network nationally and on a federal level.

FCIC people live on the phone lines. Not on bulletin board
systems--they know very well what boards are, and they know that boards
aren't secure. Everyone in the FCIC has a voice-phone bill like you
wouldn't believe. FCIC people have been tight with the telco people
for a long time. Telephone cyberspace is their native habitat.

FCIC has three basic sub-tribes: the trainers, the security people,
and the investigators. That's why it's called an "Investigations
Committee" with no mention of the term "computer-crime"--the dreaded
"C-word." FCIC, officially, is "an association of agencies rather than
individuals;" unofficially, this field is small enough that the
influence of individuals and individual expertise is paramount.
Attendance is by invitation only, and most everyone in FCIC considers
himself a prophet without honor in his own house.

Again and again I heard this, with different terms but identical
sentiments. "I'd been sitting in the wilderness talking to myself." "I
was totally isolated." "I was desperate." "FCIC is the best thing
there is about computer crime in America." "FCIC is what really
works." "This is where you hear real people telling you what's really
happening out there, not just lawyers picking nits." "We taught each
other everything we knew."

The sincerity of these statements convinces me that this is true. FCIC
is the real thing and it is invaluable. It's also very sharply at odds
with the rest of the traditions and power structure in American law
enforcement. There probably hasn't been anything around as loose and
go-getting as the FCIC since the start of the U.S. Secret Service in
the 1860s. FCIC people are living like twenty-first-century people in
a twentieth-century environment, and while there's a great deal to be
said for that, there's also a great deal to be said against it, and
those against it happen to control the budgets.

I listened to two FCIC guys from Jersey compare life histories. One of
them had been a biker in a fairly heavy-duty gang in the 1960s. "Oh,
did you know so-and-so?" said the other guy from Jersey. "Big guy,
heavyset?"

"Yeah, I knew him."

"Yeah, he was one of ours. He was our plant in the gang."

"Really? Wow! Yeah, I knew him. Helluva guy."

Thackeray reminisced at length about being tear-gassed blind in the
November 1969 antiwar protests in Washington Circle, covering them for
her col