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party to be held by the Butte Office staff on Wednesday
next. And if you think we are kidding or that this is a
'screwy lead,' you need merely accept the invitation."
Was exile in hell really a reassignment to heaven?
A 1988 piece in the Washington Post entitled "FBI
Agents' 'Siberia' Lives On," found that "In recent years,
the office has become a choice assignment for outdoors-
men." Quoting a former agent, Richard Dawson, who
had transferred to the office in 1968 and stayed there
many years before retiring, the article says, "People
here as a matter of preference by far outnumbered the
few here as a matter of supervision. I came here because
I like to hunt and fish."
Or, as historian and author of The FBI told the Chica-
go Tribune in 1966, "The truth is that agents ended up
liking it. It may seem like the end of the Earth to some,
but for fishermen and hunters, it was wonderful."
Sadly, the Butte Field Office of the FBI closed in 1989,
replaced by a processing center for records, and then
later, even that was closed. Now, Montana is under the
jurisdiction of the Salt Lake field office, which hasn't
blunted its effectiveness much; they still nabbed the
late-but-not-so-great Unabomber, didn't they?
Maybe if J. Edgar Hoover had ever been to Montana
and Butte in particular, he'd have realized his mistake.
He should have sent the bad agents to North Dakota.
And then he should have taken up hunting and fish-
ing, and moved to Montana himself.
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