBI would hopefully not have any advance warning. The FBI had had enough time to own up to their crap by now and hadn't, so we wanted to use their failure to harm them. We wanted the Army to discover the bugs and we didn't want the FBI to have prior warning of that so they couldn't make themselves look good by owning up only once they knew they'd be caught anyway.

The Engineers were perfectly willing to come back. More than willing in fact, the colonel joking that he'd get more volunteers for the job than he'd need because of how well we'd treated them during the initial construction and because they thought the Government were assholes for attacking us yet again. The colonel also adding, "Most of my men are eager to meet Mark and the angel too."

Prof recognized the hint and passed it on to me. [I made sure I socialized with the Engineers as much as I could between exams, feeding them the usual cover story and being unable to make the Guardian Angel appear on demand.]

There was the issue of whether we could trust the Engineers. We decided that we did. The Army's attitude had been great right from the moment the 75th Rangers had realized that they'd been duped by the CIA. Vanessa had also used various Army people from around the country several times on MAF business, as part of the Army's "Community Service sentence", and they'd had a literally PERFECT attitude to that too. They'd been happy and proud to help, and had gone considerably beyond the extra mile to make sure the various jobs were done excellently. Both the Army and MAF were having their reputations enhanced by how well those jobs had gone. The Army had also done an honest job on our homes' initial construction. [When the Army Engineers arrived, I proximity checked most of them, especially the colonel while Dad or Prof asked them questions designed to test his loyalty. They all passed fine. It was only an indication rather than a proof, but it was still reassuring.]

The Army was going to send us the bill for the cost of all the repairs, so it wasn't hard to get their agreement to do the job. A general had approved it, and the necessary replacement parts were being obtained, such as two panic room vault doors and several custom-ordered, very large sheets of bulletproof glass. The Army would be arriving on Friday morning. I knew they'd be all over the houses, so after everyone got out of bed Friday morning, I removed the papers I'd taped over the vents. I also tried to put the fake-concrete putty back from where I'd excavated it for my photos, but it'd turned as hard as rock so I had to leave everything in the roof-spaces as it was. If the Army finds the bugs, hopefully everyone will think the FBI got interrupted before they could finish the job.

On Friday morning the Engineers noisily arrived - some by Chinook, some by truck - to start making good the damage the FBI had caused. I watched the transmitter dishes quickly go silent ("go dark" would be more accurate although less meaningful).

In addition to working on repairing the obvious physical damage, the Engineers also looked for covert changes. The control panels for our garage blast door, for example, were taken apart, the chips replaced, the originals sent away to be checked, the cabinets inspected for any unwanted additions, etc.

The task I was most interested in was their checking the system that searched our house for bugs. If the Army found them:

• It'd get rid of the bugs.

• Embarrass the Government even further.

• Give us more ammunition to use against the Government.

• Increase my opinion of our house's safety (a good feeling).

• Pretty much prove that the Army was among The Good Guys.

We wanted the Army to find the bugs themselves, rather than my tricking them into it in some way, as that'd seem better to the public and FBI later and it'd be a good proof of the Army's honesty. In case the Army missed the bugs, we still wanted them to be 'discovered'. I could ensure that in several ways, but I needed to see what was happening at the time so I was casually walking passed the Security Center when that work was starting. I'd had to rush through an exam and say I needed a break before the next one, but I got there in time.

They were checking the radar system when I arrived, so I chatted physics to give me an excuse for hanging around during the work. I knew a thing or two about radars by now so I could talk reasonably intelligently about them, and our life-saving detection of the attacking UAV was an obvious topic to justify my interest. The Army guy was interested in me too, so it was easy to maintain a conversation while he did his job.

The tests of the radar's software passed fine, and the software specialist doing that then moved across to the bug-detecting computer that I was most interested in.

I asked him, "You know about this system too? I thought they'd have different specialists."

"The software on this thing is simple."

Software is obviously a good job for a lazy person because the Engineer only had to connect his laptop to the computer that was running the bug detection software, copy our program across to his machine, and have his computer compare our version to the one he'd brought with him. He didn't even have to compare them himself!

Not even a second later, his attention suddenly jumped, "What's this?"

Fortunately he answered the question himself, "There are seven changes in the parameter file. Let's see what they're for."

#4: <Good idea, because that just looks like a bunch of numbers to me.>

I'd done the minimum number of computer subjects at school, staying clear of the technical aspects like C++ programming because I was never going to be a computer nerd. I've nothing against computer nerds, although I am hoping to be richer than Bill Gates soon, but computers don't really interest me and it wasn't the right sort of career path for me. Besides, Julia wouldn't let me; she tells me I'll be hiring nerds.

After a little digging, he said, "The first one's a reduction in an antenna's sensitivity, and I bet the others are the same.

^-- "Yep, so's the second ... And the third." I'll assume you know how to count up to seven so I'll skip the rest of the quote. I'd hate for you to think I was padding out my autobiography unnecessarily.

^-- "Let's set them back to their original values and see what shows up."

^-- "Okay. Reinitializing the program. No alarms going off; that's a surprise. Let's eyeball each room. Tell me if you spot anything unexpected, you know the rooms better than I do." He was talking to me and the security guards gathered around us, who'd been attracted by his comments when he'd found the changes.

He called up the part of the program that displayed a 3D representation of a single room with all its EM sources displayed, the Adults' living room being the first room displayed. We all looked at the display carefully. I knew exactly where the three bugs were in the living room but there was no sign of them on the screen because they were totally unpowered now, unless the FBI had turned their transmitters back on again, which would have astonished me since there were several teams of Army Engineers scattered around the houses. (There were quite a few tree transplanting guys on our property too, from the company finishing off the last parts of that job. That'd been what we'd urgently got done after the Dimple Hill sniper had shot Ava.) I could arrange for a bug to be detected simply by flying a flashlight up to the ceiling where a bug was and flicking the light on. I didn't even have to wait until we were checking that room because the software was still monitoring all the rooms. I'd hide the flashlight and make sure we physically inspected that ceiling at the point the sensors had said the consumption of electricity had occurred. The bugs were well hidden, but eyeballing the ceiling from inches away would find one. That was my Plan B; Plan A being waiting to see if the Army could find the bugs themselves now that the antennas' sensitivities had been set back to their proper values.

The guards said the room looked fine, and I added my agreement too. The Army guy changed the display to the next room. The sequence of rooms this software displays is east to west across the Adult's House, then north to south through the Kids' House, and room after room in that succession looked fine.