What If the FBI Were to Interview Me?

What if the FBI were to interview me and an agent posed the question:  "Mr. Freedman, do you believe you are employable?"

I would have to say: "Honesty, I don't know whether I am employable.  There's no way I would know.  I believed I was employable in October 1991 while I still worked at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.  In May 1991 my supervisor had stated in a job performance evaluation that I was 'as close to the perfect employee as it is possible to find.'  I later learned that, in fact, I was not suitable for employment.  I learned that my employer had determined that the entire time I believed I was employable I actually suffered from a paranoid psychiatric disorder, that I was potentially violent, and that on the day I was fired my supervisor had formed a belief that I might kill her, or so she said.

On October 2, 1992 I saw my former treating psychiatrist Stanley R. Palombo, M.D. in a consult arranged by Napoleon Cuenco, M.D., a resident who assessed me in September 1992 at the George Washington University Medical Center.  Dr. Palombo told me I was employable without restriction.  In April 1993 I filed a claim for disability benefits with the U.S. Social Security Administration and the agency approved my claim in August 1993.  Social Security advised me that I had become disabled and not suitable for employment effective October 29, 1991, the day Akin Gump fired me.  I was absolutely honest with the Social Security Administration.  I did not fake an illness.

I met with a Social Security consultant, Paul Yessler, M.D. in early June 1993.  He did a psychiatric assessment.  I told him that my former employer said I was potentially violent.  I remember his response, his exact words.  He said: "That's very impressive.  But all people are potentially violent."  According to Dr. Yessler, all people have the potential to become violent depending on the circumstances. 

In May 1994 I took a battery of psychological tests at GW.  The testing failed to disclose that I suffered from any mental illness.  Despite the test results, a psychologist diagnosed me with psychotic mental illness on the basis of the testing.  Even though I appear totally normal, mental health professionals see me as severely disturbed.

In 1997 I told the D.C. Court of Appeals all the reasons why I thought Akin Gump's reasons for my job termination were faulty.  But the Court did not agree with my opinion.  The Court affirmed that Akin Gump's reasons for my job termination were genuine and worthy of credence.  I suppose the Court could have taken judicial notice of the common sense fact that all people are "potentially violent" as Dr. Yessler pointed out, but the Court chose not to do that. 

My opinions about myself, my experiences, and my environment have been devalued so persistently by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in the last eighteen years that it is impossible for me to have total trust in my perceptions.  I cannot say with conviction that I believe I am employable."

And that's what I would tell the FBI.