Lane von Herzen: AN OPEN LETTER TO FBI DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY

My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.

Monday, March 28, 2022

AN OPEN LETTER TO FBI DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY

March 28, 2022

Dear Mr. Wray:

At some time yesterday, my husband called my son with a reminder to obtain a smog check for his car in order to facilitate registration renewal in the state of California.

It is my understanding that your agents are now pressuring my son to render his consent to a falsification of that conversation to align with a spurious allegation of a crime that never occurred.

Mr. Wray, federal law enforcement should not constitute an exercise in creative writing. Nor should it entail false witness statements compelled by death threats, threats of job loss, surveillance, harassment and other egregious harms

The crimes of your agency are no longer concealed, sir.

Your agency is effectively holding a gun to the head of my son and his girlfriend in a reprehensible attempt to justify a physical attack on my husband and myself, either in the form of an unjustified law enforcement raid on our home, or though other extrajudicial harms.

Sir, cease and desist.

Respect the determination of your Commander-in-Chief and the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice by providing me with the full contents of material responsive to FOIA request #1496758-000.

Do so immediately, sir, as you have been instructed.

The Freedom of Information Act is a simple statute, accessible in its particulars to all Americans. It is designed to prevent abuses of authority on the part of agencies such as yours, sir.

It is not too grand a statement to observe that our democracy partly depends on the willingness of he FBI to honor and uphold FOIA.

Correspondingly, I ask that you turn your attention to this task, Mr. Wray.

Cease your attempts to justify your agency's lies about my family. Relinquish the material documenting these lies in their entirety.

This is your responsibility to me, as it is your responsibility to the American people as a whole. Your own chain of command has determined that you cannot shirk it any longer, sir. Hear them well.

Sincerely yours,

Lane MacWilliams