ODYSSEY OF AN EAVESDROPPER

The CEO of a Maryland electronics company specializing in eavesdropping and explosives detection equipment tells of spooks, dirty tricks and vengeful federal agents.

Kaiser recounts two stories with the help of novelist/journalist Stokes. The first, and more engaging, is a chronicle of the evolution from the 1960s onward of electronic eavesdropping technology and applications. It’s couched in a tone suggesting the reader doesn’t suspect half of what’s been going on, an attitude buttressed by an appendix detailing surveillance techniques and countermeasures. The second story is the author’s personal account of what he alleges was a harrowing, long-term FBI campaign against him. A steady supplier of listening devices and countermeasures to a dummy company used by the Bureau for such purchases, Kaiser was called to testify during a 1975 congressional probe into questionable activities. His revelation under oath that the FBI was illegally inflating cost figures set Hoover’s minions on a trail of revenge, he asserts. The vendetta culminated in Kaiser’s indictment for the illegal wiretapping of two FBI agents during an investigation of bank fraud. He was acquitted of all charges but had to deal with a civil suit by the two agents (they were taped using equipment Kaiser had installed for the bank). That suit, he avers, nearly cost him his business, his marriage and his mental health; after eight years, his insurance company forced him to settle out of court. Kaiser’s narrative contains some entertaining revelations about his adventures running countermeasure “sweeps” for both government and corporate clients, but redundant protestations of innocence, allegations of persecution and a persistent air of overblown self-importance drag down too many of these pages.

Laborious diatribe against the Feds, with little evidence other than Kaiser’s say-so.