Lane von Herzen: Mr. Doug Bodin and the Right to Patient Confidentiality

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.

Friday, July 15, 2022

Mr. Doug Bodin and the Right to Patient Confidentiality

The following is a letter I sent to the Office of the Inspector General Hotline of the U.S. DOJ on July 13, 2022. Certain information has been redacted in order to preserve patient confidentiality.

July 13 2022

To the Office of the Inspector General Hotline, U.S. DOJ:

It is my understanding that, following a long and unexplained delay in communicating, Mr. Doug Bodin of The Bodin Group in Los Altos, CA will be meeting with xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx for the first time this Friday, July 15, 2022.

xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx's progress has been complicated by the ethical and professional failures of Dr. JB and Dr. KS in their apparent compromise of xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx's care through their acceptance of pay for informant roles prescribed by the FBI.

These doctors have violated the fundamental requirements of doctor/patient confidentiality with which my family has entrusted them in their treatment of xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx. Beyond this, they have actively contributed to falsified law enforcement reporting regarding our family, going so far as to extend knowingly false assertions to my husband regarding our family's health and well-being during phone calls which were recorded. One or both of them apparently suggested to my husband that, given my commitment to exposing the truth of FBI malfeasance toward "targets of interest," my husband should "move out of the house" in order to "reclaim his life." This guidance, so I am informed, was specifically directed by FBI personnel.

Clearly, this conduct stands in flagrant violation of professional medical guidelines, as well as law enforcement prerogatives.

I do not know Dr. JB or Dr. KS, except that I would be able to select them out of a line-up of criminal suspects if asked to do so.

The primary point is that xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx has a right to access medical health care professionals without worrying whether they are being coerced by the FBI and compensated by Infragard. Such conflicts of interest presented by physicians accepting remuneration for predatory practices represent astonishing ethical failures on the part of these doctors.

The knowingly false assertions these two individuals extended to my husband served to undermine my credibility to the extent that they seriously endangered others' investigation of falsified law enforcement reporting for anti-democratic objectives.

Given the FBI's distortions of the truth, breaches of professional ethics, violations of Americans' privacy, and assaults on the rule of law in the agency's apparent effort to conceal its corruption of the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative and its affiliated "target of interest" program, it would be surprising if Mr. Doug Bodin had not been conscripted into the agency's recent efforts to discredit my family.

I would ask that the OIG Hotline please be alert to any "witness statements" coerced from Mr. Bodin, as the falsifications therein could be of substantive concern to my family's well-being.

I believe the FBI has demonstrated that it is intent on utilizing lies to claim that my family members represent some sort of "national security threat," when in truth, we are entirely honorable, peaceable, and law-abiding. The security threat to our Constitution resides within the FBI itself, which seems to feel that it is above the law in advancing a political agenda within the United States which is contrary to the principles of democracy.

I happened to read Edward Snowden's book, Permanent Record, recently. In it, he explains that the FBI is less interested in plausible deniability regarding its crimes than it is committed to never getting caught. Given that materials responsive to my FOIA requests almost certainly "catch" the FBI in falsified law enforcement reporting against law-abiding American citizens, I can see the rationale for the FBI's rather outsized desire that its crimes should not be revealed in the public realm.

Still, our democracy requires that the truth of the FBI's actions be fully illuminated.

I would hope that Mr. Doug Bodin would be as committed to his professional code of conduct as these circumstances require. However, not knowing him, I cannot assume his integrity in this regard. Correspondingly, I would ask that the OIG Hotline please remain watchful for any false denunciations originating from this source.

Most sincerely,

Lane MacWilliams