Unpaid Bills To Blame For Blown FBI Wiretaps


No Dial Tone For Deadbeat FBI

Telephone companies cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because the agency neglected to pay its phone bills on time, the Associated Press reported today.

Some of these wiretaps were monitoring suspected terrorists. What's going on here? Is the government running out of money?? Adam's Life delves deeper...

"I kept telling them the check was in the mail," said the agency's communications director, J. Edgar Fakeman, "but I guess they caught on."

The AP reported that "more than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time." And in one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

"Times have been tough," Fakeman said. "We cancelled our cable service last month. And we've been burning old files to stay warm because the heat's been turned off. We've had to take a second job just to pay the rent for our offices."

The FBI is now waiting tables at a Denny's in nearby College Park, Maryland.


"Would You Like Your Eggs Scrambled Or Subpoenaed?"

"The hours aren't that great, and we have to take two buses to get there, but how else can we afford these D.C. prices?" Fakeman said.

Problems began in January of 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security took over many of the FBI's primary jobs. A few months later, FBI's wife, CIA, packed up the kids and left.

"She wasn't happy with how we were acting after the whole restructuring thing," Fakeman says. "So what if we had a few beers now and then? Or some confiscated smack? She's a dirty whore. I know she's been sleeping with the DEA."

Andrea Ekaf, the FBI's social worker, says that many government agencies are finding themselves in similar situations. "It's not uncommon for a government agency to fall on hard times after a restructuring. Look at NASA. One moment, they're flying to the moon, and the next, they're selling expired freeze-dried ice cream out of the back of an '89 Cadillac DeVille just so they can afford to pay child support."

The AP report comes a mere week after tabloid photos revealed that the FBI was secretly panhandling on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th street in Washington D.C.

"It wasn't panhandling," Fakeman insists. "We needed to make a phone call at the pay phone and all we had were dollar bills. We swear."

No word on whether the FBI will be able to meet its financial obligations in the future, but Fakeman is confident the agency will be able to weather the storm.

"We recently received an e-mail from a friendly stranger in Africa who says he'll give us a million dollars if we send him our bank account information. Apparently, he won the lottery but is unable to claim it due to some obscure Nigerian law," Fakeman says.

"It may just be the bonanza our agency is looking for."