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What I Learned at the FBI

By Tom W. Bell and Glen Whitman

On Thursday I attended a seminar at the FBI for film and TV writers. There was lots of useful information, but what I found most interesting was the FBI agents' use of language. Specifically, I noticed that they regularly used the word 'forfeit' as a transitive verb meaning 'to acquire by asset forfeiture.' As in: "The FBI forfeited $2.6 million in this operation."

Of course, this is a perfect reversal of meaning. The standard meaning of 'forfeit' is to lose or to abandon, not to acquire.

I don't know that this says anything particular about FBI psychology, except that asset forfeiture has become so routine that they needed a shorter word -- "acquire by asset forfeiture" being rather cumbersome. I suppose that agents just naturally extracted the only verb embedded in the phrase 'asset forfeiture.' Words like 'seize' and 'confiscate' either didn't occur to them, or else seemed too narrow because they don't necessarily imply keeping the seized assets.

Still, it was jarring to hear this casual use of a word to mean something so diametrically opposite its original meaning. At first I was genuinely confused; when I heard an agent say the FBI had forfeited a bunch of money in some operation, I momentarily thought the FBI had actually returned the money to someone. But what are the odds of that?

Full post as published by Agoraphilia on August 01, 2009 (boomark / email).