The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking a lot of heat these days. During my years as a deputy sheriff my experience with the bureau was always positive, so there’ll be no FBI bashing from here. There’s one story about the FBI that’s my favorite-and the bureau wasn’t even involved:

As a newspaper reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, I was double-crossed by a copy editor who thought he was doing his job. I’d written a story about a small town cop arresting a man for impersonating an FBI agent.

The suspect is stopped for speeding. He hands the cop a business card containing the letters "F-I-B" penciled in above his name.

This bogus federal agent tells the traffic cop, "It’s okay, I’m on the job-I’m FBI." The fact that the letters "FBI" are spelled out "F-I-B" has everyone at police headquarters rolling in laughter. What a giant fib this bogus agent is attempting to pull off.

I handed in my story which contained the facts as I’ve presented them to you. I was careful not to make typographical errors. The letters "F-I-B" were critical to the humor of the incident, so I used the typographer’s code, "cq," in the margin to indicate the letters "F-I-B" were correct as written.

When the paper came out the next morning, all reference to the man’s bogus business card were printed as: "FBI." The letters "F-I-B" appeared nowhere in my story.

That done, the humor of the incident is forever lost. There’s nothing funny about a man claiming to be an FBI agent with a card stating he is, in fact, an FBI agent. When I got to work in the afternoon, I challenged the copy editor.

"Don’t get on my case," he said in rebuttal, "you made the mistake-you’re the one who wrote ‘F-I-B.’ You’re our police reporter, you’re supposed to know how to spell FBI."

End of discussion. Some guys have no sense of humor.