We're with Nobody (10 page)

Then there was the clerk in the criminal records division across town who invariably reacted with disgust over whatever request I made, no matter how routine. After appearing at their counters for several years in a row, both women began to recognize me, but for the criminal records czar, familiarity had bred contempt—beyond, even, that she routinely mustered for anyone who walked in the door. It was written all over her face. Sometimes, just to fulfill her need to hate me, I would ask her to check the criminal record of a candidate, and after she returned to say, in a borderline vicious tone, “
No
, there's nothing in their name
,
” I would depart, walk down the hall and then pause and return with another request, sometimes for a name I'd made up; once I even used my own. “Nothing on Alan Huffman? OK, thanks! Have a nice day!” The truth is each time I arrive in town I look forward to seeing both of these public servants, for different reasons.

7. If nothing you do dislodges them, mention the open records law, making sure to use the correct title, which varies from state to state. Even if the clerk is being adversarial, use a thoughtful tone, as in, “Oh, is this not a public record?” as if you don't know for sure but you assume they do. If that doesn't work, say simply, “I know this is a public record.”

Each state has an open records law, though they vary to some degree. In one race, a records clerk refused to give me a copy of a tax lien filed against a candidate. “Is that not a public record?” I asked.

“It is,” she said, “But it contains some information that is protected by privacy laws.”

“Well, then,” I said. “How does that work? It's a public record, but it can't be viewed by the public?”

She stared at her computer screen. “I can read the parts to you that aren't private,” she said.

“OK,” I said. I ended up taking notes as she read to me. It was a little unnerving when the campaign used the information in an ad, knowing that I couldn't produce copies of the document, but I knew where to send anyone who might challenge the claim.

8. If you encounter a particularly skillful opponent and he or she gets the best of you, owing to their vast insider knowledge of bureaucratic operations and the ability to frighten children
too much
on Halloween, move on to another task in another agency office, then return during lunch when someone else is at the window. The chances are they can't stand that person, either.

9. Admittedly, there are times when you may want to throw your laminated sheet to the side and say, “Listen, this isn't the CIA and I don't have time to stand here while you figure out ways
not
to do what you're paid to do. So here's a novel idea—
just do it!
” Michael loves this option, though I should point out that he uses it judiciously. Before you reach this point of no return, you should make every effort to exhaust all the possibilities and avoid a showdown, particularly in a building with guards, and when drawing too much attention to your request will ensure that someone will alert the politician, who will immediately start doing damage control.

10. When all else fails, ask to see the person's supervisor. Bonus points: Know the supervisor's name beforehand. You can find it on the office website or by scanning the room for photographs, employee-of-the-month awards or desk nameplates. Forcing the supervisor into play means bad internecine publicity; it indicates failure on the clerk's part.

If, by chance, you're fortunate enough to encounter a particularly helpful public servant, call back later, ask for the supervisor and tell them what a gem of an employee he or she has working for them. Few people ever do that, and they should.

Chapter 10
Michael

T
he last time I had the crap kicked out of me was in college. I don't remember exactly what precipitated the altercation that night, but I do recall being a tad drunk outside a convenience store, holding a bag full of greasy potato logs and shoving a finger in the guy's face. The only difference between then and right now is that I'm not drunk, I don't have any logs and I'm standing inside a county courthouse.

It's midsummer and I've been trying for a month to get my hands on one court file. I've had enough. Government offices, whether local, state or federal, can be difficult to navigate. If you're lucky you can just walk in and ask for the information. In other cases you have to fill out forms and come back a day or two later. In some instances you have to write letters, officially requesting the information under the state and federal open records laws that allow for its release. Sometimes, however, no matter what route you take, nothing works.

The file I'm seeking, which I've been told holds information about an infidelity committed by the candidate we're researching, is supposed to be stored in the county clerk's office along with every other court file. The case has long since been resolved, but this particular file has been “checked out” by the attorney who handled it. Why? Because he wants to protect his client from the damage it could cause. Over the past four weeks I've called and sent letters to no avail. The clerks don't know when the file will be returned and have so far not been inclined to retrieve it themselves. Even my phone calls to the attorney's office have proved fruitless. So, on this morning, I tell Alan I have no option but to drive to the courthouse and confront the bureaucracy in person.

“I'm going to spend an entire day on this bullshit,” I grumble.

“Remember to smile,” Alan says as I walk out the door.

It's a painstaking drive down rural highways and one-lane back roads to the small-town courthouse that is the source of my irritation. When I enter the clerk's office, I introduce myself as the guy who's been phoning and writing about the file that's not there.

“Still hasn't been returned,” one of the clerk's says quickly.

“Tell me,” I say. “If it
were
here, where would it be?”

She leads me back to a records room, points at rows and rows of shelves crammed with folders stuffed with legal papers, and tells me that what I'm seeking would be there, if it were there, which it's not. She asks if I need the case number to search for the missing document. I already have it, I tell her, and she leaves. I thumb through the files one by one in sequence until I get to the spot where it should be. There, in its place, is a small note card indicating that, indeed, the candidate's attorney removed the file some months earlier. I take it out, walk back to the clerk and set it in front of her.

“Exactly how long can someone ‘hijack' a court file?” I ask. “I mean, it's county property, right? Do you have any interest in getting it back?”

The clerk starts to formulate a response when she looks over my shoulder through the door of an adjacent courtroom, points and says, “Ask him. He's the one who has it.”

There, standing among a roomful of court personnel wrapping up some hearing, is an average-looking man in a dark suit packing up his briefcase.

“That's
this
guy?” I ask with my finger on the name scrawled on the note card. “That's the attorney?” She nods.

The object of my ire is preparing to leave, or so he thinks.

Housed directly behind the forehead of every human are chunks of brain called the frontal lobes. These lobes are chock-full of dopamine-sensitive neurons that help control our emotions. Their functions, according to medical books, are to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad conduct and to override and suppress unacceptable social responses. In humans, the frontal lobes reach full development in our twenties as we reach the cognitive maturity associated with adulthood. I can only assume, however, that sometimes, on some days, the frontal lobes simply decide to take a snooze.

Our conversation begins nicely enough. I introduce myself to the attorney, describe my problem and ask if I might see the court file that he possesses. He says nothing for several moments, goes back to his briefcase and then asks, “Why do you want it?”

My frontal lobes are apparently sound asleep. “First, it's none of your business why I want it. Second, it's not your file to keep. Third, as far as I'm concerned, you stole it,” I tell him.

The others in the courtroom, including the judge, are now listening. The rage I'm directing at this attorney is surprisingly fulfilling after a month of being stonewalled. He tells me he's not sure he even has the file. I show him the card with his name on it and he just smiles. This guy is a classic dick and all I want to do is keep going. I also realize that I'm in unfamiliar territory and, on one level, I understand the perils that can arise from starting trouble in a place where you know no one.

In the movie
Chinatown
there's a scene in which Jack Nicholson's character, Jake Gittes, a private detective, is tailing a man on behalf of his supposed wife, to see if he is having an affair, not knowing that he's been tricked. At one point in his investigation, which includes researching land and water rights records in the county courthouse, Gittes realizes that he may be bumping up against something bigger than one man's infidelity—something that involves political corruption, the swindling of farmers and a conspiracy to control the flow of water to the thirsty, growing city of Los Angeles. If there were any doubt about it, his suspicions are confirmed when a thug slices his nose with a knife for being “a very nosy kitty.”

Neither Alan nor I had ever been subjected to physical assault, but we've received our share of threats, and we take note of episodes involving others who encounter trouble on similar quests. You've probably never heard of Ajay Kumar, but he lives in New Delhi, India, and, like me, was just asking questions and digging for the truth. In India, any citizen is entitled to ask for information from any level of government under the nation's Right to Information Act, adopted in 2005. So when Kumar (not to be confused with Ajay Kumar, the world's smallest actor) discovered that private buildings were encroaching on government land under the protection of a local politician, he asked the Municipal Corporation of Delhi why these homes and shops were allowed to be built on property not zoned for private construction. At first he was denied, ignored by the public information officer. But he persisted and took his questions to a higher-level public information officer and then to the federal government's central information commission. Success at last, Kumar must have thought, when the commission ordered the local government and the police to inspect the property about which he had inquired. He must have felt a sense of vindication and pride that he had taken on the powers that be and won a victory, not only for himself, but also for his neighbors and the citizens of his city. He must have believed that the system had worked.

Unfortunately for Kumar, when he returned to the property a few months later, he was savagely attacked and beaten bloody with an iron rod by an angry mob of two dozen people who backed the politician he had crossed.

“Neither the police nor the people helped me,” said poor Kumar in a
Time
magazine article.

Miles from home, I wonder who's going to help me if this thing goes south. I don't know how many friends this attorney has or who they are. Maybe the sheriff? Maybe the judge? Here I am, standing in a courtroom, half shouting at a man I've never met before, all because he has a file I want to see. Is it worth it?

“I'll bring it back when I'm ready,” he tells me.

It's worth it.

“No, here's what you're going to do.” My right index finger is now about two inches in front of his face. “You're going to go to your office, get the file and bring it back to the clerk where it belongs. You don't own it and your client doesn't own it. It belongs to the county. So go get it.”

In poker, when players make mistakes because something has upset them emotionally, it's called “being on a tilt.” A player becomes so upset that he begins to make poor decisions. A player can sometimes go on a tilt simply because his opponent is obnoxious or rude. And a player on a tilt may begin betting with weaker hands than usual. While it's important to recognize when your opponent is on a tilt, it's even more vital to understand when you may be going on a tilt and figure out how not to let your emotions get the best of you. I'm definitely on a tilt, but it's too late. I've already laid down my bet and called his hand.

The attorney looks away and glances briefly at the judge, who, I'm relieved to see, has a hint of a grin on his face and a look that says, “Hey, don't ask me to help you.” It's just me and the attorney—no angry mob. Everyone still in the courtroom knows he's purposely hiding information he is not entitled to keep.

With few options except to continue ignoring me or hit me on the head with an iron rod, he finally agrees to have someone from his office return it and tells me I can get it from the clerk. A few days later I do, and it contains the information I am seeking. Though it was never used in the campaign, it was nonetheless a victory, the payoff for a well-played hand.

Things don't always end that well. Sometimes you meet assholes along the way. But fortunately it's rare for anyone to be killed or beaten in the United States today for merely asking questions, for seeking information to which we are entitled. Whether it stays that way in these volatile political times is anyone's guess.

Chapter 11
Alan

On May 14, 1993, XXXXXX advised the president that XXXXXX had participated in a meeting during which XXXXXX, XXXXXX and XXXXXX reviewed the XXXXXX of the XXXXXX (relative to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990) and concluded that XXXXXX would cause XXXXXX to XXXXXX.

A
ll true statements! It happened during the administration of President George H. W. Bush.

OK, so it's not a verbatim transcript. Michael and I long ago disposed of our copy of the original presidential memo, but such are the kinds of political “bombshells” we find among the files we receive from the Bush Presidential Library in response to our voluminous Freedom of Information Act request. The memos, covering the activities of a former presidential aide we're researching, are so heavily redacted that they contain few complete sentences. Scanning them for anything of value is a dizzying, futile exercise.

The administration's lack of transparency is no surprise, considering the availability of executive privilege, but we've arrived at the presidential library in College Station, Texas, hoping we'll get lucky and catch a glimpse of something substantive regarding a man being considered for an appointment by then-president George W. Bush. The prospective appointee, known affectionately as XXXXXX, had served as an aide to the elder Bush, and our hope is that the staff of the newly opened library is unprepared for the likes of us and might let the archived memos slip through. In fact the staff
is
unprepared, but we end up being denied anyway, passive-aggressively, no doubt as a result of a directive from above.

We're interested in four hundred boxes of files, only a handful of which have been opened for public review, and so we request access to the entire collection, which totals about forty-five hundred pages. After we receive our blacked-out copies, President George W. Bush issues a controversial executive order limiting public access to presidential archives. As a result, Bush also effectively closes his own gubernatorial files, which he had stashed in the presidential library rather than in the state archives, where they would have been available to scholars, journalists and the general public. Though President Barack Obama later rescinded the executive order, and the Texas state archives took the position that the gubernatorial files are state property, subject to the state's open records law, be forewarned: If you visit the presidential library in hopes of learning about the inner workings of the administration of Bush-the-elder as president, or Bush-the-younger as governor, you may want to have a backup plan. Otherwise you could be forced to spend your time chatting with a sweat-stained German tourist, which is what I do while Michael handles the dirty work of upsetting the records clerk.

Before arriving in College Station, we researched XXXXXX in various cities across the Midwest and along the Eastern Seaboard. It's now late in the season, and we've made the last leg of our journey, a seven-hour road trip from Jackson, in my silver roadster. Michael and I figured a road trip would be a nice intermission from the tedium and inconvenience of air travel and cheap rental cars. We'd be just like the two guys on the old
Route 66
TV show who roamed the United States in a drop-top Corvette, searching for adventure, never knowing what might unfold in the next town along the way. Except it didn't really work out that way for us.

Even when there's something to sink your teeth into, presidential appointments are notoriously difficult to derail. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings were notably contentious, focusing on allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual comments to a subordinate attorney, yet he was confirmed anyway. In our case, it was apparent that our research was going nowhere long before we arrived at the presidential library. Even the road trip was a disappointment. The summer sun was blazingly hot with the top down, and because Michael and I are middle-aged guys with thinning hair, we lacked the cinematic appeal of the hunky young
Route 66
guys. Plus, the highway department was in the process of repaving long stretches of I-20, which resulted in tar splatters on my shiny silver fenders, and after many long days together Michael and I were starting to get on each other's nerves. A side effect of trafficking in negative information is that it sometimes rides right alongside us in the car, with the inevitable result that Michael starts intentionally smacking his gum because he knows it annoys me. As we drove across Texas, I could hear his gum smacking over the roar of the highway wind.

Once at the presidential library, we spend several hours going through the indexes, compiling a list of documents we want to review. It's monotonous work, and when it comes time to approach the clerk with our request, I wander off to chat with the
touristischen
, who is dressed in the modern equivalent of lederhosen—maroon pants pulled too high, with fanciful stitching on the back pockets. As he and I discuss the landscape of America, I notice Michael occasionally glaring at me from his station at the counter, where a phalanx of staffers has gathered around the bewildered clerk to engage in familiar document-request sortie. At one point the German, discussing air travel, blurts out the word “Lufthansa!” very loudly, and everyone at the counter looks at us accusingly. The truth, meanwhile, is preparing to run for cover.

Irritation, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing in our line of work. It's one of the tools of our trade. Michael and I are driven by our irritation with mendacity and secrecy, and energized by the displeasure of recalcitrant records clerks. But we have different approaches to using that tool, which sometimes causes the interpersonal dynamics of Huffman & Rejebian to be fraught with peril. In short, we tend to irritate each other. We have managed to achieve a kind of détente, whereby we ignore each other's transgressions in service of the greater goal. But the truth is, like it or not, our differences serve the job well. Michael tends to be more organized and focused, less interested in the extras of whatever political drama we're following than in the key players and supporting actors, with the result that he may miss what to me are interesting and telling asides. I'm more likely to come back with something unexpected, such as when a random, rambling conversation with a retired logger revealed that a powerful congressman had facilitated the lucrative transfer of thousands of acres of national forest land to an old friend. Then again, I sometimes miss key dialogue, and my only takeaway is “Lufthansa!” Our different approaches to doing the work make it less likely we'll miss something.

As in any human intercourse, certain characteristics that are annoying or counterproductive in one application serve other purposes quite well. Petty attention to detail is useful when it results in important documentation; it's bad when it leads to painstaking concealment of the truth. It all comes down to what a person chooses to do with the tools at his disposal, which, fortunately, is something that can also be documented. A redacted document is revealing for what it refuses to say.

Politics is the engine of history, and its documentation provides the only permanent record, which is crucial considering that even on a good day the political world is characterized by barely controlled chaos. What people say and do, as reflected in the record, illustrates their fitness to lead during good times or bad. If, by chance, society should break down, as it did after Katrina, who would you want to lead you through the postapocalyptic landscape? Would it be someone who redacts memos? It would pay to look closely at what your potential leader chose to reveal—or conceal—and what they actually did compared with what they said or didn't say. Would you want your tribe to be led by a mayor who grants municipal contracts to political donors, or a waitress with the audacity to break into a flood-ravaged school and begin preparing meals on an open fire for hundreds of survivors? Would you choose as a leader a person who spent an inordinate amount of time in careful exposition, using buzzwords and entertaining yet unaccountable anecdotes, or someone who spoke honestly and only when he or she had something meaningful to say? Would you want someone who beat up his girlfriend in an airport terminal, or someone who rushed to her aid? Someone who feared public revelation, or was honest and forthright? And how could you tell the difference?

Even after years of researching political misdeeds, Michael and I are amazed by the lengths to which some candidates—on both sides of the political aisle—will go to get elected, and by what they will attempt to conceal or redact, or will publicly say, often in contradiction to the public record or in gross violation of logic. If a candidate has something to hide, it's very risky to try to conceal it, and if what he attempted to conceal is brought to light, how he responds is always telling. The days of closely controlling and containing information are gone. There are a host of carefully calculated institutional barriers, such as dazzle camouflage and time-honored subterfuge, which, like an old, drunk liar of a friend, will never, ever go away, and it does sometimes look like facts are going out of style. But facts have staying power, and sometimes the very act of concealing or attempting to conceal them is its own revelation.

Considering what can often be found in candidates' records, it probably should come as no surprise that some of them attempt to keep the public in the dark. For Michael and me, the worst case of political solipsism was the candidate who was running on a family values platform, which included something he called “empowerment of parents,” who nonetheless made personal loans to his own campaign and simultaneously reduced his daughter's child support payments to a mere $22.50 per week. He never mentioned this, of course, but it was there in the public record and he had no way to legally prevent its discovery. Whether the guy rationalized that winning would put him in a better position to support his daughter or was driven by blind, selfish ambition, he had a choice to make regarding his campaign finances. He chose poorly.

I can imagine how this revealing scenario began. The guy was probably behind in his fund-raising efforts and found himself wondering, “Do people not realize how expensive it is to run for office? Do they not understand how much is at stake?” Perhaps it was time for the campaign to send out direct mail and there was already a stack of unpaid bills from printers, the phone company and the local newspaper. As he searched for a means to make up the difference, he realized he had some money of his own that he could loan to his campaign, as candidates often do, though it wasn't much and there was still the matter of the freaking child support. What to do?

“Make the loan,” the miniature horned candidate on his shoulder exhorted him, while the tiny winged candidate on his other shoulder gazed out the window. So he made the loan and stole from his daughter. He shirked his responsibility as a father to save his campaign, and unfortunately, it paid off. He was elected. Someone, somewhere, dropped the ball. We didn't hear until later, back at the office, that he had won. It mattered a great deal to us that the wrong guy won, because his offenses were so offensive. Finding the truth can be arduous, or it can be as simple as taking the time to peruse a routine public record. Either way, there's no guarantee anyone will care.

Any candidate can pay lip service to campaign positions, but the underlying question, as he sits in repose under a sunlamp, or spends an evening sipping expensive wine with a lobbyist for a hazardous waste disposal company in a dim Capitol Hill bar, or exchanges an aching glance with an intern who sports one of his own campaign buttons, is what sort of documentable details may be discerned from the incremental decisions he or she has otherwise made—the contracts they've signed off on; the votes they've cast or missed; the political deals, big and small, they've been party to; the telling comments they've made in official memos. It isn't necessary to catch someone in flagrante delicto, though that's always nice, or to find that they've received an outright or even a technically legal bribe. You can find out a great deal of what you need to know through the public record, assuming no one has tampered with or censored it.

This is not to say that a candidate's history of late payment of taxes or his use of a derogatory term in a private meeting precludes him from being a good leader. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone says things they wish they could take back. Everyone redacts his public life to some degree. As Michael and I probe the recesses of candidates' lives I often wonder what details might be used against me if I were running for office. Promiscuity? Thriftlessness? That episode involving the Dutch guy in the Sahara Desert, the subsequent confrontation with the FBI and my not-entirely-flattering article about counterterrorism efforts for the
Washington Post Magazine
? Does my penchant for blithely sending untold tons of aluminum beer cans to the county landfill, rather than recycling them, undermine my avowed support for environmental causes, despite the fact that I've covered endangered species and once went on a Sierra Club outing involving a sailboat and a group of people who droned incessantly about birdsongs, which compelled me to wander off down the beach to go skinny-dipping in the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico alongside a family of porpoises? What about the time my dog bit a neighbor lady and I afterward told a funny story about it, numerous times, at parties? Could I be portrayed as insensitive, perhaps even a public nuisance? Do such details indicate my unfitness to serve as a political leader? Yes, absolutely they do. That's not the role you want me to play in our postapocalyptic tribe or in the proving ground of everyday life.

What you want from people like Michael and me is the ability to document and discern, to stand in the shadows of the campfire under the bridge and judge the behavior of current or prospective leaders, based on factual evidence. If we see the guy saying something that contradicts what he has been observed to do earlier in the day, we will let you know. Perfidy is like theft or any other criminal behavior: The tribe may be able to make use of it, occasionally, such as during a violent conflict—otherwise, no, and particularly not among the leadership class of a moderately functional civilization.