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About five, six FBI agents walked into the courthouse and arrested me. They said I was being arrested for distribution of information related to explosives over the Internet.

In fact, I had previously helped train one of the FBI agents who searched my apartment.

The attorney general called and asked me if I was willing to be interviewed for FBI director. And the truth is I told him I didn't think so, that I thought it was too much for my family. But that I would sleep on it and call him back in the morning. And so I went to bed that night convinced I was going to call him back and say no.

You hear these horrible stories about the FBI just doing all these nasty things to people. And you know what? In my case, I didn't experience any of that, probably because the way I treated them. I was like, 'Okay, what do you want to know?' So I kept going back to their offices on a regular basis.

In due course, following an additional debriefing, the FBI confirmed to me and to my former counsel, Tom Carter, that I was not a suspect in this case. I assumed that my involvement in the investigation was over.

The Patriot Act unleashed the FBI to search your email, travel and credit records without even a suspicion of wrongdoing.

While I was in jail, they handcuffed me and took me to a backroom, where a detective from the FBI and a Secret Service agent were, and they interrogated me for about three or four hours.

What I had later learned was that the FBI knew I was going to New York a couple days after the raid.

One of the hardest things I do as FBI Director is call the chiefs and sheriffs in departments around the nation when officers have been killed in the line of duty. I call to express my sorrow and offer the FBI's help.

At that point, which would be around February 2002, they came and they confiscated my computer, because, they said, they were suspecting that I was communicating with certain Senate members and taking this issue outside the Bureau.