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  I was beginning to feel as if I were in a foreign country, not quite the Iran of Argo, but on the line of an alternate America run like a DMV.

  “Am I being detained?” I asked.

  “Where is your passport, sir?” said the agent.

  “The other guy took it from me and walked over there and put it in a drawer or something.”

  “James, I need to see your passport. And give me your bags.”

  “Sir, can I ask what this is about?”

  Sensing some crazy and possibly illegal behavior from these agents, I slid my hand into my pocket and attempted to turn on the video option of my iPhone. He saw me do it.

  “If you touch that fucking phone,” he barked, “I will have you arrested.”

  I kick myself looking back on the incident. I wish I had committed the name of this CBP officer to memory. In subsequent detentions, I would not make that mistake again. The agent took my brown duffle bag and asked me quickly if I made any purchases. Before I could answer, he violently yanked on the zipper and proceeded to dump all my gear onto the table. He then rummaged through my clothes, apparently looking for contraband.

  On January 5, 2015, Bill Marshall at Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on our behalf with the Department of Homeland Security. We wanted to know why I was detained and harassed. On January 7, Marshall received an email back from CBP claiming its people were “unable to locate or identify any responsive records.” It did not surprise Bill that CBP failed to produce any relevant records. What surprised him, shocked him really, was the speed of the rejection. Two days!

  “It is very strange, unheard of, really,” said Bill, “that CBP would be able to receive a FOIA request, process it, conduct the search for records related to it, and respond to me within two days of my having sent the request.” He added quizzically, “That doesn’t even account for the time it took my letter to reach them via USPS.”

  Judicial Watch pursued this inquiry nonetheless, and finally CBP responded with a single-page inspection document too heavily redacted to be of value. What they blacked out, I imagined, was the reason why they were stopping me. Think this is a conspiracy theory? Read on.

  ***

  Lake Erie, September 2014

  Equal opportunity border crossers, we decided to stage a crossing of the Canadian border as well. A few weeks after Mexico, we rented a small pleasure craft out of Cleveland and cruised the forty-five miles over to Canada. On the return trip, a high-speed Zodiac boat with a man dressed head-to-foot in black ISIS garb followed in our wake. Needless to say, we recorded his journey. We saw no Border Patrol coming or going. A local skipper we spoke to had never seen the Border Patrol on Lake Erie.

  According to CBP rules, small-craft operators are supposed to self-report if they cross from Canada into the United States. Our ISIS rep chose not to. Who can blame him? He was carrying a bag of the deadly poison ricin and a sack of Ebola-infected rags—yes, Virginia, fake in both cases. Holding a British passport, as more than a few ISIS fighters do, our man would have had no trouble getting into Canada and, if anything, even less trouble getting to Cleveland.

  Still in full terrorist gear, the fellow docked his boat in downtown Cleveland. He then carried his Ebola-soaked rags and his ricin bag right into the heavily visited Rock and Roll Hall of Fame adjacent to the harbor. I hoped we were not putting any ideas into the deranged heads of our ISIS friends—by this time they had already cited our Osama video in internal documents—but we were definitely trying to get the attention of our government.

  In the latter case, we seem to have succeeded. Two days after posting our Lake Erie video, Senator John McCain had the chance to question Francis Taylor, then undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a hearing of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee about reports of ISIS urging its followers to infiltrate the United States across its southwestern border.

  “There have been Twitter, social media exchanges among ISIL adherents across the globe speaking about that as a possibility,”6 Taylor responded to McCain.

  Taylor then boasted, “I’m satisfied that we have the intelligence and the capability at our border that would prevent that activity.” McCain wasn’t buying it.

  “Well you know it’s interesting,” McCain responded, “because an American reporter named James O’Keefe dressed as Osama bin Laden walked across the border at the Rio Grande River undetected. Does something like that concern you?”

  “Actually sir, he was not undetected,” said Taylor who was apparently expecting the question. “He was known to the border security agencies who walked . . . saw him . . .”

  McCain cut him off. “Then why didn’t they stop him when he came across?” When Taylor proved unable to answer, McCain answered for him: “You can’t answer it because they weren’t there to stop him.”

  McCain was right. They were not there. Nor was it the fault of the Border Patrol agents that they were not there. Despite its many promises, the Obama administration had failed to make a serious effort to secure the border. “The fact is there are thousands of people who are coming across our border who are undetected and not identified,” said McCain, and he was right.

  ***

  Port of St. John, US Virgin Islands, April 15, 2015

  More of the same. I went snorkeling at an island near St. John where I was staying with my family. Upon returning, we checked in at a little customs shanty. I waited patiently as an agent pounded away at the keyboard of his computer. It seemed to be taking longer than usual. Suddenly out of nowhere, while staring into his screen, he said quietly and with just a hint of menace, “Do you think what you did was funny?”

  Without thinking, I said, “No, it’s not the slightest bit funny.” To me, the fact that terrorists can easily infiltrate the country is not a laughing matter. The agent’s response was curious.

  “Are you done with that stuff?”7

  That “stuff” was investigative journalism into the workings of the US government, the same government that reportedly protects our freedom to do that “stuff.”

  Looking back, when the agent asked, “Are you done with that stuff?” I wish I would have answered, “Done? No, bro, I’m just getting started.” But I knew enough not to joke with CBP people, especially when detained by them. It is a strange feeling, being forced to condemn your own actions while being detained by the US government—forced to beg for forgiveness and their mercy. It reminded me of Tocqueville’s condemnation of those people who readily sacrifice their will to the government’s. “They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk,” he wrote, “but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.”8

  ***

  St. John Airport, US Virgin Islands, April 16, 2015

  In order to ease passage to other Caribbean Islands not part of America, the CBP mans a customs station at the St. John’s airport. A day after being harassed at the port, I was detained once again. To document the detention, a friend took a photo of me through the window of the detention room.

  This time, too, I thought to record the encounter through the iTalk app on my cell phone. It seemed like a good idea until a CBP agent demanded to see my cell phone. I showed it. No problem, I thought, at least at first. The iTalk app records in the background. The agent would have to log in to see that the phone was recording.

  “Please unlock your cell phone.”

  Damn! Now what do I do? “Sir, I’m a journalist,” I told him, “and I have confidential sources and methods on this iPhone. I cannot in good conscience unlock it.”

  “Unlock your phone, please.”9

  With that, I tilted the phone up slightly toward me so it was not easy for him to see. With some fancy finger work, I quickly
punched the code and then hit “stop record” in one sequence. To the agent, it appeared as if I had entered one long numerical password. Just as I was exiting the iTalk program, he grabbed the phone out of my hand and swiped the screens to see if there were any apps open. That was close.

  When I told Bill Marshall at Judicial Watch about my latest encounter, he sent another FOIA request to CBP. He wanted to find out why I was targeted. This time, he got a letter back saying that the “average time to process a FOIA request related to ‘travel/border incidents’ is a minimum of 12 months.” Last time, it took two days.

  ***

  Montreal, June 2015

  The game kept getting chippier. Two months after the incident in St. John, I took a short trip to Greece. I traveled there in part to get some man-on-the-street interviews regarding the financial crisis and the ensuing riots. On the way home I landed in Montreal and was processed through US Customs at the Montreal airport. Once again, I had a large “X” stamped on my passport document. This was the fifth X in my last five trips. I was leading the league in X’s. At the first customs desk, the agent was friendly enough until he entered my name in the database—then his tone changed.

  Understanding now the risk of recording on my iPhone, I recorded everything on a voice-activated device that was also a functional USB flash drive. It was an expensive piece of equipment, manufactured by people in the intelligence community. I even put files and pictures on the device in case the authorities inserted it into a computer. To take it apart and find the recording element they would need a serious technician and maybe a search warrant.

  The agents made me empty all my pockets on the table. They went through my phone as they typically did and then examined the flash drive closely. Unknown to them, the flash drive was recording the conversation. When they finished looking at it, one of the agents put the drive on top of a counter about seven feet away. Without being obvious, I tried to keep the discussion as close to that device as possible.

  After a few routine questions, an agent pulled my name up on the computer, and his eyes lit up. This agent asked if I had ever “passed the border before in disguise.”10 I answered honestly that I had and explained the purpose behind the Osama bin Laden crossing. I asked whether these recurring detentions were a form of retaliation.

  “No, we’re not retaliating against you,” he said, then added. “Why would you say that?”

  The guy was being coy. We both knew why. He led me to a private room where four agents took turns interrogating me. A woman agent led the way, probing further into who I was and what I did for a living. When I tried to explain, she interjected, “You’re like a shock reporter. You basically go to the extremes to prove a point?”

  I had been called a lot of things in my brief career but never a “shock reporter.” I suspect she just sort of combined “shock jock” and “reporter” and conjured the term on the spot. I was impressed. According to the agent, “shock reporter” O’Keefe brought on this added scrutiny by at least appearing to break the law in crossing the Rio Grande.

  “I broke the law?” I said to her incredulously. “I’m a journalist who is trying to expose something important.” I thought I might be reaching her.

  “Deep down in your heart,” I continued, “when you set the bureaucracy aside, you have to admit the problem needs to be exposed.”

  Actually, I didn’t reach her. Her mind was pretty well shut. The questions kept coming. Wanting to know why, I asked a male agent about the recurring searches. He explained that his bosses “don’t want you to pull a fast one on us.” They were afraid, he explained, of “getting egg on their face.”

  This explanation had a logic to it, but it still made little real sense. The CBP mission was to protect the public “from dangerous people and materials,” not to keep egg off the faces of the CBP brass. By my lights, I was helping the CBP improve its service. The CBP apparently did not quite see it that way.

  The questions grew progressively more intrusive. They asked what my next project was going to be, how I made money, and, bizarrely, which candidate I intended to back.

  “Would you really support Trump as a nominee?” one agent asked. I was so unsettled by the question I laughed involuntarily. “I don’t really endorse politicians for, you know, anything,” I told him honestly.

  When I went public with my experience at the hands of the CBP, I caught the attention of at least a few liberal civil libertarians, a vanishing breed. An immigration lawyer writing under the handle “Timaeus” posted a protest of CBP’s actions on the decidedly left-leaning Daily Kos. She (I’ll presume) was writing against the Daily Kos grain. Comments about my detention on the site, Timaeus noted, had turned into “a festival of schadenfreude.”11 Trolls have always delighted in my misfortunes. I expected no less.

  Lest Timaeus be accused of coddling a “world class rat” like me, she seasoned her defense with insults aplenty. “His Bin Ladin [sic] crossing the river stunt was juvenile and highly offensive,” wrote Timaeus. “But I think he was exercising his constitutional right to travel along with his First Amendment free speech right to be a complete jackass. I don’t think that deserves punishment with a lifetime of travel restraints.” As much as I appreciated her left-handed support, I had to ask myself whom exactly I “highly” offended—bin Laden? Terrorists? Mexicans? Liberals? The media? The CBP? The deep state? Who?

  The well-known and respected civil libertarian Jonathan Turley was kinder. Turley acknowledged that I was “controversial” and “hated by many on the left.” He cited much of my legal history and questioned whether Project Veritas was the “journalistic organization” it purported to be. The picture he posted in the article had me in an orange jumpsuit, all the rage in New Orleans back in the day.

  Unlike Timaeus, however, Turley gave our Osama video its due. “The video succeeded in capturing what critics have complained about for years,” wrote Turley, “that the border remain [sic] wide open and that the Administration is misleading the public on the ease with which potential terrorists could cross into the United States illegally.”12 This was our point exactly.

  “Whatever the merits of that video,” Turley continued, “it does seem to me to be either a form of journalism or political speech.” He confirmed that the video was obviously “very embarrassing,” not just for the CBP but for the Obama administration as well. He found my treatment by the CBP “troubling” for any number of reasons. Among them was the unlikelihood that the CBP would detain a reporter from NBC or the New York Times for doing something comparable. He suggested there would be much more attention paid had a major media reporter been detained, and he was right.

  “When dealing with a critic like O’Keefe,” Turley concluded, “the government should be able to show an objective and consistently applied rule. Perhaps they have one, but there has been little coverage of the incident.” Truth be told, during the Obama years, there was relatively little major media coverage of any news that embarrassed the White House. What coverage there was tended to be protective.

  The comments from Turley and Timaeus encouraged me. The unapologetic CBP harassment forced them to confront an injustice they were not prepared to tolerate. Unfortunately, there were too few people like them.

  ***

  Seattle, July 24, 2015

  The relative lack of coverage allowed CBP to continue doing what it was doing. In July 2015, soon after the Turley protest, I had to go through customs in Seattle following an Alaskan cruise sponsored by the National Review. I knew at this stage of the game that I had to record these encounters, but I had to be prudent. My lawyer informed me that I could not legally video record the CBP agents. He reminded me too that if an agent asked, “Are you recording me?” I had to answer truthfully. USC § 1001 prohibits false statements to a CBP officer.

  Whatever anyone asked, I had to be prepared in advance to answer. We use the same techniq
ue in our undercover work to avoid lawbreaking. For example, if one of our journalists is offered a ballot during a voter fraud investigation and is asked if he is the person registered, the journalist cannot say “yes.” That would be a lie. Instead, we train our journalists to avoid the heart of the question. “You are always behind Enemy Lines” is a much quoted Veritas rule, sometimes even in our own country.

  Seattle was déjà vu all over again. “This is the sixth straight time I’ve been asked to be inspected,” I told the CBP agent assigned to me.13

  “Okay,” he responded.

  He looked at the screen for a very long time. I could sense his body language tensing as he read the material before him.

  “What do you do for a living, sir?”

  “I’m a journalist.”

  “You’re a journalist?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is this sort of freelance or are you working for a company?”

  “I started my own company—I’ve got twenty people working for me. We do a lot of reporting, especially on the border.” I added the border jab to see if that would provoke a candid admission from him.

  “Do you have any cameras?” he said, his poker face intact.

  This was the moment of truth, and I was prepared.

  “I didn’t bring those with me today,” I said without lying. I had sent them through in my bags. My audio recording device, however, was recording every word he was saying. I kept that fact to myself.

  “How do you turn this off?” he said, taking my iPhone and jacking with it.

  “You just hold down the two buttons down the side there,” I said. I was so helpful. My mother would have been proud. He read the screen carefully for a few more minutes.

  “Did you make the news for the whole, like, southern border stuff?”