Father Byers, the FBI investigated you how many times? We want files! My real ID.

[[ I again put this up – for cause – years after I put it up originally, and with some revisions. Meanwhile, just the other day, this came in as a hit on the blog. Coffee-break? Or is it another “Who are you, anyway?” These guys don’t have time to look at blogs…

If they come to my blog on a named server, it’s because they want me to see it. All good.]]

The CIA and the FBI have a rivalry, right? So, here’s the high pressure repeated request from a self-described [ex-?]”CIA” guy who’s now […] as cover: “Father Byers, the FBI investigated you how many times? We want files! Who are you, anyway?” Of course, I myself wouldn’t have such “files”. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. And who is “we”?

Playing along with this kind of interview, um… interrogation… can be fun for me because I like nostalgia, a lot. He baits and is thus baited back, a counterintelligence dance: which investigations do I know about, or do I know what my ID really is? Who am I anyway? ;-)

The short answer to the question about who I am and how many investigations there have been on me is this: I’m nobody. And I don’t know how many investigations. Maybe just one, as in lifelong and continuous. I would dearly love to see those “files”.

The [ex-?]”CIA” guy’s question (going after me and my parishioners incessantly) is incomplete and therefore inadequate. Not so smart. He said he only wants files merely from the FBI? I mean, go ahead and include the CIA (“Dedicatio par aevum” memorial pictured up top, but I guess he would already have those…) and DEA and BATFE and DHS and ICE and TSA and, most importantly, Counterintelligence for Consular Services that was forthwith afterward, back in the day, sucked into Diplomatic Security Command Center in North Rosslyn. Be sure to include the dozen and a half other groups. In fact, include all those groups who were subpoenaed but who refused to answer the questions of Jason Chaffetz’s congressional investigation into Fast and Furious. Jason was ignored even though he was Congressional Chairman of Oversight. So, good luck with that, especially since I’ve been told by Main State that anything related to me has long been destroyed, the normal practice upon being placed into a perpetual interdepartmental program. Go ahead and ask for such files. Just know you might be asked, with polygraph, why you’re asking. Could be a career ending move, or send you to (an extraterritorial) prison.

My rap sheet: No felonies. No misdemeanors. Ever. Nothing pending. Nothing ever having been pending. No courts. No settlements. And nothing having been “wiped” from the record. Well… There are some things that may have disappeared from my rap sheet as a County Sheriff told me when I asked him about it – disappeared things such as being pulled over for not wearing a seat belt when I was constantly starting and stopping to deliver meals to the home-bound for the soup kitchen. The cop admitted later that he ticketed me for purely political reasons, what with me being Catholic in a Baptist stronghold. Anyway, that citation was, like, back in I think 2012. I found out at the court house that no one knew enough to grant permission about the statute at the time that permitted no usage of a seat belt in such conditions of constant stops because of soup kitchen service deliveries with permission. I can recall other times getting pulled over, like when my sister was teaching me to drive when I was twelve years old in 1972, and I ran a trick stop sign that was posted inches behind a telephone pole so that it couldn’t be seen. Other occasions do come to mind. For instance, I remember I was going a little fast – like 5 miles over – in making the 1000+ mile trip to my dying dad’s bedside back in the early 1990s. You get the idea.

A longer than short answer: I guess it would take an autobiography to even scratch the surface. I’ve had a pretty wild life. There was a time when I’m guessing that for a short while I was a most researched person in these USA. But, what do I know? That’s just a guess judging from the blog stats of hits from named and therefore not much secured servers of pretty much every intelligence HQ in these USA and around the world. You know the drill: USAIC, NNIC, DHS, DOD, DOJ, BATFE, IRS[!], SSA[!], FBI, CIA, Interpol, The Hague[!], etc., in so many centers for each all around, making the stats fly, scrolling quickly off screen, zip zip zip. I should see if I still have some screen shots from years gone by. Probably anomalous interest, right? If these were the named hits, I have to wonder what the blind hits were. It is what it is. At any rate, let me guess about a few incidents which may have instigated Federal research on yours truly now and again.

• In recent years I’ve received my concealed carry handgun permit here in North Carolina, which has (in some cases by far) one of the more stringent series of local, state (SBI) and federal (FBI) background checks in these USA, a fact opening up North Carolina to reciprocity in most states of these USA. North Carolina even adds what amounts to presently illegal (because of duration, many months) checks into mental health. No records of that for me.
• I got my Gold-Star driver license / “Real ID” when that was a thing and had to renew again in time for the election. This involves some pretty stringent background checks as well on Local, State and Federal levels.
• I’ve been fingerprinted and checked all over the world, not for any particular reason that I could put a finger on, as it were, outside of association and location, you know, just because I happened to be in terribly dangerous places really a lot with lots of terribly dangerous people, people who have killed really a lot of people, or who are in charge of the militaries of their countries, et al. So, it finally becomes the ol’ “Who are you anyway?” kind of thing, literally, pretty much everywhere. Embassies literally ask that question after calling me in to have a chat, all in frustration, not being able to get a grasp of what good old Diplomatic Security CC in North Rosslyn can do. Sigh. I mean, it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud. It’s so predictable.

• I’m still thinking about gathering some dates and info and documentation so as to sign up in the near future for Global-Entry, a jacked up version of TSA pre-check which involves checks even more stringent than for the NC firearms checks. This was still a thing in June 2020, except of course for uncooperative New York: see the CBP website. G-E involves checks against criminal and law enforcement indices (Federal, State, Local), customs, immigration, agriculture, and terrorist indices including biometric fingerprint checks and a personal interview (That‘s surely a well experienced interrogator). All the checks are not listed here. It’s a pretty long, exhaustive list. Fun! [I didn’t bother doing this because of Covid lockdowns, particularly overseas, where you could be imprisoned for the duration if you refused the vaccine, which I did. But as this idiocy is coming to an end in most places, I might just put this back on the bucket list.]
• Just because of past lives, as it were, I’ve recently called in some items related to financial groups and terrorism to, for instance – depending on the subject – Main State, Liberty Crossing Campus, the FBI. You can’t do such things without first being extremely thoroughly vetted by the FBI from multiple locations and on all sorts of levels. That particular and fairly recent investigation took fully two months: I was cleared by all five FBI research centers, each dedicated to different categories of crime. They’re relentless. Great. Those research centers are scattered throughout these USA. These series of checks are so comprehensive that they pretty much add up to joining any of our institutes or agencies minus the polygraphs. Thoroughness cannot be underestimated. Oddly, the guy taking the financial case wanted to know about terrorism. I mean, he asked about it like a half dozen times. Oh, I forgot, terrorism and financial malfeasance often go together. My bad. I finally told him that laundering such large amounts of money usually involves terrorist groups and, therefore, their financing. He knew I knew, and it all went forward.
• Of course, Main State and the FBI do not put one on a perpetual interdepartmental program for no reason. It costs them resources, financial and personnel, who have to track me and my boring life (especially when I travel overseas). My consolation is that there’s a tiny chance that they will be inspired by at least some of the things I write. Once you’re on a program, you’re on. That’s it, forever, as the FBI strongly insisted with me, drilling this into me, way back in 1996, four years after Main State insisted on this with me in 1992. There’s no way off as there’s nothing remaining after destruction of files [Ooops! There goes those “files” the guy mentioned at the top of this post was pressuring me about!] in order to base a new decision upon. It’s like the Seal of Confession. Even if the penitent gives you permission to break the seal you can’t break the seal. Someone could be putting him/her under some sort of coercion to request such a thing against his/her will (regardless of what he/she says). The information doesn’t belong to the priest. It belongs to Jesus. The same here: even if I request to get off the program I cannot do so. It’s beyond unmasking. It’s frustrating. There are summaries only with the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA. Part of the program is to be “accompanied,” even in a terribly annoyingly obvious way, especially at airports and inside airplanes. In analyzing this, the guy I call “The Guy” [an actual CIA guy] told me that this is meant to send a message to the idiots: If you mess around, you will be stopped. However annoying this can be, it’s also kinda nice. This started decades ago, perhaps when I was a teenager, in the mid-late 1970s. I need to write more about it. As mentioned above, Diplomatic Security established someone with a secured alternative identity, as they do, the problem being that it’s my identity, that being convenient, as that guy is like the same age and looks like me, and still, after a lifetime, has my life experiences in the countries where I’ve been, and, as far as I can tell, many of the same languages. He works for them. I’m groomed as the fall guy. This is the case for thousands of people in these USA at any given time. The difference with me is that I found out.
• More recently, seemingly in April of 2018, this was all jacked up a bit. Already being in the area for something else, I had gone to FBI ATLANTA to talk about options for that perpetual interdepartmental program mentioned above. I was delayed for some twenty minutes from approaching the security building, that is, until CTU Virginia showed up. We parked together. The last two spots. He accompanied me twice to the security building (as I forgot my passport and had returned to my car to get it). He delivered a printout and entered while I was told to just go to the window. That printout was given to the agent who looked at it, looked at me, looked at it, looked at me, looked at it, looked at me, set it down, shoved it toward me and said that he has no one presently there who can speak to this. I was able to read the author’s name and the provenance of the printout, DOD DARPA. Good old nerdy DARPA. They created some mathematical complexities using massive amounts of intel that they’ve categorized and turned into that which is actionable in the field for whatever “target” they have on “the list.” That, of course, makes me, again, one of the most highly researched people in the world. Huge amounts of resources are used for such targets. Just Google “DARPA COMPASS”. I assume that this, in my regard, is simply meant to assist whomsoever in my being “accompanied” (to use Pope Francis’ terminology). As I’ve written previously, I once told the guy who was established with my identity (yes, I’ve spoken with him) that I regret the cost of such accompaniment, but he instantly cut me off before I could even finish to say that such costs are entirely negligible in view of the scope of the entire program. He cut himself off half-way through the word “program” – as in “proooghh… cough cough cough” – knowing he said too much.
• I’ve been involved in one way or the other in numerous terrorist incidents [always on the right side of things, mind you], but enough to be further investigated through the decades by a number of countries, including the Holy See, Italy, these USA, Australia and, with some intensity at the highest military-intelligence levels, Israel. It is what it is. Try asking for their files on me, you know, like in המוסד. Good luck with that. I mean, would they give you something that had nothing to do with the real files? ;-) Either way, when you get those “files,” [pfft!] share them with me! Baiting for leakers is fun. I might even find out what is held to be my real ID. This quickly disintegrates into rabbit holes of counterintel mind games until, gaslighted, one can’t remember who one is anymore:

Having been trained into some basic counterintelligence as a teenager by a very special individual, I’ve never done the Jason Bourne thing. I never had to. In all of this, I apologize to sincere and patriotic agents of all our military and intelligence and law enforcement agencies. I poke fun at myself. I don’t mean to poke fun at you.

Meanwhile, to repeat, the reason for all the investigation thing is not because I’m special – oooh! special! – No. I’m a nothing. Nobody. And that’s the reason my identity was so conveniently used. I’m utterly expendable, truly nothing. I don’t count as a citizen of these U.S.A. I mean, the FBI were adamant about giving me an alternative identity so that I, as Father George David Byers, and a citizen in good standing, would just be disappeared. No more priesthood, no more family, no more decades of studies, all in favor of the guy who works for them and for whom I’m merely the fall guy.

I hope to be a citizen of heaven in the future. You gotta have hope, right? The original sin in which I’ve post-hoc participated, and all my own sin, is all written out in the wounds of the Divine Son of God, now risen from the dead. It’s in Him that we find our identity as redeemed and saved so as to walk in humble thanksgiving in His presence, in His friendship. Saint Paul speaks of this as the Body of Christ, Jesus being the Head of the Body, we being the members. That’s the ID I want to have. Jesus is the One. He’s the only One. And He’s the One to judge us, who we are before Him. He will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.

But you can’t get to know Jesus until you go to Confession. And only then, restored and brought to life, will you know who you are, your “real ID”, in Jesus. I’m just another soul who goes to Confession. I know the following and so should we all:

• Psalm 139 For the leader. A psalm of David. Oh LORD, you have probed me, you know me: you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, LORD, you know it all. Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me. Such knowledge is beyond me, far too lofty for me to reach. Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, you are there too. If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast. If I say, “Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light” — Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one. You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be. How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them! Were I to count, they would outnumber the sands; to finish, I would need eternity. If only you would destroy the wicked, O God, and the bloodthirsty would depart from me! Deceitfully they invoke your name; your foes swear faithless oaths. Do I not hate, LORD, those who hate you? Those who rise against you, do I not loathe? With fierce hatred I hate them, enemies I count as my own. Probe me, God, know my heart; try me, know my concerns. See if my way is crooked, then lead me in the ancient paths. (nab)

You want to know about my life? You sure you got the right guy? Have at it. But, I say, and so should we all: Jesus Christ, you are my life! Jesus is the One who is forgotten by so many looking so desperately for their identities. I insist, and so should we all:

Jesus Christ: You are my life!