Even the Smallest Person

1.  What are your thoughts about the alleged assault against your older son with a powerful DEW on Friday night, April 28, 2023?

Answer:  My thoughts are that someone should be interrogating Ruben Tamayo.

2.  What does it signify that the far right within the FBI and its affiliates appears to be wielding DEWs against the law-abiding American public?

Answer:  It signifies that the far right feels justified in perpetrating actions consistent with covert war in order to achieve dominance and control over the law-abiding American public.

3.  It appears possible that far right FBI personnel have established a line of communication with your older son through his electronic devices.

Answer:  It appears possible, yes, although I do not believe that line of communication is overt.  Having said that, my older son has never expressed that he wants me to stop pursuing my FOIA request because I have "angered a lot of powerful people within the FBI" before now.  His accusations yesterday were unprecedented and unfounded, and his language did not represent his own vernacular.  

Anytime a friend or relative expresses to me out of the blue that I should abandon my FOIA request, I become concerned.

4. Why are you unwilling to abandon your quest for these materials?

Answer:  For the same reason that a good person is unwilling to abandon the truth.

I believe that, if falsified law enforcement reporting is allowed to continue, American democracy will ultimately be forfeit.

Many other democracies rely on the health of our own, so the stakes are astonishingly high.  The balance between democracy and autocracy is teetering.  We want to do everything we can to ensure that democracy can prevail.

5.  Your stalker recently suggested, once again, that you should accept materials responsive to your FOIA request that omit an AI-geneerated film bearing your likeness, and that you should do so in return for immense financial rewards.

Answer:  Specifically, he suggested that Q-Anon, with which the alleged AI film is consistent, might be exposed if all materials due to me under the Freedom of Information Act are provided to me.

6.  And what is your response to that suggestion?

Answer:  My response is that 41 million otherwise rational Americans believe in QAnon.  If far right segments of the FBI have participated in a scheme to falsely accuse law-abiding American citizens of crimes they never committed in a manner consistent with QAnon conspiracy theory, we need to gain access to truth of this matter.

7.  There are no circumstances under which you would accept a redacted report.

Answer:  There are none.

8.  You have said previously that the far right is thoroughly involved in human trafficking within the United States through Russian-affiliated organized crime.  

Answer:  That appears to be the case.

9.  And you have also surmised that a portion of "funds" derived from human trafficking may be extended as payoffs to high-ranking FBI officials on the far right.

Answer:  My stalker appears to have claimed these payoffs exist.

10.  Is it possible that far right factions within the FBI are essentially projecting their own crimes onto innocent Americans?

Answer:  Projection is a complex phenomenon.  But, to the extent that these individuals feel guilty about their crimes, and to the extent that wish to rid themselves of that sense of shame, yes, they may be attempting to acquit themselves through casting blame on the innocent.

11.  You referenced a film you saw recently, "Judgment at Nuremberg," as addressing this.

Answer:  Yes, I did.  There's a memorable speech by one of the defendants in this narrative, a German judge who condemned many innocents to death under Nazi rule.  And the relevance of his words to our historical moment is inescapable:

There was a fever over the land, a fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger.  We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within.  Above all there was fear, fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves.  Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler means to us, because he said to us:

"Lift your heads.  Be proud to be German.  There are devils among us, communists, liberals, Jews, gypsies.  Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed."

It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb.

What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies?  Why did we sit silent?  Why did we take part?  Because we loved our county.  What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights?  What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?  It is only a passing phase.  It is only a stage we are going through.  It will be discarded sooner or later.  Hitler himself will be discarded -- sooner or later.

12.  There is self-delusion within this monologue.

Answer:  Yes, in the same way that some of those among the American public are responding to the hatred and invective of the far right at this time.

We need to help people to see beyond the scapegoating to its true motives and its true ends.

13.  Why is that so important?

Answer:  Slander and defamation always accompany human atrocities.

We need to rigorously evaluate political movements that depend upon discrediting law-abiding citizens of the United States.

Their motives are not benevolent.  Their means are not peaceful.

14.  Do we as a society possess the courage to expose the crimes of the far right within the FBI?

Answer:  The far right is currently recording Americans' conversations without their knowledge or consent.  If someone comes close to revealing these and other crimes, they and their family members are assailed in myriad other ways.  If someone in a whistleblower's family is ill, God help them.  The FBI's exploitation and predation toward these individuals is unconscionable.  Any outburst on the part of someone who is ill or confused or tired, as my son has been ill and confused and tired, will be used against them in perpetuity.

We need to ask, out of common decency, does a young man who has a pituitary tumor caused by FBI predations deserve privacy and safety from further FBI predations?

The far right has no limits, so how do we plan to limit their crimes?

In the absence of our determination to confront these criminals now, the perils for our democracy will rise.  Our civil liberties and human rights will become a memory.  

Those of us who love our country are striving to ensure that won't happen.

Do we have the courage?  

I do.

And I know I'm not alone in this.

15.  Your son asked you yesterday why you would never consider abandoning your FOIA request.  What was your answer?

Answer:  If I were to abandon my FOIA request, I would be abandoning the four innocent people within my family, the dozens of innocent people within my neighborhood, the thousands of innocent people within my community and the millions of innocent people within my nation.

And I will not abandon them.

16.  Is this a question of character for you?

Answer:  This is a question of soul.  

There's a resonant quote from Lord of the Rings, "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

Any one of us might be the person who has that opportunity to change the world for good.

I always assume that person might be me -- in which case,  I'm going to invest everything I have in that effort.

Lane MacWilliams

************************************************************************************

The FBI is a deeply divided agency.  There are many FBI employees who view their vows to the Constitution with the utmost seriousness and honor, and who strive to defend the fundamentals of our democracy with courage, fortitude and commitment.  The fact that some segments of the FBI appear to have embraced a lawless course is not a justification to assail the FBI in general.  As President Joseph R. Biden has so rightly expressed, violence is never justified in any circumstance.  The rule of law must always be honored and upheld.  It is our shared determination to preserve the civil liberties and human rights of all Americans that renders the United States a democracy.  We must never abandon this promise. All of our most cherished freedoms depend upon it.