Read Online Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist by Jeffrey Shapiro - Free Book Online

agency. They told him that he had been held by an Afghan army unit associated with a terrorist group named Al Qaeda and was the only survivor of captivity. As the words “sole survivor” came back to his memory he laughed, “Why am I always the sole survivor? This is getting old.” The other captives, once learned to be Israelis, were all beheaded. He remembered being stripped and placed in manacles in a cave and being asked about his mission over and over again, and the pain of the torture, but little else. All he had left were the physical scars, the missing little finger on his left hand, the two nail size holes on the bottom of his feet and a 2 inch scar above his left eye. He didn’t even remember the faces of any of his captors or the group of Israeli agents who were specialists in the caves of this region and had rescued him. During the 6 week debriefing, the CIA and the Israeli Secret Police were primarily interested in whether he had had any interaction with a man named Osama, of whom Jonathan had no recollection.
    Jonathan paused when he came to the pictures of his children and was reminded of his emotional pain when he saw a picture of Matthew, sitting in an airplane shaped walker bought for him by Bob. He snatched the picture from the wall and held it close to his heart and then put it away in a desk drawer, because he couldn’t bear to look at it. There were also a few pictures of Carly, his special treasure. He was so thankful for her life and the joy that she brought him. He only hoped that he could help her through this trauma which he had brought upon her.
    On the walls and shelves were awards and trophies of achievements inside the agency and competitions that he had won apart from the agency, a trophy for winning the toughest man competition when he was 19, a plaque from the State of Virginia for winning the math and science fair when he was 17, diplomas from Wharton and Harvard for leadership and negotiation classes and on and on. It was a collection of who he was and all that he had accomplished, but it meant little in light of his loss.
    He sat down at his Hewlett Packard engineering computer and tried to re-initiate his reviews of suspicious emails, but found that the agency had removed his authentication credentials so that he could no longer access the servers and databases that would provide him with his answers. He was surprised that the agency had not forewarned him about the changes in clearances and had gone silent, because usually they were respectful with their communication. “They must just want to leave me alone,” he thought. “Get used to it….It’s just part of the transition to being a full time bureaucrat.”
    He stayed in his little refuge to avoid Mary because his presence seemed to aggravate rather than soothe her wounded spirit. He logged on to his personal Earthlink email account and saw the usual listing of junk mail, an email from his parents wishing him well and one from his brother. As he was scanning the listing, he saw an unusual phrase in one of the subject lines, You have fought for your country….. He opened the email and found the remaining message to read but your country will not fight for you. There was an attached JPEG file. He scanned it for viruses and then opened it. He was shocked when he saw a picture of himself in faded green army fatigues. He didn’t remember the picture but surmised that it must have been taken several years ago after one of his field assignments in the Middle East. In the picture he was standing next to a MD530E “Little Bird” helicopter. He was alone and he wasn’t smiling. The email was from a user named M’OReilly, someone he didn’t know or had never received an email from before. He knew it wasn’t just a random and weird message from some kook; perhaps it was from the invisible enemy, the people who had beaten him and his unit and were not done, trying to intimidate him and get into his head. He wished that he had the