Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 9 Out from Under the Bootheel Part 3 A Secure Bat Phone

Did I stop playing practical jokes once I became a father, family man and serious respected professional? What do you think? Even as an Air Force officer I was known for answering my work phone, "Bat phone, boy wonder speaking," parodying Robin in the popular Batman television series. Several Air Force colonels took to mockingly calling me "boy wonder."  

Once out in Maryland my office was sent a top-secret telephone encryption device for use on classified phone conversations. The devices in use now are quite small, but this early model was a 30-inch by 30-inch cube about the size of a small safe and just as heavy. A close friend of mine was put in charge of the device. It was quite a responsibility, that my friend took very seriously. The morning the device arrived they rolled it back into his office in the SCIF, he locked his door, and he went to lunch.

A SCIF is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility which means it is behind closely guarded vault level locked doors with access only to those with Top Secret security clearances. We all had offices inside the SCIF. As second in charge of the office, I had keys to all the offices inside the SCIF.

By now, you have to have figured out that while he was at lunch, I entered my friend's office, rolled the encryption device out of his office and into a nearby empty adjacent office and locked the door.

That afternoon my friend comes into my office. "Joe, did someone move the secure phone encryption device?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked acting confused.

"When I came back from lunch, it wasn't in my office," he said beginning to sound more than a little worried.

"That's impossible. Something that big can't just disappear," I said trying to sound concerned as I got up from my desk and went with him to check his office.

You should have seen the look on his face as I began looking around his office for the missing device and he began contemplating being sent to prison for losing this device. My plan had been to distract him somewhere else in the SCIF and have one of my other engineers return the box when he wasn't looking. But the look on his face was just too panicked; so, I broke down and told him where it was. Of course, I blamed one of the other engineers.

After that, I was a little more careful with my pranks. Being in a position of authority, you don't want to abuse your power. Okay, once I did take the microphone out of one of the guy's telephone handsets. When he answered the phone, he could hear the caller, but no matter how loud he shouted the caller couldn't hear him. I made sure I was the first to call him. You could hear his, "HELLO, HELLO!" throughout the entire SCIF. After that I limited my entertainment to the classified news letter I put out every week. It informed everyone what was going on and of course included a few jokes. Everyone I worked with was highly intelligent; so, the favorite item was my weekly brain teaser about the exploits of my fictional investigator Sam Sigint. After a month of the newsletters, my boss became worried that having a classified news letter might be frowned on by our customers, so once again, my foray into journalism came to an abrupt end.