Code of Silence or Mob Silence?

Bear with me here while I play around with some ideas.

While trying to understand Alaska based FBI Special Agent (are there any FBI agents that aren't special?) Chad Joy’s decision to complain about fellow Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner, one of the issues that arose was the idea of the code of silence. Why, if there have been so many cases of law enforcement officers not reporting other officers abusing suspects, taking drugs or bribes, etc., would he go after a fellow agent for things as relatively insignificant as "giving away unnecessary information to sources." "telling her husband about her work," and "wearing a skirt in court as a surprise for a witness"?

A Google search found a variety of stories headlined “Code of Silence” ranging from

Prison guards intimidating others guards to not reveal their abuses against prisoners
The Bush Administration
Orange County Sheriff’s Office
Gangs silencing neighborhood witnesses
The Mafia
Corporations Not Talking about being hacked

This got me thinking about the wide variety of ways “Code of Silence” is used, suggesting to me that the term is rapidly losing its meaning. It’s becoming an easy headline, a cliche, that now simply means that "people won’t talk."

Let’s consider what a code is. The first two definitions at Merriam Webster online are

1: a systematic statement of a body of law ; especially : one given statutory force
2: a system of principles or rules

Both these definitions have positive connotations. As do Honor Codes and Codes of Ethics. There’s also Code of Chivalry.

Chivalry was disciplined by a code of conduct that was clearly understood although it was never clearly formulated. Examination now, in retrospect, allows it to be reduced to this series of commandments composed by Léon Gautier ~

1. Thou shalt believe all the Church teaches and shalt obey her commandments.
2. Thou shalt defend the Church.
3. Thou shalt respect all weaknesses and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
4. Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
5. Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy.
6. Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
7. Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.
8. Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.
9. Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

This is a noble code (assuming you believe in the church and feudal duties). In the purest form, people in some sort of group voluntarily pledge to follow a code simply because it is seen as a being morally right. But as I look at how “Code of Silence” is used, it appears to me that rather than people voluntarily pledging to an honorable code, it often refers to very negative ways to force people to conceal potentially embarrassing, even harmful information about corrupt individuals. I’d say there is a continuum from


Let’s look at some examples:

1. Honor. Members take a pledge, often at risk to themselves, to remain silent for what they consider the greater good of their group, community.
Examples:
a. Captured soldiers who refuse to reveal information to their captors. They are ruled by a sense of honor not fear of punishment - for they often receive terrible punishment from their captors for refusing to cooperate. While they may also be affected by peer pressure from their fellow captives, this is an appeal to honor of sorts too.
b. Members of an underground movement - say the Underground that fought the Nazis in WWII - who also will not reveal hideouts or other members despite torture and threat of death.

Even at this theoretical ‘good’ side of the continuum, there are problems. One could believe that one country’s military is honorable while the other side is not. One could find certain underground movements (the US Revolutionary Army, the WWII underground, the Mujahideen fighting the Russians) as good, but others (Fidel Castro’s revolutionary army, the Irish Republican Army, the Taliban fighting the Americans) as bad. While someone else might see the moral right in each of these examples reversed. And there are probably few if any pure situations where some sort of sanction doesn't have a role.

2. Honor and Punishment. Members take a pledge and there is a sense of honor, but there is also a real threat of physical harm to those who do not uphold the Code.
Examples: The traditional Mafia (at least as portrayed in books, movies, and television) seems to have had a sense of honor in the loyalty of members to each other, yet the code is also enforced by threats of violence, even death. It’s what Tony Soprano refers to when he complains that there isn’t the honor among the troops that there used to be.

3. Punishment. There is no pledge or Code. Silence about illegal activity is enforced by threats of expulsion, violence, death.
Examples:
a. Prison guards who abuse prisoners in violation of the law and keep prisoners and other guards from reporting the abuses through threats, peer pressure, intimidation.
b. Community members who will not talk to the police about gang members for fear of retaliation.


I'd guess that Codes of Silence (where people maintain silence as a form of honorably maintaining of a code of behavior based on principle, not based on fear of retaliation) are pretty uncommon these days. There appears to be ample evidence of situations where people refuse to cooperate with law enforcement by remaining silent about what they know. But this silence is for the most part, not based on some Code of Conduct, but rather simple fear of retaliation or distrust of the law enforcement agencies or a combination of both. To call this a “Code of Silence” is to give it a dignity it doesn’t deserve. "Fear Forced Silence" is not as catchy as “Code of Silence” but probably more accurate. "Bullied Silence?" Maybe "Mob Silence" is catchier, suggesting the pressure to be silent, with the hint of violence.

This is one of the problems we have with all cliches. As George Orwell wrote, back in the 1930s, metaphors are coined to help us grasp an abstract idea. At first they are crisp and eye-catching like Churchill's use of "iron curtain." But then with overuse they become cliches, and we no longer see the imagery. (When was the last time you "saw" someone dead just short of the line?) Then we use the concept without thinking.

I think that's happened with Code of Silence and now journalists, headline writers, and others apply this term without thought to any situation where people won't talk, even where there is no 'code' operating, just the power of bullies protecting themselves from exposure. This is a form of terrorism.

Spotted Doves and a Crested Serpent Eagle

I've been feeling like our birding this year in Chiang Mai is a little slow. But probably if I look back, it took us a while to figure things out then too. As you can see, we still have a pretty good view for birding. We're next to the rooms we had last year, but this time we face west instead of North. And we don't have this giant fruit tree just off our balcony, so we won't have birds quite as close as last year.
Here's the view from our apartment. Those giant leaves in front are teak. You can see the spotted dove on the top of the tree there. (Insert at lower left is from last year so you can see what that bird is.) The doves like to sit up on the top of those trees. They did that last year too. But this bird, once in a while would jump up and fly almost straight up and then loop back down and land back on his perch. He did that this morning twice while I was watching. The second time, while he was gone, another dove landed there, but when he came back the other flew off so he could resettle.

This picture I got Wednesday on the way to work. I was on the bike and saw this raptor not far off. I stopped, pulled out my camera and got off this shot before it flew off. Dogs nearby were beginning to bark at me stopped in their territory looking at the sky. I've cropped this so you see the bird close up. It gets a bit blurry, but I lucked out getting the wing spread up like that as well as the tail. The only thing I could find in my bird book that came close - because of the white bars in the tail and wing was a crested serpent eagle, but I didn't know if those were enough to identify it. But that night we had dinner with the other AJWS volunteers and G has been here a couple months and connected with the bird watching community. I sent him the picture and he identified it also as a crested serpent eagle (without my telling him what I thought.) He passed the picture on to local bird expert Tony Ball who concurred. So, that's an identified bird I wouldn't otherwise have taken credit for.


These two I caught taking a picture of the orange flowers on this tree. I knew they were there, but didn't realize I'd caught them revealing those white wing patches. I'm guessing they are white vented mynas, but I'm not positive.

I also saw a scarlet backed flower pecker this morning. It's a small bird that flits around, basically black and white, with an outrageous bright scarlet (when you see it you think that's what scarlet is) splash painted down it's back and a bit on its rump. No picture though. My picture from last year isn't too clear and doesn't see it from the back.

We hiked up -from our place - to Doi Suthep today. I'll try to get some pictures up soon. I've got to get rid of stuff from my computer. The memory is so full it won't download all the pictures.

Dinner With J's Tai Chi Friends

[Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, 10 pm Thai Time]

Last night we had dinner with J's Tai Chi group at B&K.


At our table we enjoyed our conversation with a retired economics professor and a retired Japanese travel writer who's moved to Chiang Mai.

Mangoes, Wheat, Pests

[Friday, January 30, noonish:  I posted this briefly yesterday before I saw that the blogger required permission for posting anything from his blog.  So I took it down right away and emailed for permission, which I just found in my email.]

Here's some interesting environmental history I found while working on my mango project. About how US wheat shipments to India in the 50's introduced a massive pest - Congress grass - into India. And how JFK got to eat fresh Indian mangoes at the Indian embassy, but the seeds were confiscated by the USDA. This was originally posted June 22, 2007:

Mangoes, Congress Grass and AmericaPL 480 – now how many know what that is all about? People from Bangalore will definitely know about Congress grass, because it has been the main cause for most allergy related misery & skin diseases out there. Ever figured out how it reached the city? It is an interesting story, because the seeds or the weeds traveled long and far to reach Bangalore…Parthenium or carrot weed (since it looks like a carrot plant), one of 10 worst weeds in the world, traveled with the PL 480 wheat that was imported from USA (some say Mexico – I am not 100% sure yet) many years back, under the Public loan 480 generously provided to India.
Now, Parthenium is called Congress weed or Congress Grass, do you know why? As far as I could gather, the white flower looks like a Gandhi cap …It is also called 'Safed topi 'or Gandhi Bhooti!!! But I could not see any resemblance, Was it because Congress was in power when the wheat import took place?? (Or maliciously meant to mean - as spread out & ingrained as the Congress party in India?)
SO what happened in 1956?? After partition, Western Punjab, India's wheat bowl had gone to Pakistan. A spell of successive bad monsoons added, there was a severe food crisis by 1955, reminiscent of the Bengal famine. India had no options. Chinese were already starving. Russia, India’s quasi-ally didn't have enough for its own people. Europe was just recovering from World War II and could not help. India didn't have any foreign currency to buy food even if it were available. Millions of people would have to be left to starve, if the US had not came to India’s rescue. That was how the famous PL 480 wheat import deal with US was signed by India in 1956.
US prohibited mango import from India for many long years. To tell you an interesting story, in 1960, during a state visit by Nehru, Alphonso mangoes imported from Bombay were served for Nehru’s state dinner with JFK by BK Nehru, the Indian ambassador. There was a caveat, after dinner, all seeds were to be collected & handed over to the USDA for incineration. Can you believe that these things happen??

The story goes on and ties back into Congress grass and the new laws to allow importation of Indian mangoes to the US. You can read the rest of the story at Maddy's" Ramblings.  Check out the rest of his blog too, some quirkily interesting, funny posts - like the one about the bee's painted onto urinals so men would aim better.  Another post that caught my fancy was about an Indian journalist who worked in Germany in the 30's and 40's.  The dialogue between three Indians trying to get into Switzerland and the SS Guard is a wonderfully funny look at cross-cultural meanings.  I also think I found it interesting because I'm about 2/3 through The Orientalist    whose main character is Baku born Jew who ends up in Berlin as a writer, converts to Islam.  Their time in Berlin would have overlapped and I wonder if the two knew each other, or at least about each other.

It's The Year of the Ox - So What's the Difference Between Cows and Oxen?

My unfinished posts are piling up.  So let me get these Thai cattle pictures from the Petchabun trip up to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Ox. But are cows oxen? Does it matter?


The Prairie Ox Drovers says:

• What is an ox?
  Oxen are steers of any breed of cattle, that are at least four years old, and taught to work. Steers, in this catagory, that are younger than four years old, are called "Working Steers".

• What is a steer?
  A steer is a castrated bull.

• How are oxen different than cattle?
  There is no difference. Oxen are just cattle that have been taught to work.

Wikipedia says:

Oxen (singular ox) are large and heavyset breeds of Bos taurus cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult, castrated males. Usually an ox is over four years old due to the need for training and to allow it to grow to full size. Oxen are used for plowing, transport, hauling cargo, grain-grinding by trampling or by powering machines, irrigation by powering pumps, and wagon drawing. Oxen were commonly used to skid logs in forests, and sometimes still are, in low-impact select-cut logging. Oxen are most often used in teams of two, paired, for light work such as carting. In the past, teams might have been larger, with some teams exceeding twenty animals when used for logging.

An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an "education."

Various other sites include cows and other bovine as the stars of this Chinese Year:

Chinese zodiac sign - Ox (Cow)

Chinese New Year 2009 - The Year of Ox - The Year of Brown Cow

Year of the Ox, Cow, Buffalo or Bull

www.Chinese-Zodiac says:

2009 Year of the Ox 2009 -the Year of the Bull! The Chinese New Year's Day is Jan. 26, 2009.

Happy ox chinese zodiac symbols (Niu) Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai (May You be Happy, May You be Wealthy)!

Chinese Calendar began in 2697 BC when the Yellow King became king.

This year is the 4706th Chinese Year beginning from January 26, 2009, the Year of the Bull, Cow or Ox. The birth year of President Barack Obama (1961) was a Bull Year.

Chinese astrology is not like western astrology.
The Feng Shui Shop gives predictions for the year for all the animal signs of the Chinese astrology. And he lets us know we have some control over how things turn out:

Chinese astrology is not like western astrology. The whole idea of it is to be informed of what may come and how you can apply cures and enhancers to avoid potential problems and having the information in advance you can avoid many of the problems that are forecast. The information will also assist you to be prepared and to make informed decisions that may affect your wellbeing and endeavors. It is important that you know when and how to avoid the bad influences during the year.

The message I am trying to convey is even if you are a Sheep and you read below or somewhere else advising that 2009 will not be a good year for you and all misfortunes will befall on you, adopt a positive attitude and follow the advice given below and in the 2009 Flying Star (Xuan Kong) recommendations, you will be able avoid any bad luck that is forecast. Knowing how to avoid negative Flying Stars can help alter your year's luck in a good way. I know you will come across websites or other Practitioners who will predict all sorts of doom and gloom for a certain animal in any year, please take this with a pinch of salt and enjoy a great 2009.

Mangoes and Spiritual Buildings

I spent much of today looking up and cataloging information on exporting mangoes to the US from Thailand. I finally found a key document from the US Department of Agriculture.

Q. When did the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) publish the final rule to allow litchis longans,
mangoes, mangosteens, pineapples, and rambu-
tans from Thailand into the United States?
A. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Ser-
vice (APHIS) published the final rule in the Federal
Register on June 21, 2007. Under Title 7 of the Code
of Federal Regulations, Part 319.56-47, the final rule
allows, under certain conditions, the importation of six
fruits—litchi, longan, mango, mangosteen, pineapple,
and rambutan—from Thailand into the United States.

I'm still assuming that we're going to hit some major obstacle - like the cost of irradiation for the small scale we're talking about will be prohibitive, or some other obstacle will appear. But in the meantime I'm going to follow where it leads.

On the way back from a noodle lunch I noticed this tree which I'd never noticed before at Wat Ram Phoeng. There is something right about an organization that designs its building in ways that preserve the existing trees.


This evening the AJWS volunteers in Chiang Mai got together for dinner. We'd met Marti last Saturday night at our anniversary dinner and tongiht got to meet George and Maxine as well as Rachel. All and all a good group. We finally had to go because they were closing the restaurant and we have to work in the morning.

Let's Get Real About Mary Beth Kepner

[Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 9:30 pm Thai time] I saw more hits from people looking up Mary Beth Kepner than any other single google search term today. Then, later, someone sent me a link to a story that begins like this:

Stevens: Agent, witness had romance
By JOHN BRESNAHAN | 1/26/09 5:42 PM EST [I've corrected the link, sorry about that, I accidentally put in the link from the email.]

Whoever put that headline up is the kind of person who gives bloggers a bad name.  I know that people want to believe the worst and really don't care about the facts. [As I look at that headline again, pre-posting, I realize that the colon means that Stevens is alleging this. But I missed that the first few times I looked and I'm sure others did and will, as the person who put it there (presumably Bresnahan) intended.]

Let me say from the beginning here, as I've said in previous posts: Mary Beth Kepner met with a class of mine and I've talked to her on a couple of other occasions when I've accidentally run into her around town. I even met her mother at the Weekend Market in the summer. (For non-Alaskans, that happens a lot in Anchorage. We have a small population and we see people we know when we are out and about.) I'm a reasonably cautious judge of character - I know that often people are not what they seem to be. With those caveats, I'm 99% sure that Kepner is a stellar agent who has played very craftily in the grey area of working with undercover sources. Chad Joy seems to be extremely rigid and can't deal with ambiguity, grey areas, or the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

Let me say that for the most part, while some of my blogger friends come out and say things like, "He's a total slimeball" I generally put all the evidence out there for the readers and then let the readers draw their own conclusions. Generally, but not today. I did that in a very long post on the original, heavily redacted, complaint that this story is based on.


The headline is totally sensational and based on the flimsiest of evidence, as the story says later. Well the story doesn't say the evidence is flimsy, but it gives the evidence.  It's evidence I and others have posted already in more depth.   FBI special agent, Chad Joy, in a complaint he filed with an internal oversight unit within the Justice Department (that did NOT grant him whistle-blower status) says that:

1. Most recently, Kepner met with Allen by herself in her hotel room in Washington, DC.
   
2. Kepner wore a skirt for Allen during the recent trial during his testimony. Kepner doesn’t wear skirts.
   

1.  Two people can't be in the same hotel room without having sex?  Do you think she'd have met with him in her hotel room if she could have imagined that anyone would have leaped to the conclusion they were having an affair?  

2.  Obviously, one of the two parts of the second statement is false.  Either she DOES wear skirts sometimes, or she DIDN'T wear one in court.  Basic logic.  OK, I know he means something like he's never seen her in a skirt before.  But this is evidence in a serious complaint?  By an FBI agent no less?
It's sort of like someone saying Mr. X murdered Mr. Y based on the evidence that someone says he saw Mr. X buy a gun. Just as I could win the lottery tomorrow (if I'd bought a ticket), the odds are millions to one against it.

From there the Defense team filed a motion to dismiss the Stevens conviction based on a number of issues including their leap to claim that Kepner and Allen were having an affair.

OK, I acknowledge that nothing is impossible, but this allegation (as well as the post cited above) is clearly part of an attempt to invalidate the Stevens conviction, and seemingly part of a scheme to make the Prosecution case look ridiculous whether there is evidence or not.  I can't speak for what happened with the Prosecution in the DC based Stevens case. I've offered possible explanations in at least one previous post already. But I can speak to Joy's comments about Kepner in the investigations and working with sources.

Let's look at some of the facts:

Bill Allen is in his early 70s, but looks and acts older. When Allen testifies, the prosecutors first take pains to point out he was in a motorcycle accident that has affected his ability to find the words he wants to say, but not his memory or his thinking abilities. Judging from when I saw him on the witness stand in the Kott and Kohring cases, I would say his mind works just fine, but he does have trouble speaking fluently at times and he walks slowly. He's an old man who's not well.

Kepner is a fit, attractive woman, attractive in a very natural and unobtrusive way,  probably between 30 and 40 years old. She instigated, as I understand it, and has been in charge of, the FBI investigation of Alaska corruption since 2004 and has been pretty busy working the case with various sources and with the Prosecutors most of the time.

I know such alliances happen, but usually the younger lady is hoping there will be an inheritance. While Allen is wealthy, there's no way Kepner could be expecting to cash in on that.

She is not your stereotypical FBI agent. Well, you could say that was obvious since she's not a man. But beyond that, she exudes a sense of sincerity and caring with the people she's talking to. I realize I'm generalizing from my own experience, but most of the media who covered the three trials in Alaska that I've spoken with also admire her. Frank Prewitt (about whom I have serious ethical concerns), a key source in the Tom Anderson trial,  wrote a book in which he often praises Kepner  while being snide about almost everyone else - including Chad Joy. Let me quote from him as I did in the post on the original, highly redacted complaint.    Prewitt is writing about meeting with Kepner because there have been complaints that she got a gift from him - a painting of her dog by his wife.

"Let me get this straight. I worked covert operations with you and your team nearly full-time for two years, worked overt, including trials, for another two, and someone's concerned we might be too close!?" I squinted, leaned forward and cynically whispered, "Has anyone told my wife?". . .

Come on Kepner, once you figured out I wasn't a crook [this was debated in trial - it seems at least that the statute of limitations was up] you know very well we both had to trust each other to do what we've accomplished. If I hadn't thought you really cared about me, my family, and getting to the real source of the corruption, I would have been out of here a long time ago. . .

In truth, we had become very close. People have real lives, real feelings, real highs, and real lows. Some people bring out our best, others our worst. Some relationships fit like a glove, others chafe like a scouring pad. Most of us are healthiest and happiest in circles of mutually supportive community. And for all those very natural reasons Kepner and I worked well together.

"I understand Bureau concern over conflicts of interest. But extreme cases make poor general policy. It was your training and humanity that accomplished the government's mission. Robotons don't have instincts or feelings, that's why they make crappy supervisors and can't solve cases, they also make lousy friends."

I would note that while Prewitt is clearly a very smart man, the details of the book, as he acknowledges, are not necessarily accurate.  And he is the hero in his own book.  But this section about their relationship rings true with what I know. While nearly everyone else in the book gets skewered, the fact that he didn't do that to Kepner and instead portrays her very positively, says something about how he regards her. And how I would imagine Allen regards her. Remember, Kepner's investigation brought down Allen, one of the most powerful men in Alaska, but he's stuck around and been a convincing witness in three trials. If wearing a skirt is going to keep him testifying, I say go for it.

I also know of another person who lost his freedom due to Kepner, who nevertheless, speaks highly of her too. This all tells me she does her job of working with undercover sources exquisitely well.




There was a time when women were trying to get into law enforcement, but there were barriers - mostly physical. First it was height requirements which kept out most women. Then there were requirements like "able to carry 100 pounds for 100 yards." Those too, were eventually shown to be basically irrelevant to most situations. What wasn't generally recognized by the old guard was that women had compensating abilities. They often can calm down situations that the guys who can carry 100 pounds would inflame.

My suspicion is that Kepner's use of her 'feminine' charms to so successfully work her sources has driven Chad Joy's frustration level through the roof. It's all so unmanly. And so exceedingly successful. These folks are cooperating voluntarily because they want to please Kepner, not because she's some big bad guy they are afraid of.


The most plausible story for me is that Kepner has used her skills, including charm, to keep Allen active and cooperative in the various cases - he first testified in fall 2006. Her playful intelligence and her seeming guilelessness which appears to have worked on Frank Prewitt too, seems to work well on Bill Allen. Both these men are smart enough to know she's an FBI agent and playing them, and both probably enjoyed just being in her company. I suspect there aren't that many people who feel that way about Chad Joy. And it bothers him, I suspect, that this woman is being so successful using decidedly un-macho techniques.

Am I falling under the Kepner spell myself? I came of age when J Edgar Hoover WAS the FBI and he was the personification of power gone bad. Kepner has given me renewed faith in the FBI. I have this to say in my defense - my wife, who has also met Kepner, likes her too and doesn't feel the least bit jealous. (I double checked this last fact just now.)

Some of the googlers have been looking for "Mary Beth Kepner photo." Part of me thinks a photo of her would help people get who she is. But I also have been fascinated by how the person who is behind shaking up the Alaska political scene like no one has ever done before can wander around Anchorage unrecognized. There are photos of her on different Alaska blogs, including on this blog; I'm not going to repost my picture here.

Wat Pa Dara Phirom Part 2

[Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 7:33pm Thai Time]



This really is a gem. Having meetings here for two days gave me time to slowly stroll around several times and get to see things I missed yesterday. And my one peek inside of one of the buildings suggests there is lots, lots more. There are also a number of NGO's here, including one that looks after stray dogs.

But I'll just put up a few pictures. Well, maybe a lot.

Bike Ride to Wat Pa Dara Phirom Part 2

This really should be consolidated into one post. Here's the link to the first part, with the map. Today was the second day of the meeting at the Wat, so I have a couple more pictures. I also failed to say that I was starting out near Chiang Mai University. I just want to add a couple more pictures of the ride. Then I'll do another post with pictures I took at the Wat during meeting breaks. Another post about the meeting itself - what it was all about - is on the pile of to do posts, including more from the Petchabun meeting.

I also want to add that last night I got a ride back - I didn't see riding home in the dark along the highway, even with my blinking light in back, as a desirable option. As it turned out, I got a ride back today too as the meeting got out mid afternoon and there were pickups headed back to the office. It's a lot cooler at 8am than at 3pm and they didn't have to twist my arm too much. It was great getting in a longer-than-my-short-office-ride in - the Wat is about 14 kilometers from home - but I'm not excited about the highway part, even with relatively little traffic.


This is the key picture I didn't get yesterday - the part of the road where there's just this tiny space for a biker, up against the wall. There are three lanes of traffic and there was little traffic, so I never had anything bigger than a motorcycle in the lane next to me, but still, I didn't enjoy it. Where there was a road - paved, but more often not - on the other side of the canal, I took that. On the way home, in the pickup, I saw that the other side of the road has more sidewalk, but it isn't a clear shot - it's got trees and lots of signs as frequent obstacles. Things are like this maybe a kilometer past Huey Road until after the 700 Year Anniversary Sports Stadium.

It would be nice to figure out some other way to get out there - one that used neighborhood roads instead of the highway.  It would take longer, but be more comfortable.  I know J won't want to drive along this stretch.  

Then the 'sidewalk' appears. (See yesterday's post.) It's not perfect, but it gets you a little away from the traffic. And things look really nice. But I've learned that few things are accidental.

Perhaps this is why the highway is so good here.






Now I'm off the main road on this wonderful little road to the Wat. It turns out you can stay on the main road and the Wat isn't far from it either. But this way is so much nicer. Note the bridge in the background.


And today I took this shortcut - the foot bridge into the Wat. It maybe saves 1/2 kilometer, but it was fun too. (No, I wasn't about to put my camera down and do the automatic timer on the bridge. In places like this I make sure the camera string is around my wrist.)  Also, I see that the map is misleading here as the road across the bridge goes back right along the canal.  I started onto the bridge from the road that cut off from the highway and got off the bridge practically in the Wat.  

Wat Pa Dara Phirom

The meeting was on the Temple Grounds. There are several NGO offices on the grounds. Before the meeting, and during breaks, I strolled around this beautiful temple.

This Temple wa[s] developed in the 1890s, on land donated by a decendant of the great Lanna Princess, Phra Raja Jaya, born Chao Dara Rasmi, 11th daughter to Chao Inthawichayanon, one of the last rulers of Chiang Mai and the Lanna Kingdom. Doi Inthanon was named after this King. [For more of this interesting history of Wat Pa Dara Phirom]from Brick Road Cafe and Guesthouse.

My sketchy translation is this:  

Don't try to do things which are equal to your heart, 

Try to make your heart equal to the things you can do.




This one is for my Mom.  She'll know why.


Talking before the meeting.  

Bike Ride to Wat Pa Dara Phirom in Mae Rim

Pet drew a map to Wat Pa Dara Phirom Saturday night so I could ride my bike there for the Monday and Tuesday meeting. Let me just get this much up tonight and some pictures of the temple. I'll try to figure out what happened at the meetings tomorrow. He figured it was about 15 kilometers. That way he wouldn't have to come by and pick me up. Well his map was great and the ride was pretty good too.



This is past the stadium. It was nice to have somewhere other than the road to ride. Up until this sidewalk appeared I had to hug inside that white line. For a good ways, there was a small wall on the left (drive on the left in Thailand) and then the hill to the canal.



Then after the curve to the right, the separate sidewalk disappears and this bike/motorcycle lane shows up.



Pet had told me this is where the "Military - Horses" are. I guess that means the calvary. I joked that it probably smells and indeed, I smelled the horses just before there was a sign for the horses.


See, it's an official bike lane.




And there was the second military base.




And this is the great little road once you turn off the main highway.

[I've added a few more pictures and comments on this trip in Part 2]

Lazy Chinese New Years Sunday Trip to Walking Street

There were firecrackers going off now and then today as the year of the Ox is on us. We spent a lazy Sunday and then took the bikes out to Walking Street for the Sunday night bazaar. If tourism is down in Thailand, Walking Street is no indicator. I've never seen it so jammed. It was almost like the Hong Kong Metro at rush hour. Here are some random shots.

Bikes, Barbets, Card Reader, and Anniversary Dinner

We woke up to an interesting call. I got up and made a sound memo on the camera and downloaded it. Joan found the bird on the top of the tree and once I looked through the binoculars I was pretty sure it was a Lineated Barbet. (There's a nice description and good pictures at the link.) I looked up lineated barbet audio and that nailed it. But when I tried to download the sound memo, I realized I couldn't and hadn't tried for a long time. I googled and found a forum where someone suggested to get a card reader. CARD READER! Of course. That's how I used to download all my pictures and audio until mine stopped working. That was on my list of things to buy once we got here.

Pet and Bon were picking us up today around 11 to look at bikes. The bike choices have been:

1. buy bikes and sell them when we leave (Someone wanted us to do this last year so he could buy my bike at a discount.)
2. rent bikes (what I did last year)
3. the manager of our building offered to buy bikes and rent them to us
4. let Bon and Pet buy bikes and rent from them.

We finally agreed to option 4 since both wanted bikes. I decided this was not a violation of the AJWS ethics rules which say volunteers cannot leave valuable equipment or donate money to their organizations when they leave. I could be wrong, but it seems to make more sense to help them save money on their bikes rather than give the same money to the shop. In any case, we went over the AJWS policy carefully so they knew all the reasons for the rules.



But I insisted we go to Cacti Bikes where we rented our bikes last year. The owner was really a decent guy and I wanted to support him. Maybe he had some used bikes he'd sell. He did and we got two bikes. Bon and Pet went off to their meetings and we rode off on our bikes.











(1000 Baht is about $29)
Not far, because the computer arcade is pretty much across the street and canal from the bike store. I found exactly what I wanted - the card reader and a new stick on Thai keyboard for my MacBook. The paper one I'd bought last year got worn out much to quickly. J did great even in the Chiang Mai traffic. We tried to go more round about routes through less crowded sois. We mixed in some walking.

















The old card reader I had bought in Thailand was great. It was tiny and just needed to plugged into the USB port. This new one has its own USB connection. 150 Baht or about $4.30.



Next we got the stickers. The old ones were paper and after about six months, the most used keys had been worn bare. I'd seen clear plastic ones online, but there were about $6 plus more than that for shipping. I figured I could wait, and it was good I did because I had to get the keyboard replaced. But now I can put on the new ones, and I need them here.





Checking J's map, we saw the YMCA was nearby and J decided we should eat there. I'd only been in the parking lot when we picked up the Japanese researchers last year. With the bikes, getting a little off the beaten path is much easier. We had a decent lunch and I found this map there. I'd been aware that maps were culturally biased by seeing that in Asia China was in the middle of world maps while in the US, the US tends to be in the middle. There's also the Europe in the middle version.

But the description on this map said that the size of countries, of continents even, were distorted so that Northern Hemisphere countries appeared much larger than they actually were and Southern Hemisphere countries smaller. You can see more of the details at the Peters Map Site. But I figure that Alaska-Mexico example is of interest to my Alaskan readers. And no, Texas isn't really bigger than Alaska too.

Then we went on home - J getting used to riding in Chiang Mai - a lot more exciting than in Anchorage where there are separate bike paths most places.




Since it was our anniversary, I'd invited some people from work for dinner and we decided on Khun Churn, a yuppie vegetarian Thai restaurant. I'd also invited the other AJWS volunteers, whom I hadn't met, but we'd gotten email connection. We rode through the Chiang Mai University campus agricultural department area.


We had a fun dinner, lots of laughing. M, one of the volunteers came too. I learned that there'd been an orientation for the Thai and Cambodian volunteers that week that we'd arrived. I'd never gotten any information on it at all. This was about the same time that I learned from Pet that A, one of the AJWS staffers, had told him today that I wasn't really a volunteer, I wasn't on the list. Since AJWS paid for my plane trip, I'm guessing I really am an AJWS volunteer. Anyway, a trick I learned at the first Anchorage International Film Festival was that when the picture is too dark, or otherwise funny, you can always play with filters to make it interesting. So this picture of us at dinner is with Photoshop's graphic pen filter. Much nicer than the original photo.

[Update Jan. 25, 2009 Sunday evening Thai Time:  I forgot to mention that folks got there late because some roads were closed off and there was an anti-Government demonstration.  J and I didn't see it at all.  But this is pro-Thaksin territory.]

Cut Through Wat Umong on Way to Work

Yesterday I used an extra bike at our building to go to work. But it was obvious when I got back that they really needed it and I shouldn't have accepted the offer. The seat was really hard and the brakes were ok as long as you didn't have to stop in less than 15 feet.

So today I walked again and decided to cut through Wat Umong. Most of the time last year I rode my bike and going through the temple grounds on the bike didn't seem the best thing to do. But walking it was great. And it seems to be something of a short cut as well. I've been trying to grab something from Google Earth, but I can't quite make sense of what I see in our neighborhood.

The first three pictures were going to work in the morning.








The last three pictures were on the way home.





This is definitely not your everyday temple, nestled as it is in a heavily wooded area.

Petchabun Trip 3 - Meetings

January 22, 2008 - 11:30pm Thai Time

The meeting was billed as a Land Reform meeting. Here one of the Southern Thai staff members is writing up the agenda for Day 1.


16 January
9:30 Breakfast
10:30 - 12:00 Conversation Circle (this is apparently NGO jargon) on the capitalist system of agriculture/land use (lecture/presenter)
12:00 - 13 Lunch
13:00 - 16 Discussion - capitalist system of agriculture/land use
17:30 Dinner
19:00 Discussion on the situation, price, market for corn

I know that people are going to read this and react - what are these people communists? Somehow if someone is discussion capitalism, and they appear to not be enamored by capitalism, they must be communists. But it does make sense for Thai farmers to learn how capitalism is supposed to work and how what people in New York do causes the price of their crops to plunge.




It was still cold when we got up, but now the sun was out so it seemed like a good idea to start outside. Everyone introduced themselves. But sitting in the sun was getting too hot.







So we moved back inside. This is a floor side view of the meeting.






Another floorside view. The discussion ranged widely. The farmers in Isaan (Northeast Thailand) and the north had been growing corn for biofuel, as I understood it, but with the collapse of oil prices, the corn prices collapsed too. There was also a collapse in the price of rubber, which affected the farmers from the south who weren't affected by the cost of corn.




Here's the Bangkok attorney who gave several lectures the first two days. The discussion also touched on problems with education and the price of oil and shrimp. At one point he said something like "they are making Thailand into a factory for the West."

It was difficult to follow. I'd say I could get about 40% of the words, but what they actually mean when the other 60% is added in, well that I had to check on during breaks, and I really only got bits and pieces of what was going on.

Basically, as I understand it, he was trying to give context to the issues the farmers were facing.





In addition to the direct, on the agenda, learning, Bon got to see a computer program for tracking information - a problem that our organization was having last year. So this was a good opportunity, if she can get the program and make it work.


Different folks led the discussion at different times. Here's Pet facilitating.










Sukaew, one of the farmers we work with - from the village with the mangoes - was one of the people who is going to help draft the plans based on the information gathered here. So he was always taking notes in a beautiful, but tiny, script.



The folks representing the slum dwellers and homeless from Bangkok were selling these T Shirts with the face of Mr. Suwit Watnu. I was told he was a leader of the people living in the slums and had died of cancer. Google told me this much: that he was from the Human Settlement Foundation and an adviser to the Campaign for Popular Democracy. But I couldn't find anything about his death.



Here Pet is leading the wrap up discussion on Monday afternoon. Here are some notes based on talking to various people. I'm satisfied with just knowing what the topics were at this point, and don't need to know exactly what they said about them.

Clearly there was both a discussion of the immediate micro issues that the farmers face and the macro issues that help explain what the farmers are being impacted.



impact of global economic problems on Thai farmers
drop in price of corn and rubber
Laws affecting land ownership and distribution
Developing new plans based on the information gathered at these meetings
Money and banking
Issues around the difficulties of working together.


More items were added to the charts as a result of the discussions. In the end the group was planning a date for demonstrations in Bangkok to go along with negotiations with the Prime Minister. It seems like they settled on February 27, but that is clearly subject to change.

I'm starting to nod off. Time to get to bed.

Rat Na Kai and Why Thailand has an H in it

I still plan to post several more times on Petchabun, but it's easier to just give you a couple of quick pictures of going to lunch today. We are still working on my workplan. Basically I was to be focused on management, but before coming to Chiang Mai I did some checking on the possibility of importing mangoes from Thailand. I think there are lots of obstacles, but maybe it's doable. This would be really helpful to some of the farmers we work with who have wonderful mangoes. And maybe we'll discover there are other products that would be easier to export from Thailand, like wild honey. Of course, you know what happens when you come up with an idea. You get assigned to follow up on it. So that's a new one of my assignments.

Also, at Petchabun I talked to one of the farmers about birds and I mentioned the possibility of training some farmers to be bird guides. Pet liked the idea, so now I get to check out all the birdwatching websites in Thailand as part of my work.

Anyway, Ping and I went to a small shop nearby for lunch. Above you can see it from the outside. It's just a set of posts with a corrugated metal roof. With lots of green stuff acting as most of the walls.



Here's looking into what was the black hole in the middle of the top picture.





And here's Ping (Last year I started spelling this "Bing," but he spells it - in English letters - with a P. That's ok for people who have studied some Thai and know the difference between an aspirated P (Ph) and an unaspirated P (P). So, you pronounce that first letter like you were going to say the English P, but don't let air come out of your mouth. (Hold your hand in front of you mouth when you say the English P and you feel a puff of air (that's the aspirated part). Now say the P without the air. That's how to pronounce his name - Ping. It's not the same as a B, but B is the closest English sound) adding some spice to his lunch. This is essentially wide noodles, some brocoli like vegetable, some chicken (kai - that's an unaspirated k, same routine, K without the puff of air, close to an English G, but not quite), and a liquid that's the consistency of gravy. I used to have this a lot when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, my third year working in Thonburi.

Since I got into all that aspirated stuff, I might as well take if full circle and explain, that's why Thailand has an 'H' in it. This is an aspirated T, pretty much the same as an English T. But they also have an unaspirated T - say T but with no puff of air - and so the phonetic Thai alphabet I originally learned reserves the letter T for the unaspirated T sound and TH for the aspirated T sound. So that's why Thailand has an H in it, but is NOT pronounced Thighland.

One more note: I spell my boss' name Pet, because it also has an unaspirated P. So it sounds more like Bet, but to get it right you have to form your mouth and tongue like you are going to say a P, but don't let that puff of air out.

I went looking for a picture of the mouth and tongue, but found these pictures of the B (left) and P (right) sounds. You can go to Slice of Thai to see the original pictures and explanations along with hearing the sounds.

















These pictures don't help me understand this at all, but they are pretty.

Here's part of Slice of Thai's explanation of the charts:

Sounds that are lower in pitch are near the bottom of the chart, and sounds that are higher in pitch are near the top of the chart.

Notice the blue fuzz at the bottom: that is the very low-pitched, wind-like blowing sound you can also hear along with the whistling.
The color of the spectrogram at a given point indicates how much sound with that pitch you were making at that time. The color scale works like this:



So the red parts of the spectrogram represent the most noticeable pitches.

Glimpse at Today's Thai News

J brought home the Bangkok Post today.

The King of Thailand sent a message President Obama, this account from Xinhua:

The message stated that, "I believe that, under your strong and energetic leadership, the United States will overcome the many daunting challenges ahead and bring about positive changes to the world community at large. Thailand as a long time ally stands ready to continue working closely with the United States."

"As our two countries enter the 176th year of relations, I look forward to working with you and your new administration to further enhance and advance our close and strong alliance for the prosperity of Asia and the Pacific region. As the Chair of ASEAN, Thailand also welcomes deeper engagement of the United States to that end. We certainly look forward to welcoming you and members of your administration to Thailand in the near future," read the message.

Police Academy First

FEMALE CADETS: The Royal Police Cadet Academy has opened its doors to women for the first time in its 107 years.
Apart from academic subjects, the 70 female cadets will receive mental and phsical training as will their male counterparts throughout the four-year course.
After graduation, they will be given the rank of police sub-lieutenant and assigned to investigate work or child welfare in major tourist provinces.

iPhone arrives in Thailand
The long-awaited Apple iPhone has finally arrived Thailand on Friday.
The TrueMove iPhone 3G launch, handled by True Move, was held at the Royal Paragon Hall at Siam Paragon from Friday to Sunday. The rest here.

Petchabun Trip 2 - Keeping Warm with Bio Fuels

As I said in the previous post, it was cold by Thai standards. Mornings and evenings there were always several fires going with people sitting or standing around. To a certain extent, Thais are enjoying the cold as a chance to wear their winter fashions, even among this low income group. There were lots of ski caps and jauntily worn scarves and other cloth shawls. I notice watching the inauguration last night that the men wore their scarves, mostly, discreetly under their overcoats, just barely showing Not here. As in India, men as well as women wear the hats and scarves with flair. Watch the pictures in the coming posts.





While there was some firewood involved, used up corn cobs were the major source of fuel for the fires. They had big plastic bags of the cobs. In the meetings one of the topics was how the price of corn had fallen sharply when oil tanked and this really hurt the farmers who had switched to corn because of the previous high costs.




The corn kernels had been scraped off the cobs and sold or eaten[I was told today this kind of corn is not eaten by people] - this is also an animal food - and so they had lots of cobs to burn.

Petchabun Trip 1 - The Trip

We left Thursday afternoon and stopped in Lamphun to pick up three of the villagers my organization works with and who I got to know last year. We had four in the cab and two got into the bed of the truck.







The road was generally good, but it was through the mountains, winding much of the way.











Thais drive on the left side and scenes like this, where both lanes in this two way highway were going in the same direction, are not nearly as common as they were in the past.








We stopped at a roadside stand to buy some fresh jujube - putsa or พุทรา - in Thai.

JUJUBE or "Put-Sa"
Peak season: February to September

Put-sa (or jujube) is oval-shaped and green. The outer peel gradually turns into a light golden yellow as it ripens. Like freshly-picked Golden Delicious apple, its flesh is crisp and crunchy. To offset the slightly tart taste of fresh jujube, the entire fruit is dipped into a dry salt-and-granulated sugar dip seasoned with crushed chilli.

Put-sa is pickled in light brine and served with the salt-and-sugar dip, preserved in syrup, candied, dried or baked. It is a popular garnish as it can be easily carved into dainty leaf or floral shapes.

It is grown in the provinces of the Central Plains particularly in Pichit and Sukhothai. from tatnews.org

We stopped for dinner at this market area. The picture isn't as sharp as I'd like, but there are lots of details if you double click to enlarge it. My boss, Phet, and Bon are walking there.



And then we began night driving. Not my favorite activity, especially in a place like Thailand. But we didn't have any problems.





Another shot of driving at night to Petchabun.





Another pit stop. Along with gas and clean restrooms, the stop had this coffee house.








Then our two outside passengers got wrapped back up for the rest of the trip. It's been unusually cold. Here's a story from Xinhua last Tuesday:

BANGKOK, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Thailand is currently hit by the worst cold wave in ten years, with average temperatures dropping to 6-8 degrees Celsius, said Thawatchai Fangangkul, governor of Uttaradit in the north of Thailand on Thursday.

Two people were killed on Wednesday when severe cold wave hit most parts of the country's north and northeast.

Uttaradit had declared nine of its districts the cold spell disaster zones, the governor said.

Meanwhile, an official of Chiang Mai's Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Centre said the temperature in the province has hovered around 11 degrees Celsius for two days and the minimum temperature on local mountaintops was recorded at two degrees Celcius, the lowest in the past year.

At Chiang Mai's Doi Inthanon, Thailand's highest mountain, temperature dropped to minus 3 degrees Celcius, forming white frost on the ground and attracting a huge number of tourists to experience the cold weather.

10˚C equals 50˚F. The common belief is that it has never snowed in Thailand. We drove through Utradit and it was probably in the 40s F at night in Petchabun.




It was cold when we pulled up to the meeting site in Petchabun about 10:30pm. People were standing around fires having a good time and keeping warm.




The meeting was held in a sala - or hall - that is an as yet unconsecrated Buddhist Wat (temple). Inside, people were already sleeping.




Phet and the others set up a couple of tents. I got a sleeping bag that I would guess would be rated as good down to 75˚F (24˚C) and a quilt like mat to put under the sleeping back. You can see my stuff in front of the tent in the picture. I ended up, like everyone else, sleeping fully dressed and decided it was better to have most of the quilt on top instead of as padding on the floor. Last year when we came to Chiang Mai in February, I never used the fleece, outer shell, or wool cap I wore to the airport in Anchorage. I was glad I had them this time.


There were open doorways on each of the four sides of the sala. This was the view I had Friday morning as I woke up to a very loud bell being gonged in a strong, persistent rhythm at 6:15am.

Stopping at the Street Vendors after Noodles

I'm still trying to figure out how to post the trip to Petchabun, so here are some pictures of the street market down the street from our apartment. These are a couple of the ones where we bought goodies after having noodles for dinner.







J likes these little vegie patties that are cut up and stir fried.












I got a cup of strawberries for breakfast tomorrow.






Roasted bananas with coconut milk. Mmmmmmm.




And these are all sweets. I'm not sure what all they are, but a lot have cocunut, some are egg yolk and sugar.






My computer conversion calculator says 10 Baht equals 28¢. Now we're home watching the inauguration festivities on CNN.

Back from Petchbun

There's lots to tell about the trip to Petchabun. Briefly, there were about 50 poor Thai farmers and some urban slum dwellers and some NGO (Non-governmental organization) staff meeting from Friday to Monday in a Temple hall (there are some Buddhas and two monks, but it hasn't been consecrated yet). We were in the mountains of Petchabun out of internet contact, near a small village. This was pretty abrupt planning since J and I arrived on Tuesday (Thai time) and we left Thursday afternoon. I got back at 3:00 am today. I have a ton of pictures to download, some video, and lots of thinking to do about what went on. I do have permission from my boss to post whatever I want. So, if you want a backcountry experience with people who normally don't get a voice in the media, check in the next few days as I get a series up on the meetings. In the meantime, here's where I am and where the meeting was.


The trip to Petchabun took about eight hours. The roads are generally good, but there was some construction and much of the way was through winding mountain roads. The red dot at Pethabun is approximate. I'm not even sure what the name of the village was near where we were.



Thanks to GoogleEarth for the maps.

Less Redacted Version of Internal FBI Complaint

Here, thanks to Legal Times, is the less redacted version of, now in court identified, FBI Special Agent Chad Joy's internal complaint document. Click the link for my earlier analysis of this document (in the more redacted version). [you can magnify the document if you scroll over the down arrow on the toolbar of the scribd box below then click on the plus (+) sign.]

Whistle Blower Complaint 2

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Government Business & Legal ted stevens trial FBI

There are quite a few more names visible here - basically his and the agent he complained about most, Mary Beth Kepner. He clearly did not like her or how she operated. While there are a number of allegations that probably do violate rules if proven - ie. telling her husband things about work - these are probably violations that occur frequently in many households. Other allegations seem pretty bizarre - that Mary Beth Kepner wore a skirt as a surprise for Bill Allen when he was testifying in the Ted Stevens case, but she never wears skirts.

I'm afraid I don't have time to go into this more.

Score One for Critical Thinking - The Whistleblower Who Isn't

A couple of plugs here for bloggers and newspapers. I just found the ADN story on the web that Chad Joy has been identified as the FBI agent who wrote the so-called whistleblower document. I know that the ADN was 95% sure as was I, that the author was Chad Joy, but we both withheld naming him in the articles/posts we did on the topic. Not everyone posts things they know, let alone wild rumors.

I don't blow my own horn here too often. It isn't seemly. But when I wrote the article on the FBI Complainant Document, I realized that few readers if any would read the whole thing. It was way too long. But I think it is one of the better posts I've written. People who did read it carefully would have known the author of that document was probably Chad Joy. I didn't make that claim. The information was buried deep in the post. But I followed the line of reasoning of the author of the document. He wrote that he'd been mentioned frequently in an FBI source's book about the Alaska political corruption investigation. I pointed out there was only one book published so far, and in that book, Chad Joy and Mary Beth Kepner were the two FBI agents mentioned in the list of characters.

But I also argued that I thought the term whistleblower didn't fit. Whistleblowers are people who warn the public about some impending danger, and in this document, nothing like that was ever mentioned, the complaints were basically about rules being broken and the author also complained that he was made uncomfortable and no one was listening to him. If there was a complaint at all, it should have been a grievance.

In the ADN post today, it turns out that Chad Joy was NOT granted whistleblower protection. I want to thank my UCLA 17th Century English Literature Prof, Dr. Clayton, for teaching me how to read between the lines, basically how to think. I did a post on how that happened a while ago, reading between the lines.

Posted 8:49am, Jan. 15 Thailand Time

Headed to Petchabun

Most of the folks in my office are headed to an NGO (non-governmental organization) meeting for five days in Petchabun, so I'm going along. Not at all sure what to expect. This will be basically a Thai thing, there will be some of the farmers the organization works with there too. I have no idea where we will stay, but I know things will work out. J is staying in Chiang Mai and they were very cautious in inviting me because they know J gets car sick on windy mountain roads, but J said to go. Otherwise almost no one is in the office. We'll hae lots of time for me to catch up on what they are working on and how I fit in.

Click the link for a map of Thailand. Chiang Mai is below the MAR in MYANMAR - top of the map, left. Petchabun is above the LAND of THAILAND top, middle.

The meeting yesterday afternoon was interesting as I sat there trying to understand. I had learned a lot of the vocabulary they use last year and so that was helpful, but I wasn't sure about how the terms were connected. My mind tried to fill in the blanks. I knew what they were talking about - gathering information, updating planning documents with the farmer communities, but I wasn't quite sure what the issues were. I had to ask after when Eaw was driving me back to the apartment with all the kitchen and other household stuff we'd stored with them (two small boxes.)

So, I'm going to leave my computer with J so she can use it. I don't think there will be internet connetions where we go. If there is, I'll use someone else's computer. So it could be quiet here for a several days.

Meanwhile, for Anchorage folks, there may be interesting developments in the Stevens case. I'm getting some intriguing google searches from Washington DC that are landing on the post about the 'whistleblower'. Maybe someone has seen the Prosecution's response to what the Defense has submitted to Judge Sullivan.

I just looked at last nights post. I see the text isn't coordinated with the pictures. Sorry. I literally fell asleep several times while posting. But I got a good night's sleep. And we didn't leave the sliding glass doors open all the way last night so it isn't so chilly in here this morning.

Day 1 - Off and Running

It's 5:30am Anchorage time and 9:30pm here in Chiang Mai. My eyes are shutting down. So here's

a) Walk to Work, J. came with me this morning.
b. Along the way I pass the huge compound of former Premier Thaksin's Brother


Along the wall of Wat Umong.

This the massage place outside the Wat Umong entrance.











Here's my boss, Pet, and one of the more charismatic farmers, Su Kaew. Most everyone is headed to Petchabun tomrrow for five days of intensive training. That's what I'm here for isn't? So, assuming everything goes as planned, I'm headed for a long weekend visit.

At the meeting today I understood just enough to be dangerous. A lot of the words came from last yer's plan which I translated into Engolish forum

Bon's keeping her socks on inside at the afternoon. That's one way to keep warm.

Sorry, but I keep drifting off as I type. I better let the pictures speak for themselves.



In the market this evening.





On the way back from lunch at the temple, we passed this little shop with all these Free Palestine signs.

Maybe by tomorrow I'll be able to keep my eyes o0

Morning Snacks

We don't have our kitchen stuff yet - the induction cooker, pots, dishes, flatware - that we left when we came home last April, so these are some snacks we picked up last night until we go out. J's still sleeping, but I'm enjoying the morning. It's nice to be up early - the time is quiet. And I'm enjoying being chilly in Chiang Mai. I know my Anchorage friends basking in the relative warmth of 25˚F (-4˚C) after the week of below zero weather and probably think I'm crazy.

The Almost Full Moon and Blogspot Post Times

Just before we left Anchorage I posted a picture of the full moon and the moonlight. And here we are on the other side of the world looking at the same moon. I know it's a much often used device, yet it is still amazing to me that as far away as I go, the sun and moon are always there and people far apart can look at the same moon at the same time. (That raises a question I have never thought about - are there two places in the world from where you can never see the moon and/or sun at the same time? Joel?)

[Update Jan 15 (Thai Time): My son has answered this question by email:

basically no. At the extreme, where they are on opposite ends, it gets a bit tricky since the horizon is almost horizonal. But it isn't quite, since your eyes are not on the ground, and on top of that the earth's atmosphere bends light about 3 degrees at the horizon. So you can see 186 degrees, effectively, and even the moon is far enough away that I doubt it's in the blind spot. The sun has a much bigger diameter than the earth, so it could never be in a blind spot.]

As you can see from my pictures, I haven't figured out how to set my Canon Powershot SD 790 so that the brightness of the moon, surrounded by the blackness of the sky, isn't overexposed. If anyone out there has a suggestion, please comment or email.

On the other hand, we are all used to the giant telephotoed pictures of the moon with every crater showing. These give a different view of the moon.

In this last one, I played around a little bit with it in iPhoto.

These pictures were taken at 5:57am Chiang Mai time. I went to bed about 9:30 last night and just recently woke up. The birds are making interesting noises, though roosters are the most common. The temple gong just marked 6:30. The sky is greying above the mountain Doi Suthep. We have a western facing view, so the other side of the sky is probably lighter. The computer says it is 53˚F (almost 12˚C) so it is a bit chilly in here.

[Update: Here's the moon and sky 42 minutes later at 6:45am from our balcony]

Computer time

I've reset my computer so it has local time. Last year I left my computer on Anchorage time. The blog post timing is set in blooger and it would make more sense on the blog to have my actual local time for my posts. Fiddling with basic things like that on blogger make me nervous. No telling what other strange things it will cause. Will all most posts get changed to Thai time? Probably not, but things got all screwed up early on when we changed to Daylight Savings Time. I had to change it to Pacific Standard time for the blog to work. OK, let me change it and see what happens.

Hah! I was right. (Am I starting to think in blogger?) It changed all the old posts to Thai time. So I changed it back to Alaska time. So just add 16 hours to the post times.

Update 7:23am - It's easier to get the moon when the background sky isn't so dark.]

Feels Comfortable Here

We pulled up to our place and Pop, the manager, was there to greet us and make sure everything was ok. We did some unpacking and eventually got ready to go out and get some things we needed - like soap and hangers and toilet paper. Pop was wearing a jacket the whole time and I teased him about it. Then wandered down the soi (soi's are streets coming off the main road - usually they are referred to as Thanon Suthep (Thanon means road) Soi 1, Soi 2, etc.)





It felt like we had just gone away for the weekend, not eight months.



There are some changes, most obviously some large buildings at the university are now completed. But the streets are basically the same, if maybe a bit more crowded.



The phone shop - they're everywhere - was informative. There are three different brands competing. They all have promotions (that's now a legit Thai word). He suggested a brand. You get unlimited calls, if the person you call has the same brand. But the first plan I had a couple of years ago was much easier to use and control - 1 Baht per call between 5am and 5pm. In the end I said I'd have to check to see which brands my friends were using.





















This is the main drag along the southern side of Chienag Mai University.



We were told that tomorrow is graduation at the University and that the king will be there. I'm guessing these flowers are there for the king.

And so are these newly painted curbs.

On the way home we stopped at Ek-Ah-Saw-Wah - the restaurant we saw being built last year. It's got a little more landscaping in. We sat outside, and while I didn't shiver, I could feel the cooling air. But the food was delicious. We ate it all up.

Last year it took nearly a week to find a place. Today we're settled from Day 1. I'm sure glad all this hstle and bustle

Safe and Sound in Chiang Mai

They still serve food on international flights and they gave us lots of choices when we got our tickets. So we took Hindu vegetarian. It sure tasted a lot like chicken. I know they can make vegie foods that seem like meat, but I think this was the real thing.






Since we were so late, we got to see the sunrise over the Pacific.









It looks just like being in an airplane. I took two seats in the back because that far back there were just two seats, not a third. But it meant there was a space between me and the window. The space was nice, but I couldn't lean on the window to sleep. But with a little bit of muscle relaxant, I slept a lot on the plane. It was also 5:45 am when we finally left three hours late.



We were on the ground in Taipei for at most 40 minutes. 20 of that was waiting to get off the plane from Anchorage, and another 15 until the plane to Chiang Mai took off. That leaves about five minutes to ask about the Chiang Mai flight as we got off the plane, be greeted as though we won the lottery, and pointed to a lady with a Chiang Mai sign who quickly led us and four others to the Chiang Mai flight. Someone had to move for us. They'd already closed the doors and people thought the empty seats were available. Thanks China Air for making sure we got our connection. That probably saved us four or five more hours.

I’d already assumed that we were going to be rerouted through Bangkok because we were almost three hours late - arriving at 8:30 am Taipei time - and our flight was leaving at 8:35am. Given that we were in the back of a crowded airbus, I knew it would take forever just to get off the plane.

But they knew we were due and the plane waited for us. I didn’t even have time to email Grib to say we’d made the flight. I'd emailed from Anchorage that she shouldn't come til she hears from us because we were probably going to miss our flight.






Mrs. Lee was sitting next to me. We did a lot of hand stuff, but she didn't speak English, Thai, or Chinese. In the end she asked me to fill in her immigration form. She had a Chinese passport and she was born in Thailand. I really wish I could have spoken to her in a language she understood. I did get to show her pictures of Alaska on my computer.



Well, after emailing Grib to not come to the airport, no one was there. We decided it would be faster to just catch a song thaew since we knew that Bon had made arrangements for us to stay where we'd stayed last year.












We stopped at the airport post office and mailed the package we'd taken for the Thai AFS student. That was easy and we had one less piece of luggage to haul around.



Here, we're in a bit of traffic in the back of the SongThaew (Two rows - a pickup with two benches in the back.)

We got a room right next to our old one on the fourth floor. It's not as big, but otherwise identical, except we have a west facing view instead of north. Still lots of trees and we can hear the birds, and the fourth floor means I've gotten more exercise today trying to get the internet connection just right than I've gotten in a couple of weeks.

Nolan's Going to Australia

Nolan saw me Mac-ing - he couldn't get his Mac to connect to the wifi here. He ended up dropping his stuff here and we started talking. He's headed to music school outside of Sydney.

Extinction is Forever - We Made it to the Airport

It was pretty drama free. We're at the airport. We have one extra piece of luggage. We'd met a Thai AFS student last week and so we're taking back an apple box full of gifts for her family and friends in Khonkaen.
Our China Air flight comes from New York. It left an hour late, lost more time in flight. Not exactly sure when it's due, but our departure is 75 minutes late. I'd checked and knew it was going to be late, but they close the check-in counter at 2am, so we couldn't just hang out at home. At least by the time we came there was no line at all. We originally had two hours to get our connection to Chiang Mai in Taipei.

So now I have all this time to read and do other great things, except it's 2:00am and I'd rather be sleeping. But I have a nice quiet spot with a plug. J is doing her walking. We did pass the display cabinet with some of the prohibited items that were intercepted here.

Full Moon

OK, so there is a light in the alley in the back.
But the shadow of the tree on the deck are from the full moon.

Under 30 at Out North

We went to Out North Friday night for the Under 30 performances. These are short pieces by local folks that are under 30 minutes. While some of the people of the years, maybe most, have been actors or at least people who are involved in the arts more than the average person, there are also performances done by 'normal' people. This year there were three very different pieces. Here's the description from the website:

Julius Rockwell’s
“The Sexual Behavior of the Male Red Salmon”
This nonagenarian blends science, humor, and anthropomorphism in a story that demonstrates how the mating rituals of salmon are surprisingly similar, and just as complicated, as those of humans.

Corinna Delgado’s
“Cell Therapy”
is the true prosaic story of one woman’s journey through incarceration to poetic justice.

Joan Cullinane’s
“Dive In”
is an invitation to the audience to get off their beach towels and jump in the water, even if it is mid-winter in Alaska. Joan the water witch says forget the role of the voyeur, no one really needs directors, writers and actors to play!

Imagine a ninety-year old man telling you his story about studying how salmon spawn, out in the Alaskan wilderness 50 years ago. It was interesting, informative, funny, and amazing. We learned about the different kinds of male salmon - the ones that stick loyally to their partners, the loners who dart in just when the female is about to spawn, the ones that just fight, etc. Among other things.


Corinna soft-rapped her story of incarceration and getting out. Watching her messed with my images of 'the prisoner.' A powerful performance revealing both toughness and fragility. And the battle continues. Although she is participating in prison poetry projects now, she's still having to deal with being an ex-con when looking for jobs.



Then, after intermission, Culinnane. I confess, I think she's spectacularly disarming. I could watch her wait tables or sit and read and be totally entranced. We'd seen her in a previous Under 30 and she had the same effect. I think it's the total authenticity in her performance. There's no mask. It's just her. Naked. Figuratively, and almost literally in this piece. Not only is she authentic, but she's knows stuff. She understands how people relate to each other. She's one of those people who watches other people and figures it out. And I liked that she was performing an anti-performance piece. She engaged the audience by telling us things about ourselves we don't usually admit out loud and got us into the performance. She was talking to us and even if we weren't all talking back aloud, we were all engaged. And some of us ended up down on the stage - actually a fair number. As I'm writing this, I'm still scratching my head at all the things she squeezed into 30 minutes, though I suspect it went over. The last part involved everyone deciding, in groups, where to donate $50 she was contributing. One rep of each of the five groups went down to the stage, told us what our group decision was and then they were told to mill around. One organization had to be chosen. She checked on whether they'd grouped up. Not really. Then she said, "Well, if you can't come up with something, then I'll just take my money home." Within a minute they'd all coalesced behind one charity. She was just showing us that there were other ways to make decisions. The whole piece was amazing, though I think 90% of it belongs to her ability to speak directly from her heart, no bs. Oh yes, the word 'play' came up a lot. As in playful.

Note: My pictures were taken before and after the performances, but I did sneak the one in when the audience was on stage, but with no flash.

There's one more performance Sunday afternoon at 4pm.

Trip List Makes Traveling a Little Easier

We leave for almost three months in less than 48 hours.

One thing I've found that makes traveling easier is a Trip List template I keep on my computer.

Trip List

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Vacations Travel simplify packing

• I open the file.
• Make necessary changes, additions
• Print it off
• Check off things as I pack them
  

So, the clothes are pretty much the same for every trip, the amount varies depending on how long I'm gone. Though I believe in doing laundry in the sink rather than taking lots and lots of stuff.

Sections like reading, work, munchies all will vary from trip to trip.

I may not need everything, but at least I have a list and won't forget something basic.

Generally I don't take more than I can carry on with me on the plane. For this trip though - we're gone almost months in the same place - I think we'll take one or two bigger suitcases. This also allows us to take gifts that wouldn't fit into carry-on.

Now, gotta run and get all this stuff together as well as clean up the house for the house sitters.

Better Insults

Dick Cavett writes in a New York Times opinion piece:

There are two kinds of insult. “I was bored by your book” is one kind. “Your book? Once I put it down, I couldn’t pick it up,” is the other.

Unfortunately, too many comments on blogs are of a third variety, "Your book *&%%!!(sucks!" So my challenge to bloggers and commenters is this: If you must insult someone, do it with panache. When you've written your angry response, stop. Delete it. Then attempt to rewrite it like the second one above about the book.

The longer it takes the recipient to realize that he was insulted, the better the insult.

Note: The NY Times online is free. If you can't get the link, you may have to register.

What Does Daylight Mean?

Here's 9:05 am this morning. Only two and a half weeks after the solstice and it's light at 9 am in Anchorage.

The Anchorage Daily News has a Daylight feature in the weather section. But that focuses on sunrise to sunset. But we have long, long twilights this far north, so we really have more 'daylight' than the sunrise to sunset time suggests. In the picture above, it is still an hour before the sunrise, yet the sky is no longer dark. And the same is true on the other end of the day. When it is cloudy, we have much less 'daylight' of course.

Anyway, yesterday we gained 3 minutes and 25 seconds of official daylight. By March we'll be galloping along, gaining almost 6 minutes a day. You can really feel the change in the light here, even though it was -10˚F when I took this picture this morning, we know spring is on the way. You can see the temperatures are way below normal - which is between the blue and yellow lines in the middle chart.

And for J and me, spring will be Monday afternoon (Anchorage time) when we get off the plane in Chiang Mai.

MacHaus Rocks - eBatt Sucks

The MacHaus had the parts today. I dropped the computer off at about 1 and about 3 they called to say it was ready. We were meeting folks for dinner near there so did some errands on the way to dinner and got the computer. So now I have a new clean computer keyboard, the crack is gone, and presumably the keyboard won't be locking randomly any more.





On the other hand, eBatt, where I ordered a back up battery for my camera isn't nearly as responsive. I ordered Saturday. Here's what they had advertised:




Free shipping for a $12.95 battery. The comments on eBatt were all glowing. But then I got to the checkout page. There is no free delivery. My choices are Overnight for $40 or Two day for $23.95. I'm not happy, but I've waited too long to do this and I'll just pay for the Two day and not worry about this getting here before I leave. I'll call on Monday to see if they can send it priority mail. And I emailed them about my time constraints and what happened to my free shipping. No weekend phone option.



OK, shipping date is Jan 5. With two day delivery no problem.

I call Monday and he says, "No free shipping to Alaska or Hawaii." We go round and round - it does say it in small print way on the top of the page, but on my screen when I was ordering, that part of the page didn't show. I tell him we are part of the US. I tell him that a camera battery would cost $4.80 Priority Mail through the US Post Office. In fact, here are the rates I get for shipping 3 oz from LA (they're on the West Coast somewhere) to Anchorage on a Monday (had to use next Monday on their calculator):



"We don't do that."

"Why not?"

"We just don't. You want to cancel?"

I'm pissed but I tell him to send it right away. And then I get an email saying the same thing.

It's now January 8. Nothing has arrived. I look at my order. It says,



So now the estimated shipping date is Jan 7. If it really went out then, it should come tomorrow. But if they shipped it yesterday, why is that still the estimated shipping date? FedEx doesn't deliver on Saturdays or Sundays. If it doesn't come tomorrow, I won't get it before we leave. US Postal Service does deliver weekends. But eBatt wouldn't use the Post Office.

At this point I'm ready to cancel and just try to buy one in Thailand.

But the MacHaus was great.

[UPDATE 12:16am: I just checked the status so I could get the order number so I could email them my concern, and now the estimated shipping date is January 9. Why am I paying for two day shipping when it is now four days after the original shipping date and they haven't even sent it yet?

Early Women in the FBI - Some Notes

This post is made up of left over notes from another post on an FBI document. I'm posting this here in case someone else is looking for stuff on early women in the FBI. They can save a little bit of time.

I was trying to find out when the FBI first took women special agents. It turns out there were at least four, sort of, in the old days. The first one, best as I can tell, was Emma Jentzer:

• (1910s)Emma Jentzer is first woman to serve or a special agent in the Bureau of Investigations (later known as the F.B.I.) From a NOAA Female Firsts Chart

Then I found this scrap of court records. It showed up googling Emma Jentzer, but it doesn't really say what it is. (I found it googling "Emma Jentzer")

Court Document Scrap Harry J. Jentzer, an agent and employe of the United
States, to wit, Special Agent of the Bureau of investigation of the De-
partment of Justice of the United States, and to Emma R. Jentzer, an
agent and employe of the United States, to wit, Special Employé of the
Bureau of lnvestigation of the Department of Justice of the United States,
each of whom was then and there duly engaged, for and on behalf of the
United States, in investigating the said Hermann Wessels,

There's more, but not much useful. What's interesting here is that we find out there is a Harry Jentzer who is also an FBI Agent. And Emma is referred to here as "an agent and employe of the United States, to wit, Special Employé..." So, at that time (around 1918) Emma was considered a Special Employé, not a Special Agent. But Harry Jentzer was a Special Agent. I'm guessing he was her husband. You can see the whole document if you use the link above. It had to do with an illegal immigration investigation.

Then there is one other reference, a footnote in a doctoral dissertation on FBI anti-communist activities called "Red Scare " by Regin Schmidt.

“The Bureau’s main file on the two anarchists was opened in 1916, when the Bureau of Immigration in San Francisco requested an investigation of Berkman’s anarchist journal the Blast, But the ensuing inquiry revealed nothing “of a character tending to incite arson, murder, or assassination.”40 Following the entry of the United States into the war, Goldman and Berkman embarked on a crusade against conscription and they were immediately put under intense surveillance by the Bureau. Agents took notes of Goldman’s speeches, their journals and pamphlets were carefully scruitinized, their “No Conscription League” was infiltrated and all males liable for military service who attended their public meetings were approached by the Bureau and asked to show their draft cards.41

41. The reports are numerous, see for example, reports, Emma Jentzer, May 26, 1917; [plus six more by other people]

The FBI's own site gives us a little information from their Famous Faces Page. Well, this is the Answer page:

17. Alaska Davidson, who served as a Bureau special agent from 1922 to
1924. Davidson had two contemporaries in the 1920s - Lenore Houston and Jessie Duckstein - are a few of the women known to have served as agents before 1972.

So where is Jentzen? Not really a special agent? Only a special employé? There can't be that many 'known' to have served that they couldn't name them. The Philadelphia FBI website gives us a clue that things might not be that easy for women, at least in DC.

In November 1924, Lenore Houston, an employee in Philadelphia, became the first and only female special agent hired by Director Hoover. While serving in the Philadelphia office, Miss Houston received excellent performance ratings and was earning $3,100 a year by April 1927. She resigned in 1928, shortly after being transferred to the Washington Field Office. Philadelphia FBI Files

The FBI Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones gives us a little more insight:


I was trying to just wrap this up, but as I was looking for something on Jessie Duckstein, I found a whole account of the three early women agents. It's by Lynn Vines and reprinted from "The Investigator." It also tells us why the doors opened in 1972. It wasn't just the death of J. Edgar Hoover:

The FBI is honored to be the host agency for the 1992 Interagency Committee's Conference for Women in Federal Law Enforcement. The year 1992 marks the 20th anniversary of legislation opening the door to women as federal law enforcement officers.

It goes on to describe what happened to the early women FBI agents when J. Edgar Hoover became director. I would note that another source did say that he cleaned house when he came in. So, a lot of people were let go. But the fact that no women were hired for the next 48 years suggests this might not have been just part of the general housecleaning.

When two women entered on duty on July 17, 1972, in New Agents' Training Class, the media repeatedly referred to them as the "first female FBI Agents." Although that term is technically correct, there were three female agents in the Bureau of Investigation in the 1920s. When J. Edgar Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 (later to be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation), there were two women special agents on duty. They resigned shortly thereafter, but another woman agent, appointed November 1924, served until 1928.

On August 11, 1921, Attorney General H. M. Daugherty appointed Mrs. Jessie B. Duckstein for temporary service as a stenographer/typist at Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, DC. Her salary was set at $1,200 per annum payable from the appropriation for "Detection and Prosecution of Crimes." Her work was quite satisfactory, and in December of that year her salary was increased to $1,400 per annum.

By July 1923, she had become confidential secretary to Director William J. Burns. Her salary was raised to $2,200 per year in accordance with her job classification. On November 6, 1923, Special Assistant to the Attorney General Martin sent a memo to Burns requesting a discussion of Duckstein's desire to be an agent. Fourteen days later the Director ordered that Duckstein's designation be changed from stenographer to special agent. Her salary as an agent was to be $7 per day plus $4 per diem in lieu of subsistence and expenses when absent from her office. Letters from Director Burns and Attorney General Daugherty informed her of the promotion. She was instructed to report to the Department of Justice for the oath of office.

Mrs. Duckstein was 37 years old when she became an agent. She was a high school graduate. Her work at the Bureau, especially as secretary to the Director, was thought to be a tremendous asset for a field agent. She was sent to New York City on December 3 to begin training. The Special Agent in Charge had no doubt that she would "develop into one of the best operatives of any investigative bureau." It was suggested that "this agent be especially assigned to study and analyze anything and everything pertaining to the so-called white slave traffic."

After completing this training Mrs. Duckstein was assigned to the Washington Field Office. In May 1924 Special Agent E.R. Bohner sent a memo to Acting Director J.Edgar Hoover saying that it was not advisable to have a woman agent assigned to that office. On May 26, 1924, Hoover requested Duckstein's resignation with regard to a reduction of the force under the appropriation for "Detection and Prosecution of Crimes." Duckstein wrote a letter on May 27 resigning at the close of business on May 26. Her resignation was accepted by Attorney General Daugherty on May 31.

On October 11, 1922, Mrs. Alaska P. Davidson was appointed a special investigator of the Bureau of Investigation. Her starting salary was $7 per day plus $4 per day in lieu of subsistence when absent from her office. Salary, expenses, and per diem were paid from the appropriation for "Detection and Prosecution of Crimes." When she entered on duty, Mrs. Davidson was 54 years old. Her education consisted of three years in education consisted of three years in public school. Her work experience was not in the law enforcement field.

She took the required oath of office, then reported to New York City for training. The Special Agent in Charge remarked that "This lady is very refined and could not work on every investigation where a woman could be used." He advised that she be assigned only to open investigations of a class that would not be rough."

She was assigned to the Washington Field Office. There is no indication that her work was unsatisfactory. However, in May, 1924, Special Agent in Charge E.R. Bohner advised that there was "no particular work for a woman agent" in his office. On May 26, 1924, Acting Director J. Edgar Hoover requested Davidson's resignation because of a reduction in the work force. Her res- ignation, effective at the close of business June 10, 1924, was accepted by Attorney General Harlan Stone. [It goes on to talk about Lenore Houston.]

So there seems to have been a few people supporting women, but a lot who had no use for them in the agency. And then there was this snippet from the Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement

Robin Ahrens, First Female Agent Killed while on duty
Alaska P. Davidson, First Female Special Agent
Lenore Houston, First Female Special Agent appointed by JEdgar Hoover
Burdena Pasenelli, First Female Special Agent in Charge

It turns out that when Special Agent Pasenelli was Agent in Charge, it was in Anchorage. I guess they thought that was remote enough she couldn't do any damage. From The FBI By Athan G. Theoharis, Tony G. Poveda

And, as an Alaskan, I do want to know how Alaska P. Davidson got her first name.


For more a more recent 'first' woman in the FBI, this Seattle Times (Tuesday, June 8, 1999) article talks about one who became an agent in 1973.

Female FBI Agent To Retire Soon

SEATTLE - One of the first women to be appointed an FBI agent plans to retire this summer.

Burdena Pasenelli, special agent in charge of the Seattle division of the FBI, plans to retire July 31 after 30 years in law enforcement.

Pasenelli, 54, joined the FBI in 1973 and was stationed in Sacramento, Calif., and Kenosha, Wis., before being promoted in 1984 to supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

I had found an obituary for Emma Jenzter while I was doing this earlier, but you had to pay to get access to it through the NYTimes. But today I was thinking it was worth it and then realized I could probably get it through the University library. It fills in a few of the questions I had.

It turns out that Harry was her husband. It also says in the obituary that he was the first federal agent. (Well, obituaries are written by the family, so we have to take that with a grain of salt.) You can read the rest for yourselves.


The Ellis Island job makes sense since she was doing work involving illegal immigration.

OK, so that's what I have on this topic.

Famous People Born in 1909

Last year I put up a list of famous people born in 1908. I got the idea accidentally when stumbled onto Brainy History. I added the death dates where Brainy didn't have them and I discovered that I could verify one who was still alive - Claud Lévi-Strauss.

One commenter suggested there should be pictures. So this year, I went back to Brainy and got their list of 1909. There are some notables on it, but I think 1908 was a better year. No one on the list is still alive - Katherine Dunham died in 2006.

Brainy has them listed in alphabetical order by first name - well, it's not totally consistent. I've reordered them by how long they lived, starting with those who died youngest. And added brief bios and pictures. I've tried to get information that isn't all from Wikipedia. I've generally taken a relatively small amount - a teaser - with links to the rest of it. And I added one person to Brainy's list - Art Tatum.

There is something about seeing all these people who were born the same year. How many knew each other? (I only found one link between two of these people, it's mentioned in the profiles below.) And you have to think about chance and fate when you contemplate how short a trip some had in this world and how long others were around. Four people died in 1957. Then no year had more than one death until three died in 1993, five in 1994. Note that the sixties were so exciting that only one person - a Pole - died that decade.

If you notice any errors or omissions, please either post a comment or email me . I was only able to do limited double checking on birth and death dates and I'd be surprised if I didn't make some typos on those.

The List in Birth Order

Barry M. Goldwater Jan. 1, 1909 - May 29, 1998 Victor Borge Jan. 3, 1909 - Dec. 23, 2000 Keith Davis Jan 6, 1909 - Sept. 9, 1994 U. Thant Jan. 22, 1909 - Nov. 25, 1974 Saul Alinsky Jan. 30 1909 - June 12, 1972 Simone Weil Feb. 3, 1909 - Aug. 24, 1943 Dean Rusk Feb. 9, 1909 - Dec. 20, 1994 Joseph L. Mankiewicz Feb. 11, 1909 - Feb. 5, 1993 Wallace Stegner Feb. 18, 1909 - April 13, 1993 Stephen Spender Feb. 28, 1909 - July 16, 1995 Stanislaw J. Lec March 6, 1909 - May 7, 1966 Claire Trevor March 8, 1909 - April 8,1957 Nelson Algren March 28, 1909 - May 9, 1981 Eudora Welty April 13, 1909 - July 23, 2001 Rollo May April 21, 1909 - October 22, 1994 Jessica Tandy June 7, 1909 - Sept. 11, 1994

Errol Flynn June 20, 1909 - Oct. 14, 1959 Mike Todd June 22, 1909 - March 22, 1957 Katherine Dunham June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006 Lupe Velez July 18, 1909 - Dec. 13, 1944 Malcom Lowry July 28, 1909 - June 26, 1957 C. Northcote Parkinson July 30, 1909 - March 9, 1993 Roberto Burle Marx Aug. 4, 1909 - June 4, 1994 Elia Kazan Sept. 7, 1909 -Sept. 28, 2003 David Riesman Sept. 13, 1909 - May 10, 2002 Al Capp Sept. 28, 1909 - Nov. 5, 1979 Art Tatum Oct. 13, 1909- Nov. 4, 1956 James Reston Nov. 3, 1909 - Dec. 6, 1995 Joseph R. McCarthy Nov. 14, 1909 - May 2, 1957 [Johnny Mercer Nov. 18, 1909 -   June 25, 1976 Peter F. Drucker Nov. 19,1909 - Nov. 11, 2005 Eugene Ionesco Nov. 26, 1909 - March 28, 1994 (Rufus) James Agee Nov. 27, 1909 - May 16, 1955

List in Order of Longevity



Simone Weil
Feb. 3, 1909 - Aug. 24, 1943

Taken from rivertext.com:

... the following sentences from the opening of Weil's, "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force, ß" might have been lifted out of an analysis of Coppola's Godfather trilogy:

In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle… To define force – it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. …

… Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.

[picture also from rivertext, but a page with several Weil quotes about God.]
OK, you want to know who she was:

French philosopher, activist, and religious searcher, whose death in 1943 was hastened by starvation. Weil published during her lifetime only a few poems and articles. With her posthumous works - 16 volumes, edited by André A. Devaux and Florence de Lussy - Weil has earned a reputation as one of the most original thinkers of her era. T.S. Eliot described her as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints."

"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict." (from The Need for Roots, 1949)

For the rest of this go to Kirjasto.

Lupe Velez
July 18, 1909 - Dec. 13, 1944

An actress, born in Mexico who succeeded in Hollywood. Her web presence is full of contradicting stories. My sense is that if we ever heard her true story, one she may not have been able to tell herself when she committed suicide at age 36, it would be more interesting even than the wild ones we do get. Here's a bit from emol.org.

Velez's brief affair with Douglas Fairbanks accelerated the breakup of his famous union with Mary Pickford. Lupe's other affairs were legendary. Her men included Tom Mix, Clark Gable, Russ Columbo, John Gilbert, Jack Dempsey, Jimmy Durante, and Charlie Chaplin.

Velez's tempestuous liaison with Gary Cooper drove the tall, handsome, slim actor to lose 40 pounds and suffer a nervous breakdown. Their three-year relationship was marked by brawls and rages, yet they would have married, if not for the vehement disapproval of Cooper's mother. Finally, when Gary was boarding the Twentieth Century train to Chicago, vengeful Lupe arrived, pulled a gun and shot several times at her lover, narrowly missing his head. Cooper dove into the car and Velez quickly stormed out of the station, swearing at her lack of marksmanship and escaping arrest.

On July 24, 1934, Lupe married handsome Olympic champion and Tarzan star Johnny Weismuller. Their union was ferocious, and famed for its public scenes. Johnny was the one who always ended up bruised, bitten, and beaten to a pulp during their five years together.

James Agee
Nov. 27, 1909 - May 16, 1955

"I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art."

With these words James Agee acknowledged the restless journey his biography would encompass. Poet, novelist, journalist, film critic, and social activist, Agee would lead an unorthodox, hard-driving life that would result in an early death. So voracious was he for experience that in valuing life, as he put it, he could not help but shape the penetrating, passionate, and colorful poetry and prose he produced.
Of Huguenot ancestry, James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1909, the son of a postal worker who was killed in the prime of his life in an automobile accident. The loss of his father marked James Agee both short term and long term.
Thirty years later it would form the kernel of the novel which is the cornerstone of his fame (A DEATH IN THE FAMILY), but more immediately it resulted in what the author would later see as an expulsion from a childhood Eden. From PBS. Photo from HarvardSquare.

Art Tatum
Oct. 13, 1909- Nov. 4, 1956
(Picture from Southern California artist Merryl Jaye. Check her other jazz portraits.)

Art Tatum was among the most extraordinary of all jazz musicians, a pianist with wondrous technique who could not only play ridiculously rapid lines with both hands (his 1933 solo version of "Tiger Rag" sounds as if there were three pianists jamming together) but was harmonically 30 years ahead of his time; all pianists have to deal to a certain extent with Tatum's innovations in order to be taken seriously. Able to play stride, swing, and boogie-woogie with speed and complexity that could only previously be imagined, Tatum's quick reflexes and boundless imagination kept his improvisations filled with fresh (and sometimes futuristic) ideas that put him way ahead of his contemporaries. (from thefeelingofjazz.blogspot.com)

For NPR Audio Jazz Profiles on Art Tatum

Claire Trevor
March 8, 1909 - April 8,1957
A remarkable actress, Claire Trevor was famous for playing molls, floozies and broads, and was cast as the owner of a rowdy saloon in many a western. She made her debut in 1933, and became a glamorous leading lady, opposite the likes of John Wayne, Clark Gable, Glenn Ford or William Holden. Brilliant in StagecoachAward for Key Largo (1948). She appeared as a guest at the 70th Annual Academy Award (1939), the film that catapulted her to success, she won an Academy Award for Key Largo (1948). She appeared as a guest at the 70th Annual Academy presentation in 1998. (From IMDB which has a full bio as well)
[Picture and lots more pictures from Starlets Showcase.]



Malcom Lowry
July 28, 1909 - June 26, 1957

English novelist, short story writer, and poet, who is best known for his book UNDER THE VOLCANO (1947), a 20th century classic. Like many of Lowry's publications, the novel is highly autobiographical. An alcoholic, Lowry spent his post-Volcano years drinking and planning a cycle of novels built around his masterwork. He lived from 1940 to 1954 in a primitive cabin in Dollarton, British Columbia, and then in Italy and England until his death.
I wrote: in the dark cavern of our birth.
The printer had it tavern, which seems better:
But herein lies the subject of our mirth,
Since on the next page death appears and dearth.
So it may be that God's word was distraction,
Which to our strange type appears destruction,
Which is bitter.
('Strange Type', from Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry, 1962)http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mlowry.htm



Joseph R. McCarthy
Nov. 14, 1909 - May 2, 1957

Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period of intense anti-communist suspicion inspired by the tensions of the Cold War.^[1] He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of CommunistsSoviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, McCarthy's tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits. Today the term is used more generally to describe demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.^[2] (for the rest of this bio go to Wikipedia. Photo from ohiohistorycentral)








Mike Todd
June 22, 1909 - March 22, 1957
Wikipedia lists both 1907 and 1909 as possible birth years) Best known as the creator of Todd AO, the producer of Academy Award winning Around the World in 80 Days, and one of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands. Died when his small plane crashed. (Photo of Todd from Instantcast.com.)







Errol Flynn
June 20,1909 - Oct. 14, 1959

The 1930s and 1940s are remembered as the golden era of Hollywood, when monumental films were made and stars were born. Some emerged slowly, but Errol Flynn took the world by storm. His acting talent, gorgeous face and handsome build put him on movie screens everywhere and kept him there for nearly 30 years. To moviegoers, Flynn was a dashing, noble romancer. To his friends, he was a mischievous, witty prankster. In all, he was loved and appreciated by fans everywhere.


Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was born in the British Commonwealth seaport of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia on June 20, 1909. He died in Vancouver. British Columbia. (From cmgww.com.) (Picture from Hot Beans in Love Mustache Hall of Fame.)

Stanislaw J. Lec
March 6, 1909 - May 7, 1966

Stanisław Jerzy Lec (6 March 1909 – 7 May 1966) (born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz) was a Polish poet and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland. One of the most influential aphorists on the 20th century. wikipedia

Photo and some Lec aphorisms from theinfidels

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

There are parodies of non-existent things.

Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.

The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.

In the beginning there was the Word -- at the end just the Cliché.

To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans -- what?

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.

The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles mine.

Saul Alinsky
Jan. 30 1909 - June 12, 1972

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing in America, the political practice of organizing communities to act in common self-interest.[1]Wikipedia

The web is filled with snide right wing portraits of Alinksy as the amoral community organizer guru to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I suspect it's not Alinsky's approach they object to, but his application of it to organizing the poor. What they admire in, say, a Donald Trump or other ruthlessly successful business man who uses it to get rich, they can't stand in someone who uses it to help the poor. But reading their stuff, I can now understand why they thought trying to smear Obama as a community organizer was a natural. They really believe it. Read Rules for Radicals and judge for yourself.



U Thant
Jan. 22, 1909 - Nov. 25, 1974

U Thant served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971. He succeeded to the post in tragic circumstances following the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in a plane crash on 18 September 1961.

Born in Pantanaw, Burma (Myanmar) on 22 January 1909, U Thant was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon.
Before embarking on his diplomatic career, U Thant had gained extensive professional experience as an educator. U Thant was a member of Burma's Textbook Committee and served on the Council of National Education in the years before World War II. Additionally, he sat on the Executive Committee of the Heads of Schools Association. He also found time during that period to establish a career as a freelance journalist.
(photo and excerpt from uthantinstitute.org)

[Update Nov. 22:  

Johnny Mercer - Nov. 18, 1909 - June 25, 1976 

Johnny Mercer wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs.

Johnny Mercer wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs.

November 18, 2009 - Lyricist and composer Johnny Mercer — born Nov. 18, 1909, in Savannah, Ga. — wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs, including American Songbook standards like "Skylark," "That Old Black Magic" and "Come Rain or Come Shine."
Mercer wrote the impishly satirical "Hooray for Hollywood," too — along with a total of 90 of that town's most famous exports. His Academy Awards tally includes four statues (one for what's possibly his most famous tune, "Moon River") and 19 nominations.[Photo and bio excerpted from NPR.]

Thanks to Michele C for the heads up.  I missed this one, but I love his music. To make up for the late entry here, I've added this audio of NPR's anniversary of Mercer's birth on Fresh Air. 

Al Capp
Sept. 28, 1909 - Nov. 5, 1979

Regarded by many as the greatest comic strip of all time. He was born Alfred Gerald Caplin in New Haven, CT. At the age of nine he lost his left leg in a trolley accident. Encouraged by an artistic father, young Alfred developed his own cartooning skills. At 19, he became the youngest syndicated cartoonist in America, drawing "Colonel Gilfeather," a daily panel for Associated Press. But, bored with the staid and formulaic Gilfeather, Capp left AP and soon was ghosting the popular boxing strip "Joe Palooka" for Ham Fisher. But Capp found the working conditions in Fisher's studio intolerable. (Picture and text from Lil Abner)

Nelson Algren
March 28, 1909 - May 9, 1981

One of the most neglected American writers and also one of the best loved, Nelson Algren once wrote that "literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal appartus by conscience in touch with humanity". His writings always lived up to that definition. He was born March 28,1909 in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. His first short fiction was first published in Story magazine in 1933. In 1935 he published his first novel, Someday in Boots. In early 1942, Algren put the finishing touches on a second novel and joined the war as an enlisted man. By 1945, he still had not made the grade of Private first class, but the novel Never Come Morning was widely praised and eventually sold over a million copies. Jean-Paul Sartre translated the French language edition. In 1947 came The Neon Wilderness, his famous short story collections which would permanently establish his place in American letters. The Man with the Golden Arm, winner of the first National Book Award, appeared in 1949. Then came Chicago, City on the Make(1951), a prose poem, and A Walk on the Wild Side(1956), possibly his greatest novel. Algren also published two travel books, Who Lost an American? and Notes from a Sea Voyage. The Last Carousel, a collection of short fiction and nonfiction, appeared in 1973. He died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His last novel, The Devil's Stocking, based on the life of Hurricane Carter, and Nonconformity: Writing on Writing, a 1952 essay on the art of writing, were published posthumously in 1983 and 1996 respectively.

From SevenStoriesPress
Picture from popsubculture.com.


Benny Goodman
May 30, 1909 - June 13, 1986

Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others. Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor. . .


On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first).
(For the whole bio go to the source of the bio and the images at Bennygoodman.com.)

Also you can listen to Sing, Sing, Sing on an NPR piece with musicians talking about the 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert.


Info on the Goodman Centennial concerts in New York City May 28, 29, 30, and June 6.







Tommy Trinder
May 24, 1909 - July 10, 1989

From the age of 12 when, an early school leaver, Trinder threw in his job as an errand boy and went on the stage to make people smile. Touring South Africa with a revue company in 1921, he appeared as a boy vocalist at Collins' Music-Hall the following year. The son of a London tram driver, Tommy always possessed a quick wit. Trinder spent years touring Britain on variety bills as a stand-up comic before nationwide success found him. It began to come in 1937 with the revues Tune In and In Town to-Night, by which time music-hall audiences had become familiar with the leering smile, the pork-pie hat and the wagging finger. The British cinema, regaining confidence after its mid-1930s slump, drew him in, but straitjacketed him into roles that most light comedians could have played. Sailors Three, a genuinely funny war comedy that harnessed him with Claude Hulbert and Michael Wilding as three friends who capture a German pocket battleship, boosted his standing. Trinder's robust performance brought him further roles with the film's makers, Ealing Studios, with whom he was to do his best film work.


Meanwhile, he had virtually taken up residence at the London Palladium. Back at Ealing, he successfully played two fairly straight roles laced with his own engaging brand of humour and native London wit. The Foreman Went to France was the story of a true wartime exploit, and The Bells Go Down a smoke-grimed tribute to die work of London's firemen in the Blitz. He was, ironically, taken back to Australia by his final Ealing venture, Bitter Springs, another salt-of-the-earth role in this story of a family fighting to make a new life in Aborigine country. With the arrival of independent television in the London area in 1955, a big variety show was mounted called Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Trinder was the obvious choice as compere, and he did his old stamping-ground proud, becoming the top British TV star of the time. He continued to appear in pantomimes and cabaret, but further film appearances were only cameos. He celebrated his 80th birthday shortly before his death from heart problems. www.britmovies.co.uk

Edwin H. Land
May 7, 1909 -March 1, 1991

Edwin Herbert Land, American physicist and inventor, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. While a freshman at Harvard University in 1926, he became interested in polarized light (light oriented in a plane with respect to the source). Taking a leave of absence, he developed a new kind of polarizer, which he called Polaroid, by aligning and embedding crystals in a plastic sheet. Land returned to Harvard at the age of 19 but left again in his senior year to found a laboratory nearby. Joined by other young scientists, he applied the polarizing principle to light filters, optical devices, and motion picture processes. (From ideafinder.com) (Photo from picasaweb.google.com)

.



Joseph L. Mankiewicz
b. February 11, 1909, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA
d. February 5, 1993, Bedford, New York, USA

Despite an oeuvre comprising only 20 feature films, Joseph L. Mankiewicz explored a number of genres and styles in his work: gothic (Dragonwyck, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Suddenly, Last Summer); film noir (Somewhere in the Night); musical comedy (Guys and Dolls); Shavian comedy (All About Eve, People Will Talk); Shakespearean tragedy (Julius Caesar); espionage (5 Fingers); the Western (There Was a Crooked Man…); race drama (No Way Out); mystery (The Honey Pot); Roman epic (Cleopatra); thriller (Sleuth); family melodrama (House of Strangers). Moreover, he often combined genres within a single film. House of Strangers (1949) and All About Eve (1950) have a film noir ambience (both films are concerned with ambition and its consequences), while There Was a Crooked Man… (1970) combines a Western with a prison drama.( part of essay by Brian Dauth. Photo from University Press of Mississippi Press

C. Northcote Parkinson
July 30, 1909 - March 9, 1993


A distinguished British naval historian, he was a professor at the University of Malaya in 1955 when his life was transformed by an article he wrote for The Economist, inspiring a Boston publisher to commission what was to be a best-selling book and triggering a second career on the American lecture circuit. His subject entered the language-- "Parkinson's Law": Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Parkinson proved his point with a devastating deadpan discussion of the extraordinary inverse relationship between the Royal Navy's number of capital ships and civilian personnel--and a savagely satirical mockscientism that uncannily anticipated the great eruption of business-school bombast. (From thefreelibrary.com)
Images from blog.shj.se.olpe and Amazon.com








Wallace Stegner
Feb. 18, 1909 - April 13, 1993

Wallace Stegner was born on February 18, 1909 in Lake Mills, Iowa. Over a 60 year career he wrote 30 books. Among the novels are, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1943; Joe Hill, 1950; All The Little Live Things, 1967 (Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); Angle of Repose, 1972 (Pulitzer Prize); The Spectator Bird, (National Book Award), 1977; Recapitulation, 1979; Collected Stories, 1990, and Crossing to Safety, 1987. The nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, 1954; Wolf Willow, (A History, A Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier), 1962; The Sound of Mountain Water, 1969; Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West, 1992, a collection of essays that earned him a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle award. . .
Wallace Stegner wrote about the need to preserve the West, and he also fought for it. He became involved with the conservation movement in the 1950's while fighting the construction of dam on the Green River at Dinosaur National Monument. In 1960 he wrote his famous, Wilderness Letter, on the importance of federal protection of wild places. This letter was used to introduce the bill that established the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964. Wallace Stegner also founded the Committee for the Green Foothills in Santa Clara County, California and was involved with The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society. He also served as assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, during the Kennedy administration. There, he worked on issues dealing with the expansion of National Parks. His passion about the need to protect our wild places, and his respect for our landscape are a theme that Mr. Stegner eloquently expresses in many of his books and essays. ( There's a lot more where this came from: wallacestegner.org including information on Centenniary celebrations.)

Stegner picture from Sunset Magazine.




Eugene Ionesco
Nov. 26, 1909 Slatina, Romania - March 28, 1994 Paris, France


Absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco was born on November 26, 1909, in Slatina, Romania. The following year, he moved with his family to Paris where he lived until 1925, at which time his parents divorced and he returned to Romania with his father. In 1928, he began studying French literature at the University of Bucharest and two years later published his first article in the Zodiac review. A volume of poetry, Elegy of Miniscule Beings, followed in 1931, and in 1934 he published a collection of essays entitled No. In 1938, he received a fellowship from the Rumanian government to write a thesis on the subject of death in modern French poetry. He moved to Paris and began his research, but the German invasion (1940) soon forced him to relocate to Marseilles. He returned to Paris five years later, after its liberation from the Germans, and found work as a proofreader and translator. (Text from theatrehistory.com. Image from www.core-target.ro. There's a wonderful picture of Ionesco at www.signum-fotogalerie.at/kunstler.htm look at Ionesco Nr. 11.)





Roberto Burle Marx
Aug. 4, 1909 - June 4, 1994

Influential 20th century Brazilian landscape architect
Following up on our post yesterday about contemporary Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, we have complied some links to websites that feature images of his works. One of the sites is in Portuguese and another in German, and both of those are somewhat difficult to navigate, but the effort is well worth while. Unfortunately, there are few images on the Burle Marx firm website (Burle Marx & Cia. continues today lead by Marx's partner Haruyoshi Ono who joined the firm in 1968), but there is a little bit of history.


"Roberto Burle Marx is internationally known as one of the most important landscape architects of the 20th century.


"An artist of multiple facets, besides being a landscape designer he was also a remarkable painter, sculptor, singer, and jewelry designer, with a sensibility that is shown throughout his work."


Burle Marx is perhaps best know for his work in Brazil's modern capital, Brasilia. Text and picture from landliving.com. Photo of Marx bust from Johnnyjet.com

There's a decent bio of Marx in German.




Keith Davis (Couldn't find a picture)
Jan 6, 1909 - September 9, 1994

Yet for all the naturalness of the finished product, Mr. Broderick's singing voice took concentrated work to develop. When he was first approached about the revival, he dismissed the idea, but his sense of adventure won out. He found a voice teacher, Keith Davis, and began what he thought would be six months or so of lessons to determine whether he could handle the role. With the typical production delays, the six months turned into four years. Sadly, the night before the first rehearsal of "How to Succeed," which opened in La Jolla, Calif., in October 1994, Mr. Davis died of a stroke at 85. NYTimes

Jessica Tandy
June 7, 1909 - Sept. 11, 1994
[Tandy/Gielgud photo used with permission from
http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk] After an acting career spanning some sixty five years, Tandy found latter-day movie stardom in major-studio releases and intimate dramas alike. From a young age she was determined to be an actress, and first appeared on the London stage in 1926, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's "King Lear". She also worked in British films. Following the end of her first marriage, she moved to New York and met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn, who became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen. She made her American film debut in The Seventh Cross (1944). She also appeared in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946, ironically enough as Cronyn's daughter!), Dragonwyck (1946) starring Gene Tierney and Forever Amber (1947). After her Tony-winning performance as Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, she concentrated on the stage and only appeared sporadically in films such as The Light in the Forest (1957) and The Birds (1963).
The beginning of the 1980s saw a resurgence in her film career, with character roles in The World According to Garp, Best Friends, Still of the Night (all 1982) and The Bostonians (1984), and the hit film Cocoon (1985), opposite Cronyn, with whom she reteamed for *Batteries not included (1987) and Cocoon: The Return (1988). She and Cronyn had been working together more and more, on stage and television, to continued acclaim, notably in 1987's Foxfire which won her an Emmy Award (recreating her Tony-winning Broadway role). However, it was her colorful performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an aging, stubborn Southern-Jewish matron, that made her a bonafide Hollywood star and earned her an Oscar. She was the oldest actor to ever win an Academy Award, beating out George Burns by less than a year. (From respectance.com)

Rollo May
April 21, 1909 - October 22, 1994

Rollo May was one of the founders of the humanistic psychology movement, and is considered by most to be one of the most influential American psychologists of the twentieth century.
He was born on April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. He was the second of six children of Earl Tittle May and Matie Boughton. His father was a field secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association and moved the family to Michigan when young Rollo (given the name Reece at birth) was still a small child.
May began his college career at Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (now Michigan State University). While there, he was not exactly a stellar student, and he co-founded a magazine that was critical of the state legislature. This caused quite a lot of political difficulties for him at the college, so he transferred to Oberlin College , a small liberal arts school in Ohio. There he began to be more successful in his studies, and majored in English, with a minor in Greek literature and history. He graduated in 1930, and spent the next three years teaching English in Salonika, Greece. He had the opportunity during that time to attend seminars in Vienna, Austria taught by Alfred Adler.(Continued at atpweb.org. Photo from intuition.org)

Dean Rusk
Feb. 9, 1909 - Dec. 20, 1994

(David) Dean Rusk served as Secretary of State through the eight years of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the second longest tenure in U.S. History. Rusk was closely involved in relations with the Soviet Union, especially in negotiating the 1963 test ban treaty. He was a major participant in the secret Cuban missile crisis meetings, and later became a strong advocate of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Mr. Rusk, a native of Georgia, has also been recognized for his support of the civil rights movement, becoming one of the first members of President Kennedy’s cabinet to speak out on the issue. In 1990, Mr. Rusk published a memoir, As I Saw It, which he co-authored with his son, Richard. (From the
JFK library site. Photo from history.sandiego.edu.)

Stephen Spender
Feb. 28, 1909 - July 16, 1995

Spender thought of himself as an autobiographer. Marianne Moore described him as a discerner "of the core of a writer's intentions," and Virginia Woolf praised "his large generous sensitivity." Perhaps Reynolds Price said it best when he called Spender "a brilliantly generous connoisseur of beauty." In "World Within World," all these qualities shine. The book is a masterpiece: a major philosophical and aesthetic attempt to encompass the cosmos of Europe during the first three decades of the century. It is memorable for its portraits of Woolf, Eliot, Auden and Isherwood, which have the psychological depth of Rembrandt and the elegance of Velaszquez. It contains Spender's dazzling comments on German architecture and his keen insights into the street life of prewar Berlin and the scapegoat-hunting paranoia of the economically desperate German middle class. And it was one of the first books in which a prominent intellectual drew the parallels between communism and fascism. (From a Jaime Manrique review of a biography of Spender on Salon.com. Photo from New York Times, there, courtesy of Natasha Spender. Photo includes left to right WH Auden, Spender, and Christorpher Isherwood.)

I noticed that Spender wrote and introduction to Malcolm Lowry's (another 1909 member) Under the Volcano.




James Reston
Nov. 3, 1909 - Dec. 6, 1995

First as a reporter and then, beginning in 1953, as a columnist, Mr. Reston was perhaps the most influential journalist of his generation. In Washington, where he was based, and also in other capitals around the world, he had unrivaled access to the high and the mighty. Yet he retained a wry, self-deprecating personality, free of bombast, and always sought to reduce political complexity to plain language.
"What I try to do," he said, "is write a letter to a friend who doesn't have time to find out all the goofy things that go on in Washington."
Interested in China and the Soviet Union as well as the United States, a student of diplomacy as well as domestic politics, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and dozens of other awards.
Mr. Reston was forgiving of the frailties of soldiers, statesmen and party hacks -- too forgiving, some of his critics later said, because he was too close to them. But his stern moral standards, rooted in the Victorian values of his youth, never wavered. He remained an idealist in a world of cynics. (The rest at this New York Times report of Reston's death. The picture is from an interesting site, from an historical perspective. It's covers of Time magazines over the years.)

Barry M. Goldwater
Jan. 1, 1909 - May 29, 1998

OK, so anyone who knows the name Barry Goldwater, knows he lost the 1964 presidential election to Lyndon Johnson, but that he paved the way for Ronald Reagan in 1980. But here's glimpse at his early history from a Washington Post article (photo from same article) on his death in 1998:

Barry Morris Goldwater was born in Phoenix on New Year's Day, 1909, three years before Arizona was admitted to the Union. He was the eldest son of Baron and Josephine Williams Goldwater, and the grandson of "Big Mike" Goldwasser, a Jewish immigrant from an area of Poland that was then ruled by the Russian czars. Although Jewish on his father's side, Mr. Goldwater was raised in the Episcopalian tradition of his mother.
"Big Mike" Goldwasser left Poland at the age of 14 and went first to London, then to California and, in 1859, to Arizona where with his brother, Joe, operated a trading and mercantile operation in Prescott. In 1896, Baron Goldwater -- the surname had long since been Anglicized -- opened a branch of the family business, M. Goldwater & Sons, in Phoenix. The Goldwater stores would remain in family hands until 1962, when they were sold to Associated Dry Goods Corp. of New York for $2.2 million in Associated Dry Goods stock. Associated Dry Goods also assumed nearly $2 million in debt on the Goldwater stores' books.
Growing up in Phoenix, the future senator was popular with his schoolmates but an indifferent student; after a disastrous freshman year in high school, his parents sent him to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. There, Mr. Goldwater thrived on the rigorous discipline and military atmosphere, and he graduated at the top of his class. He returned to Arizona and enrolled as a freshman at the University of Arizona in the fall of 1928. His father died the next spring, and Mr. Goldwater left college to work in the family store.
Associates said he was a natural merchandiser with a gift for recognizing the sales potential of an offbeat item. Early in his career, he purchased a design for "antsy pantsy" men's shorts with red ants crawling all over the white cloth, and the item proved to be a tremendous success. By age 27, he was general manager of the Phoenix store. He initiated a five-day workweek for his employees and improved fringe benefits.

Victor Borge
Jan. 3, 1909 - Dec. 23, 2000

Musical humorist Victor Borge was born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen, Denmark on January 3, 1909; the son of a violinist with the violin in the Danish Symphony Orchestra, he began playing piano at age three, and was quickly hailed as a child prodigy. On scholarship at the Royal Danish Music Conservatory, he studied under Olivo Krause and Victor Schiøler, later becoming a protege of Frederic Lamond and Egon Petri; in 1926 Borge made his professional debut, and by the following decade ranked among the top stage and film stars in all of Scandinavia. His performances always maintained a satirical bent, adopting an increasingly acrid sensibility as the Nazis began sweeping through Europe; Borge, a Jew, regularly mocked Hitler from the stage, and when the German forces invaded Denmark in 1940 the pianist was briefly blacklisted before fleeing to the United States, escaping from Finland via the S. S. American Legion, the last American passenger ship to leave Northern Europe prior to World War II.

Borge arrived in New York City without knowing a word of English, but soon learned enough of the language to land a job as the opening act for Rudy Vallee's radio show before moving on to Bing Crosby's program. Emerging as a fixture of radio and later television, in 1953 Borge arrived on Broadway as the star of Comedy in Music; the production ran through 1956, and its 849 performances entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running one man show. (The rest is at artistdirect.com. Picture from www.kor.dk)

Eudora Welty
April 13, 1909 - July 23, 2001

Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty I WAS GETTING ALONG FINE with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when he first appeared here in China Grove, taking "Pose Yourself" photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I'm the same. Stella-Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason she's spoiled. (The rest of the story is at art-bin.com. Picture from the National Park Service.)

And find out why the computer program was named after Eudora Welty.

At the center of Eudora Welty’s first published story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” Bowman, the bachelor businessman, suddenly understands both his years of loneliness and the relationship between the older man and the girl who have rescued him from his wrecked car. He sees there: “A marriage, a fruitful marriage. That simple thing. Anyone could have had that.” This crucial moment augurs the “fruitful” subject that permeates Welty’s fiction: the intimate and often strange relationships within families. Welty is the twentieth-century master of her subject, and the century’s most gifted and radical practitioner of the short story. She won most of the major literary prizes during her career, including the Pulitzer Prize and the French Légion d’Honneur. Only the Nobel Prize eluded her, and many believe this to be one of that committee’s great oversights. Even a generic description of Welty’s oeuvre—four collections of stories, five novels, two collections of photographs, three works of non-fiction (essay, memoir, book review), and one children’s book—shows Welty’s wide scope as an artist, and reading through her work reveals an astonishing tonal range in subject and style, the most expansive of any twentieth-century American writer.(Get the rest at olemiss.edu.)

David Riesman
Sept. 13, 1909 - May 10, 2002

Sociologist David Riesman, best known for his influential study of post-World War II American society, The Lonely Crowd, died May 10 in Binghamton, NY, of natural causes. He was 92.
Born in Philadelphia in 1909, the son of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Riesman attended Harvard College, graduating in 1931.
He earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1934 and embarked on a law career, which included clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and teaching at the University of Buffalo Law School.
As a research fellow at Columbia Law School, Riesman had the opportunity to discuss comparative social issues with anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, philosopher Hannah Arendt, and literary critic Lionel Trilling. Later he studied psychoanalysis with Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan.
In 1949, he was invited to join the social science faculty of the University of Chicago. The Lonely Crowd was published in 1950, and became a best seller, as well as winning the admiration of his academic peers. He co-authored the book with Nathan Glazer, professor emeritus of education and social structure, and Reuel Denney, but, according to Glazer, Riesman was the real author of the work. Riesman taught at Chicago until 1958, when he was named the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard. (The rest at asanet.org and the photo from harvardsquarelibrary)

Elia Kazan
Sept. 7, 1909 -Sept. 28, 2003

One of the most revered directors of his era, Elia Kazan was also one of the most — arguably the most — controversial. In addition to making his mark on film history with masterpieces such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden, Kazan made a more dubious mark with his involvement in the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC)'s anti-Communist witchhunt of the 1950s; his decision to name alleged industry Communists earned him the ire of many of his peers, resulting in what was essentially his own Hollywood blacklisting. Thus, any biography of Kazan cannot be written without mention of his political involvement, in tandem with the many cinematic contributions he made throughout a long and illustrious career. An Anatolian Greek, Kazan was born Elia Kazanjoglou in Istanbul (then Constantinople), Turkey, on September 7, 1909. In 1913, he emigrated with his parents to New York City, where his father sold rugs for a living. After an undergraduate education at Williams College and drama study at Yale, Kazan joined New York's left-leaning Group Theatre as an actor and assistant manager. (Continued at eliakazan.com. Picture also from there.)

This quote from Arthur Miller tells gives us an example of how if someone knows what you badly want, they can control you.

In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller describes being told by Elia Kazan about his intention to testify to the House of Un-American Activities Committee.

Listening to him I grew frightened. There was a certain gloomy logic in what he was saying: unless he came clean he could never hope, in the height of his creative powers, to make another film in America, and he would probably not be given a passport to work abroad either. If the theatre remained open to him, it was not his primary interest anymore; he wanted to deepen his film life, that was where his heart lay, and he had been told in so many words by his old boss and friend Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century Fox, that the company would not employ him unless he satisfied the Committee. (from sparticus.schoolnet.co.uk)

Peter F. Drucker
Nov. 19,1909 - Nov. 11, 2005

Along with books on management questions, Drucker has also published a number of works in which he has dealt with general societal developments. Already at the end of the fifties, in Landmarks of Tomorrow, Drucker was speaking of a "post modern society." A decade later, in The Age of Discontinuity, he foresaw a replacement of industrial work with "knowledge work." And in Post-Capitalist Society, his last major work of social theory of 1993, he described a development which would end not with capital, but with knowledge providing the basis of society. (Bio excerpt and photo from peterdrucker.at)

Katherine Dunham
June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006

If her repertory was diverse, it was also coherent. "Tropics and le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem" incorporated dances from the West Indies as well as from Cuba and Mexico, while the "Le Jazz Hot" section featured early black American social dances, such as the Juba, Cake Walk, Ballin' the Jack, and Strut. The sequencing of dances, the theatrical journey from the tropics to urban black America implied -- in the most entertaining terms -- the ethnographic realities of cultural connections. In her 1943 "Tropical Revue," she recycled material from the 1939 revue and added new dances, such as the balletic "Choros" (based on formal Brazilian quadrilles), and "Rites de Passage," which depicted puberty rituals so explicitly sexual that the dance was banned in Boston.
Beginning in the 1940s, the Katherine Dunham Dance Company appeared on Broadway and toured throughout the United States, Mexico, Latin America, and especially Europe, to enthusiastic reviews. In Europe Dunham was praised as a dancer and choreographer, recognized as a serious anthropologist and scholar, and admired as a glamorous beauty. Among her achievements was her resourcefulness in keeping her company going without any government funding. When short of money between engagements, Dunham and her troupe played in elegant nightclubs, such as Ciro's in Los Angeles. She also supplemented her income through film. Alone, or with her company, she appeared in nine Hollywood movies and in several foreign films between 1941 and 1959, among them CARNIVAL OF RHYTHM (1939), STAR-SPANGLED RHYTHM (1942), STORMY WEATHER (1943), CASBAH (1948), BOOTE E RIPOSTA (1950), and MAMBO (1954). . .
Moved by the civil rights struggle and outraged by deprivations in the ghettos of East St. Louis, an area she knew from her visiting professorships at Southern Illinois University in the 1960s, Dunham decided to take action. In 1967 she opened the Performing Arts Training Center, a cultural program and school for the neighborhood children and youth, with programs in dance, drama, martial arts, and humanities. Soon thereafter she expanded the programs to include senior citizens. Then in 1977 she opened the Katherine Dunham Museum and Children's Workshop to house her collections of artifacts from her travels and research, as well as archival material from her personal life and professional career. (A lot more where this came from at PBS Free To Dance. Picture from We Hatians.)

Better Late than Never - State Department Wants to Know What the Pres is Supposed to Do

How many days are left in the Bush Administration? 13 or 14? Well I had a sitemeter profile this morning from a US State Department computer looking up the job duties of the president. I do get a kick when someone in Washington, DC has to go to an Alaskan blog to find answers to questions like this.

This also gives me an opportunity to point out to readers how much information about you is collected when you surf the internet. In the interest of transparency, I've set my sitemeter to 'open' so that anyone can click on that number in the right hand column and see the stats for the site. And I've talked about this before. I haven't lately because in some cases, I'd like to know what government agencies and what corporations have employees dropping by here. But this one is too silly to pass up. (You can double click the image to enlarge it.)


They went to the page where I looked up the Vice President's job duties to assess whether Sarah Palin was qualified. I went to the US Constitution and posted job duties for the VP, President, and Congress.

By the way, the counters are so far unable to track how long someone has been on the site if they only visit one page, so 0 seconds doesn't necessarily mean 0 seconds.

Mac Issues - Keyboard Locks, Needs Rebooting

I asked Agron (Ropi, can you tell me after whom he was named?) at Best Buy about a problem I'm having with my MacBook. The keyboard randomly locks. I have to shut it off and reboot to get it to work again. This happens anywhere from 1 to 4 times a day. Reminding me what it was like to work on a PC.

Agron's family is from Albania and he's been back often. We talked about Albanian and US schools. He's getting his computer science degree at UAA and hopes to go on to Stanford for graduate work. It's nice to know you can get intelligent assistance at Best Buy. He said there was a problem with my edition of the MacBook and the MacBook Pros - something about the wire heating up and expanding and affecting the keyboard. He sent me to the MacHaus to get it repaired.

So, after calling and getting my Mac Care confirmed, I went to the MacHaus across from REI, where Kory checked it out. He said I'd lose my stick on Thai letters because the keyboard would be replaced and even checked about putting on a Thai keyboard, but they weren't in stock. He also pointed out the crack on the right below the keyboard - see the tip of the pencil in the picture. This is also a known defect that Apple will repair for free he said. I remember someone showing me that crack in theirs. I just don't remember who it was. But they'll fix it free. Even without Apple Care.

I really don't want to be without my MacBook, so I opted to take it home and bring it back when the parts come in. It's getting pretty tight. We leave early next Monday morning for Thailand.

Meanwhile I had a few more errands to do. A package to mail and a hotel voucher to pick up from China Airlines - we have to overnight in Taipei on the way home. That's a nice break actually. It was a spectacular day today. Here's the view coming back from the airport. And it was above 0˚F today. Amazing how 5˚F can feel warm, but after a few days of -15˚F, it does.

Acting Mayor Matt Claman Takes the Oath

On a beautiful, but nippy morning (our outdoor thermometer said -16˚F (-26˚C), I drove (yeah, I know, too wimpy to ride my bike) downtown to see the transition in Municipal leadership as Mayor Begich resigned so he can be sworn in Tuesday as our new US Senator and Assembly Chair Matt Claman stepped up to become our Acting Mayor.

What Does the FBI Internal Complaint Tell Us?

Of course, no one can actually answer the title question. And that's ok. Some of my math teachers used to say, "The answer isn't as important as how you got there." I feel that way about this post.

Intro - My Approach

The best we can do is outline the facts (as they've been presented and we've experienced); the stories/theories we use to interpret the meaning of the facts we encounter; and imagination, to come up with possible answers.

Everyone does this all the time - they take their known facts, stories, and imagination and then declare "the Truth" often without even realizing how they've gotten to their 'truth.' I try not to declare universal truths (not always successfully) and rather give possible truths that may or may not be confirmed in the future. Like the math problems, the story of how I got to, in this case, tentative truths (some might call them hypotheses), is more important than the 'answers.'

That's why I won't give a summary, because that would focus on 'the answer' while the process to getting there is what's important . I know most people just want the soundbite these days, but without the context and logic that got to that soundbite, it really is nothing. Sorry, no shortcuts. But I have been playing with this for a few days to make this as concise as possible without holding this till it's moldy.

I will give you an outline:

• Intro remarks - how I'm going to approach this
  
  
• Facts/Experiences
  
• List of facts and experiences relevant to this topic
  
• What does the Complaint Document Say?

• Application of Models (Stories and Theories)
  
  • Administrative Discretion
  • Human Behavior and Types
    
  • Organizational Culture - Women in the FBI
  • Whistle-Blowing
    

• Possible Conclusions

(You're almost done with the Intro now)

The document in question here is a complaint filed by an FBI agent involved in the Alaska political corruption cases in which he alleges a number of violations of policy, rules, and procedures, and possibly a criminal violation.

I've posted the FBI Internal Complaint document in an earlier post. You can read it there or you can go to Scribd where I also posted it. I would note that in the previous post I used the language the Anchorage Daily News used: FBI Whistle-Blower Complaint Document. I'm now calling it an internal complaint document and I'll explain the reason for this when I discuss whistle-blowing.

Facts and Experience

So what 'facts' and 'experience' do I bring to this game of sussing out the meaning of the document?

1. The document itself
2. Information accumulated by attending and blogging the Anderson, Kott, and Kohring trials where I got to watch the prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses (including undercover informants), FBI agents discuss topics including the use and management of undercover informants.
3. A few discussions with the FBI agent* in charge of the investigation. She talked to a class I taught and I bumped into her a couple of times by chance at events in Anchorage.
4. Conversation with another FBI agent* involved in the investigation, again, a chance meeting at an event we were both at.
5. Conversations, mostly brief, with three of the convicted politicians.
6. A careful reading of Frank Prewitt's book on this subject Last Bridge To Nowhere.
7. Discussions with other media folks who covered the trials and a few attorney friends.
   
8. Part of my previous incarnation included doing grievance work, part of which was as a grievance representative for the faculty union.

*I would note that the FBI agents I spoke with were pretty good at talking in generalities about policy and hypotheticals and not revealing specifics about cases that hadn't already been revealed in court.


What does the Whistle-Blowers Complaint Document Say?

So much is redacted (blacked out) that one has to read between the redactions before one can read between the lines. Before I get to the first section of the Complaint, let me mention the key actors here.

1. The Complainant - refers to the person who wrote the complaint. This is an FBI Special Agent who worked on the Alaska corruption cases.
2. XXXXXXX is another FBI Special Agent who also worked on these cases.

The relationship between the two is not entirely clear. XXXXXX appears to be senior to the Complainant, but NOT the Complainant's supervisor. The Complainant says in one place he (I'm going to use 'he' when I refer to the Complainant) has:

• "attempted to rectify them directly with XXXXX" [Unsuccessfully]
  
• "My next step was to keep my supervisor aware..."
  

There is no guarantee that XXXXXX here is the same XXXXXX that is the target of the complaints, but I'm guessing it is. And so his supervisor would be someone else.

Now we can look at the document, which begins with the word: "Background"

• Background:
  It begins, "I have been a Special Agent with the FBI since 2003" He (the odds are good that this is a male agent) seems to have been assigned to Alaska as his first position and "soon after arriving in xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I was made xxxxxxxxxxx agent on a sensitive public corruption case, POLAR PEN XXXXXXXXXXXX. (The XXX indicates redacted parts.)
  

• Summary of Complaints:


• "I have witnessed or learned of serious violations of policy, rules, and procedures as well as possible criminal violations"
• Attempts to rectify complaints by talking directly to XXXXX have been unsuccessful
• Then kept supervisor aware of all problems
• "I would also 'vent' with XXXXX agents that I trusted throughout the years."
• "Advised my CDC (Chief division counsel) of some of these issues/problems."
  

• Details of Complaints
  
  • Mishandled Sources (Redaction in original document is a black bar, I use XXXXX to indicate the black bar. I approximate the length of the bar, but I don't use a ruler.)
  • "XXXXX mishandled XXX sources"
  • "becoming too close to each of them." ('meet with sources in XXXhome')
  • "unnecessarily disclosed details about FBI investigations"
  • "unnecessarily provided information related to details about FBI investigations"
  • "unnecessarily provided information related to FBI techniques and internal workings"
  • "would accept things of value from sources."
  • "XXXXX documented very little in FBI files."
  
  
• "Sources I am aware of mismanagement:"
  • Here there is a list of five blacked out names plus the name "Bill Allen"



• The next five items on the list appear to be the five names that were blacked out above and details about specific problems with each of these sources. Some I can't figure out such as
  • "Source was previously in the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX", or
  • "Source gave XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX current job as a XXXXXXXXXXX at the XXXXXX."

Others we can get the gist of the issue

• "XXXXX tried to have me reopen the source as my own source but I refused"
• "XXXXX met with the sources at XXX home"
• "XXXX had access to XXXXXX home, even when XXXX was not home"
  

Most of the allegations are about:

• being too close to sources - having dinner with them, meeting them at home for dinner or lunch, getting a gift from a source, went golfing with a potential subject
• giving information to sources that sources didn't need to know
• "XXXXX provided XXXXX detailed information about my personal background, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX without my permission and knowing I would not have allowed XXXX to do so"
• "XXXXXattempted to provide XXXXXX information about my personal background XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXwithout my permission. I had to kickXXX leg under the table to stopXXXfrom revealing personal information about me."
  
  
Then there is a section describing acts relating to Bill Allen. These include (the redaction makes it hard to summarize some of these - it's not clear what is being alleged - also the number of XXX's are approximately corresponding to the black, not exact) :

• "Most recently, XXXXXmet with Allen byXXXXXinXXXhotel room in Washington D.C. When I found out that occurred, I told XXXXXXXXX that if XXXknew that was going to happen again, to advise me so I could stop that from happening again. I also told XXXX not to do that again. XXXXignored me."
• "XXXXworeXXX for Allen during the recent trail during his testimony. XXX does not wear XXXX XXXXadvised it was a surprise/present for Allen."
• "XXXXtold Allen during the pitch for him to cooperate on or about 08/30/06 that XXXXXaccepted bribes from the FBI. XXXXXtold him details of the case and that XXXXXX had cooperated with the FBI. It was unnecessary to reveal all that information. I believed it was absolutely unnecessary to provide details about other cases to someone we were wanting to cooperate. I advised the other agent in the room and XXXagreed but did not feel comfortable stopping XXXX from revealing further information."
• "XXXXtold Allen XXXXwas cooperating and information that XXXXXXXXprovided by the FBI. XXXXXXprovided Allen with information XXXXXtold the FBI."
• "XXXXmay have revealed to Allen and/or his attorney the status of an ongoing Anchorage Police Department investigation involving Allen."

You've probably forgotten where we are in the list by now. "Mishandling Sources" was the first of 14 separate allegations the whistle-blower makes. While the second allegation - "XXXX accepted multiple things of value from sources" - is a general category of problem, most of the others actually are allegations of specific acts that the whistle-blower thinks are violations of some policy or regulation. You can read them all in the document itself linked at top or again here.

Perhaps the key points that draw attention revolve around gifts:

• "I am aware of a drawing/artwork, house-hunting assistance and employment for XXXXXX. I believe there were more gifts I do not know about."
• Issues about withholding and mishandling information at the Stevens trial
• Handling of confidential information
• Inappropriate relationship/communication with media
• Inappropriately created a scheme to relocate prosecution witness that was also subpoenaed by defense during trial

I would also point out that there are two different sets of complaints:

• First, complaints that seem to be about a specific person, XXXXXX, that relate to how XXXXX conducts the investigation, basically that XXXXXX is too close to the sources.
• Second, complaints about how things are run between the FBI and the Prosecutors during the Ted Stevens trial.

After the whole list of 14 complaints, it moves to the last three titled sections.

• My Motivation to Further Report
  
  
  • Many serious problems arose in the Ted Stevens trial
  • One of the sources wrote and published a book providing information he shouldn't have known and "the book mentioned me in multiple places." [The "Perps and Persons of Interest" section at the beginning of Frank Prewitt's book lists two FBI Agents - Lead Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner and Special Agent Chad Joy. While this section does not include all the key players (Judge Sedwick is not listed), these seem to be the two most frequently mentioned Special Agents.]
  • "XXXXXXXXXmanagement recently decided to reassign XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXto others including XXXXXXXand XXbelievedXXXXXXwould continue to have contact and mismanageXXXXXcausing other agents to be in inappropriate situations as I had been in the past XXXXXXX."
  • I found out XXXXX is "in the process of writing a book and I feared more problems would occur and I would be in the middle of XXXXproblems again."
  • I've been encouraged by two other agents to report these problems.
  • "My efforts to rectify the problems have not been solved by reporting them to management"
  • "I re-read the FBI's core values and found they have not been upheld in the areas mentioned throughout the document."
    
    
• Concerns for Myself (Since what he wrote was so short, rather than paraphrase it I'll just quote it)
  "XXXXXXXXXXX In addition FBIHQ from PCU to the highest levels are extremely pleased with the successes of POLAR PEN. I am concerned about possible retaliation. On 11/21/2008 I requested whistleblower protection status from my XXXXXwho was my XXXXXXXXXat the time. I don't want to be punished for coming forward. I am absolutely outside my comfort zone by reporting my concerns beyond my efforts I listed in this document. Because myXXXXXXwas a bit unclear as to whetherXXXgranted my request for protection, I request any and all whistleblower protections available again."

• Actions I have Taken
  • Told two other agents in his office
  • Tried unsuccessfully to report violations in command structure
  • Called Office of Integrity and Compliance (OIC) - they gave me number for Inspection
  • Division, Internal Investigation Section.
  • It looks like he followed up on that but not sure because of the redactions
  • The rest has enough redactions that I can't really report it other than to say he had discussions with people, some appear to be people about whom he was complaining.
    

• People Who Could Provide Further Information/Corroboration

The lists of names that follow are totally blacked out. It looks like there might be 15 names in the first section and about 11 in the second.

So that ends the 'facts' and experience section.
**************************************************

Next we move on to the stories/theories I bring to this. Most of us use stories and theories (also called models and narratives) all the time without even realizing it to interpret facts. It's these stories in our heads that account for different people coming to totally different conclusions when presented the same facts. (Think of the conclusions reached by a Democrat and a Republican both watching the presidential debates, for example.) We acquire these stories through our experiences and through the stories we hear as we grow up at churches, schools, on television, etc. As a retired professor, I have a little more training and experience in articulating the stories/theories I use. Here I'm using theories/stories/models (while these can be distinguished, they are often used interchangeably and here I'll use all three so you can pick the one you're most comfortable with) that cover topics like ethics, corruption, administrative law, human behavior, whistle-blowing, and management.


So, pulling all the above together, I can use the models I know to make sense of the information we have and to predict what the missing facts might look like. But even if there weren't missing facts, when it comes to the social world, people simply don't agree on what is a fact. Even though a jury convicted Ted Stevens, he has said he isn't 'convicted' until sentenced and until his appeal is heard. And some people would say that even though they were convicted, that doesn't make them 'really' guilty. And in some cases, DNA tests have 'proven' them to be right.

And then we use different models to interpret the facts. The theory that explains DNA is used to explain why some convicted prisoners aren't guilty. But you have to accept that the explanation of DNA and that how they tested for DNA 'proves' the convict isn't guilty.

The social world is pretty complicated when you start peeling back the layers. Thus this is a long post as I try to to explain how I get to my conclusions.


Application of Models (Stories/Theories):


I talked about stories/theories earlier. Sometimes these are called models or narratives. I'm going to discuss a few here so anyone can follow how I get to my possible conclusions.

1. Administrative Discretion - American government is based on the idea of 'rule of law' as opposed to 'rule of men'. This means that decisions made in government agencies are supposed to be made based on the law. However, as much as we would like to strictly follow this ideal, laws that elected legislators pass rarely can take into consideration every possible condition that can arise. Nor do they usually write all the technical details into the law. Thus it is normal for career public administrators to write out rules and regulations for how the law is going to be carried out. This too is supposed to be an open activity with the public getting chances to see and comment on the proposed rules before they are adopted. But even if these things happen perfectly, there will still be situations that require us to trust the judgment of the administrator to determine what to do.

That judgment call is known as administrative discretion. It should be consistent with the laws and rules and regulations. Why do these things occur? Sometimes simply because someone's situation will be totally unanticipated. What happens when someone says to the Census taker - "I don't fit any of those categories, I'm mixed race." Well that happened for a long time and census takers had to figure out what to do. Then they eventually changed the choices. Judges, of course, have to use administrative discretion all the time. But they do this within guidelines.

The Complainant doesn't cite specific policies, specific rules, or specific regulations that were violated. I don't know what rules there are - how general or specific they can get. In trials they did go over what has to be done when doing surveillance - things like not listening to personal conversations that are not related to the surveillance. But I don't recall, off hand, that kind of discussion about sources. They did talk about the promises made to sources about sentencing - in all cases no one was actually promised anything other than the prosecutors would ask for a reduction in sentence if there is continuing cooperation, but that ultimately the judge made those decisions. Bill Allen was told his family members would not be indicted if he cooperated fully.

It seems to me that the job of recruiting and working with undercover sources is a job that requires a lot of administrative discretion. One has to assess each individual source individually and weigh a lot of factors. One has to develop the trust of the source - that you will do as you promise, that you will protect them to the best of your ability from the people they are doing surveillance on. The agent also has to trust the source as well. The source is going to have to know information that the agency doesn't want disclosed to the people being watched. It is a careful balancing act. Determining exactly what one has to disclose to gain the source's continuing trust is an art, not a science. The agent wants to develop as close a relationship with the source as possible so the source trusts and feels a certain loyalty to the agent. If television cop shows are any indication, the line between proper and improper handling of sources is a topic of constant debate. Clearly this is a judgment call, it fits the category of administrative discretion.

As I said earlier, the hierarchical relationship between the Complainant and XXXXX is not clear. It appears that XXXXX does not take orders from the Complainant, but the Complainant seems to have a different direct supervisor. It appears that in the investigation, XXXXX was in a senior position to the Complainant. Possibly this investigation was like a project team where both are taken from their regular hierarchical units and temporarily assigned to a team. If that's the case, it appears that XXXXX might have been the team leader, but not the Complainant's normal supervisor.

If that is the case (and this is just speculation) the team leader can take advice from subordinates, but ultimately the team leader is responsible for making the call. Once that happens, unless it is clearly in violation of the law, the subordinate needs to go along. If XXXXX has the authority to make the final decisions, and these are decisions that fall within the realm of administrative discretion, then it is XXXX's call in the end, not the Complainant's.

What additional evidence is there to think the Complainant was subordinate to XXXXX? The Complainant said,

"I have been a Special Agent with the FBI since August 2003"

and

"soon after arriving in xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I was made xxxxxxxxxxx agent on a sensitive public corruption case, POLAR PEN XXXXXXXXXXXX"

This investigation - known as POLAR PEN - was instigated in Spring 2004. So the Complainant was in the FBI, based on the above statements, for probably less than a year - a relative rookie - when he joined the investigation. XXXXX had to have more seniority. Furthermore, if Complainant were the person in charge, he wouldn't have to be a whistle-blower, he would have had the authority end the practices he disagreed with.

Thus, later when the writer says things like

"I told XXXXXXXXX that if XXXknew that was going to happen again, to advise me so I could stop that from happening again. I also told XXXX not to do that again. XXXXignored me"

this person sounds like he is giving orders to someone over whom he really doesn't have authority. Of course, with the redactions, one can't be certain who is meant or what the relationship actually is.


That said, if the Complainant can identify specific rules, regulations, or policies that are specific and show that XXXXXXX violated those policies, there may be something there. I've heard from a couple of attorneys who normally would not be sympathetic to the Defense in the Stevens case who feel that the Prosecution's actions in the case are inexcusable and would not be tolerated in an Alaskan court and that there should have been a mistrial. I don't know to what extent the court problems are issues with the Prosecutor's actions and to what extent they relate to the FBI's actions. But there may well be serious issues here.


In this case, the Complainant alleges

"I have witnessed or learned of serious violations of policy, rules, and procedures as well as possible criminal violations"

but doesn't cite the specific sections of the policy, rules, and procedures that were violated. (He does cite specific actions he finds problematic, but does not connect them to specific rules to show that they are a violation.) Complainant says, as mentioned in the section above on administrative discretion, things like 'gave unnecessary information'. Whether the information given was necessary or not to develop the rapport needed to keep a source productive all the way through the trial witness phase is definitely not black and white. It's administrative discretion. If there were a rule that said, "Agents may never tell sources X, Y, or Z" and the Complainant could demonstrate that XXXXX had told X, Y, or Z to a source, then there would be a basis.

The Complainant's last "motivation" for filing the complaint was that he "re-read the FBI core values and found they have not been upheld." I looked them up on the FBI website. Here they are:

Our Core Values
• Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States;
• Respect for the dignity of all those we protect;
• Compassion;
• Fairness;
• Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity;
• Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions
and the consequences of our actions and decisions; and
• Leadership, both personal and professional.

None of these is specific. All of these are more about a person's character than about a person's behavior. Is the Complainant really saying that XXXXX is unfair? Compromises personal integrity? Doesn't accept responsibility for actions? Those are pretty heavy accusations. I do believe the Complainant believes everything he wrote. But these are clearly things, like beauty, that except in extreme cases, are in the eye of the beholder. Again, if we look at the recent presidential election, Republicans and Democrats had very different assessments of the character of each of the four main candidates. But the Complainant doesn't allow that there might be a legitimate difference in interpretation. So let's proceed to the next model to see how this can be.

Before I let go of administrative discretion, I have to use an example from the case itself. The Complainant writes about being aware of "a drawing/artwork" that was a gift to XXXXX. Presumably, receiving such a gift might somehow compromise the objectivity of the Special Agent. But I've said above, that the relationship between an agent and a source is a very delicate one. In this case, we also have a book, written by a source in this case, describing, probably not coincidentally, his relationship with his agent and a gift of a drawing. This is the same book that the Complainant has complained about. It's my impression that this book, by Frank Prewitt, takes liberties with the facts and has a tendency to be self-serving. But the author is smart. What he writes about the nature of the relationship between a source and an agent - whether the facts of their conversation are accurate or not - does capture why the charges here seem to me to be so rigidly unrealistic.

The agent, Mary Beth Kepner, has asked Prewitt to meet over coffee.

After a couple of rounds of small talk she said she wanted to tell me about a meeting with her supervisor. "Remember the lunch we had before I left?" I nodded and she went on, "Well, someone else at the table saw the picture of the dog portrait your wife gave me for Christmas and expressed concern."

I interrupted, "Concern about what?"

She said, "Concern about accepting a gift from a Confidential Source. It gives the appearance we may be too close."

I laughed and said, "Well that's easy, why don't you pay for it, we can use the dough!"

She replied, "No, serious, it's a problem."

What's a problem?" I said.

"The appearance, idiot!" she replied.

I thought for a moment, looked real concerned, and said, "You mean we're breaking up?"

Finally she laughed and explained that there was some kind of incident with an agent back in Baltimore who got too close to a source and ended up embarrassing the Bureau.

I studied her for a moment and said, "Let me get this straight. I worked covert operations with you and your team nearly full-time for two years, worked overt, including trials, for another two, and someone's concerned we might be too close!?" I squinted, leaned forward and cynically whispered, "Has anyone told my wife?"

Kepner replied, "Oh come on, there was just a concern over the portrait and a word to the wise."

I settled down a little and said, "Ahh, wise words. I like wise words. Come on Kepner, once you figured out I wasn't a crook [Steve: this was debated in trial - it seems at least that the statute of limitations was up; the next bracket was in the original] you know very well we both had to trust each other to do what we've accomplished. If I hadn't thought you really cared about me, my family, and getting to the real source of the corruption, I would have been out of here a long time ago. The first week we met I said I thought you were on to something, but you were looking under the wrong rocks. Remember? [Kepner nodded] When you say my help was "indispensable" I take you at your word, but without a trusting r-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p we wouldn't be sitting here today, and the Corrupt Bastards Club might still be recruiting members."

Kepner looked me straight in the eyes and said, "You're over-reacting. You know these cases are fragile and there can't be even a whiff of impropriety!"

I avoided her stare, took a sip of coffee and mumbled, "Well, that's easy because there hasn't been and won't be."

In truth, we had become very close. People have real lives, real feelings, real highs, and real lows. Some people bring out our best, others our worst. Some relationships fit like a glove, others chafe like a scouring pad. Most of us are healthiest and happiest in circles of mutually supportive community. And for all those very natural reasons Kepner and I worked well together. So I grudgingly agreed that a little reminder wasn't a bad thing, settled down and said, "Vicki painted pet portraits for a bunch of family, friends, and acquaintances at Christmas and I'm the one who asked you for a photograph of your dog because Vicki supposedly needed a good likeness of a yellow lab for her art group."

Kepner nodded and I continued, "The going commercial rate is a few hundred bucks. Why don't you just go over to her studio and cut a check, she'll give you a receipt and everything will be squeaky clean. But when these cases are all closed I want an invitation to one of your in-service training classes to talk about agent-source relations from the source side of things." Kepner looked puzzled, so I explained, "I understand Bureau concern over conflicts of interest. But extreme cases make poor general policy. It was your training and humanity that accomplished the government's mission. Robotons don't have instincts or feelings, that's why they make crappy supervisors and can't solve cases, they also make lousy friends."

Kepner smiled, paid for her own coffee and said, "Catch ya later, I'm late for a meeting downtown with Robocop." I smiled, waved goodbye and thought, "What a paranoid outfit! They hire terrific people, put them through incredible training, and then force them to look over their shoulders in a defensive atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Then again, they are spies, maybe that's why they're so good at what they do." [emphasis mine] [From Frank Prewitt, Last Bridge to Nowhere, pp. 137-138.]

2. Human Behavior and Styles

The management literature is full of theories of motivation that attempt to explain why people do what they do. Such theories began fairly simplistically ascribing a few motivations to everyone, but evolved into essentially saying that everyone is different and you have to know what motivates your specific employees. One of the more popular personality characteristic assessment tools is Myers-Briggs. It identifies different ways people approach basic functions such as taking in information, forming judgments, making decisions. The Myers-Briggs website does an excellent job of explaining this model. The four basic aspects they test for (taken from personalitypathways) are:

Q1. Which is your most natural energy orientation?

• Every person has two faces. One is directed towards the OUTER world of activities, excitements, people, and things. The other is directed inward to the INNER world of thoughts, interests, ideas, and imagination.

Q2. Which way of Perceiving or understanding is most "automatic" or natural?

• The Sensing (S) side of our brain notices the sights, sounds, smells and all the sensory details of the PRESENT. It categorizes, organizes, records and stores the specifics from the here and now. It is REALITY based, dealing with "what is." It also provides the specific details of memory & recollections from PAST events.

• The Intuitive (N) side of our brain seeks to understand, interpret and form OVERALL patterns of all the information that is collected and records these patterns and relationships. It speculates on POSSIBILITIES, including looking into and forecasting the FUTURE. It is imaginative and conceptual.

  While both kinds of perceiving are necessary and used by all people, each of us instinctively tends to favor one over the other.

Q3. Which way of forming Judgments and making choices is most natural?

• The Thinking (T) side of our brain analyzes information in a DETACHED, objective fashion. It operates from factual principles, deduces and forms conclusions systematically. It is our logical nature.

• The Feeling (F) side of our brain forms conclusions in an ATTACHED and somewhat global manner, based on likes/dislikes, impact on others, and human and aesthetic values. It is our subjective nature.
  

Q4. What is your "action orientation" towards the outside world?

• All people use both judging (thinking and feeling) and perceiving (sensing and intuition) processes to store information, organize our thoughts, make decisions, take actions and manage our lives. Yet one of these processes (Judging or Perceiving) tends to take the lead in our relationship with the outside world . . . while the other governs our inner world.

While most people do not fit perfectly into one category or another, I have found instruments such as this useful to get people to be aware 1) of their own ways of taking in information and processing it; 2) that there are other legitimate ways besides their own; and 3) how to benefit from, rather than fight with, people with different styles at work. Each style has situations where it is powerful and where it is not. Recognizing that other people are using different processes can be very helpful in understanding the basis for many so-called personality conflicts. And once you are aware of how you take in information, or make decisions, for example, you can see why you are at odds with someone who does it differently.

It may well be that the Complainant and XXXXX have very different styles and so they come to very different conclusions about what is appropriate. One area where they seem to have different styles is how they perceive rules and regulations. The Complainant appears to take rules very literally. XXXXX seems to believe that they are not as clear cut and rigid. The Myers-Briggs system uses the four factors above, divided into two options for each, to come up with 16 different types. One possibility is that the Complainant is an ISTJ which would lead him to be fairly rigid when it comes to following the rules (from portrait of an istj):

ISTJs tend to believe in laws and traditions, and expect the same from others. They're not comfortable with breaking laws or going against the rules. If they are able to see a good reason for stepping outside of the established mode of doing things, the ISTJ will support that effort. However, ISTJs more often tend to believe that things should be done according to procedures and plans. If an ISTJ has not developed their Intuitive side sufficiently, they may become overly obsessed with structure, and insist on doing everything "by the book".

So if the Complainant were, in fact, an ISTJ, he might see his way of interpreting the rules as the only possible way and thus anyone who disagrees is simply wrong. I'm using this as an example of how people could get into conflict in a situation like this. I'm not saying that the Complainant is a Myers-Briggs ISTJ or that the Complainant has these characteristics. But if he did, that would sure help us understand why he's taking the stand he's taking. Or, it may be the case that XXXXX has gone way beyond the discretionary gray area. But the Complainant hasn't spelled that out clearly enough for us to judge. (And, of course, the document was never intended by the Complainant to be seen by us.)

Going through his complaints, we see they are mainly about rules being violated - rules he doesn't specifically identify, and which would appear to be rules which cover situations that have a lot of gray area. He seems focused on rules without regard to the bigger picture - that ten people under investigation have either pled guilty or been convicted. Of the four who have gone to trial, they have all been convicted. Now, if there was some latitude in the application of rules to do this, it wouldn't seem to be a bad practice. However, if the court decisions were the result of clear violations of the rules that violated people's basic rights, then the Complainant has a legitimate case.

But he hasn't made that case. He has not identified in his complaint, harm that might have been done to the public or injustices done to those under investigation. The main harm I can detect from his complaints is possible harm to himself. And the rules were broken.

Let's go through his "Motivations for Further Reporting":

• Many serious problems arose in the Ted Stevens trial -
  Are these problems that would affect the fairness of the trial? That would change the outcome? There is suggestion from others - particularly the Defense - that this may be the case. But the Complainant doesn't make this claim or the connections to rules broken. He only gives examples of the behavior he dislikes.
  
  
• One of the sources wrote and published a book providing information he shouldn't have known and "the book mentioned me in multiple places."
  a. The Complainant needs to identify the specific rule or regulation that identifies what information may not be shared with sources and then show that this source had such information and then show how the source got the information.
  b. I don't know what the rules are about sources writing books, but I find it curious that the Complainant lists that someone wrote a book that mentions him. If there is a law or rule that abridges the First Amendment rights of sources, the Complainant should identify it.
  
  I would note that at least two reviewers of the book (Rich Mauer and myself) said that the book was more historical fiction than a factual depiction of the investigation. It was clear the author made up details in a number of places and the author didn't claim it to be completely factual. The Complaint's comments here now give more credence to the book than it previously had.
  
  
• "XXXXXXXXXmanagement recently decided to reassign XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXto others including XXXXXXXand XXbelievedXXXXXXwould continue to have contact and mismanageXXXXXcausing other agents to be in inappropriate situations as I had been in the past XXXXXXX."
  There is too much redaction here to be sure what was intended. One possibility is that the Complainat is alleging that XXXXXX has been reassigned but with responsibilities similar to what XXXXXX had in the POLAR PEN investigation. You could argue that here is a situation where the Complainant is trying to prevent harm to others in the future - other Special Agents. But it also suggests that he is complaining that he was put in inappropriate situations - though again except where he says "XXXX gave sources information about the Complainant" - he never spells those out clearly. Are these just embarrassing and uncomfortable? Or illegal? Were they instances of harassment or mistreatment? Or did XXXX deem the sharing of information necessary to build trust with a source? In any case, if they were violations, the Complainant needs to identify the specific rule, give specific evidence, show that XXXXX actually did these things.
  
  
• I found out XXXXX is "in the process of writing a book and I feared more problems would occur and I would be in the middle of XXXXproblems again."
  What problems would occur? In the previous book, the problem the Complainant offered was that the source had information he shouldn't have had. If that happened with the author of the new book, then that's happened already (he already has the information) and writing the book isn't an issue. If publicizing that information is the issue (the Complainant did not say it was in the previous book) then the Complainant needs to explain that and why. Or is the Complainant concerned that he will again be a character in the book? We need an explanation of how that violates the rules or what harm is done.
  
  I really don't know what the rules are here and I confess to being surprised that Frank Prewitt was allowed, as part of his agreement with the FBI and Prosecutors, to write a book which, from what I've heard, the FBI did not read and clear before it was published. Was XXXXX responsible for leaving such a clause out of the cooperation agreement with Prewitt? Or was the Prosecution? In any case, is this a violation of the regulations?
  
  
• I've been encouraged by two other agents to report these problems.
  Whistle-blowers are generally encouraged to talk to mentors who have a broader view of things before filing their complaints. So, in principle, this is a good move. But one has to pick one's advisers well. Did these two have enough experience and knowledge about this case to advise him? Did he share enough information for them to judge accurately? Did they listen carefully and then urge him to file? Or did they not object to what he was intent on doing?
  
  
• "My efforts to rectify the problems have not been solved by reporting them to management"
  Whistle-blowers are almost always advised to go through the normal channels before going beyond the organization to raise the issue. So this shows the Complainant did that. Sometimes such complaints are rejected because they have no basis, sometimes because the management is covering up something. There's no evidence one way or the other here.
  
  
• "I re-read the FBI's core values and found they have not been upheld in the areas mentioned throughout the document."
  
  

I've posted these core values above. They're pretty general and they are about character not action. Is the Complainant accusing XXXXX of not being fair, not being respectful, not having integrity? Those are pretty heavy charges.

When people think there is only one right way to take in information, to draw conclusions, or to make decisions, it's easier for them to conclude that people who use a different method are wrong or even bad. One of the benefits of tests like Myers-Briggs is that if introduced well, they help people see that when other people have different styles on fundamental behaviors it doesn't mean they are bad or lazy or stupid, but that they approach things with a different style.


3. Organizational Culture - Women in the FBI

The FBI has been known to have a unique organizational culture. J. Edgar Hoover led the agency from 1924 until his death in 1972 - 48 years. During his tenure, women agents weren't allowed - see the excerpt below from Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones' book, The FBI:

[To enlarge, double click]

Once Hoover was gone, things changed, but while current FBI webpages say that 43% of all employees at the FBI are women, there are still only 15.5% women among special agents. [The data comes from the two FBI webpages below. 2,000 women special agents/12,851 special agents.]

On September 30, 2008, we had a total of 31,244 employees. That includes 12,851 special agents and 18,393 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals. (From FBI Website.)

Over 2,000 women serve as FBI Special Agents, many in high-profile, leadership positions. (From FBI Website - Female Special Agents page)

And today, based on the chart below, 74% of all employees of the FBI are still white. [White men make up 45% and white women make up 29.2%]

There are a lot of good agents who are strongly supportive of women and non-whites, I'm sure. But I suspect that there are still male agents who are not completely comfortable with the idea of female agents. That's the case of men in all organizational settings, even ones that are not linked to as strong a male image as the FBI has had.

I once heard a talk by a black, female CPA who worked for a major national accounting firm that helped me understand how this lingering sexism can work. She'd been invited to talk to an undergraduate accounting class at a major university. She talked to them about racist and sexist incidents she had encountered in her career. Students kept interrupting her and challenging her on what she said. Finally the regular professor intervened. "You've never once challenged me the way you are challenging our guest today. Nor have you challenged previous guests. Why do you suddenly feel that it is ok to challenge today's guest?" He then went on to point out that their treatment of her seemed to reinforce what she was saying about black women being treated differently, and with less deference, than white males.

I raise this as another hypothesis to follow up in this situation. If in this case the Complainant is a male and XXXXX is a female, perhaps some of the Complainant's discomfort is related to the fact that XXXXX is a woman who doesn't defer to his suggestions all the time. Obviously, this is a guess and I don't have any data to back it up. Would the Complainant have responded the same way if XXXXX were a male? Or is he like those students who feel more freedom to challenge a female authority figure than a male? And remember, I'm not sure that XXXXXX is a female. But should the genders be as I describe, this could be one of many factors that are affecting behavior here.

So, these are a few of the stories/theories that one could bring to analyzing this complaint to determine whether the Complainant has legitimate issues or not. I'd like to look at one more story - whistle-blowing .

4. Whistle-blowing

Whistle-blowers have a generally good positive image with the public. It's true that management may be cynical about whistle-blowers, but overall the image is good. Thus to call someone a whistle-blower, for most people, tips their initial bias in favor of the whistle-blower.

But there was a point while I was writing this that I began to question the label Whistle-blower. I went back to see why the label was applied. The Anchorage Daily News called the file of the complaint it posted "FBI Whistle-Blower Complaint Document." I checked the document itself again. It isn't labeled with the word whistle-blower. It just starts, "Background." There is no title, though it has a heading that says it isn't classified, but it is sensitive. I can't find the word "whistle-blower" until the bottom of page 6 (of 8 pages), "On 11/21/2008 I requested whistleblower protection status..." The only times it is used is in regard to getting protection from retaliation.

People do not have to label what they do by particular names. However, the more I read, the more this document felt like a grievance rather than a whistle-blower complaint. A grievance is filed by an employee who feels he has been treated improperly in violation of the rules and regulations of the organization. For a whistle-blower, the motive is not personal protection, but to protect the public from some significant harm.

James Bowman, a professor of public administration who has specialized in ethics defines a whistleblower as:

...an employee who reveals information about illegal, inefficient, or wasteful governmental action that endangers the health, safety, or freedom of the American public.

The Complainant in this case never discusses danger to the health, safety, or freedom of the American public. The Complainant does say that rules and regulations were violated, but the only consequences of those violations that he even hints at are dangers to himself.

• He didn't like that a source wrote about him in a book.
• He's concerned that a reassignment will lead to XXXXX "causing other agents to be in inappropriate situations as I had been in the past"
• He's concerned about a second book being written "and I feared more problems would occur and I would be in the middle of XXXXproblems again."

I've read the complaint carefully, several times. I can't find anywhere that the Complainant argues the violations "endanger the health, safety, or freedom of the American public." He never mentions that cases could be compromised, that defendants' rights are being abused, that sources are being coerced. Rather we hear that he is made uncomfortable, that his concerns are being ignored, that he's in the middle of problems.

This is all material for a grievance, not a whistle-blower. But for a grievance you also need to cite specific rules, policies, or regulations that were violated, which he hasn't done.

It is not clear to me when the document was filed. There is a date stamped across the top of each page - "Filed 12/22/2008." Is that the date it was filed with Judge Sullivan? I'm not sure. Was it filed with another agency first? I don't know. Another date is mentioned in the complaint - "On 11/21/2008 I requested whistleblower protection status..." Whether this is significant or not I can't say for sure. This was almost a month after the Ted Stevens verdict was announced (Oct. 27, 2008.) Already during the trial there were problems that were embarrassing to the Prosecution and to some extent the FBI. Was the Complainant worried that his record might be tarnished if some of the charges against the Prosecution stuck? It does appear that the main complaints stemmed from his relationship with XXXXX and then at the end he added the material from the Stevens case. Was this because it added more examples of wrong behavior? Or was it added to strengthen his claims against XXXXX? I have no evidence to answer any of these questions, but they might be useful to pursue. If I were to let my imagination run wild, I might even wonder whether the Defense was actively looking for some weak links in the Prosecution team. But if that were the case, I think the complaint would have been much better written.

A useful model to evaluate whistle-blower claims, also cited by Bowman and many, many others, but taken here from The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, is Norman Bowie's six criteria for determining if a whistle-blower's complaint can be justified:

1. The whistleblowing stems from the moral motive of preventing unnecessary harm to others.

As I've mentioned above, I have some question about the Complainant's motives. I don't doubt he believes there is a problem, but if his motives were to protect himself rather than to protect the public, he probably should have filed a grievance. Grievants also get protection from retaliation. In fairness to the Complainant, he really doesn't seem to have seen himself as a whistle-blower till the end, probably when people he went to for counsel advised him to ask for protection against retaliation. It was the media that seem to have plastered 'whistle-blower' all over this story. As I said, that word suggests that someone in the agency is coming forth to protect the public from harm. But there is nothing in this complaint, the way it was written, that can be characterized that way. This is, as I read it, a document to protect the writer from harm.

2. The whistleblower has used all the available internal procedures for rectifying the problem before making public disclosure. (This may be precluded under certain special circumstances.)

This seems to be the case. There is evidence in the complaint that he attempted different internal avenues. In fact, the whole process has been internal. It only was made public over the Complainant's objections by Judge Sullivan.

3. The whistle blower has ‘evidence that would persuade a reasonable person’.

This is a problem. He does not cite any specific rule, regulation, or policy that has been violated. There is little or no evidence provided to prove any of the actions mentioned - to prove they happened or to prove they were the way he characterized them. That doesn't mean they didn't happen, there just isn't any evidence other than his statement they did.

4. The whistleblower perceives serious danger from the violation.

If this is the case, he never specifies what that danger is and who is endangered, except himself.

5. The whistleblower acts in accordance with responsibilities for ‘avoiding and/ or exposing moral Violations’.

I understand this to mean that the whistleblower's position in the organization gives him responsibility to report wrong doings. This appears to be the case.

6. The whistleblower’s action has reasonable chance of success.

If we were just going to depend on the document itself, there's not nearly enough information. It all depends on whether the Complainant or others can identify the rules and regulations that were violated and can present evidence that what he claims happened.


4. Possible Conclusions

I said at the very beginning that there simply isn't enough information available in the complaint to have any answers.

There are two basic sets of charges:

1. Those that relate to how the Alaska Corruption investigations were conducted by the FBI, particularly in regards to relationships with sources.

2. Those that relate to the relations between the Prosecutors and the FBI during the Ted Stevens trial and how evidence was handled and communications with the Defense.

There are some potentially serious issues when working with undercover sources. At what point are the sources enticing the subjects into acts they normally wouldn't have performed? How do you decide who gets a reduced sentence and who doesn't? Will the outcome be that the some of the minor players end up getting the biggest punishment and some of the biggest players get off with relatively light or no sentences at all? How do you know for sure the informant isn't creating things to save his own skin?

But the Complainant doesn't raise such issues. His key concern seems to be that rules were violated - rules he never identifies. The infractions he does identify are mostly fuzzy. They have words like "unnecessary" in them. Determining what is necessary is not an objective, clear cut task. This is why we have a term like administrative discretion and why humans, not machines, make the decisions.

Even where there might actually be some more objective and significant infractions (it depends on what the unnamed rules and regulations are) like not keeping a written record of communications with sources, or the confusion between the Prosecutors and the FBI over who had control of the records, or the issue of turning over records to the Defense, the Complainant never talks about the harm to the defendant or to the public, or the effect on the cases or future cases. It's just about rules. When he does mention future effects, its about the impact on other employees, (concern in the heavily redacted point about a reassignment that others will face the same problems he had to face) but no concern is voiced about the effectiveness of the undercover operations or the success of the trials. (Also, the latter complaints seem to shift to decisions the prosecutors made, while the initial complaints seemed to be chiefly focused on another FBI agent.)

I also seem to detect that much of this is about the Complainant fearing that he will be blamed for things that other people ordered him to do.

• He doesn't like that one of the sources wrote a book which "mentioned me in multiple places."
  
• He expresses fear that a second book will be written and "more problems would occur and I would be in the middle of XXXXX problems again."
• He discusses the decision to send one of the Stevens witnesses home because of a serious illness. He was concerned that they should inform the defense first. "I was ignored. They had me send Williams home. The defense and judge found out, were very angry, and suggested prosecutorial misconduct had occurred."
  

While it is certainly legitimate to be concerned that one isn't being scapegoated for others' wrong doings, one would hope that an FBI agent is looking at the bigger picture. Generally, whistle-blower complaints are made when there is serious potential harm about to impact the public - hazardous waste leakage, infrastructure in danger of collapsing, serious human rights abuses. The Complainant may be well aware of that bigger picture, but if it is in this complaint, I've missed it.

If there is concern here that he might be blamed for what he sees (possibly correctly) as improper actions taken by others, there are ways to deal with that. As long as he documents that he voiced his concerns and that he was acting on the orders of others, he should be ok.

In any case, from the perspective of an outsider who does not know all the rules and regulations that apply to the handling of sources or evidence, in order to conclude that there were the violations alleged in the document, it would be necessary to have:

• a list of the specific rules and regulations that are alleged to be violated, and
• a list of specific actions that are violations (he has some of this already) linked directly to the specific rules and regulations
• the evidence that these things actually happened as he claims
  

This post is based mostly on what was written in the Complaint Document. Perhaps the problems he raises are legitimate and had he written a document that clearly linked the behaviors he mentions to specific rules and regulations that were violated, it would be more persuasive. That's why people hire expensive attorneys. And the Complainant was writing for an internal review system, if I understand it right, with no expectation that a judge would make his document public. But then he is an FBI Special Agent and thus should be better equipped than the average citizen to write a tight document and to know the risks of disclosure.

Bohemian Waxwings Visit

Update: Last year they came January 27. You can see the Bohemian Waxwing Video here.

The ADN reported that the Audubon Annual birdcount this year said the waxwings were the most numerous bird in Anchorage this winter - 22,000 - four times more than seen at last year's count.

One theory for the increase in waxwings over the last 30 years is the free mountain ash trees that were given away by oil companies in the early 1980s. We have one of those free trees. The other one was already a serious tree when we bought the house in 1977.