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November 9th was a cloudy cool day for the Wagner Rotary Club. President Rachel Woods called the meeting to order and Pastor/ Rotarian Bill Heermann gave a prayer for all our troubled hearts and minds after the fire at the Good Samaritan Home yesterday, the 8th. He prayed for the displaced residents and their families and gave a blessing for the food which will nourish us to go out and help others in need.

Guests were introduced by Rotarian Kathe Henke. She brought Marjo and Shirley Soukup, neighbors, and good friends to the meeting to be with the club. The other guest was her son Philipp Alhusen who would be giving the club the program after the meal.

Rotarian Song Leader Gerrit Juffer had his music ready, and we sang two verses of R-O-T-AR- Y. The musical accompaniment really helps us sing.

Sergeant at Arms (Assistant) Jamie Soukup enjoyed filling in for Jordan Weber again. He promptly fined $3 to Gerrit Juffer for Gerrit’s dog Rosie winning twice already in the football book fundraiser; $3 went to ;$2 went to Jeff Doom for being lazy on the songs; $1 to Patty Frei for circling the room before she sat at a different table than her husband Bill; $1 to Kathe Henke for introducing all the Soukup’s in the room except for Linda Soukup; Kathe offered up a $10 Happy Fine for having her son Philipp visiting her and getting him to do the program for her; $6 came from Becky Brunsing as her daughter’s DWU Volleyball team is # 6 in the Nation in NAIA standing; $5 from Bryan Slaba for the marijuana bill being defeated and another $5 for the Medicaid bill passing in the election; $ 5 From Rachel Woods for the Wagner Girls VB team winning a spot in the State VB tournament. Each Rotarian offered up $1 each because we discovered that every single Rotarian at the meeting had voted in the election held on Tuesday Bryan Slaba had a chance to win the Queen of Hearts Drawing, but he only drew a nine of Hearts and said goodbye to winning $135.00.

Secretary Treasurer Craig Krsnak said the attendance race is holding steady, with two misses for the day on each team with a total of nine misses for Jamie’s Team and eleven misses for Jordan’s team. Krsnak announced the football winners for the week were Radack Kotab sold by Bill Frei and Geri McAdaragh sold by her son Scott.

Mr. Philipp Alhusen, Kathe Henke’s son gave a very interesting and informative program to the club members. He is from Virginia and quite recently retired from twenty years in the FBI. Members are encouraged to retire after twenty years as the retirement package is set up to benefit those who retire rather than work for another five or ten years. It also allows the Bureau to hire new members at a less expensive salary.

He began his training twenty years ago by attending regulation training in Quantico, Virginia for sixteen weeks. Miami, Florida was his first office where he spent four years working on Swat training, FBI procedures and investigating procedures. From there he was in the Washington, DC area at FBI Headquarters for ten years where he worked on crimes against children. He also worked in the Richmond, Virginia field office as a supervisor for six years.

Every agent during his career has one event that he will never forget. For Alhusen this was the car attack by James Fields. That was during a counter protest demonstration that took place on August 12, 2017. James Fields drove his car at a high rate of speed into all the bystanders. It was the first time that the FBI had a clear picture of the car’s license plate taken by a bystander. They found out who was the driver quite quickly. There were several people injured that day, but one woman died from the attack. Agent Alhusen spent the better part of two years investigating this and eventually James Fields was found guilty and given twenty-six years of life sentences for his crime. He is in a secure facility in Colorado.

He showed a clip on his video of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation provides to US citizens: Protects against terrorist attacks. Protects against intelligence operations and espionage attacks; Protects against Cyber based threats and high technical crimes; and protects against probable corporate cyber-attacks at all levels.

Mr. Alhusen listed the four things that “Hackers” do: Cyber- attacks, foreign grown attacks, hackers who are interested only in a cause or theology; and the most common one: Greed They like to hack into the government for sinister information; the corporate security systems in our country are very outnumbered; they use USB flash drives whenever they can to gather your information, work networks are very vulnerable and insider threats.

He showed a graph that detailed how hackers work using other locations to store their information so that they are very hard to detect.

The current trend is to use the “cloud” for storing your information but warned that you must beware of people who sell their security services.

Mr. Alhusen concluded his program by showing the club members a bracelet that he wears all the time in memory of a fellow officer who was killed in the line of duty. The FBI makes these bracelets for all those who die in service to our country.

Alhusen has enjoyed his twenty years in the Bureau and said that it was something he had always wanted to do. He made an interesting statement at the conclusion of the program. “The Bureau has always had about 12,000 agents. After 9-11 there was a great deal of concern about the country’s safety and with all the recent uptick in crime, we still only have 12,000 agents.”

He was asked about the political bent that seems to be inserted into every incident in the news today. He stressed that FBI agents only INVESTIGATE. That is all they have ever done and will do. After they conclude their investigation, they turn all the records over to the Justice Department with their recommendations and then the matter is out of their hands.

The club adjourned the meeting with a recitation of the 4-Way Test.

Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?