FBI's most-wanted item: someone with organization skills
by Beth Teitell

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

The Senate Judiciary Committee should ease up on the FBI. So, big deal, the agency can't find a few hundred firearms and 184 laptops, including at least one containing classified information. And yes, there was that business with the belated discovery of thousands of pages of investigative reports in the Timothy McVeigh case.

But tell me that Orrin Hatch has never misplaced anything. Never lost his car keys, or the TV/VCR remote control. Tell me Mr. Ranking Republican has never spent hours searching for his Discover card, going so far as to cancel it, only to find the little devil the next day in a jacket pocket or hiding under an old napkin at the bottom of his purse.

Yet every time documents go missing in Washington - FBI files, Hillary's billing records from the Rose law firm - everyone is so critical.

At a Judiciary Committee hearing last week, the senators used words like ``inexcusable'' and ``very, very serious management problems'' to blast the FBI.

As a person who recently came upon her original W-2 form from 1999 (I say ``original'' to distinguish it from the replacement the Herald issued), I know from personal experience that these things can happen, even to people who mean well.

What should the agency do? I read in the paper that the FBI has begun a 36-month modernization program to provide the bureau with a ``workable'' system of information technology, but three years is a long time. A lot of stuff could walk off between now and then: hair elastics, bills, socks. I'm already dreading the C-Span coverage of the hearings.

What the FBI needs is a place for agents to put stuff - rifles, submachine guns, computers - when they walk in the front door. I can't tell you how much a simple, wall-mounted mahogany-stained basket from Pottery Barn has changed my life.

Before the basket, leaving my apartment would take 25 minutes, minimum. ``I'm almost ready to go,'' I'd tell my husband in the morning, as I began a mad dash around our home, trying to recreate what I did when I last entered the apartment.

Did I make a beeline to the kitchen and wolf down the chocolate chip cookies I'd been thinking about all day at work and leave my keys in the fridge next to the milk? No - I stopped in to see the baby first. Oh, wait, I went to the basement to look for a shirt I'd lost.

Now, I simply drop my keys in their little spot, and they're there waiting for me when I need to leave.

(Unfortunately, I've also started dropping other items in there, too, at first limiting myself to things I'd need on the way out - sunglasses, wallet, hat - but slowly expanding allowed items to include: the newspaper I mean to read but haven't yet, a hair brush, a bottle of Poland Spring water, so that while the keys are in there, they're a little hard to find.)

I must confess that I've never been to the FBI, so I'm not sure if Pottery Barn's Graham Wall Organizer would even look good in the foyer, or whether a little antique table might work better.

The agents also should be taught not to put stuff in temporary locations. This, I confess, is a storage lapse of which I was guilty. ``I know I should file this Important Tax Document in my tax file,'' I'd think, ``but I'm in a hurry now, so I'll stick it in the old knapsack I use as a way station until I have time to deal with it properly.''

If all else fails, the FBI could embed paging technology in all of its property. Personally, I find that very helpful when I'm trying to find the cordless phone.

Oh, so that's why the refrigerator is beeping. . . .