x-posted at Kos & Eurotrib
I posted this as a comment on both “Did NSA Spy on Me? Anyone Else Have This Happen?” and “The Bastard’s Scared” but then thought that perhaps it would make a somewhat decent diary.
Jeffersonian Democrat’s diary :: ::
Yep, I have an NSA file.
I graduated from UMich in ’95 in Russian and Eastern European Studies. I studied in Moscow for three semesters at the Moscow Institute for Social and Political Studies. While in Moscow, not only did I have some great job offers but that is where I met my ex-wife.
I was stupid and turned down the offers because I wanted to graduate then become a Naval intelligence officer. So I did, but it was only after I was in the the Navy had an issue with my wife’s nationality regarding my security clearance. So after due process they revoked my clearance in the name of national security and without a minimal clearance, one cannot be an officer. So while they were processing me out, I started to think about those great job offers in Moscow. I called the Russian embassy and asked about visas (the conversation was in Russian) and told them up front that I was soon to be a former intelligence officer. They had no problem with that.
Six months later, before I was about to go on terminal leave, NCIS showed up and interviewed me about that conversation. They then searched my briefcase, car, and home. I asked the agent to please be sensitive about my wife because if this happened in her country, I would not be going home at the end of the day. Boy was she pissed when they searched the house, she had more balls than I when she told the agent that she didn’t see any difference between him and the KGB. The guilty look on his face was priceless.
I went on terminal leave and had been hired by Eli Lilly as a pharma-salesman. A week before sales training graduation I had an aggressive phone message from NCIS stating that they wanted another interview. The only way they could’ve gotten my number was from my manager and on the day of graduation I was fired for “business reasons”.
I returned to Virginia Beach and called NCIS. They asked me nicely for a voluntary polygraph. This time I grew some balls and replied “F*k you, you fked my military career and now my civilian job too, fk off!” The agent then asked me for the courtesy of letting them know if I would seek legal representation for a law suit and I hung up on him.
So I am sure I have a file. I watched Will Smith in “Enemy of the State” and laughed throughout this thriller because I said to myself “I’ve seen this movie before, I starred in it!”.
This is why now I believe people are really innocent, like the guy who was accused of the anthrax attacks without evidence, they really fked his life up. Or the professor from Florida who was recently acquitted. These govt. people are nasty. My ex-wife told me that she was happy that I didn’t become an intel officer because people get “funny, strange” when they get into that world, they change.
My ex and I are best friends and more intimate now than when we were married. But that situation threw me into depression and despair. I withdrew emotionally and lost my normally healthy sex drive and libido. We lived as brother and sister for four years after that until we divorced. Not only did they f*k up my career(s) but also my mental health and marraige. See, I was always a patriot and a combat veteran and I could never concieve of the thought of betraying my country nevermind being a security risk. I was a true-blue American. Now I am not so naive.
BTW Kossacks, this is why I am know as a Tin-Foil Hat person. I would have never believed that this could happen and this was in ’98. So after writing this, the next person who slams me for tin-foil hat posts, well, the reply will be similar to my response to NCIS. God I hate that show! JAG too! All NCIS is a bunch of people who couldn’t cut it with the FBI, they couldn’t investigate their way out of a wet paper bag! Am I bitter or what?!?!?