NOT EXACTLY DOUBLE-0-7
Is Everyone Around Here Named "Brown"?
War Stories
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#19/I Extend My Government Service
After my discharge from the army, I decided to stay in Europe for a while. I was not just ready to face civilian life back in the United States. I knew it was a society which had progressed without me there - it had moved forward eighteen months while I had not. I was just not prepared to face the changes back home.
One fragment stored in my memory was that experience of sitting a few hundred yards from the Czech border for a half year. I was a medic in a recon platoon - while the Soviet army tightened its grip of control on the other side. Now, I really wanted to see what it was like inside that country. I went to the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt one day to see if I needed special permission to go there after I got out of the army.
The clerk at the desk asked "Why do you want to go there?"
"I'm just curious about what life's like there with the Soviets running things. You see I was a medic..."
She cut me off, "No, you don't need our permission."
"Even if I have a fairly high security clearance?"
She laughed, and said, "That's not a problem, you can go there if you want - but you must get a visa from the Czech trade commission down the street." She then chuckled as if to say that's probably an impossible task.
Then she noticed my fancy cameras (bought an hour before in the army P-X) hanging from my shoulder and asked if I knew how to use them.
I nodded, "Yes."
"How well?"
"VERY!"
Then came a question that surprised me: "Would you care to do some work for us?"
I tried to hide my breath taking excitement and managed to avoid saying "Hell yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! Are you nuts - of course, where do I sign up?" Instead, I put on my best acting face showing boredom and said "Possibly."
She pointed to a hallway to my left and instructed me: "Follow that about halfway to the end and push a door bell on the wall and ask for 'Mister Brown'."
The button on the wall was easy to find, but I thought it strange there were no doors on that side of the hallway. I pressed the button but heard nothing. I wondered if anyone heard my signal anywhere in the complex. Just when I decided the button was broken, a voice sounding quite annoyed came out of a speaker in the ceiling: "May I help you?"
"I'm here to see Mister Brown."
"When you hear the buzzer, press on the wall in front of you." What? These bozo breaths are watching too many episodes of GET SMART. "BUZZ." I pressed and the panel swung in to reveal a room with no windows - just lots of maps for wallpaper. The room was well lit but I couldn't figure out how - the ceiling looked opaque.
A huge oval table took up most of the floor space. I took the chair at the head of the table. I heard a noise behind me and turned around but saw nothing. When I faced back to the front, a man was walking along the table in my direction. He slid a piece of paper toward me on the slick table and handed me a pen. "Write down your full legal name and Social Security number."
I did and the man I assumed was Mr. Brown took the pen and paper said, "I'll be back in a few minutes." He then walked back and pushed a panel at the other end of the table and vanished into another room. During the short time the "un-door" was open, I heard what sounded like a battery of teletype machines... a sound which stopped when the panel closed.
I had barely enough time to inspect the maps, which looked more like pictures taken from high above the ground. The man returned in less than fifteen minutes with a three inch high stack of computer paper. This time, the man identified himself, "I'm Mister Brown. Have a seat Mister Duffey." Then as he sat in the chair next to me and plopped the long ribbon of paper halfway between us he said, "Let's see what kind of skeletons are in your closet."
As he leafed through hundreds of entries, I knew he was looking at my life history. He told me I frequently paid phone bills late at Indiana University where I was politically active. He knew the names of my friends and why some were now ex-friends. He knew specific days I had done things... things about which I had long ago forgotten! When he got to my military records his attitude changed and he began treating me as a loyal patriot.
....Mr Bush or Mr Brown?
By now, I had lost any doubts about what agency with whom I was dealing and for whom I was going to do some work - but no one ever used the three well known letters - anytime. And I also thought it strange that everyone with whom I dealt was apparently members of the same family since they were ALL named Brown... Well, everyone except me: I was just, Duffey.
Later I'll talk about the unique, if not bizarre, training I was given. I'll also offer details of my mission - which was far less clandestined than you might expect. But for now, let me wrap up this by saying all I did was play "tourist" in Czechoslovakia and take pictures - just like I was planning to do anyway. The difference: I earned about 50-cents each time I made the noise you can hear the sound of lots of money by clicking the map.
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