"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:UBfQb.4483$U%5.26339@attbi_s03...
| Seriously, instead of doing a big background check and looking up all
your
| papers, sounds like the agent did the smart thing -- he just asked you.
He
| was able to learn a lot more about you and the issues involved that way.
| They would have noticed if you had tried to flee.
|
| Right. Had he been a real terrorist, Michael would have evaporated into
thin
| air when the doofus FBI agent left his card on his door.
|
| Criminy -- this "special agent" acted less covertly than I did when I was
| looking for dead-beat dads in the inner city. I sure hope his actions
| aren't representative of our national security efforts.
| --

The agent did not seriously believe that Michael was a terrorist and had
reason to believe that we knew enough about him that he was not a terrorist.

He may have told Michael that he had not looked at his INS file and may only
have been pretending to be ignorant of its contents. He might have gotten
more serious if Michael had answered questions contrarily to what the FBI
already knew.

The FBI routinely looks at your checking accounts when they begin an
investigation and would have done this before even contacting Michael. They
would have checked to see whether endorsements on checks deposited in his
account matched other signatures they had of his, for example. They would
also have looked for anomalous disbursements or deposits. This technique has
been so successful at uncovering terrorists that the FBI has not really
changed its methods in 40 years. Originally they started checking bank
accounts at random just to see what would turn up. They found one bank
account that had checks bearing five different signatures all with the same
name. They sent a rookie agent by the name of Jason Moulton out to stake out
the house and he ended up catching Patty Hearst and several other members of
the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not bad for a rookie. He told me that when
he went in through the back door that Patty Hearst was sitting at a kitchen
table, cleaning a disassembled weapon. He was real glad that she was not
armed.