My Phone Was Tapped while I was blogging about pedophile priests

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UPDATE MAY 2014: I am rewriting this, to be posted at Faster in a few days.

I even remember when they tapped it and how: (This is a work in progress part of a book to be released in 2015 at http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com/ )

Olga stood inches from the screen door, peering in at me as she knocked. At the sound I jumped a few inches, fingers twitched, I hit the wrong computer keys. When I took off my headphones, the city noise filled my ears: At least two helicopters overhead all the time, endless loud voices shouting in Armenian from the apartments close by, the electric hum that underlies everything in East Hollywood.

Neighbors' loud voices, that's an understatement. I had been hobbling around mumbling, “Sopranos. Warbling sopranos,” since the first weeks we moved to this lanai style crumbling apartment building, and now we'd been there more than a year. So as Olga stood inches from my doorway cooing to me to come out, she was a solo with the warbling sopranos as always in the background.

My neighbors and I detested each other, and we rarely spoke other than to nod good day. Maybe twice one of them had knocked on my door in the two years I'd lived there.

They gossiped in Armenian endlessly in the walkway just outside my door, where they sit on makeshift lawn furniture sipping espresso, living on Social Security in a country where they've never held a job, while I slaved away at three jobs in the apartment just on the other side of a picture window, trying to hear my work videos over their warbling.

It was a mutual detest, we lived in separate universes within feet of each other.

Then out of the blue Olga calls out to me and knocks, so insistent I go to the door without even hitting "Save" on the computer, thinking it will only take seconds. But Olga insists I come now with her to her apartment to do something with her computer that she can't explain. I almost like Olga as she is at least trying to learn English, unlike the other Eastern Europeans in the building who can't even answer what time is it, or was that an earthquake in English, but will gladly stick a palm in your hand on the Sunday before Easter and whisper something in your ear in what sounds like Latin.

What I can get now from Olga's fractured English is come right away, I am having trouble with my computer.

She's so insistent I leave with her and don't even lock my door.

So when first I get to Olga’s door I don't want to go in. All these neighbor men and women sit against the wall sipping espresso and staring at us. I don't want to leave my apartment with the door unlocked, even for ten seconds, but Olga is urging me in behind her drawn blinds.

So I'm soon all the way inside her rooms, no view of what is going on outside, sitting at her little computer and I can’t see what it is she thinks is wrong with her computer.

A STRANGE SOUND fills the room. My cat lets out with a sound he never made before or since, a long howl from next door that goes into another howl and another and continues nonstop for a good thirty seconds.

The whole time the cat is howling, I'm trying to get up from the computer chair but Olga has her hands on my shoulder, saying “Internet Explorer, see? Internet Explorer.”

I say, yes, there it is right there in the corner, Internet Explorer. What do you
want me to do with it?” and try to get up but Olga won't let me get up.

If she says anything, I can't hear her because the cat is now howling louder. Louder.

I try to get up, I say, what's that? My cat has never made that sound before. And Olga pushes my shoulders down and points at her computer screen. I'm thinking, it's just my cat, I've only been gone thirty seconds, what will a few more seconds mean, and I diddle around on the computer keys, can’t find anything wrong or amiss or not working or needing attention at all with her computer.

Olga, meanwhile, has her head turned most of this time, and now as if getting a signal, she lifts her hands from my shoulders and says something like, oh well, I’ll have to ask Sasha to fix it. Olga gestures as if to say, you can go now.

The cat has is no longer howling.

I go back home. Nothing is amiss, nothing is different. My computer monitor still glows.

My cat glares at me like you are so dumb.

From that time on, there was a tapping knocking noise on my phone, a tapping noise that would start up whenever I said the words Archdiocese, bishop, Pope, Vatican, Jeff Anderson, and a few other phrases that would come to the attention of chatter seeking internet spy software.

Looking back, I know that during the years I did City of Angels Blog in L.A., my phone was tapped. And now looking back from a different perspective, I realize that day when Olga lured me out of my apartment, and my cat was howling trying to warn me, was when whoever it was tapped my phone.

Not only was there a blatant knocking noise on the phone that even the most cynical of my associates would admit had to be phone tap noise,

But

From then on, SNAP somehow always knew everything I was doing. They found out who I was talking to, and each time I began work to develop a story, there would be interaction on the other end with someone from SNAP, they intervened. Then my news source would no longer talk to me. The contact would have a changed attitude, and in a couple cases just say, I can’t talk to you anymore, and hang up the phone.

It happened over and over. I'd be working on a story, suddenly the source was in contact with SNAP, then the source would not talk to me anymore.

Meanwhile the phone was clicking and clicking and clicking. Every time I'd say a phrase like, pedophile priest, bishop, Jeff Anderson, archdiocese- the tapping noise increased, as those bots found key words and tapped in.

The intervention by SNAP to stop every story I was writing became something I just watched happen, one time after another. I'd track down a contact, start developing a story, then just wait to see how long it would take. There would be an unexpected interaction between my contact and SNAP, and a few days later when I followed-up and called back as arranged, that source would not talk to me anymore.

At first I took it personally and it hurt, man, it really hurt. Doors kept slamming on me. It happened often, but every time, in that interim between the first contact and SNAP, there would be a surprise: "You'll never guess who got in my cab today," or "Barbara Blaine called me, out of the blue, and asked me to run a press event." It became real obvious to me what was happening, although trying to describe it here left me sounding paranoid. But at least I stopped taking it personally.

That obstruction started in 2008, long before Feb. 2010 when I first published something publicly negative about SNAP.

When I was doing City of Angels Blog full speed starting in 2007, I expected to get some harassment from the Church, I mean, I was publishing things about the clergy cases in L.A. that no other news media was covering, digging up docs and posting about the priests, the attorneys, the hierarchy. Considering the subject matter, it surprised me there wasn't more harassment, I expected it.

But of course, I know now.

The church set up this fake victims support nonprofit, to carry out its obstruction. They gained our trust, so we all spilled everything to them in a way we never would talk to an archdiocese Victim Assistance officer. Then the stories we gave SNAP about a hundred thousand or so sexual felonies by Catholic priests committed against children went into a file somewhere in a St. Louis basement, never to be heard again.

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More to Come
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ADD:
There is one guy I talked to all the time when I got the blog going, because he could help me specifically with my case, he knew what was happening in the Chicago Archdiocese. In 2008-9 we were talking about doing a project together. Then one day I called him and he said, "You'll never guess who got in my cab today. Barbara Blaine." A chill went over me, because by now the strange intervention had been going on for more than a year.

"She just happened to get into your taxi?" I asked. "Yeah," he answered, "strangest thing. I never see her in the city."

A couple weeks later I phoned again asking when we could start working again on that project and he said, "You know what, we've decided to just do something here in Chicago with people who are here locally, not bring in anybody from the outside."

I was stunned, and once again cut off, in this brusque cruel cold way, because in the end with SNAP it has been about control of the message. They were not going to let me do anything.
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COMING:
There is one guy I talked to all the time when I got the blog going, because he could help me specifically with my case, he knew what was happening in the Chicago Archdiocese. In 2008-9 we were talking about doing a project together. Then one day I called him and he said, "You'll never guess who got in my cab today. Barbara Blaine." A chill went over me, because by now the strange intervention had been going on for more than a year.