IRS: “But you have to do something, I’ve got six floors of raw sewage in my building and we can’t occupy any part of it.”
HAZMAT: “Look, we deal with chemicals, radioactive materials and the like. Shit is not in our job description so you’ll just have to call a plumbing contractor.”
The IRS’s situation was a bit more than just a simple plumbing problem. Raw sewage had flowed into the building for three days. It seems this sewage came from a ten square block around the IRS facility. The toilets and sinks on every floor had flowed over for three straight days. Many floors were covered by as much as a foot of raw sewage and it had leaked through the floors of the upper stories and into the ceilings of the levels below. The baseboards, drapes, and carpets had absorbed much of this unwanted material as did the lower drawers of many filing cabinets. Being a file clerk was not going to be much fun. Then there was the problem of the smell. Three days of raw sewage fermenting in an airtight building at 94 degrees would test even the most resolute of olfactory senses. Since none of windows in this environmentally “green” building could open, airing the place out was not an option.
Compounding the problem was the fact that no clean water was flowing into the building for some as of yet undetermined reason. The heat and humidity were devastating to the electronics. The “Honeywell” men had shut off the redundant air conditioning that would kick in for the main computer room on floor three. They were also thoughtful enough to silence the alarm that notified the IRS computer folks whenever the temperature in the main computer room rose above 70 degrees. Even though the heat kept running up to 94 degrees, it was actually much hotter in the building since the building was closed up tight and the outside temperature in Cincinnati was over 90 degrees during the long weekend. The first responders on Monday recorded the indoor temperature at over 105 degrees. This heat, along with the raw sewage, much of which was in a liquid state, produced a great deal of humidity. Imagine a fog generated by raw sewage and you can guess what damage that created in the electronics. All personal computers were rendered useless along with the huge clustered units in the main computer room.
By 10:30 am the streets resumed their usual flow of traffic and the area returned somewhat to normal… normal for everyone but the IRS. Their entire operation was shut down and nobody seemed to know what to do. Employees were milling around the building that was still roped off. Finally, Joel Siglitz, the aforementioned IRS chief administrator who had argued with the HAZMAT leader, told everyone to return home to await further instructions.
All of the TV stations in the greater Cincinnati area led off their evening newscasts with the story of the false alarm of terrorism at the IRS office earlier that day. Some called it “A Big Stink at the IRS” for their lead-in. Many of the local citizens found a great bit of humor in the situation and much barroom talk centered on the IRS being shit bombed. Late night comedians couldn’t pass up the opportunity get a few laughs from the situation as did most of the daytime radio talk shows. The biggest bully in the Federal Government was being laughed at by the citizens. This was just to be the start of the repercussions to follow.
CHAPTER 8 - REPERCUSSIONS
Siglitz looked at his watch and noted that even though it was only 10:30am it had already been a long day. It was about to get even longer. He dialed the number of his boss in Washington DC and was told that he should call back in an hour.
The building engineer approached and had some very bad news. It seems that the sewage was still flowing into the building and that the Cincinnati Public Works Department (CPW) wouldn’t be able to respond for at least another two hours.
Siglitz then called the Executive Director of the General Services Agency (GSA) to make arrangements for some temporary office space. Naturally he was directed to put his request through the normal channels and provide the needed paperwork. Siglitz’s explanation that he currently had no office, no computers, and no staff to prepare the needed documentation made no impression on the GSA executive. Procedures were procedures and that was that. Forget the fact that the Cincinnati office of the IRS was responsible for processing tax returns for a fourteen state area when the tax return involved a payment to the IRS; the GSA had its protocol for spending the Government’s money, notwithstanding the fact that the IRS is the agency that collects the money in the first place. This irony apparently was lost on the GSA, but not Siglitz.
At 11:30am Siglitz redialed his boss’s number and got through immediately. After listening to his situation report, Deputy Commissioner Anna Makris said she would brief all the necessary people up the chain of command. She also promised Siglitz that she would talk to the people at the GSA and try to cut some of the red tape in finding temporary facilities for the Cincinnati operations. After ending the call with his boss, Siglitz gave a sigh of relief. This was premature.
The CPW people finally showed up at 2:30 pm and entered the same manhole that the “specialists” had entered. They were horrified to discover that the sewage had been deliberately pumped into the building and that the clean water pipe had been turned off. It took them nearly two additional hours to disconnect the forced flow compressor and stop the flow of raw sewage.
By this time, raw sewage was beginning to leak out of the first floor of the building. The ungodly stench that had been confined to the inside of the building was now spreading to the immediate vicinity of the building. The switchboard of the CPW began to light up like a Christmas tree. Then the Mayor’s office began to get flooded by calls. Then the Hamilton County Public Health Department received a call from the Mayor’s office. Then the State of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency received a call from the Hamilton County Public Health Department. Then the United States Environment Protection Agency received a call from the State of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Then the Internal Revenue Service received a call from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Joel Siglitz had spent most of the afternoon at a makeshift office in the Federal Building in downtown Cincinnati. He was able to contact his senior staff and flesh out a basic plan for restoring operations. This was by no means easy since everyone was communicating by cell phone, but at least it was a start. Siglitz had returned home about 6:30pm and was working on his second Scotch and soda when the phone rang. At the other end of the line was Anna Makris, her boss, and her boss’s boss, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. The conversation was not going to be a friendly one. An hour of tense conversation followed, with the Commissioner doing most of the talking. Siglitz was made aware of the following:
The Commissioner had been told in no uncertain terms by the EPA that the Cincinnati mess had to be dealt with immediately even if it meant involving the Commissioner’s boss, the Secretary of the Treasury.
Restoring operations for the moment would have to take a backseat to cleaning up the mess.
The GSA would provide toxic waste contractors no later than 7:00am tomorrow to begin the cleanup activities.
Siglitz would personally supervise the cleanup effort and that Washington would send somebody to Cincinnati to begin the process of restoring operations.
The Federal Protective Service (FPS) of the Department of Homeland Security would begin an investigation of the sabotage. Their investigators would be arriving in Cincinnati tomorrow.
Finally, it had been decided by the Secretaries of Treasury and Homeland Security that the head of the Federal Protective Service and the Commissioner of the IRS would hold a joint news conference tomorrow afternoon to brief the media on the events at the IRS’s Cincinnati office. Siglitz had objected to this on the grounds that the additional publicity would serve to keep the incident in the public’s view. Better, he argued, to launch a discrete, but thorough investigation. He was overruled.
Joel Siglitz suddenly felt considerably older than his forty-eight years. The recent events gave him great concern about his career. He had been a rising star in the IRS and had landed the head job in Cincinnati only last year. Siglitz was kn
own as a go to guy in Washington when the IRS needed something fixed quickly and discretely. His spin on the IRS’s handling of tax free applications for conservative political groups had earned him high marks from his superiors. It was his idea to put the blame solely on the Cincinnati office and several low level employees. Some would say that since his reward was to get promoted to the head of the Cincinnati regional office, perhaps a sort of ironic justice had been achieved. Downing a third and fourth Scotch and soda, he dozed off into a fitful sleep.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
6:30am
Siglitz waited in his car three blocks from the IRS building with his third Starbucks of the day to keep him company. By 6:45 three vacuum trucks and several vans marked “Enviro-Remediation Services” arrived. They were accompanied by a US government vehicle with the markings of the GSA. Somebody in Washington had lit a fire under the GSA and now the cleanup could begin. A man who introduced himself simply as “Johnson, GSA” greeted Siglitz and handed him a sheaf of papers with instructions on documenting the work of the contractor. This paperwork package was about the size of the Cincinnati Yellow Pages. Silently Siglitz moaned to himself. The next weeks and months were going to be tedious. The documentation plan called for Siglitz to arrive at the start of business each day and return at closing time to verify the progress being made. The corner office it wasn’t. Then there were the flies. Along with the stench that had outraged the local residents, flies begin to appear in prodigious numbers.
The buzzing and stench along with the hot and humid summer weather in southern Ohio made even the short check-in and check-out times that Siglitz would have to verify a totally miserable experience. He soon discovered that the stench, like being in small room with cigar smokers, would cling to his clothes and follow him the remainder of the day. Ahh…. virtue is its own reward.
At 8:30am Siglitz was driving back to his temporary office in the Federal Building when he received a call from the investigators from the Federal Protective Service. They had just arrived at work site and needed to interview him. Caught in the rush hour traffic he returned to IRS building and announced his presence to the FPS folks. Showing a badge and introducing himself as Special Agent Neoponte, a large overweight man ushered Siglitz into nearby FPS Crime Scene van. An hour of tedium ensued. No, neither Siglitz nor anyone on his staff had received any threats verbally or in writing. No, he knew of no recently discharged employees who might bear a grudge against the IRS. No, there were no reports of suspicious behavior in the days leading up to the incident…..yada, yada, yada. Neoponte announced that there would be no further questions for now and that Siglitz could go about his business.
Siglitz returned to the Federal Building about 1:30pm, after making a detour to his home in order to shower and change clothes. Tomorrow he would return to the work site in coveralls to protect his business attire. At 2:30pm he was advised to turn on CNN and catch the news conference. Looking somber and menacing were the Executive Director of the Federal Protective Service and the Commissioner of the IRS. The Cincinnati office of the IRS had been deliberately sabotaged and severely damaged. Although stopping short of calling it domestic terrorism, the Federal officials promised that the full weight of the law would be felt by the perpetrators of this crime. It would be their intent to make examples of those responsible for this outrage. One viewing this news conference couldn’t help but to feel a little intimidated. Then the questions from the media started and in ten minutes the Federal officials had achieved exactly the opposite result they had intended. When asked to describe the damage caused, the Commissioner of the IRS stated that someone had deliberately reversed the flow of sewage, disabled the air conditioning and flooded the facility with three days of raw sewage.
Somebody in the media began to giggle and it started a series of pun filled questions that elicited more laughter. Caught on microphone was a comment from “an un-named source” that the IRS finally had received what it had dished out over the years. There were of course the usual remarks about,” what goes around comes around.” The Federal officials indignantly cut the news conference short amid the giggles and laughter. This was a public relations disaster that was about to get a whole lot worse.
Tuesday Evening
Absent the disastrous new conference that afternoon, the news coverage of Monday would probably have been the end of the story. Now everyone in the national media seemed intent upon covering the events in Cincinnati. The “Big Stink at the IRS” as the media began calling it was now national news and led coverage on both the early and late evening news. All the major networks had dispatched news teams to Cincinnati to cover the story. Late night television hosts couldn’t resist joke after joke about the IRS and the sabotage. Siglitz had been correct in his concerns about raising public awareness. Soon it would become apparent that the public relations would be the least of the IRS’s problems.
Aftermath
In the months following the events of early July, 2014, the IRS found itself literally under attack by the media, outraged citizens, politicians, hackers, and hooligans.
Somebody printed up bumper stickers that read “Honk if the IRS Stinks” and sales in Cincinnati soared. Many motorists drove by the site of the cleanup and honked until the noise became unbearable to the cleanup workers. This drew even more news coverage.
A talented hacker accessed the GSA data base and posted online the location of every IRS vehicle. In the following months over 300 IRS vehicles had their windows smashed, swastikas painted on doors, and in some cases were torched.
The budget of the IRS became totally unmanageable due to the costs of addition security recommended by the Federal Protective Service, restoration of the Cincinnati operations, vehicle damage, and the replacement of the computers lost in the sabotage.
Virtually every local and national newspaper carried personal interest stories of average citizens being abused by the IRS. Sixty Minutes dedicated an entire show to IRS abuses. The daytime radio shows covered IRS abuses on a daily basis.
Politicians were inundated with anti-IRS communications. With the 2014 mid-term elections just around the corner, most politicians refused to even bring up a vote for a special IRS appropriations bill. Congressional committees held numerous hearings on IRS matters just to demonstrate, even if insincerely, that they were on the side of the average citizen.
An IRS agent in San Francisco attempted to serve a collection notice on the owners of the Leather for Pleasure Lounge. He was beaten and gang raped for several hours and then left bound, beaten, and buggered in the Golden Gate Park. When detectives for the San Francisco Police Department sex crimes unit showed up at the Leather for Pleasure Lounge they could find no witnesses. Nobody saw or heard a thing.
Many people of all walks of life were beginning to view the saboteurs as folk heroes. The FPS investigation had gone nowhere and the media pointed this out at every opportunity.
The citizens were only beginning to get angry.
Mountain and Meadow Ranch, Wyoming
July 24, 2014
11:00pm
Lighting a Macanudo and pouring another two fingers of twenty-four year old Macallan, the architect of the IRS’s recent problems smiled and muttered to himself, “They ain’t seen nothing yet.” Operation Taxpayer had been a total success.
CHAPTER 9 - FUN AT OLGA’S
Bardstown, Kentucky
August 2, 2014
9:30am
“I’ll take five pounds of the tomatoes and eight of these green bell peppers, Ms. Olga,” declared the young housewife who had been shopping at the Farmers Market in Bardstown. She added, “You always have the best and freshest produce in Nelson County; I just don’t know how you do it.”
“Just lots of love and attention to detail,” replied the elderly lady in the old fashioned dress and apron. “I started growing vegetables on our family farm in Alabama when I was only six years old and I guess I never lost my love of doing it after all of these years,” drawled the propriet
ress of the produce stand, Olga Stromeltz. The produce that came from Olga’s five hundred acre farm, located ten miles east of Bardstown, was indeed some of the finest generated in Nelson County, Kentucky. The secret was a unique blend of organic fertilizer that Olga and her two “nephews,” Frank and Jimmy, applied to the soil. Had the good residents of Bardstown known the actual composition of the specially blended fertilizer they might not have been so eager to put a slice of one of Olga’s tomatoes on their freshly grilled hamburger.
Olga, Frank, and Jimmy grew vegetables, sweet corn, and raised a few chickens and pigs on the farm. Located just off of Farm Road 618 which connected to State Highway 55, the farm was remote and private. The southern field of one hundred acres faced the road and most of the produce was grown there. A half mile dirt lane connected the farm house to the county road. Near the house was a chicken coop, pigsty, barn and several small outbuildings to house the tractor and other farming equipment. The remainder of the farm was covered with a thick wood of maples, elms, sycamores, poplars, and oaks. It was a beautiful scene in the autumn when the foliage turned into the reds, yellows, and oranges of the native hardwoods.
Mr. Hawkins had chosen this location carefully. It was secluded and yet only a one hour drive to Louisville. This was a perfect location for Olga and her assistants to practice their professions. The fall of the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic had left people such as Olga and her nephews, Frank and Jimmy, in need of gainful employment. Mr. Hawkins was building an organization that had need of their services. He was able to track them down, offer them employment in the private sector, and create new identities for each. Olga had been living in Spain when he located her. Frank had moved to Canada and Jimmy was found residing in Switzerland.
Olga was seventy-three years old and had spent the bulk of her professional career as an officer in the Russian KGB. Her expertise was interrogations and torture. She loved her job as only a true psychopath could. The hills of Kentucky were a long way from the cells at the Lubyanka in Moscow, but the private sector had the advantage of no bureaucratic procedures to contend with and it paid considerably more than her salary as a KGB colonel. Her fluency in several languages, including English, made it easy for her to assume the identity of Olga Stromeltz, an elderly widow from Alabama. The former Colonel Elena Bataskya was thriving in her new environment. She did, however, miss the challenge of interrogating professional operatives and ultimately breaking them. The people provided by Hawkins were mostly amateurs and easy to break, but very fun to torture since they had not been trained to resist.
Patriots Versus Bureaucrats Page 9
