My Second Open Letter to Mike Lawlor -- On "Nightcrawlers" and Treason Played for Laughs. We've already established that you are willing to sell out your country. Now we're just haggling about the price.

MBV Note to Readers: In my first letter to Connecticut's own Felix Dzerzhinsky, Mike Lawlor, we explored the subject of that tyrannical collectivist's KGB file. The response to that missive was very gratifying, as well as rewarding in terms of further clues and offers of assistance. I hope you like this letter as much as you liked the first.

From the Desk of Mike Vanderboegh

A man says to a woman, "Would you sleep with me for one million dollars?" She eyes him up and down. He is well-dressed, seems intelligent, urbane and sophisticated and might well have a million dollars to blow on a night of sex. She decides quickly and replies, "Sure." The man then asks, "Well, how about for ten dollars?" The woman is outraged. "What do you think I am?" The man smiles and says pleasantly, "My dear, we've already established what you are. All we're doing is bargaining about the price." -- An old joke.

Mike.Lawlor@ct.gov

Mike Lawlor

Under Secretary, State of Connecticut

Office of Policy and Management, Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division

450 Capitol Avenue

Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Mike,

To take up where we left off, we were discussing the undoubted existence of your KGB file. In the meantime, I have been assured by sources recently (and not-so-recently) retired from the intelligence and counter-intelligence services of this country that you also have FBI and CIA files as well. One of those reminded me of the term "nightcrawler." As defined by Richard Bennett in his book Espionage: Spies and Secrets, a "nightcrawler" is a "talent spotter who prowls bars and nightclubs looking for government employees, military personnel, etc., who can be compromised using booze, drugs or sex."

LTC William Corson, USMC, Retired.

 He also reminded me that a mentor of his, Marine LTC Bill Corson (Yes, the same William Corson whose book I quoted in my first letter to you) once worked on a television documentary in the 80s with the legendary Washington, DC intelligence unit undercover cop Carl M. Shoffler. The documentary highlighted KGB recruitment tactics and techniques in the "gay bars" of the nation's capitol.

Shoffler was famous for having been one of the undercover cops who caught the GOP-sent burglars in the Watergate Hotel on 17 June 1972 but he never bragged about it. Indeed, he was much respected for the street smarts and hard work he brought to his intelligence unit work in the nation's capitol which always had ramifications far beyond the usual for a mere street cop.

For his part, Corson was even more highly regarded in the intelligence business. The novelist W.E.B. Griffin dedicated his work The Outlaws, in part, to "William R. Corson, a legendary Marine intelligence officer whom the KGB hated more than any other U.S. intelligence officer -- and not only because he wrote the definitive work on them."

One reason that the KGB hated him was that he was an effective anti-communist. His work in Marines' Combined Action Program in the I Corps area of South Vietnam was unorthodox, successful and nothing short of brilliant. (See also this out-take of a 1982 interview with LTC Corson on the subject.)

The documentary (I am seeking a copy of it as I write this) highlighted the operations of KGB assets called "nightcrawlers" in the D.C. area according to my source, who believes that such tactics were undoubtedly used against you during your time in the Soviet Union.

Of course I have already been accused of "homophobia" for dealing with this subject. That is, no pun intended, a red herring. My motivation here is tyrannophobia, if I may coin a term. But more of that in my next letter.

For now, I'd like to deal with some evidence out of your own mouth that several readers and one former intelligence officer brought to my attention since my first letter. Frankly, I'm a bit embarrassed that I missed it initially since the story raises even more questions about your early life with the words out of your own mouth.

I am referring, you may recall, to the story entitled A Giant Wait by Don Amore in the Hartford Courant of 26 December 1997:

Mike Lawlor was nearly out of George Washington University Law School and needed a job. Near the end of the lengthy screening process in 1983, he was face to face with a stern CIA recruiter.

The man in black wanted to know: Was there anything, anything at all, anything on this earth that would compel Lawlor to betray his country?

``I told him, `If the KGB could get me Giants season tickets, I'd think about it,' '' Lawlor recalled. ``I said, `Not just for one season. It would have to be a permanent thing. So all you'd have to do is get me Giants season tickets, and you'd never have to worry about me at all.'

``Well, the guy did not laugh. He did not smile. I never was offered a job.''

Sorry about that, Chief. The CIA went on to win its Cold War. Brothers Mike and Kevin Lawlor are still fighting theirs, waiting for the iron curtain to rise and the power behind it to grant them a pair of Giants season tickets.

``It is our white whale,'' said Kevin Lawlor, 29, a deputy assistant state's attorney in Milford. ``It is our obsession.''

I was instantly struck by your words as reminiscent of that old joke I quoted above. We've already established that you are willing to sell out your country. Now we're just haggling about the price. It is no wonder that the CIA man didn't laugh. But let us continue with the Mike Lawlor narrative of treason played for laughs:

Mike Lawlor (D-East Haven), 40, is a state representative and co-chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. But in the struggle for liberation from the waiting list, he is just another foot soldier. He gave the Giants his name in 1982 and was told the wait for seats would be about 50 years.

``You know, once you're on the list, they're always trying to find a way to get you off,'' he said. ``If you move, you're off. So I gave them my parents' address in East Haven; I figured they'd always be there. One year, I didn't get the newsletter they send, and I got worried.''

It turned out the Lawlors' postman had taken it upon himself to send a forwarding address to the Giants. After some pleading, Mike Lawlor got his place back in line.

``So maybe my children will get the tickets,'' he said.

There are small victories, won underground. The Lawlors scored three tickets for this season from a friend of a friend, who got better seats through a friend of a friend and put his up for sale. That's usually how it works.

Kevin Lawlor, Connecticut State's Attorney.

Of course your brother Kevin has carved a right smart career for himself, too: "Connecticut State’s Attorney Lawlor to be feted for work, heritage." What with you as Malloy's hatchet man on citizen disarmament and with a brother as a state's attorney, it isn't too hard to open an investigation on a troublemaker like me, is it?

So when you threaten Connecticut's hitherto law-abiding citizens with “You can either surrender the weapon to us, destroy the weapon, or sell it to a federal firearms licensee. After that date (January 1) that hasn’t been declared or register is banned and if you get caught, you’re going to get arrested." . . . Well, they had better take you damn seriously, hadn't they?

You know, it's the arrogance about you collectivist pricks that always strikes me as ironically misplaced. You're always the smartest guy in the room, dispensing orders from on high as if to the purple born, yet when it comes to the important things you really aren't all that bright.

Take that slip you made in the interview when you played the subject of treason for laughs. Of course you have long thought yourself safe from scrutiny of any questions about what you were up to back in the 70s and early 80s. But mentioning that a. you had tried to get a job with the CIA right out of law school and b. that they had turned you down, well, even to a guy like me who's nothing particularly special other than an amateur student of history, why, that's just plain stupid.

It raises so many questions and reinforces the ones I've already asked. Why would the CIA, at the height of the Cold War when it needed every trustworthy Russian speaker and analyst, turn you down? I guess the key word there is "trustworthy." The CIA, and not because of the bad joke, must have found compelling reasons to find you untrustworthy. That must have stung, huh? Not that you weren't accepted -- you would play that for laughs, for you are the smartest guy in the room and that just proves their stupidity, right? As a homosexual you already were struggling with issues of identity, loyalty, societal trust, etc. And again, homosexuality is not the issue. It is not now, nor was it then, grounds (by itself) for exclusion from employment by the CIA. According to my sources, the Agency knowingly hired many homosexuals from its inception onward as long as it was convinced of their loyalty, their trustworthiness. And, my sources say, as long as that was understood up front there was no blackmail risk and the Agency only very rarely was proved wrong about their pick.

So why did they turn you down, Mike? What was it that they spotted about you? I am told by sources who were once in a position to know that you have not only a KGB file and a CIA file, but an FBI file as well. We'll never get anything out of the CIA, but I wonder what a FOIA of the FBI might turn up? Have you got the juice to work your will upon the Fibbies as well?

And again, why apply to the CIA at all? Why did you change your career from Soviet Studies academic to zealous public prosecutor seeking the brass ring of political power? You are a public official. These are legitimate questions. Not that I expect an answer from you, at least not a written one.

Now if I lived in Connecticut and was asking these questions I would have already had my answer. You (or your brother) would already have seen to it that the slavish bully boys of the Connecticut State Police would have committed a dynamic raid on my ass, much as you threaten your state's citizens with official violence if they ignore your unconstitutional diktat.

As my friend John Longenecker has written about your collectivist kind, you are mostly all working out your anger at old wounds through power. He recently wrote me:

For a very long time, as you may already know, I have been a real believer myself in psychoanalysis. I have an old wounds theory of why officials are so sadistic. When old wounds meet political clout is when we see totalitarian abuses of due process and unending torment. The torment itself is the payoff for the sick office-holder. They are as clever as Satan in their words and conservative-friendly values on the stump, but in office, they are as cruel as Nazis.

Or, if you prefer, as cruel as Dzerzhinskys.

There is an exchange in the movie Tombstone between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday when Earp is trying to figure out what made Johnny Ringo so evil that may apply here:

Wyatt Earp: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?

Doc Holliday: A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.

Wyatt Earp: What does he need?

Doc Holliday: Revenge.

Wyatt Earp: For what?

Doc Holliday: Bein' born.

So what did the KGB see in you to target you for recruitment? What did the CIA see in you to decline your much-needed services? How did that rejection make you feel? Why did the FBI open a file on you? How long will the Governor tolerate a man who may (or may not, only you and the KGB know for sure) have been a KGB mole as the public face of his firearm confiscation effort? Bad optics, that.

Questions, questions.

I'll have some more questions, and some answers, I think, as well, in my next letter. Have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926

Pinson, AL 35126