Wire Tap

We frequently took Eli to the beach when he was young. He spent 50 out of every 60 minutes we were there, in the water. Last year he earned a junior life guard certificate.

Some time in late 1995 or early 1996 I arrived at my office early. I made coffee, settled in and picked up my telephone to make a call. There was somebody on the line. I said, “Hello.” He responded, “Hello?” I asked, “Who is this and what are you doing on my business telephone line?” Defensively he replied, “I was just checking the telephone to see if it was still hooked up.” Confused, I demanded to know where he was. He told me he had just rented an apartment and he gave me the address. I told him to wait there and I would be there is a couple of minutes. The apartment was about a block from my office.

When I arrived at the apartment just north of Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena I ascended an exterior stairwell to the second floor. The apartment door was open and the man I had been speaking with stood in the doorway. I introduced myself and we walked into the apartment. It was empty save a telephone plugged into a jack.

When I returned to my office I telephoned Pac Bell and told them about the telephone down the street tapped into my line. I had been complaining for months about noise on my line, but none of their serviceman were ever able to find the source. When a technician arrived later in the day I asked him how the telephone had been tapped into my line. He said it was a hard wire tap, that is, it was tapped into the trunk of lines that ran on the pole in front of the apartment. I asked him how someone would know which line was which. He told me line maps are kept at the central Pac Bell office in Pasadena, locked in a safe. Only Vice Presidents or higher have access. He estimated the wire tap had been in place for up to six months.

I interviewed several tenants and the manager at the apartment building. The man who had rented the apartment was described as kind of scary, ex-Vietnam vet type of guy. He didn’t work and he spent much of his time sitting on the exterior stairwell drinking beer. He usually had a two or three day beard growth. He didn’t socialize with neighbors. The manager said the man always paid his rent in cash. He rented for about six months until the previous week when two men in dark suits arrived at the building and physically took him from his apartment, each holding an arm, and got in a dark sedan and drove away. That was the last anyone saw him. The manager gave me his name and other information that I quickly discovered were fictitious.

I recalled just such a person about a month before asking me for job as an investigator. He had asked to speak with me, cold calling and without an appointment. I agreed to speak with him. He told me he had just gotten out of the US Army, Special Forces and he was looking for a job. I gave him some ideas about where to look, but that the kind of investigation I conducted did not require an individual with his skills. I suggested Wackenhut, the folks that perform security at Groom Lake, but he flatly rejected the idea saying that he did not want to be a glorified security guard.

The experience was unsettling, to say the least. Pac Bell apologized, but provided no explanation as to how this fellow was able to hard wire my telephone line. I did not immediately make the connection between the wire tap and my trip to Area 51. I had conducted several dicey investigations involving many millions of dollars. So it was all too easy to rationalize the situation and I soon put it in the back of my mind to think about later.