Pranking the FBI

Over twenty years ago, a 13 year-old student in the UK was researching a project at school and getting bored at the same time - even though the project was Al Capone and the online research involved the official website of the FBI. Eventually, he came across an intriguing link on the site - Submit A Tip - and decided it might be fun to do so - something along the lines of “Two bombs have been left in New York garbage cans.”

He had a giggle with a couple of mates and then forgot about it. A week or so later, his mother received a telephone call, asking her and her husband to attend a meeting along with their son in the headmaster’s office the following morning. No further details were given, and the boy had no idea what it was about.

They were all surprised when they turned up the next day and found two policemen, a Special Branch officer and an American official with the headmaster. A couple of days after the schoolboy prank, two small explosive devices had been found in public waste bins in New York. The FBI had reviewed all recent tips, recognised the accuracy of this particular one and had tracked the source back to the school.

The student hadn’t been totally stupid (although that is a matter of opinion). He had used the user name and password of a friend who had left the school and moved to another region of the UK a few weeks earlier. The police had raided the new home of the unsuspecting friend and had questioned him and his mother, before realising he had no part in the event and shifting their enquiries back to the school.

It quickly became apparent during the headmaster’s meeting that the timing of the prank and the discovery of the devices had been coincidental, resulting in nothing more serious for the student than a reprimand from the headmaster, a warning about future behaviour from the local constabulary, a rise in legend status within the school and the rollocking of all rollockings from his embarrassed parents, once he returned home.

The above account isn’t fiction - although it would form the basis of a decent plot. I knew the student concerned and his family at the time and still do so today. He worried that the prank might prevent him visiting the USA (it didn’t), or that he might be arrested when entering the country (he wasn’t - or, at least, he hasn’t been yet…).

Okay, this is perhaps an extreme example, but I am constantly amazed how seemingly innocuous decisions or actions can have significant, often serious, potential consequences. In this case, the student’s friend left the school after his mother decided she needed a fresh start following a nervous breakdown, and moved the family to the peace of the Welsh countryside. The last thing she expected was members of the police force, supported by a tactical firearms unit, banging on her front door in the early hours of the morning and questioning her and her son about terrorist activity in New York.

Fortunately, all’s well that ends well in this case. No-one was hurt. Nobody went to jail, or visited Guantanamo Bay for a while. No governments collapsed. No wars started.

However, when a man at the end of his tether decides enough’s enough and simply walks out of a changing room in a warehouse… Well, I guess you know the rest…