You’re being watched.

You’re being Watched

New York City,
March 1974:

         I was a field technician for a company called Globe Comm. repairing those old Teletype Machines (Pre-Email, sort of like a PC – except much larger, more mechanical and noisier).  I loved that job.  I could roam New York City and see all the sites.  We only had seven to ten thousand customers worldwide, most all were based in this city.  As a roaming technician, I was occasionally assigned to central office maintenance.  We had our machines in banks, brokerage houses, news agencies, import/export firms, consulates and foreign missions to the United Nations.

         You need to get the full picture of what a Globe Comm. Technician looked like.  Button down shirt, clean pressed slacks, sometimes a tie, polished leather shoes and an attaché tool case.

         It was the middle of the cold war and Vietnam was just winding down.  The company was very successful, but in twenty years it would all come to an end, by 1986 it would be in trouble and by 1995 the primary business would be gone, replaced by email.  But now it’s ’74 and I am trudging through ice and snow to the Russian Mission to the United Nations.

         Having never been there myself, there were stories I had heard from a number of technicians about this mission.  I was told not to sign anything, get in and get out, don’t let them intimidate you.  As I approached it, I noticed that there was a NYC Police Precinct directly across the street.  The building was located on 66th street, near Third Avenue, it was set back further than the other Brownstones on the block creating a small plaza in front of the building. 

         The lobby was decorated in early grotesque; heavy wood chairs and couches, deep pile carpet, all the walls were draped in red.  Oil paintings of Russian landscapes lined the walls; an illuminated oil portrait of Lenin was the centerpiece.  The only voices I heard were people speaking Russian and Spanish.  In the far corner of the room was an opening in the wall with a sign, written in Russian, Spanish and English, “Information”.

         When I got there, the man inside wore a Uniform of the KGB, he only spoke broken English and needed to call for a translator.  A nice middle-aged balding man appeared wearing a very white shirt, black suit and tie.  He asked, more interrogated me, on where I was from and why I was there.  Then I was offered coffee and asked to sit in the next room. 

         This room was decorated by the same old fart as the first, it had deeper pile carpets and a fireplace that could hold a whole cow on a spit.  When I sat down on the couch I sank in so far that I realized I might not be able to get up again.  Ten minutes later the translator came back with a piece of paper, written in Russian, and asked me to sign it, it was only a formality.  I refused to sign and asked to leave or let me fix the machine. 

         I was escorted to the communications room and discovered I could do nothing because the communications line, the facilities were unusable.  I called my central office and reported the malfunction, which would be turned over to the local Phone Company for repair.  Job done I left and went directly home. 

         This is not the end of this boring little story.

December 1974:

         We are decorating the shop at the central office for our Christmas Party.  Food had been ordered; the only thing missing is soda.  I volunteer to do the run.  When I return, I’m told that there was a phone call for me and they left a number to call back.

         I called back and the young voice at the other end introduced himself as an FBI agent.  He explained that  ‘you are a hard man to find’.  This roused my curiosity and made me nervous at the same time.  He would not divulge the reason for the call except that he wanted to meet me the following day.  He specified outside of the company premises.  I told him there is a coffee shop directly across from the building and we could meet there.  Being a suspicious person, I looked up the address and phone number of the New York City FBI field office and called and confirmed the agent’s identity.

         When I got home that night I told my wife about what had happened and she started to think about it.  She made mention of a couple of odd phone surveys we had received over the summer that year.  We, prior to 1974, had never been phone surveyed, and the questions asked seemed to be a little sensitive, ‘where do you work, what do you do, where do you vacation’.

         The following day he called from the lobby desk and I went down to meet him.  Upon leaving the building he asked if there was a less public place, he did not want to go to the coffee shop.  At this point I asked him what it was all about.  We were out on the busy sidewalk on Broad Street, two blocks from the American Stock Exchange at nine o’clock in the morning, nobody was paying attention to us.

         He asked me if I had ever gone to the Russian Mission?  My eyes must have popped in surprise.  Being I had only gone there once, and it was an unnerving experience, it stood out in my mind.  I related to him the circumstances of my visit and that it had been my only visit there.

         He started to pump me about the inside of the mission building.  Where did I go?

         When I told him that I was escorted to the second floor communication room his eyes lit up.  It had been more than eight months since I was there, I told him that I did not remember everything; most of the machines that I did see were from our competitors, ITT and WUI.  I invited him up to our office to meet my manager and I was sure we had more information on file, he agreed.

         When my manager got wind of what was going on, I can remember him saying to the agent, ‘You know better,’ he pointed at me ‘you will find out!’  Then, almost like a little puppy, the agent followed my manager out of the office.

         That was when I discovered; even the FBI needs a warrant to search anyone’s files for anything.  But now comes the fun.  I only spent and hour in that mission at the end of March.  I remembered walking down Third Avenue to the 59th Street Bridge and caught the Queens bus home.  Remember the agent said ‘I was a hard man to find’.

         First of all, here I am with my tool case, traveling all over Manhattan from place to place.  At least two or three times a week I would be assigned to a mission, Chinese, Swiss, Polish. Then during the summer months, my wife and kids would spend two months in Hampton Bays, a rental house, along with my mother-in-law.  My wife and her mother would go to yard sales all over the East End of Long Island to find Antiques.  Every time they returned to that rental, they noticed a police car had been behind them and continued past.  Every time!

         Between me traveling all over the city with an attaché case and my wife traveling all over the island every weekend, I am sure we were driving the FBI crazy.  And, just imagine all the money and manpower that was expended during those nine months, when all they had to do was ask.

         I've never since heard from the agency, but one day I'll try and find out if I do have a dossier.