The State May Record This Call ... Page 6

On Wednesday, November 29th, everything came to a climax, as if to define the conflict tension of the Third Act in this bizarre film noire that had become my life. Let's look at a transcript of the interview that my wife and I gave to Rick Van Gill at WBGU, on the radio show entitled: "Marty Frankel Speaks"

WBGU College Radio Interview, Sunday April 29, 2001

PAVLITO: "The whole time that we were waiting for this meeting (with Marini) to take place on November 30th, a man named John Doyle, from Treasury Department in Cleveland, Ohio led us to believe that we were involved in a sting operation and I was to wear a wire and help apprehend these people who were impersonating federal agents. They even called my wife and she can tell you a little bit about what they (short laugh ) told her about this 'wire' that I was supposed to wear."
EVITA: "Yes, as my husband said, um, they made us believe that the people we were supposed to meet with (on November 30th) were impostors and that they wanted us to, uh, carry out this 'sting operation' for them. Therefore the man started to call me, from the Treasury Department.

(she took a short pause to clear her throat)

EVITA (con't) "As I said, John Doyle called me and wanted to set up a sting operation, asking me all sorts of questions about what my husband would and would not wear and where he would and would not wear it. It got rather comical and personal to the point of asking me, coming close I would say to asking me about the size and so forth, of my husband's genitals. Which I thought was completely hilarious.

"At this point he's asking me questions about myself, including my social security number, and things like that, and he's implying that my husband and I have done something wrong as far as the IRS is concerned, which put me on edge and alert to the point of realizing that we were under investigation ourselves. Therefore I got a bit anxious with him and wanted to know why I was being asked questions about myself and my family. This went on, off and on, with calls back and forth every five or ten minutes, for about five hours, I would say. Completely tying up my day, making me feel that nothing else I had to do was important. In fact he even said this. Nothing I had to do was more important than this, which I totally disagreed with, with him, but I guess that didn't matter. After about four or five hours of phone calls, finally he calls with the head of the Treasury Department on the phone, we have a three-way going, which I didn't know. He asked me personal questions and then says, 'Oh, let me introduce you to so-and-so who is the head of the Treasury Department.'

"I thought that I'd fall on the floor. He's letting me know that all these things that he asked me, that I tried to answer, personal questions and general questions about my husband and myself, were being listened to. So at this point I was basically done. This is when he lets me know that the people we were supposed to be carrying out the sting operation on . . . are legitimate . And he tells me, tell my husband not to worry about any sting operation because there is no longer any need for one and that we should just proceed as we originally set out to do, which was to meet the man in front of Kinko's.

"By now I am blown away. I am completely confused. I'm irritated. I'm anxious. I don't know what's going on and I let them know this, as far as, uh, you tell me one thing for five hours and then turn around and tell me something else."

( Evita continues to vent her frustrations with the deceitful tactics of the Treasury Department)

" . . . about an hour or two later, he calls my husband at work and tells him basically the same thing. By now we are both completely confused and frustrated."

PAVLITO: "This was Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of November that they called my wife and then called me at work. I did not get an attorney because I thought that I was going to be like Columbo on TV. I didn't think I needed an attorney. And, and I was stuck with going to this interview, uh , that we had set up to, to sting some 'bad guys' that we thought were imposters. Turns out that they not only had an IRS agent but another, an FBI agent named Gary Schade who would be accompanying them. We met them the next day at, in front of Kinko's. And I had a video camera and I asked them if we could videotape the interview. They said 'no'. My wife had a still camera and I asked 'can she take photographs of your identification', they said 'no'. I said, well I don't even have an attorney. And they said, 'well you do have the right to have an attorney but if you don't do the interview, you will be subpoenaed, we'll hand it to you right now.'"

This is the 'slice of my life' where the dark shadows and the dirty tricksters that hover around me assemble into deceitful voices over the telephone and then crystallize into the 'Laurel and Hardy' type figures of two men, Larry Marini (as the corpulent Oliver Hardy) and Gary Schade (as the skinny Stan Laurel). They were two nondescript middle-aged men in cheap suits, carrying briefcases. To see them on the street, one would guess that Marini and Schade could be insurance brokers or used car salesmen.

They were not rude but they were not personable either. They knew that my wife and I were intimidated and they pressed that advantage over us in the interview, in the study room on the fifth floor of the university library on Thursday, November 30th, 2000.

Thus we find that this section ends with a loop to where this article began, at the interview where I learned of the two "me's". There was the real "me", a humble factory worker dreaming of reaching retirement, and the other "me" a multi-millionaire, a fictional person, allegedly created by or with the help of Marty Frankel, or so Marini and Schade implied. Perhaps this second, "multi-millionaire me" was conveniently created by the same people who created the great, spy named Wen Ho Lee. I simply do not know who did this to me, but I did not do it to myself. On November 30, 2000, exactly one year after the famous N30 "Battle in Seattle", I, who have never been to Seattle, was sitting face-to-face with the agents of the almighty New American Police State.

Dear readers, you now have a glace at the 'scam' that was foisted upon me, to bring me to this ambush (this so-called interview) that I fell into. It was an ambush that still makes no sense to me nor did it appear to offer any resolution of anything. It appears to be nothing more than a Kafka-esque illustration of 'a day in the life' of a man, a mere political insect, confronted in dialogue with a mammoth, all-powerful dinosaur called the State. It was, for me, a single episode, pulled from a few pages taken from Kafka's book, The Castle. I had become Kafka's 'Joseph K' and the two government agents who sat in front of me, were the eyes of the monster, squinting into the cockroach's tiny space, a college library study room. To them, I was just a bug that they could easily crush, but I was, perhaps, an interesting bug that they wanted to play with before they crushed.

They showed me the documents that supposedly bore my name. There were Treasury documents for a bank in Tennessee, SEBA corporation documents (which was the document that Joe Kahn of the New York Times used as a lead to find me for the interview in June of 1999) documents for the Ohio Engineering Consultants firm and there was also some paperwork for Dryfus Fund accounts, wire transfers records and other items which supposedly bore my name. But what about the signatures? As they turned the pages, to the last page of the incorporation and Treasury documents, the signature became plain to see.

It was not my signature and I quickly stood up from my chair, opened my wallet to show my interviewers the signature on my driver's license. Furthermore, it did not look like the handwriting of Marty Frankel either. Marty's handwriting is distinctive. My wife commented that it looked like the flowery penmanship of a female.

"Does that look like my signature?" I asked FBI Agent Schade, pointing to the documents.

"I don't know." Schade replied

"We are not handwriting experts." IRS Agent Marini replied.

"Mr. Marini," I said in a firm tone of voice, "Every year I file this thing called a tax return, and as I recall, I occasionally sign it. You have had every opportunity to have my tax returns compared to these signatures with any handwriting experts that you need to consult."

They persisted in their veiled innuendo by asking why my social security number appeared on many of the documents. I simply said that I did not know. Are we assuming that these documents originated with Marty Frankel? (I later pointed out in a phone call to Larry Marini, that I had given a copy of my divorce decree, from my first marriage, to Mr. Leon Frankel when he generously offered to help me gain visitation rights with my daughter after a bitter divorce in the early 1980's. The divorce decree, of course, had my social security number printed on it.) Then came the crowning item in their crescendo of innuendo. They produced a copy of a resume that listed my education and job history. The job entries cited seemed correct but the years were off significantly. For example, the years 1974 to 1976, were listed under the heading "European Travel".

That was totally incorrect. I was in Europe in 1973, specifically in Greece during the great Polytechnion student and worker uprisings against the military government (in October-November 1973), and with the thought of Greece, my mind drifted. I was seized with the flashback horror that a soldier might feel when some vague stimulus, a smell, a sound or shadow moving at the periphery of one's vision, takes that soldier back to Vietnam. For an instant I was in Athens, the grand lady of Europe's cities, when she was raped and bludgeoned by the Fascist tanks of the NATO-backed dictator, Papadopoulous. I was once again standing in the shadow the Firebird, the mythical Phoenix that rises from the smoldering ashes. The Firebird was the chosen symbol of Greek Fascism. My heart raced as if I were 22 years old again, running through the shade and light of sunset illumination, down Syntagma Boulevard, running from the soldiers and the 'bluecoat' National Police, running from the tanks as they smashed cars, sidewalk bookstands and human beings. I felt the fear again, as if it were all happening for the first time.

It was Fascism! It was real Fascism and, in my mind I ran as fast as I could through my memories of Athens. Tears rolled down my 22-year-old face for the old men who were not swift of foot. The old Greek men were doomed, cut down by American-made machine guns or crushed under British-made tank treads. I remember running and thinking "This must never happen in my country. This must never happen in my country." Now I realized that I was the old man who was slow of foot, as Marini and Schade handed me a subpoena to appear in Connecticut, a subpoena that they promised me that I could avoid by cooperating with them. I suddenly realized that Fascism, was indeed coming to my country. This time I could not outrun it.

I unintentionally mentioned my experiences in Greece, for the first time in our friendship, to Marty Frankel in Call #9, on March 25, 2001.

Call #9, March 25, 2001

MARTY: "It's like a Twighlight Zone movie (in prison). I saw three people killed."
PAVLITO: "I know Marty, I've seen people killed. I don't want that to happen to you."
MARTY: "But I mean, have you seen people killed where they were totally defenseless? Where they had no way to fight back?"
PAVLITO: "(almost shouting) Yes, I've seen people shot down by tanks in Athens Greece in '73. People who were standing in line to go to a movie and they got machine gunned."
MARTY: "You were there?"
PAVLITO: "I was there, Marty. I saw it. I saw women leaning out of balconies to tell, uh, at night the soldiers would march and make a lot of noise, and some old woman, well she was older than me, but. She leaned out the window and started yelling at the soldiers to be quiet, they were waking up the kids! And they (the soldiers) shined a spotlight on her and blew her away. I've seen it Marty. OK?"

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