Jobs and whatnot <very long> was RE: [geeks] WHATS WRONG WITH YOU

[Christopher Byrne]

Speaking of getting and losing jobs, the great contract that was going to
net me $250k a year went away today.

Unfortunately the Air Force has decided that someone in my position requires
a security clearance, and they declined to give me one because of the
following reasons

1. I have poor credit due to previous identity theft
2. I have dual citizenship with Ireland
3. I have two names (Dinsmore and Byrne)
4. My father, who was born and raised in Ireland and also has dual
citizenship is a convicted felon (drug and arms smuggling), and known
associate of terrorists, namely various south and central american drug
people, and the IRA.

Here's the story <long and irrelevant to geekiness, but cool anyway>.

<------------------begin text block------------------------>

My father came to America at 14, and was promptly kicked out of his house by
his alcoholic abusive etc... etc... father. This was in the early 60's and
the army wasn't too picky about who they were taking as long as they were
willing to volunteer for hazardous duty. He did, and they finagled him his
citizenship (a program the DOD had where citizens of friendly nations could
get instant US citizenship by volunteering for military service) and sent
him into the great and glorious U.S. Army.

Well it turned out that my father was something of a natural soldier.
Although poorly educated he's a very intelligent man, and he did very well.
Within two years he volunteered for, and was accepted for special forces
training (a note, they normally wouldnt have done this, but my father was
5'6" 135lbs with dark skin for a white guy and black hair. This was 1966 if
you get the picture.) Once again, he was a natural. He went to S.E. Asia as
a member of the 3rd SOG and then spent the next seven years being one of
those people who "were never in" cambodia, thailand, china, north vietnam
etc...

It jsut so happens that at this same time, the CIA are using the local
"warlords" to traffic in large quantities of drugs (heroin mostly) to
support their other black activities. Some of the missions the CIA had set
up for various special operations groups had a lot less to do with winning
the war then they did with smuggling drugs.

When my dad finally got out of Viet Nam he was pretty fucked in the head so
he went back to Ireland to do a mental recovery (my father recieved the
silver star and bronze star, two awards each, the purple heart with 7
awards, expert CIB and other citations, and refused to claim them or even
acknowledge them. My grandmother still has them on her wall, and he wont
even go into the room with them). While there he met up with a lot of his
old friends, most of whom were involved in some way or another with the IRA.
So here we have a very angry 22 year old kid, fucked in the head from 'nam,
and a trained SF soldier. Obviously he got involved in the organaztion. He
was never a member, but he did some stuff for the provos, including
reactivating the smuggling contacts he had made during the war.

So it would go a little like this. Dad would head down to Florida and buy a
big boat. Then sail that big boat down the gulf coast to honduras and load
up on whatever drugs were for sale that week. Sail back up to florida, or
even as far up as newport Rhode Island (if you wanted to sell drugs to the
sicilians you did it in philly, baltimore, or Rhode Island. They completely
own those places). Sell the drugs at a HUGE profit, and head back down to
Panama with the boat.

At the time (late '70s through early '80s) Panama was the biggest free for
all arms market in the world. There they would load up on mass quantities of
guns and other arms, and sail them to the bahamas, or to a friendly south
american port (bahia blanca, or Montevideo for example) and then transhipped
on a freighter to north africa. From north africa it would go to lebanon,
lybia, or syria to be used in training, or to a "friendly" (meaning they
didnt inspect shipments too closely) country like Norway or finland, and
finally across the north sea to Ireland.

This made my father enormous amounts of money which he hid by forming an
international construction contacting company. THey specialized in
industrial stonework, and special ultra high quality stone restoration or
fabrication (we're talking restoration of cathedrals etc...) where he could
reasonably be expected to do a lot of foreign travel, and transfer lots of
money around the world.

In the middle of all this my father meets and marries my mother, and I pop
out a year or so later. 18 months after that they are divorced, six months
before my younger brother is born. Soon after the divorce my mother starts
referring to my brother and myself by her maiden name, Dinsmore, however she
never legally changes our name from Byrne. I rarely see my father for the
next three years. The last time I saw him before 1997 was on my fifth
birthday. I was registered in school under the name Dinsmore, and a social
security card was obtained for me by my grandfather in that name.

In 1983 my fathers money man was caught evading taxes, and he became a
confidential informant and government witness. My father was indicted on 148
counts of smuggling, trafficking, and possession of illegal weapons and
controlled substances. They indicted him in secret while he was on one of
his trips, and picked him up coming into Newport with 16,000 lbs of
marijuana, and 200 kilos of cocaine and assorted automatic weapons and
explosives.

In 1984 my father went on trial, which took over two years. Finally in
february of 1987 my father started serving an 8-1/3rd to 25 year sentence
for his various crimes. Because of time off for good behavior he was
released after seven years in april  of 1994.

As soon as he was released, my maternal grandfather who was a state senator
and lawyer blocked him from communicating with me or my brother. We did not
know this at the time, but he had court records manipulated to make us
"disappear" along with other things.

In november of 1996 my grandfather died. For several months after that his
wishes were kept by his cronies regarding my father, and he wsa still barred
from contacting us, however in October of 1997, after 15 years, five months,
and 12 days, I again spoke to my father on the telephone. He invited me and
my then fiance to have christmas with him and his fiancee (they were married
over thanksgiving)back in massachusetts. I accepted, and over the holidays
we reconciled and have been close ever since.

In January of 1999 my fiancee and I were married. We had a civil ceremony
with a county magistrate presiding etc...

Soon after our marriage I recieved notice from the state of Massachusetts
(we moved back to mass after that christmas)that after a records search
related to my marriage license they discovered that my name wasn't actually
Dinsmore.

Needless to say I found this more than a bit shocking, and contacted my
lawyer to investigate. He insisted that my name was indeed legally Dinsmore,
and that the records must simply be misplaced, and he supposedly started
looking for them. In the meantime the state of massachusetts suspended my
drivers license, cancelled my car registration and insurance, and said that
my marriage license was invalid. They did most of this without notifying me,
because while they had a record of the address for Christopher Dinsmore,
there was no recorded address for Christopher Byrne the fourth.

Soon after this I was pulled over by a local police officer "just because I
felt like it" at two in the morning after a night of socializing with
clients. I was in fact taking a client back to his hotel when we were pulled
over. After a few minutes the cop returned, and I was arrested for driving
with a suspended license in an unregistered vehicle without insurance.

When I called my lawyer he assured me that it was a screwup and he would fix
it, which he did. I recieved a continuance without a finding, and my license
was reinstated.

Only six months later the same thing happened.

I was driving late at night, and a cop pulled me over for doing 45 up an
onramp onto the highway (in MA the speadlimit on onramps is 25mph, but I had
NEVER seen a cop enforce that law). Again my lawyer assured me it was just a
screwup and again they reinstated my license etc...

All this time my lawyer insists that he is working on the name issue, and my
license was reinstated in the Dinsmore name. The problem is that the records
that my lawyer keeps promising to provide the court as to my identity never
show up, so they keep repeatedly revoking my license. Then my lawyer would
pull a favor with a judge he knew to get everything straightened out, only
the computer would keep seeing the missing records and automatically suspend
my license.

This happened a total of three times before I finally had enough of it, and
I decided to just relocate out to california and start the fuck over. At
this point my mother confessed something to me. My lawyer had been a protege
of my grandfathers, and he was actively trying to prevent me from finding
out that my name was never legally changed. Apparently one of my
grandfathers dying wishes was that I always remain a Dinsmore, and my mother
and my lawyer were colluding to prevent me from finding out the truth, and
in the process completely fucking up my life for three years.

Finally in june of 2000, I recieved my first new identification in my real
name, a passport issued to Christopher Byrne the fourth. Over the next few
months I slowly changed everything to the Byrne name, and believe me that
was difficult to explain. I'm still wangling with the social security
administration, and I'm still having a problem with my drivers license. I
have been unable to register my car (a friend registered it for me in New
Mexico, I'm driving it quasi-legally and in great fear in CA) my credit
record is completely fucked (all of this, complicated with several incidents
of identity theft), and now, I can't get a security clearance.

Whenever I have to go and get a work background check I warn them about all
of this. They don't believe me until they actually check the records
themselves. I went to the security officer at the company I was contracting
for and layed it out for them and they said "Were not even gonna try and
bother getting you a clearance", and thus, my contract went away.

What's even more amazing is that none of this came out when I was 19 and got
my first clearance in 1996 to accept a commission into the AF Reserves. My
grandfather apparently pulled seom strings to keep it quiet back then.
Unfortunately he died a few months later leaving me with the mess. I truly
truly loved, and still love and miss my grandfather, but man, this makes me
INCREDIBLY angry right at this moment.

<-------------------end text block------------------------->


Chris Byrne
=======================================
The eyes may be the windows on the soul
But the word is the doorway to the mind
=======================================