Who Knows What About You? It’s Well Worth Finding Out.

(c) Jeffrey Robinson 2023

In the spring of 1969, the FBI issued a warrant for my arrest. Apparently I’d been charged with several felonies, including armed robbery, aggravated assault and interstate flight.

Disclaimer: I have never robbed a bank, never assaulted anyone and the only thing I know about interstate flight is American Airlines #1 from JFK to LAX.

Needless to say, I knew nothing about any of this the charges against me at the time, and only discovered I was a wanted man in 1972. I was living in France and had gone to the US Consulate in Nice to renew my passport. I filled out the forms and handed the vice-consul the required $12. (Those were the days. Today passports cost $165.)

That man, who wouldn't shake hands and introduced himself simply as “Mr. Holmes,” was a caricature of ineptitude. A couple of years from retirement, he was one of those functionaries who viewed the public as an inconvenience, didn’t care to discuss or explain things because that was beneath him, and wasn’t going to do anything that could get in the way of keeping - as opposed to doing - his job.

With no sympathy, human understanding, kindness or emotion, he proclaimed, “I can’t give you a new passport because the FBI has issued a warrant for your arrest.”

He then refused to return my $12.

That was pretty shocking. The warrant, not the $12. And, sure, I would have insisted on the rebate, except I was suddenly worried that cops were going to burst into his office and put me in cuffs.

It took several disbelieving moments before I recouped my composure and I could assure him that an outstanding warrant against me was categorically impossible.

He wasn’t interested.

I tried reasoning with him by stating a few undeniable facts. That in the spring of 1969 I was an officer in the US Air Force, with an FBI security clearance. Because I was the staff press officer to five generals and three colonels, I had a Top Secret clearance.

(Sidebar: In four years, I only saw two documents with the words Top Secret stamped on them, neither of which had those words in flashing neon. They were small and unimpressive, the same size as Secret and Confidential, and that came as a huge disappointment. Also, for some reason that was then - and remains all these years later - beyond my comprehension, I had been granted a Human Reliability clearance. That meant, according to the FBI’s inquiries into my background, I could be trusted to be in proximity of nuclear weapons. Here I must explain that, at some point during my four USAF years, I saw a document that had been issued by someone somewhere in the Pentagon that was entitled (something like) How To Survive The Detonation of a Nuclear Device. The answer was succinct. “Don’t be near it when it goes off.” Which coincided with my immediate reaction to having been granted official permission to be nearby. It was, “NO!!!!!”)

I pressed my point to Mr. Holmes that, had the FBI really wanted me, they could have found me. They knew where I lived and worked. He was unmoved. I then wondered if the warrant was in my name, spelled the same way I spell it.

Holmes wasn’t in the least concerned with me or my disquiet. Whatever it was I might ask him to do, he wasn’t going to do it. “You’ll have to take it up with the FBI.”

I tried, “How can you be sure it’s me?”

He shook his head, “Sorry, not my table,” an idiotic reference to a bad waiter.

How about, “The warrant is for Robinson, J-e-f-f-r-e-y A-l-a-n with my birthdate?

Now he hesitated, then reluctantly admitted, “Not exactly.”

"What?”

It was like pulling teeth but he eventually confessed, “J-E-F-F-E-R-Y... A-L-L-E-N.”

"Then it’s not me.”

He repeated, “Take it up with the FBI.”

My supposed doppelganger turned out to be three years older than I, born in a different place and – Homes eventually had to mention, "It says here he’s black.”

Standing by my air-tight alibi, I volunteered for a line-up.

His response was, again, “Take it up with the FBI.”

With no way around this man’s singular stupidity, I phoned the US Embassy in Paris and, after being passed around to several people who, like Holmes, claimed this wasn’t their table either, I finally spoke with the Consul himself. He wouldn’t overrule Holmes, but promised to send a telex (that’s how long ago this was) to Washington pressing my appeal. A few days later the State Department agreed to renew my passport.

That, I thought, was the end of that.

Except it wasn’t.

A few years later, coming into New York on a flight from Paris, I was stopped by US Immigration because of the outstanding warrant. The Immigration Office reckoned he’d caught a bad guy. I explained the mix-up, a fast check was done, and I was allowed to go about my business.

Over the next 12 months it happened twice more. Having a criminal alter ego was turning into a serious annoyance. That’s when I discovered the joys of the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). As was my right – and still is - under FOIA I could see what information the government was holding on me. So I petitioned the FBI.

My file arrived six months later, with the usual forms relating to military service, including the security check the Bureau ran when I enlisted. It also contained the State Department telex confirming that this Jeffrey Alan was not that Jeffery Allen. Better yet, there was no copy of any warrant.

Officially, I was innocent. To hedge my bet, I carried that FOIA response with me just in case. Immigration never questioned me about it after that, so I can only presume that Jeffery was finally arrested. Neither Pacer (the US Court System website) nor the Bureau of Prisons inmate finder website show any reference to him. But then, this was more than 50 years ago, long before these websites were set up.

That said, without FOIA to get me inside my own FBI file, I would not have been able to protect myself should an over-zealous Immigration Officer decide he could be a hero.???

Since then, I have extensively exercised my right of access to information, asking for and receiving classified documents from all sorts of government agencies, including the CIA.

Needless to say, relatively few people ever bother to ask for – or have need for - CIA files, the way I did while researching my book "Yamani-The Inside Story." It’s the biography of a specular man, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi Minister of Petroleum and the face of OPEC. I specifically wanted to know what the Agency knew about the 1975 assassination of King Faisal at the hands of his nephew. Yamani was standing right next to the King when he was murdered. What interested me about the nephew was that he’d studied and lived in the States.

My initial request was turned down on the often used grounds that the files may or may not exist, but if they do, they’re protected by some boiler-plate intelligence secret. I immediately filed an appeal.? Nicely enough, in keeping with the spirit of FOIA, ?government websites tell you how to file an appeal. I sent mine directly to the named person who was then head of the Agency’s FOIA office. I said, “If the files don’t exist, you’re incompetent because they should. And if they do exist, you have to turn them over because they absolutely meet the requirements for a FOIA disclosure.”

I note here that, by law, there is no requirement in the FOIA legislation to explain why you want to see documents or to justify the information you’re seeking. Access to it is your right. Why you want something is none of the government’s business. What’s more, if the government decides there is a legitimate reason – as defined by law - to keep that information away from public view, the burden is on them to prove their case.

One evening, a few weeks after my appeal went to the CIA, my phone rang. We were living in London by then and my number was unlisted. The man on the other end asked for me and introduced himself as Mr. Whoever, the fellow I’d written to at the CIA. I hadn’t enclosed a phone number and asked how he got it. “I’m unlisted.”

He responded, “Come on, we’re the CIA.”

For the next 30 minutes he and I discussed my FOIA request. I was happy to explain to him who I was, what I was looking for and even why I wanted it. He suggested some parts of what I wanted were currently sensitive. And the negotiations began.

It was a surreal conversation. Here I was bargaining with the CIA over access to their files. We eventually reached an agreement. If I was willing to drop one small part of my request, he’d send me all the rest. I did. And he did.

Years later, I was able to find out what was in the files he'd held onto. From my point of view it turned out to be insignificant. Why kept it from me made no sense. At least not to me. The only way I can explain it, even now is - as he said - “Come on, we’re the CIA.”

Over the past 50+ years, access to information has become even broader and more open. It is true in the States. It is true in Canada. It is true throughout much of Europe. This is good. Sadly it’s not universally true. There are all too many governments that don’t want people to know the truth. Or, perhaps more importantly, need citizens to accept as fact the misinformation they’re selling.

As I said, I have used my FOIA rights often. Recently, I was researching a court case and a witness who, I believed, had lied under oath. I ran a series of thorough checks on her, which is particularly easy in these Internet and digital days.

(Spoiler alert: Never take as fact anything you find on the Net. Always cross check it at least three times with primary sources before acting on it. The Internet is not a source. It is a bibliographry!)

What I discovered was that she’d once been a police officer in a medium sized US city but had resigned after 14 years’ on the job. Retirement for that particular force is 20 years. So I asked myself, what happened that she walked away from her pension?

FOIA not only works on the federal level, but also on state and municipal levels, so I FOIA’d her old department for her records. It took eight months. When the files arrived, there were several unimportant pages. But two items stood out. The first was her letter of resignation, with a date that corresponded to a civil court action I’d been able to uncover by querying the state’s court records. The second was a request she made, about two months later, asking that her polygraph results be returned to her.

Polygraph results? I phoned the department and was told that all recruits are subject to a polygraph test, but that's a one-time deal. It wouldn't happen again unless there was some sort of official inquiry. I have since established that her polygraph was administered for good reason and that the results were sufficient for the department to tell her, resign or get fired.

It never ceases to amaze me what you can find if you know how to look.

Which brings me to this.

We live in an age of mass-information that documents so much of our life. Some of it may be correct. Some of it may be embarrassing. Some of it may be dead-wrong. You need to protect your own name and the way you do that is by finding out who knows what about you.

Step One: Get onto the FBI website (or any and all law enforcement websites, and court websites, too) and find the part of the website that explains FOIA. There is almost always a sample request letter you can cut and paste. You may say to yourself, why? I answer, why not? Mistakes happen. If nothing else, it’s a good idea to know that you’re not wanted for armed robbery, aggravated assault and interstate flight. Or, perhaps more importantly, that you are.

Step Two: Check everywhere else. Get creative. Think out of the box. Dig deep to discover what's out there. It’s amazingly easy, and it could change your life.

Step Three: Given the plague of identity theft that is sweeping the world, get copies of your own credit reports. This is really important!

Someone I know was refused a mortgage because, according to a credit bureau report, he'd been a bankrupt in 1955. He had no idea that this was in his file. And he found it particularly perplexing because he was born in 1960. He has since had that bankruptcy notice removed.

You are entitled to free copies of your own credit report every year from the three main US reporting agencies. If you’re outside the US, chances are that there’s a website somewhere that will explain how to do that where you live.

Check out the link below to the only website authorized by the US government to issue free, annual credit reports from all three credit reporting agencies.

Online: AnnualCreditReport.com

By phone: 1-877-322-8228 (TTY: 1-800-821-7232)

Or through the mail? by filling out the credit report request form on that website and mailing it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, PO Box 105281, Atlanta GA 30348-5281

?*****

(c) Jeffrey Robinson 2023

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