When does legitimate investigation become harassment? Not in my case; at least not yet. But had the Unabomber’s brother not turned him in, the Unamericans might never have caught him. (He had not been under FBI investigation.) Of course, he was eventually arrested, tried, and convicted (he pleaded guilty in 1998), whereas I am still out of prison. What does it mean to say the system worked?

As Steinbeck wrote about the Ku Klux Klan: “The totem has certain rules, almost natural laws. It must be secret, exclusive, mysterious, cruel, afraid, dangerous, and monstrously ignorant.”

William T. Vollmann, “Life as a Terrorist: Uncovering My FBI File”