Actually, the strategy the feds used is unclear to me. They wanted to put Harry away forever, thereby receiving greater raises and promotions and such, but for a number of reasons six years was the best they could do. The sentencing guidelines have specific limits for sane crooks – guys who are cognizant of their acts – and part of the government’s case involved agents swearing under oath that Harry was cognizant of his terrible acts. Understand: Insane people can be put away forever provided they actually DO something illegal rather than THINK about doing something illegal, while only sane people are allowed to THINK their crimes in order to be put away and then there are limits to how long they can imprison a man which, in this case, was six years. Got that?

        So, unless something untoward happened like a “P” number, which is a federal designation that allows the “Doctors” to keep you forever, they couldn’t just arbitrarily start calling Harry crazy after the conviction in order to load his wagon for good and maybe accept medals for valor and such for saving the Boss.

        They couldn’t call him crazy; they had to make him crazy.

        Be advised: Psychotic illnesses and the like are not funny in prison. Whether you are officially designated crazy or not, if you mumble to your muse and you do it out loud, the hacks may put you in a glass and concrete room which echoes like a banshee and they may strip you of everything but a blanket and your imaginary debating opponent. While there you may not be allowed a diversion like a book to pass the time with nor anything but your pitiful little pud to fondle for the camera crew and the prison entertainment committee (and let’s face it, being naked in a glass box, you’re probably going to want to play with SOMETHING and you dick’s right there and, well…). Later the hacks may remind you of your gallant display which is now on tape in the prison archives, always ready with a threat to show it during 8:00 movie time for the general population. This is a great way to promote mental health. (I, for one, do not stumble around in the yard talking to my rabbit.)

        In any event, Harry was outraged with not only the sentence, but with his assigned wing in his assigned institution – Butner – which, while looking like therapy (remember, they said he didn’t need therapy), seemed to him a place designed to MAKE him looney and deny him his rights as a sane man. It was right out of a Kafka novel. “I’m not now, I wasn’t then crazy, Waid, I was sick: bi-polar and clinically depressed, and it pisses me off that the feds wanted it both ways and were trying to make my illness worse.”

        He might have been a Libertarian and concerned with the erosion of our liberties, but he’d never envisioned a government bent on bending the rules so blatantly.  Like many in here, he clearly thought that lying and selective presentation of facts to form a fraudulent picture, and then to circumvent that picture later to further a political agenda, was only practiced somewhere else on someone else. Harry, fettered to the historical imperative of constitutional law, had only considered the THEORETICAL application of fascism, not the personal tragedy of it all.  Harry was now an official enemy of the state and not a potential patient of some psychiatrist in the free world, but his legal cognizance could be questioned at any time and it didn’t matter that he was proven beyond a doubt to have known exactly what he was doing at all times when he was committing whatever it was he was committing.

        “What exactly were you committing, Harry?” I asked. There had to be more to it than political ideology.

        “I was thinking, Waid. I was dreaming and I told them my dreams.” He smiled his darkened smile.

        “I’d never do that,” I said.

        “It’s a stupid legal principal, Gary.”

        “Maybe so, but it has historical precedent. Remember your Old Testament. Lots of those ancient kings lopped off heads of innocent babies because some thinkers thought something and coaxed the kings into protecting their sovereignty. You’re just one of the babies and being suicidal doesn’t matter.”

        “That’s what they said: ‘being sick was a ploy’.”

        “Out West, ranchers kill wolves to protect their herds and it’s never seemed to matter that wolves don’t eat cattle.”

        “So I’m a wolf.”

        “Coyotes are killed too.”

        “Yeah…and eagles…”

        “And eagles. Whatever you said to them, you scared the king and kings don’t like to be eaten. Also, the best wolf killers – the guys with the most pelts – get the call when it’s time to do it again. Agents work on commission, Harry. You should know that, being a veteran."