Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

W >> Winn Schwartau >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

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"What'll you have?" Tyrone gestured at a waiter while asking
Scott for his preference.

"Corona, please."

Tyrone took charge. "Waiter, another double and a Corona." He
waved the waiter away. "That's better." Tyrone was already
slightly inebriated. "I guess you think I'm a real shit hole,
huh?"

"Sort of," Scott agreed. "I guess you could put it that way."
Scott was impressed with Ty's forthright manner. "I can think of
a bunch more words that fit the bill." At least Tyrone admitted
it. That was a step in the right direction.

Ty laughed. "Yeah, I bet you could, and you might be right."
Scott's drink came. He took a thirsty gulp from the long neck
bottle."

"Ease on down the road!" Ty held his half empty drink in the
air. It was peace offering. Scott slowly lifted his and their
drinks met briefly. They both sipped again, and an awkward
silence followed.

"Well, I guess it's up to me to explain, isn't it?" Tyrone ven-
tured.

"You don't have to explain anything. I understand," Scott said
caustically.

"I don't think you do, my friend. May I at least have my last
words before you shoot?" Tyrone's joviality was not as effective
when nervous.

Scott remembered that he used the same argument with Doug only
days before. He eased up. "Sure, ready and aimed, though."

"I'm quitting." Tyrone's face showed disappointment, resigna-
tion.

The beer bottle at Scott's lips was abruptly laid on the table.
"Quitting? The FBI?" Tyrone nodded. "Why? What happened?"
For one moment Scott completely forgot how angry he was.

The din of the Oyster Bar made for excellent cover. They could
speak freely with minimal worry of being overheard.

"It's a long story, but it began when they pulled your article.
God, I'm sorry, man," Tyrone said with empathy. The furrows on
his forehead deepened as he searched for a reaction from Scott.
Nothing.

Ty finished off his drink and started on the refill. "Unlike
what you probably believe, or want to believe, when you called me
that morning, I had no idea what you were talking about. It was
several hours before I realized what had happened. If I had any
idea . . ."

Scott stared blankly at Tyrone. You haven't convinced me of
anything, Scott thought.

"As far as I knew, you were writing an article that had no par-
ticular consequence . . ."

"Thanks a shitload," Scott quipped.

"No, I mean, I had no idea of the national security implica-
tions, and besides, it was going to be in the paper the next day
anyway." Tyrone shrugged with his hands in the air for added
emphasis. "Tempest meant nothing to me. All I said was that you
and I had been talking. I promise you, that's it. As a friend,
that was the extent of it. They took it from there." Tyrone
extended his hands in an open gesture of conciliation. "All I
knew was that what you'd said about CMR shook some people up in
D.C.. ECCO has been quite educational. Now I know why, and
that's why I have to leave."

The genuineness from Tyrone softened Scott's attitude some. "I
thought you spooks stuck together. Spy and die together."

Tyrone contorted his face to show disgust with that thought.
"That'll be the day. In fact it's the opposite. A third of our
budgets are meant to keep other agencies in the dark about what
we're doing."

"You're kidding!"

"I wish I was." Tyrone looked disheartened, betrayed.

"At any rate," Tyrone continued, "I got spooked by the stunt with
your paper and the Attorney General. I just couldn't call you,
you'll see why. The Agency is supposed to enforce the law, not
make it and they have absolutely no business screwing with the
press. Uh-uh." Tyrone took a healthy sip of his drink. "Reminds
me of times that are supposed to be gone. Dead in the past. Did
you know that I am a constitutional lawyer?"

Scott ordered another beer and shook his head, no. Just a regular
lawyer. Will wonders never cease?

"Back in the early 60's the South was not a good place for
blacks. Or Negroes as we were called back then." Tyrone said
the word Negro with disdain. He pulled his tie from the stiff
collar and opened a button. "I went on some marches in Alabama,
God, that was a hot summer. A couple of civil rights workers were
killed."

Scott remembered. More from the movie Mississippi Burning than
from memory.

Civil rights wasn't a black-white issue, Tyrone insisted. It was
about man's peaceful co-existence with government. A legal
issue. "I thought that was an important distinction and most
people were missing the point. I thought I could make a differ-
ence working from inside the system. I was wrong, and I've been
blinded by it until now . . .you know.

"When I was in college the politicians screamed integration while
the poor blacks no more wanted to be bussed to the rich white
neighborhood that the rich whites wanted the poor blacks in their
schools." Tyrone spoke from his heart, his soul, with a touch of
resentment that Scott had not seen before. But then, they had
never spoken of it before. This was one story that he had suc-
cessfully neglected to share. "Forced integration was govern-
ment's answer to a problem it has never understood.

"It's about dignity. Dignity and respect, not government inter-
vention. It's about a man's right to privacy and the right to
lead his life the way he sees fit. Civil rights is about how to
keep government from interfering with its citizens. Regardless
of color." Tyrone was adamant.

"And that's why you're gonna quit?" Scott didn't see the con-
nection.

"No, goddamnit, no," Tyrone shouted. "Don't you get it?" Scott
shook his head. "They want to take them away." He spoke with
finality and assumed Scott knew what he meant. The liquor fogged
his brain to mouth speech connection.

"Who's gonna take what away?" Scott asked, frustrated by Ty's
ramblings.

"I know it's hokey, but the Founding Fathers had a plan, and so
far it's survived two hundred years of scrutiny and division. I
would like to think it can survive the computer age." Tyrone
quieted down some. "My father used to tell me, from the time I
was old enough to understand, that law was merely a measure of
how much freedom a man was willing to sacrifice to maintain an
orderly society."

"My father was a radical liberal among liberals," Tyrone remem-
bered. "Even today he'll pick a fight at the family barbecue for
his own entertainment. And he'll hold his own."

Scott enjoyed the image of a crotchety octogenarian stirring up
the shit while his children isolated their kids from their grand
father's intellectual lunacy. What was this about?

Tyrone caught himself and realized that he wasn't getting his
point across. He took a deep breath and slouched back in the
chair that barely held him.

"From the beginning," he said. "I told you about ECCO, and what
a disaster it is. No authority, no control, no responsibility.
And the chaos is unbelievable.

"I don't pretend to understand all of the computer jargon, but I
do recognize when the NSA wants to control everything. There's a
phenomenal amount of arrogance there. The NSA reps in ECCO
believe that they are the only ones who know anything about
computers and how to protect them. I feel sorry for the guys
from NIST. They're totally underfunded, so they end up with both
the grunt work and the brunt of the jokes from the NSA.

"NSA won't cooperate on anything. If NIST says it's white, NSA
says it's black. If NIST says there's room to compromise, NSA
gets more stubborn. And the academic types. At long last I now
know what happened to the hippies: they're all government con-
sultants through universities. And all they want to do is
study, study, study. But they never come up with answers, just
more questions to study.

"The vendors try to sell their products and don't contribute a
damn thing," sighed Tyrone. "A bunch of industry guys from
computer companies and the banks, and they're as baffled as I
am."

"So why quit? Can't you make a difference?"

"Listen. The FBI views computer crimes as inter-state in nature
and therefore under their domain."

Scott nodded in understanding.

"We are enforcement, only," Tyrone asserted. "We do not, nor
should we make the laws. Separation of power; Civics 101. To
accomplish anything, I have to be a private citizen."

"What do you want to accomplish?" asked Scott with great inter-
est.

"I want to stop the NSA." Tyrone spoke bluntly and Scott sat too
stunned to speak for long seconds.

"From what?" A sudden pit formed in Scott's stomach.

"I found out why they dumped on you about the CMR," Tyrone said.
"I haven't been able to tell you before, but it doesn't matter
any more." Tyrone quickly shook off the veiling sadness. "NSA
has a built-in contradiction. On one hand they listen into the
world and spy for America. This is supposed to be very secret,
especially how they do it. It turns out that CMR is one of their
'secret' methods for spying on friends and foes alike.

"So, to keep our friends and foes from spying on us, they create
the secret Tempest program. Except, they think it needs to be
kept a military secret, and the public sector be damned. They
actually believe that opening the issue to the public will hamper
their intelligence gathering capabilities because the enemy will
protect against it, too."

Scott listened in fascination. What he was learning now more than
made up for the loss of one article. He felt bad now that he had
overreacted and taken it out on Tyrone.

"Same goes for the EMP-T bomb," Tyrone added. "Only they didn't
know that you were going to publish ahead of time like they did
when I opened up my fat trap."

Scott's eyes suddenly lit up. "How much did you tell them?"

"That I knew you and you were writing an article. That's it."

"Then how did they know what I had written? It was pretty damned
close. I assumed that you had . . ."

"No way, man," Tyrone held his hands up.

"Then how did . . .Ty? What if they're using CMR on my computers?
Could they . . ."

Tyrone's predicament was to decide whether or not to tell Scott
that he knew the NSA and others spied on Americans and gathered
intelligence through remote control means. "I assume they're
capable of anything."

"Shit!" Scott exclaimed. "Privacy goes right out the window.
Damn." Scott rapidly spun in his chair and vacantly stared off
in space. "Is that legal?"

"What? CMR? I looked into that briefly, and there's nothing on
the books yet, but I did find out that tapping cellular phone
conversations is legal."

"Phone tapping, legal?" Scott couldn't believe his ears.

"Cellular phones, yeah. The FCC treats them like TV sets, radi-
os, satellites. Anyone can listen to any station."

"That's incredible," Scott said, mouth gaping. "I wonder how
they'll handle RF LAN's."

"RF LAN's," asked Ty. "What are those?"

"A bunch of computers tied together with radios. They replace
the wires that connect computers now. Can you imagine?" Scott
saw the irony in it. "Broadcasting your private secrets like
that? Hah! Or if you have your own RF network, all you have to
do is dial up another one and all the information ends up right
in your computer! Legal robbery. Is this a great country or
what?"

"Now you know why I'm leaving. The NSA cannot be permitted to
keep the public uninformed about vulnerabilities to their person-
al freedom. And hiding under the umbrella of national security
gets old. A handful of paranoid un-elected, un-budgeted, non-ac-
countable, mid-level bureaucrats are deciding the future of
privacy and freedom in this country. They are the ones who are
saying, 'no, no problem,' when they know damn well it is a prob-
lem. What they say privately is in diametric opposition to their
public statements and positions."

Scott stifled a nervous laugh. Who wound Tyrone up? A conspira-
cy theory. Tyrone was drunk. "Don't you think that maybe you're
taking this a little far," he suggested. For the first time in
years the shoe was on the other foot. Scott was tempering some-
body elses extremes.

"Why the hell do you think there's so much confusion at ECCO and
CERT and the other computer SWAT teams? NSA interferes at every
step," Tyrone responded. "And no, I am not taking this too far.
I haven't taken it far enough. I sit with these guys and they
talk as though I'm not there. I attend meetings where the poli-
cies and goals of ECCO are established. Shit, I trust the dope-
smoking hippies from Berkeley more than anyone from the Fort."
The bitterness came through clearly, but Scott could see it
wasn't focussed on any one person or thing.

But Scott began to understand. For over 20 years Tyrone had
insulated himself from the politics of the job and had seen only
what he wanted to see; a national Police Force enforcing the
laws. Tyrone loved the chase of the crime. The bits and pieces,
the endless sifting of evidence, searching for clues and then
building a case from shreds. The forensics of modern criminology
had been so compelling for Tyrone Duncan that he had missed the
impact that the mass proliferation of technology would have on
his first love - The Constitution.

The sudden revelations and realizations of the last several weeks
set his mind into high gear. Tyrone introspectively examined his
beliefs; he tried to review them from the perspective of an
idealistic young man in his twenties. What would he have done
then? He realized the answer was easier found now that he was a
man of experience: Do Something About It.

Far from a rebel looking for a cause, the cause jumped all over
Tyrone with a vengeance and the tenacity of a barnacle.

All at once Scott knew that Tyrone was serious and that he would
be a better friend if he congratulated instead of castigated.

"You know, I kind of understand a little. Same thing with my ex-
wife."

"Hey, that's not fair, man," Tyrone vigorously objected. "Maggie
was a dingbat . . ."

"I know that and she knew that," Scott agreed, "but that was what
made her Maggie." Tyrone nodded, remembering her antics. "And
in some ways we still love each other. After ten years of fun,
great fun, she wanted to get off of the planet more than I did,
so she went to California." The softness in Scott's voice said
he still cared about Maggie, that she was a cherished part of his
life, that was and would remain in the past.

Scott shook off the melancholy and continued. "It's the same for
you. You're married to the FBI, and while you still love it, you
need to let it go to move on with your life."

"Y'know, I don't know why everyone says you're so stupid," Tyrone
said with respect. "UFO's aside, you can actually make sense."

"Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't really matter. But I'm doing exactly
what I want to do. And the day it stops being fun, I'm outta
here."

"Isn't that the arrogance of wealth speaking?" Tyrone asked.

"And you're any different? The 22 room Tudor shack you live in
is not exactly my vision of poverty. As I see it, it's one of
the benefits," Scott said unembarrassed by his financial securi-
ty. "Before I made my money, I swore that when I got rich, I
would give something back. You know, to the planet or society or
something. Do something useful and not for the money." Scott
spoke with honest enthusiasm. "But I don't believe there's a
rule that says I have to be miserable. I love what I do, and
well, I don't know. The concept of career is different for me.
I like the idea of doing a little bit of everything for the
experience. You know, I drove a cab for one night. Glad I did,
but never again."

"So?" asked Tyrone.

"So, do what you want to do and enjoy it. Period. As a friend of
a friend says, live long and prosper."

Scott let Tyrone sit in contemplative silence as the waiter
brought them two more. They were doing a good job of sticking to
the plan of getting 'shiffaced'.

"You know," Tyrone opined, "INTERNET is only the tip of the
iceberg. NASA is having ECCO and CERT look into over $12 Million
in unaccounted-for telephone calls. The Justice Department sold
old computers containing the names and other details of the
Witness Protection Program to a junk dealer in Kentucky and
they're suing him to get them back. The Secret Service is rede-
signing its protection techniques for the President since someone
got into their computers and copied the plans. The computers at
Mitre have been used by hackers for years to get at classified
information. The public hears less than 1% of the computer
problems in the government. And still, no one will do anything.
There's even talk that the missing Plutonium that the Israelis
theoretically stole in 1981 was actually a computer error."

"What do you want to do about it?" Scott was asking as a friend,
not a reporter.

"First," said a newly determined Tyrone, "I'm gonna nail me some
of these mothers, and I'll do it with your help. Then, after
that?" Tyrone's old smile was suddenly back. "I think I'm gonna
kick myself some government ass." Tyrone roared with laughter
and Scott joined the contagious behavior. "In the meantime, I
want to take a look at some blackmail. I think you may be
right."

"About what? I don't listen to what I tell you."

"Remember you said that the blackmail scheme wasn't really
blackmail." Tyrone shifted his weight in the chair and he
reached for the words through is fogged mind. "You said it might
be a way to make us too busy to see our own shadow. That it was
a cover up for another dissociated crime."

"Yeah? It might be," Scott said.

Tyrone's body heaved while he snickered. "We finally have a lead.
Demands have been made."

"What kind? Who? What do they want?" Scott's journalist mind
clicked into gear. "What about the computer virus crap?"

"I'm kind of looking into both, but this morning my interest was
renewed. A corporate type I met says not only he, but another 25
or more of his corporate brethren are getting the same treatment.
If he's right, someone is demanding over $30 Million in ransoms."

"Jesus Christ! Is that confirmed?" Scott probed.

"Yes. That's why I said you were right."

The implications were tremendous, even to Scott's clouded mind.
While the legal system might not be convinced that computer
radiation was responsible for an obviously well coordinated
criminal venture, he, as an engineer, realized how vulnerable
anyone - everyone was. The questions raced through his mind all
at once.

Over a few dozen oysters and not as many drinks, Scott and Ty
proceeded to share their findings. Scott had documents up the
ying-yang, documents he couldn't use in a journalistic sense, but
might be valuable to the recent developments in Ty's case. He
had moved the files to his home; they were simply taking too much
space around his desk at the office. They were an added attrac-
tion to the disaster he called his study. Scott agreed to show
Ty some of them. After the meeting with Franklin Dobbs, and
knowing there might be others in similar situations, Ty wanted an
informal look at Scott's cache.

"I've been holding back, Ty," Scott said during a lull in their
conversation.

"How do you mean?"

"I got a call from a guy I had spoken to a few months ago; I
assume he sent me those files, and he said that key executives
throughout the country were being blackmailed. Some were borrow-
ing money from the mob to pay them off."

"Do you have names? Who?" Tyrone's took an immediate interest.

"Let me see if I have'm here," he said as he reached for his
small notebook in the sports jacket draped over the back of his
chair. "Yeah, he only gave me three, not much to go on. A
Faulkner, some banker from L.A., a Wall Street tycoon named
Henson and another guy Dobbs, Franklin Dobbs."

"Dobbs! How the hell do you know about Dobbs?" Tyrone yelled so
loud several remaining bar patrons looked over to see what the
ruckus was.

Scott was taken aback by the outburst. "What're you hollering
about?"

"Shit, goddamned shit, I don't need this." Tyrone finished one
and ordered another drink. He was keeping his promise; well on
the way to getting severely intoxicated. "Dobbs. Dobbs is the
poor fucker that came into my office."

"You saw Dobbs? He admitted it?" Scott's heart raced at the
prospect of a connection. Finally.

"Scott," Tyrone asked quietly, "I have no right to ask you this,
but I will anyway. If you find anything, on Dobbs, can you hold
back? Just for a while?" A slight pleading on Tyrone's part.

"Why?" Was this part of the unofficial trade with Ty for earlier
information?

The waiter returned with the credit card. Tyrone signed the
slip, giving the waiter entirely too much of a tip. "I'll tell
you on the train. Let's go."

"Where?"

"To your house. You have a computer, don't you?"

"Yeah . . ."

"Well, let's see if we can find out who the other 25 are."

They took a cab from the Scarsdale station to Scott's house. No
point in ending up in the clink for a DUI, even with a Federal
Agent in tow. Scott's study was in such disarray that he liter-
ally scraped off books and papers from the couch onto the floor
to find Ty a place to sit and he piled up bigger piles of files
to make room for their beers on one of his desks.

Scott and Tyrone hadn't by any means sobered up on the train, but
their thinking was still eminently clear. During the hour ride,
they reviewed what they knew.

Several prominent businessmen were being actively blackmailed.
In addition, the blackmailer, or a confederate, was feeding
information to the media. At a minimum the Times, and probably
the Expos. Perhaps other media as well were in receipt of simi-
lar information, but legitimate news organizations couldn't have
much to do with it in its current form.

Presumably then, like Scott, other reporters were calling names
in the files. Tyrone reasoned that such an exercise might be a
well planned maneuver on the part of the perpetrators.

"Think about it this way," he said. "Let's say you get a call
from someone who says they know something about you that you
don't want them to. That'll shake you up pretty good, won't it?"
Scott rapidly agreed. "Good. And the nature of the contact is
threatening, not directly, perhaps, but the undercurrent leaves
no doubt that the caller is not your best friend. Follow?"

"And then," Scott picked up, "a guy like me calls with the same
information. The last person in the world he wants to know about
his activities is a reporter, or to see it show up in the news,
so he really freaks."

"Exactly!" Tyrone slapped his thigh. "And, if he gets more than
one call, cardiac arrest is nearby. Imagine it. Makes for a good
case of justifiable paranoia."

Tyrone nodded vigorously. "I've been in this game long enough to
see the side effects of blackmail and extortion. The psycholog-
ical effects can be devastating. An inherent distrust of strang-
ers is common. Exaggerated delusions occur in many cases. But
think about this. If we're right, you begin to distrust every-
one, your closest friends, business associate, even your family.
Suddenly, everyone is a suspect. Distrust runs rampant and you
begin to feel a sense of isolation, aloneness. It feels like
you're fighting the entire world alone. Solitude can be the
worst punishment."

The analysis was sound. The far ranging implications had never
occurred to Scott. To him it had been a simple case of extortion
or blackmail using some high tech wizardry. Now, suddenly there
was a human element. The personal pain that made the crime even
that much more sinister.

"Well, we, I mean the FBI, have seven stake outs. It's a fairly
simple operation. Money drops in public places, wait and pick up
the guy who picks up the money." Tyrone made it sound so easy.
Scott wondered.

"I bet it isn't that simple," Scott challenged.

"No shit, it ain't," Tyrone came back.

"So whaddya do?"

"Pay and have another beer." Tyrone tempered the seriousness of
their conversation.

As Scott got up to go the kitchen he called out, "Hey, I been
thinking."