Lane von Herzen: The Exception

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, April 3, 2023

The Exception

1. You have been told that a plumber and his companion have borne false witness against you in return for immigration favors.

Answer: I have been told that, yes.

2. Did a particular Notary Public provide a falsified witness statement, too?

Answer: I don't have that information, but I'm certain she was pressured to do so.

3. And the FBI has evidently returned to pressuring your youngest son for falsified witness statements.

Answer: So my stalker has alleged.

4. What is your take on this?

Answer: Far right segments within the FBI are essentially functioning in ways that indistinguishable from organized crime. The only way to oppose this insider threat is to expose it to the public.

5. What are the obstacles to doing so?

Answer: I'm not certain. I think that our democracy requires a federal law enforcement agency, but segments of the FBI that continue to lie about law-abiding Americans must be held to account.

6. In some ways the far right is playing a game of producing continuous falsehoods in the hope of implicating a whistleblower or one of her family members in criminal activity. Is that correct?

Answer: I believe so. Unscrupulous FBI personnel are not used to being caught. The institutional culture appears to be one of doubling down on falsehoods and never acknowledging the agency's malfeasance toward law-abiding Americans in any context.

7. What needs to happen?

Answer: I stayed up all night worrying about my stalker's assertion that the FBI had wrought harmful alterations to a water heater that was scheduled to be installed in our house this afternoon. So sleep needs to happen most immediately.

8. Did the plumber cancel that water heater installation?

Answer: Yes, and that was due to others expressing concern on our behalf, I'm sure -- an intervention for which I'm immensely grateful.

9. But even whistleblowers need to sleep occasionally.

Answer: They do.

10. There was a recent article in the New York Times in which Donald J. Trump was quoted as saying to CIA Director John Brennan, "Anyone will say anything if you pay them enough. I know that, and you know that." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/trump-justice-system-weaponized.html What does this sound like to you?

Answer: It sounds like a man who is familiar with the hidden scheme of an intelligence apparatus that is preying upon the virtuous public.

11. The far right has been developing this disinformation capability concerning the public for quite some time, without the public being aware.

Answer: These programs were probably always part of FBI's counterintelligence to a degree -- and to the greater loss of our nation. When we understand the ways in which the FBI was surveilling John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, we are right to be deeply saddened by those indefensible choices on the part of the agency.

12. You are saying the FBI's surveillance of those national heroes did not contribute to their longevity.

Answer: I'm saying that those national heroes still had a right to privacy, dignity, and respect.

13. When we look at Christopher Wray's FBI today, are the problems significantly different?

Answer: Our technology has advanced to the point that mass domestic surveillance has become achievable for the agency. We've turned parts of the agency into a technological marvel without ethics, a Frankenstein of sorts, and he is now terrorizing the town.

14. How can you stop Christopher Wray from coercing witnesses into lying about you and your family?

Answer: I can't point out Christopher Wray's troubling choices by myself. But I can ask others to assist me in revealing them to the American public.

15. Why is Christopher Wray leading the FBI toward disinformation?

Answer: That's not my determination to make, by any means. But I believe that organizations can only thrive when those with the highest character and integrity hold the highest positions of leadership. If someone with compromised ethics, a weak sense of empathy and conscience, a strained relationship with the truth, and an inability to reflect on mistakes rises to the lead position, dystopian programs will result.

16. And you believe it is dystopian for the FBI to be alternately paying and threatening informants to lie about law-abiding "targets of interest."

Answer: By definition. Secrecy allows the lies to be told by FBI affiliates in the first place. Secrecy allows that disinformation to be embellished and aggregated. And secrecy allows the system of falsified law enforcement reporting to continue. All of these steps are dystopian.

17. What's at stake in this issue?

Answer: Democracy. Civil liberties. Human rights. Freedom itself. Our beloved country. Priceless gifts, all.

18. Not things that can be bought and paid for.

Answer: Virtues are not acquired in a marketplace. They are earned.

19. So when Donald J. Trump says to John Brennan, "Anyone will say anything if you pay them enough," what do you answer?

Answer: Consider me the exception. My soul is not for sale. And I don't think the soul of the nation should be for sale either.