Permanent Record

6.11.2013
Coming out of the interrogation exhausted, late at night, with days of
interrogations ahead of me. They wouldn’t tell me how many exactly. Eileen
drove us to meet Sandra for dinner at some diner, and as we left Downtown
we noticed we still had our tails. Eileen tried to lose them by speeding and
making illegal U-turns again, and I begged her to stop. I thought her driving
like that just made me look worse. It made me look suspicious. But Eileen is
a stubborn mama bear. In the parking lot of the diner, Eileen banged on the
windows of the surveillance vehicles and yelled that I was cooperating, so
there was no reason for them to be following. It was a little embarrassing,
like when your mother sticks up for you in school, but mostly I was just in
awe. The nerve to go up to a vehicle with federal agents and tell them off.
Sandra was at a table in the back and we ordered and talked about “media
exposure.” I was all over the news.
Halfway through dinner, two men walked up to our table. One tall guy in
a baseball hat, who had braces, and his partner who was dressed like a guy
going clubbing. The tall guy identified himself as Agent Chuck, the agent
who’d called me before. He asked to speak with me about “the driving
behavior” once we’d finished eating. The moment he said that we decided we
were finished. The agents were out in front of the diner. Agent Chuck
showed his badge and told me that his main goal was my protection. He said
there could be threats against my life. He tapped his jacket and said if there
was any danger he would take care of it, because he was on “the armed
team.” It was all such macho posturing or an attempt to get me to trust him,
by putting me in a vulnerable position. He went on to say I was going to be

---

surveilled/followed by the FBI 24/7, for the foreseeable future, and the
reckless driving Eileen was doing would not be tolerated. He said agents are
never supposed to talk to their assignments but he felt that, given the
circumstances, he had to “take the team in this direction for everyone’s
safety.” He handed me a business card with his contact info and said he’d be
parked just outside Eileen’s house all night, and I should call him if I needed
him, or needed anything, for any reason. He told me I was free to go
anywhere (you’re damn right, I thought), but that whenever I planned to go
anywhere, I should text him. He said, “Open communication will make
everything easier.” He said, “If you give us a heads-up, you’ll be that much
safer, I promise.”