The following is only a very brief account of how the attacks of 9/11 impacted my life, the life of my daughter, and the life of my ex-wife. I will recount more at a different time and in a different venue, including exacting details...
The television was on, tuned to a news channel. I caught a glimpse of the World Trade Center with smoke rising from one of the buildings. I thought it was yet another small attack and thought little of it when a saw an airplane fly into the buildings and explode. This was something more, I thought. I telephoned my father in Boston. He was watching too. In shock, we hardly exchanged words. We both knew this was a turning point.
It was the morning of September 11, 2001. I had been employed at a defense contractor in Austin, Texas and was preparing to go to work. I was numb. A feeling I had never experienced before flooded my mind. Driving to work, I noticed that the faces of other drivers were ashen with shock as well. I saw one car miss a light and crash into another. No one's mind was on their present task. Everyone was bewitched by a surreal shadow of terror and confusion. I was no different.
At the office, everyone was gathered in the kitchen, a large room with tables, chairs, a refrigerator, and a microwave. The television was on. Every eye was glued to it. Smoke was rising from the towers. Reporters droned on about how the world would never be the same again. Other aircraft were on their way to other targets. The Pentagon was hit. Another aircraft fell from the sky over Pennsylvania, believed to be on its way to Washington, D.C. No one knew when it would end. All aircraft were ordered to land. The sky became quiet.
Overcome by shock, I knew I could not just sit down and work and it was clear from the emotions of my fellow workers in the kitchen that they too could not just sit down and work. I was director of the programming department. I sent an email to everyone inviting them to sit in silence in the conference room. I figured it would help some people to sit quietly with their thoughts. Only a handful accepted my invitation. The rest remained riveted to the television.
Word arrived that the CEO of our company could not return to the office immediately. He had been scheduled to fly in from Seattle, but his airplane was grounded, as were everyone's. Another worker was scheduled to return from Toronto, but she too could not. She would need to return by train as no flights were available.
At this time, we were working on a knowledge acquisition tool. Experts would use the tool to create a knowledge base on some topic. It was targeted for anti-terrorism work. The domain we were using as a test for the tool was biological warfare. The culprit was AL-Qaeda. The bio-weapon was anthrax. We had even met with John Poindexter, the head of an anti-terrorism project – the same John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy. When news later came out that the attacker was believed to be AL-Qaeda, jaws dropped in the office. How could it be that a “fake domain” used to develop and test a knowledge acquisition project knew in advance that we would soon be attacked by the same culprit? Of course, domains don't know anything, so stating it this way is pure anthropomorphism, but still, it was uncanny.
The attack upon the Pentagon convinced me that we were experiencing an act of war. Trying to clear my head, I walked out of the back of the building into the parking lot. I listened for airplanes, but I heard none. I was aware that all aircraft had been ordered to land but it was the first time in my life that I expected to hear no aircraft. After a few moments, I heard the growing sound of a helicopter. The sound grew louder and louder. I looked up. A military helicopter flew over my head. No one yet knew for sure who had been behind the attacks and the helicopter made me wonder if fighting might be underway within the USA.
Over the next days, many news reports came in that were hard to reconcile. Supposedly, the passport of one of the hijackers had been found in the debris of the crash in New York. I found that report unbelievable. The car of two of the hijackers was allegedly found at an airport in Portland, Maine, along with a Koran in the vehicle. “How convenient!” I thought. Reports of Israelis filming the collapse of the towers from across the river in New Jersey circulated along with report of their celebration after the fall. Had any of these reports been true? I don't know. They seemed to be true and verified at the time.
Three days after the attack, our CEO was able to return to our office. He called an immediate management meeting. As director of the programming department, I was in attendance. After a perfunctory and seemingly shallow statement about the losses we had witnessed on television, his mood immediately changed to near boastfulness and glee. “Many three letter agencies have been contacting us!” he said. “They are willing to fund any and all work we can do to help in the war against terror!” It was as if Christmas had arrived more than three months early. The eager expectation of profits could be felt. Even the former director of DARPA who was at that point an employee (thanks to the revolving door between government and private industry) was enthusiastic at the notion that we would profit from these tragic events. I had a very bitter taste of disgust in my mouth.
I cannot say that I am proud of my initial reaction to the events of 911. Having never experienced war firsthand, my primal and instinctual reaction was to join the collective sense of anger and desire to crush the enemy. In my case, this reaction lasted about one week. For most Americans, it lasted decades. After a week, it became clear to me that the attack had been all too convenient for those wishing to crush liberty. The President and his cabinet had been making statements to the effect that you were either with them or against them. All foreigners become suspect. Hatred erupted against anyone or any country insisting upon taking an objective position on the events. “French fries” became “freedom fries”. “Suicide bomber” became “homicide bomber” (as if “bomber” itself did not imply homicide). Married to a foreigner, as I was, people began to stair at my wife and I whenever we spoke Spanish in public. Relatives reported their own snitching to law enforcement when they say “suspicious foreigners”. I could see that we were entering a period of ulta-nationalism, belligerence, and bigotry. These were phenomena that I could not ignore. I turned against the American reaction to the attacks.
The narrative became that “they hated us for our freedom”. This Orwellian position was absurd. No one hates anyone for their freedom. One may be hated for many reasons, but freedom isn't one of those reasons. If it had been true that the attackers were al-Qaeda and if it were true that al-Qaeda had attacked, without inside assistance, of their own accord, then what had been the real reason for this hatred? Had it even been hatred at all? Had it been an answer to our own policies? One cannot say with a straight face that the USA had not been committing crimes against the Muslim world. The American alliance with Israel in crushing the Palestinians was but one of many factors over the past decades that could turn peaceful people into terrorist recruits. Had our own bombs created this reaction? If the attacks were an inside job, then we were our own enemy. If the attacks were not an inside job but a response to our ongoing war on Muslims, then we too were our own worst enemy. No matter how I looked at it, no matter how unjust this attack on our people had been, the fact remained that we ourselves has lit the fire that led to the attacks. Continuing or intensifying an unjust and genocidal policy towards the Muslim world was not going to put an end to the conflict. If anything, this would make it worse.
Back at the office, we were tasked with a growing number of projects to mine information for signs of terrorist intent and interest. These became known as John Poindexter's Information Awareness Office. As a curious person that uses the internet to gather information on all kinds of topics, I became concerned that such projects would 1) create false positives and 2) discourage curiosity. If one became a “person of interest” merely for searching for information on topics such as “how does a nuclear bomb work”, or “model rocketry”, what would come of our future? Would muzzling the minds of Americans make us stupid? Would it prevent the self actualization of future engineers? Would fears to research or fact-check the statements of the government be seen as subversive – preventing Americans from questioning their own government? If we were “either with the government or against it”, what role would the people have in governing themselves?
I became increasingly skeptical of the direction my work was going. My employer was willing to degrade our freedom in any way provided it resulted in more cash from three letter agencies (e.g. CIA, FBI, NSA, etc). How could I be silent in the face of such intrusions? How could I be silent, while our own government worked to imprison our minds and prevent us from questioning it? How could I be silent when immigrants, such as my wife, were now forced to live in fear of my government? I came to the conclusion that there was no fucking way I could be silent!
I began to act out. Online, I participated in many forums arguing against the official narrative. In doing so, I became a target of various right-wing trolls. I put up my own website and posted articles about how the growing surveillance state was positioning itself to monitor us, even when we engaged in innocent activities such as seeking information about what actually happened on 9/11 or satisfying our interests in science or hobbies. As I published more and as I argued more, my office became aware of my online activism. In a sense, they were correct to feel betrayed. I was no longer an ideal employee. My loyalty was to freedom, liberty, and the truth and not the corporation. Foolishly, I sometimes posted online from the office, too naive to realize that my online activities were being monitored. Of course, these were grounds for punishment, at least from the point of view of a defense corporation.
Various agencies, including the FBI, began keeping tabs on me. Former associates, ex-friends, and other creeps that had crossed my path, even in the distant past, began to stalk me online, using my online activism during a time when unity was expected as an opportunity to either even old scores or relish in the schadenfreude they achieved through anonymous online threats. It did not begin as a coordinated effort to harass me. It began as a “pile on” by anonymous bullies who were, in reality, cowards hiding behind their keyboards. I have learned the identities of all of the main players, but this essay is not the place where they will be named. Let it suffice to say that most are sociopaths. One even drove an employee to suicide.
I began receiving threats online, including death threats. One woman, a person from my past that I had thought to be a friend, turned out to be a government informant. She showed up at my office with another woman claiming to work for the Defense Intelligence Agencies. Shortly thereafter, I was fired from my job. Online, under her cowardly alternate identity, she took credit for that. I am not her first victim. When I knew her in the 1990s, she had gone to El Salvador on behalf of the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador. The woman that accompanied her, thereafter, became the target of right-wing death squads and had to change her name. Another of her targets later died in a car accident.
After losing my job, I moved back to Massachusetts where the local police began harassing me, parking in front of my house, and photographing me when I came and went. My wife of that time witnessed this as well. As I went on to protest the war by doing propaganda in Harvard Square, a police officer from my hometown (first name Edgar) infiltrated our small group and attempted to provoke violence. On one occasion, he attempted to plant drugs in my bag.
One day, I had received 3500 emails on a single day, all threatening my daughter, myself, and my wife. The harassment had included images of what appeared to be the charred remains of an infant. I decided it was time to go underground. We fled to another state and lived relatively anonymous lives. The experience caused my ex-wife to lose her mind (literally). My daughter was inflicted with anxiety. Stalking will do that to you.
The harassment continued for six years. When Obama was elected, it ended.
