Updated: A Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving: Betrayed by the FBI

When is the promise of the American family most heartbreakingly betrayed?

When the FBI frightens a young man so thoroughly that he feels coerced into misreporting to his handler about his law-abiding parents.

This astonishing abuse of power on the part of my son's FBI handler made itself felt at my family's Thanksgiving Day feast when my son Duncan brought up one misleading conversation after another at his handler's specific directive.

First, Duncan spoke in a rather aggressive manner about his older brother, who is suffering from health concerns which I will not name here due to his privacy rights.  Duncan suggested loudly that his brother was "spending sixteen hours a day in bed," and seemed to pointedly challenge my response and that of his father.  Whether he has been pushed to describe us as neglectful or disengaged parents is difficult to say.  But it was clear to me that Duncan's normal compassionate concern toward his brother was lacking.

Is it true that the FBI has coerced Mr. Doug Bodin into falsifying statements about our family as a backup testament to Duncan's planned witness statements?  I don't know.  I can only report that my stalker has repeatedly alleged this has occurred.

What is the truth of this matter?  That unwarranted surveillance by the FBI and its affiliates often prevents appropriate health care access, because individuals are fearful that their private health information will be treated disrespectfully, as the FBI has shown a decided predilection to do.

The FBI is functioning as the arsonist/firefighter in this scenario.  The agency creates a problem by violating doctor/patient confidentiality, then criticizes its "targets" for struggling to improve in the midst of a loss of privacy and safety.

Later in the afternoon yesterday, when Duncan appeared to discover a small leak of moisture from our refrigerator door due to a faulty door seal, he rather loudly proclaimed, "The house is falling apart!"  He appeared to be advancing an agenda that the house was in disrepair as a means of establishing some unknown assertions regarding our well-being as a family.

Over dinner, Duncan spent an inordinate amount of time discussing Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore and Sean Connery as alternate "James Bonds."  Why did this conversation feel so forced, so rehearsed?  Was it because his FBI handler had instructed him to prolong a conversation the subject of which could be later reported in a witness statement to be "spying"?  The entire ruse seemed transparent and ridiculous.

At one point, Duncan entered his bedroom closet in an apparent search for his childhood "paintball gun."  When he persisted in his search, I assured him that I had not moved any of his belongings.  When he continued searching, I asked him whether he needed this item for self-protection.  He responded by suggesting that I myself might need it.  When I told him I did not, he asked "Why?  Have you made an upgrade?"  I answered him by stating "No comment."

My son Duncan and I disagreed fairly strenuously about politics.  I explained to Duncan that I am an ardent supporter of  President Joseph R. Biden.

It seemed to me that Duncan had been instructed by a third party to make the suggestion that some Democrats desired a "thirty-year-old" in the next election.

I happen to know that Duncan strongly supports President Biden, so I found his comment entirely uncharacteristic.

I explained to Duncan that President Biden is not replaceable as an extraordinary leader of character and integrity who is able to guide us through the FBI's unconstitutional challenge to our democracy through its violations of law-abiding American citizens' civil liberties and human rights.

I further explained that President Biden understands, more than any president in the last sixty years or more has understood, that the challenges to our democracy are unique and unprecedented in nature and breadth.

Duncan made some damaging comments about former President Obama with which I did not agree.  I voted for President Obama twice and I was honored to do so.  These comments, too, seemed to originate from an FBI viewpoint.

While I wish the NSA had not doubled in size in its rapid expansion just prior to 2016, it is now clear that the leadership of the NSA and affiliated agencies at that time was lying to Congress and the Executive Branch about its programs of mass surveillance directed toward the law-abiding American public.  James Clapper told Congress that such information was being collected "only unwittingly."  The American people and their duly elected representatives believed him.

At this point, former President Obama, so I understand, has turned his full support to President Biden in countering the FBI's unconstitutional bid for autocracy.  I stand proudly in agreement and solidarity with former President Obama's principled stance.

What other strange and misleading conversations did Duncan initiate on Thanksgiving Day?

He asked me whether I favored President Biden so much that I would vote for him for a THIRD TERM.

I told him that I would never favor violating the Constitution, and neither would President Biden.

An audio recording of this commentary could easily be edited to leave out the mention of the "third term" and the Constitution, creating a dialogue which never happened.  The FBI would no doubt like to suggest that I would not vote for President Biden again.

So, let me be absolutely clear:  I WILL BE VOTING FOR PRESIDENT JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN IN 2024.

AND I WILL BE DOING SO WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM.

Duncan asked me in a very assertive manner whether I had voted in the midterm elections.  I assured him that I had.  My husband Ken MacWilliams returned my ballot together with his own and that of my older son to the polling station at the Portola Valley Town Hall on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

However, the manner in which Duncan pressed me on the question of whether I had voted made me wonder whether the FBI could have pulled my ballot from the voting station or otherwise voided any record of it.

I remain extremely concerned about this possibility.

I view voting as both a privilege and a responsibility, and I would never miss the opportunity to research candidates and propositions and cast my ballot.

To be clear on this point:  I VOTED IN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS OF 2022.

I feel deeply concerned about the manner in which Duncan's FBI handler may attempt to mischaracterize our conversations on Thanksgiving.  As much as I love my son, I do not feel safe and secure when considering the manner in which the FBI may attempt to twist my words or my husband's words in order to assert falsehoods about our beliefs or our viewpoints.

I do not believe that it will be possible for me to spend further time with my son as long as he is filing "witness reports" regarding his conversations with us as his law-abiding parents.

The potential for harm due to his handler's false assertions regarding our dialogue is far too great.

No FBI handler should be dictating my conversational topics with my family members on Thanksgiving.  No FBI handler should be lying about those conversations.  No FBI affiliates should be re-editing audiotapes of those conversations to create dialogue that never occurred.  And no FBI handler should be pressuring my son to equivocate or outright lie about what was said during our conversations.

Out of an abundance of caution, I recorded the whole of my conversation on the afternoon and evening of Thanksgiving Day, along with Duncan's conversations with other family members.

I can make this recording available to the OIG Hotline upon request.

How do I feel in the wake of this experience?  Well, as I have explained to my son over text messages today, there will never be a safe way for him to engage with FBI personnel who wish to harm his virtuous parents, and who wish to harm many, many other law-abiding American citizens alongside them.  There is no payoff that is worth such a betrayal, and there is no "safety" that is worth such a deceit as his FBI handler demands of him.

For Duncan, complete disconnection from unscrupulous men within the FBI remains the only path forward.

Once he makes that wise choice, the reclaiming of his family life will become possible.

Recently, I received the following messages from my stalker, who is a paid FBI affiliate:

The FBI's ethos, here described as "deceive, distract, divide" is sometimes alternately outlined as "disrupt, discredit, divide."  

Either way, it's a long distance from Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving, isn't it?  In Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving, painted in November 1942, the enemy was not within.  Rather it was represented by Hitler's annihilating species of Fascism, which was determined to murder millions upon millions of innocents for reasons of hatred and nothing more.

The Wannsee Conference had occurred eleven months earlier, in January of 1942, establishing a monstrous plan of genocide toward European Jews.  But most of the world was unaware of Hitler's conspiracy to commit mass murder-- despite the overt horrors of World War II.

Around Norman Rockwell's table, there was love and trust and a shared sense of joy.

"Freedom from Want," was Rockwell's chosen title for this work, and I think the description is perfectly insightful.

The American promise is not made up of material plenty, of course, although the American dream might have us believe so.

But no.

The American promise is comprised of freedom from deprivation.

In the FBI's form of Fascism, the greatest deprivations our country will face will be those of trust, safety, privacy, honesty, faith, dedication to the civil liberties of our fellow Americans, the functioning rule of law, and the loving bonds that render our families whole.

Compared to those most meaningful gifts, the turkey and trimmings are rendered a delight in miniature.

The real question for our country remains this:  can we rescue our families, our communities, and our nation from an FBI that would turn us against one another in order to accrue undeserved, unelected, and unchecked power within the agency's ranks?

President Biden and his administration, along with valued members of former Democratic administrations, may soon help us answer that question.

In the meantime, we must hold hope that more honest and worthy days will find the American electorate.  And soon.

Lane MacWilliams