Joke Article Earns Writer a Secret Service Interrogation

Comedy is a
hard industry. It’s even harder when the Secret Service doesn’t
think your jokes are funny.

That’s a lesson that Daniel O’Brien, the head writer at humor
website Cracked, learned the hard way. Yesterday, he
opened up for the first time about a frightening encounter he had
with the feds.

Back in 2009, O’Brien, a history buff, began researching
material for a jocular book called How to Fight
Presidents. In July of that year, he wrote on his obviously
humor-oriented website an obviously satirical
article titled “6 Helpful Tips for Kidnapping the President’s
Daughters.”

Soon after, he was on the phone with a member of the Secret
Service, Special Agent Mike Powell. Powell said his “job [is] to
pay attention when certain … concepts are brought up online,”
O’Brien
recalls. The agent “sounded warm and kind and goofy, like a fun
uncle,” lulling O’Brien out of a panic attack and explaining that
the satirist would have to go chat with some other agents in
person.

When O’Brien got there, two humorless individuals he prefers to
identify as “Agents Hardass and EatShit” interrogated him. They
went joke-by-joke through O’Brien’s history as a writer.

Here’s some of the exchange:

“In this section you mentioned that you once kidnapped President
Carter’s daughter, Amy, but that she escaped because you
underestimated her ability to swim. You claim you had her on your
boat and was astonished to see her, quote, slice through the ocean
like a dolphin, like a goddamn dolphin, I swear, end quote. Why did
you say that?”

[…]

“I was worried that some readers might think the article was
serious, so I wanted to sprinkle in a few super-obviously-fake
details to drive that home, so I mentioned owning a boat, which
isn’t true, and kidnapping Amy Carter, which given my age would
have been impossible.”

[…]

“In November of 2008,” Agent Hardass began, “you wrote
about having Pocahontas’ actual skeleton stored in your pantry.” …
“Is that true?” Agent Hardass continued.

This went on for two hours. They asked him if he was involved in
any terrorist organizations, to which he
replied, no, but that he had been in an a
cappella group in college. They demanded the name of it so they
could follow up.

O’Brien writes with a lighthearted tone, but the whole situation
is a serious example of the chilling effect government surveillance
has on people’s daily lives and web behavior. He took down the
original article, wouldn’t even mention it by name in yesterday’s
follow-up, and noted that he deliberately mentions no living
presidents in his book. And still, O’Brien “get[s] stopped and
pulled aside at airports five out of six times” he tries to
fly.

Tim Cushing of Techdirt
suggests that the such behavior flies in the face of claims
“that the government (specifically, its intelligence and
investigative agencies) isn’t interested in your
’emails/phone calls to Grandma’ or your ‘cat videos’” and that it
should serve as a warning to “those who would have honestly felt
the government was unconcerned with their internet activities.”

Reason contacted O’Brien, who confirmed that the
although the article is on a humor site, his account of the event
is factual.