{"id":6087,"date":"2011-09-07T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=6087"},"modified":"2012-09-28T09:27:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:27:08","slug":"my-personal-g-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/07\/my-personal-g-man\/","title":{"rendered":"MY PERSONAL G-MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI building<\/strong><\/span> in Cleveland on Lakeside Avenue is on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.\u00a0 The building is outside the downtown district by a few blocks and somewhat secluded.<\/p>\n

I went there to see the head man.<\/p>\n

To get to him, I went through two minutes of various security checks in the lobby.\u00a0 Then I was in the boss\u2019 office, overlooking the lake.\u00a0 Nice.\u00a0 If the sun had been out, it would have been Santa Monica.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The boss,<\/strong><\/span> Gary Klein, and I were old friends from high school.\u00a0\u00a0 Gary had been a fearless JCC-league basketball player.\u00a0 After high school, Gary went off to Annapolis, where he got his nose broken by a Southerner in a boxing match.\u00a0 Gary told me some of the students had razzed him because he was Jewish.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t faze him.<\/p>\n

Gary was tough, but not greaser tough. \u00a0 He was smart and bowlegged like a cowboy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Gary Klein, 2004. (Photo by Ted Stratton)<\/p><\/div>\n

Gary showed me the FBI\u2019s war room and the bug-proof room.\u00a0 He said FBI life looked glamorous but wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 In 19 years he had lived in Boston, New York (Cosa Nostra and Russian mob work), Phoenix, Houston, Washington and Cleveland.<\/p>\n

His new job<\/strong><\/span> was snooping on potential terrorists in northern Ohio, from Cleveland to Toledo.\u00a0 He said, \u201cNinety-nine percent of it is B.S. leads, like somebody dumping burial ashes over Parma Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting terror was job one, forget about The Mob, he said.<\/p>\n

Gary, how can we forget The Mob?\u00a0 They\u2019re a lot more fun than Islamic terrorists! \u00a0 We grew up on The Mob.\u00a0 Hollywood wouldn\u2019t exist without Mob movies.\u00a0 I had been inside the Little Italy house of James Licavoli (aka Jack White), the last head of the Cleveland Mob.\u00a0 Licavoli made wine in his cellar.\u00a0 Drinks all around.<\/p>\n

Gary asked<\/strong><\/span> me to keep my eyes open.<\/p>\n

I said I would.\u00a0 (This was 2003.)<\/p>\n

So far nothing but B.S. leads, thank God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FBI building in Cleveland on Lakeside Avenue is on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.\u00a0 The building is outside the downtown district by a few blocks and somewhat secluded. I went there to see the head man. To get to him, I went through two minutes of various security checks in the lobby.\u00a0 Then I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-cops-and-robbers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6087"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11717,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions\/11717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}