August 8, 2006

To the editor,

This past Saturday (August 5), at about 2 p.m., my neighbor, Calvin McDonald, and Mason Bob Vanbibber witnessed two men in suits pull up to my house in a dark sedan.  They pulled what appeared to be a large tote up to my house.

In broad daylight, the men broke into my house, and spent half an hour doing something.  I noticed that my computer had been accessed, because a freedom of information act request that I made of the FBI two weeks ago was top in the list of files that had been accessed.

I reported this to the FBI and my local sheriff.  An Athens County Sheriff Deputy said he would come out to investigate, but never came until I called again hours later.

They did not take any finger prints, or do any serious investigative work.  Also, a box of Arctic Quest books (I am the author of two books, Arctic Quest and Arctic Melting), were broken into, apparently to see that they were books and not something else.

In addition, my phone has been blatantly tapped.  I had Athens County Commissioner Mark Sullivan come over and he said that clearly there was a click as if it were being tapped, as I have been reporting to AT&T for months.

Within minutes of reporting to the sheriffs that it was tapped on Sunday, August 6, my phone line suddenly went dead for about 10 minutes.  When it finally did come back on, I tried calling AT&T, but they were closed.  When I tried to hang up the phone, it would not hang up, as if someone had another receiver on the line off the hook.  I live alone, so it was clearly someone else tapping the line.

America is fast becoming a fascist police state.  We must rise up against the Bush tyranny that has so eroded our civil liberties and all that our forefathers have fought and died for.

When two men in suits can break into my home in broad daylight, and get away with it without any serious police investigation, it is time for a complete overhaul of every police institution involved, likely the FBI, Athens County Sheriff and Nelsonville Police Departments.

With the police failing to properly investigate, I request that the media and interested citizens step forward.

FBI special agent Charles Seymour, based in Athens, called me this morning, and tried to intimidate me by saying "There is a strong motivation to interrupt what you are doing," apparently referring to my efforts to publicize this and other abuses of my civil liberties.  He also asked for my social security number, the name of the person I had a land contract with for my house and the names and phone numbers of the witnesses to the men in suits coming to and breaking into my house.  This was despite his saying that burglaries were a local matter, and outside the FBI jurisdiction.

Seymour also tried to trip me up with questions such as "so you called the Sheriff on Saturday" when I had just said that I had called them on Sunday, about the break-in that my neighbor and a construction workers reported on Saturday.  I informed him that I noticed that the FOIA that I had made of the FBI, and that they had failed to fulfill, was top on the list of Word documents that had been accessed.  Also, I had just received a letter from the FBI saying that I needed more information, such as my social security number and my date of birth, before they could fulfill the request.  That letter was also taken during the break-in.

Chad Kister

Athens, Ohio

(740) 707-4110

(please include my phone number if possible)