Tyrone Duncan was right on time at the office of the FBI Person- nel Director. Amazing, Tyrone thought, the resemblance to Hoov- er. The four letters of recommendation, which read more like votes for sainthood were a little overdone, but, they were on FBI stationary. Tyrone asked the Personnel Director if they would reconsider his application, and that if necessary, he would whitewash his skin. The following day Tyrone received a call. Oh, it was a big mix- up. We misfiled someone else's charts in your files and, well, you understand, I'm sure. It happens all the time. We're sorry for any inconvenience. Would you be available to come in on Monday? Welcome to the FBI. Tyrone paid his dues early. Got shot at some, chased long haired left wing hippie radicals who blew up gas stations in 17 states for some unfathomable reason, and then of course, he collected dirt on imaginary enemies to feed the Hoover Nixon paranoia. He tried, fairly successfully to stay away from that last kind of work. In Tyrone's not so humble opinion, there were a whole lot more better things for FBI agents to be doing than worry about George McGovern's toilet habits or if some left wing high school kids and their radical newspaper were imaginarily linked to the Kremlin. Ah, but that was politics. Three weeks after J. Edgar Hoover died, Tyrone Duncan was promot- ed to Section Chief in the New York City office. A prestigious position. This was his first promotion in 8 years at the bureau. It was one that leaped over 4 intermediate levels. The Hoover era was gone. After hanging up the phone with Bob Bernsen, Tyrone sat behind his desk going over his morning reports. No planes hijacked, no new counterfeiting rings and nary a kidnapping. What dogged him though was the flurry of blackmail and extortion claims. He re- read the digested version put out by Washington headquarters that was faxed to him in the early hours, ready for his A.M. perusal. The apparent facts confounded his years of experience. Over 100 people, many of them highly placed leaders of American industry had called their respective regional FBI offices for help. A call into the FBI is handled in a procedural manner. The agent who takes the call can identify the source of the call with a readout on his special phone; a service that the FBI had had for years but was only recently becoming available to the public. Thus, if the caller had significant information, but refused to identify himself, the agent had a reliable method to track down the call- er. Very few people who called the FBI realized that a phone inquiry to an FBI office triggered a sequence of automatic events that was complete before the call was over.