Takedown

Schreiber looked confused. “Is that what this is all about?”

“What do you think? Did you actually believe the rest of the agency wouldn’t find out what you’ve done?”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal and definitely not something that should involve the FBI and DHS.”

Caldwell placed his arms on the table, leaned forward, and said, “I’ve got news for you. Treason is a very big deal.”

“Treason?” replied Schreiber. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about leaking the location of four top secret NSA facilities in New York City to enemies of the United States.”

“I never leaked anything!”

“Mark, you failed not one but two polygraphs. And you’ve already admitted that what you did was because Stanton wouldn’t listen to you. So let’s not play any more games. Too many people have died because of this. If you agree to fully cooperate, I’m prepared to offer you a deal.”

Schreiber’s chin was pulled back almost to his chest and his eyes were wide. He looked like a frightened horse whose reins were jerked hard. “People have died? You mean people at the New York facilities?”

“Yes, Mark. And depending on the depth of your involvement, that means you are also an accessory to the murders of multiple federal employees. I know for a fact that the government will seek the death penalty.”

Schreiber was panicked and beginning to sweat now. “The only thing I’m guilty of,” he pleaded, “is violating a few server security protocols, not treason, and definitely not murder.”

“I’m not a computer person,” replied Caldwell, “but if what you’re telling me is that you knowingly violated security protocols and that those violations led to the exposure of four classified locations, then you are in very big trouble.”

“But I didn’t expose those sites!” Schreiber insisted. “All I exposed were their servers, and even then, it was only for a couple of minutes. Someone would have had to have been waiting right there to have been able to gain anything by it. They would have had to know that I was going to do it, but I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Stanton.”

Now it was Caldwell ’s turn to be confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Part of my job is to monitor the four locations in New York. When two of them started acting funny, I brought it to Stanton ’s attention, but he brushed me off. He could be that way, especially if he had other things going on he thought were more important. He told me not to worry about it and to try to help out elsewhere. He said that on account of the terrorist attacks, the NSA was going to have everyone working overtime.”

“What was funny about the two locations?” asked Gary.

“Nobody was responding to my e-mails. It didn’t make sense.”

“Why not? After the attacks, a lot of the infrastructure was overloaded and went down.”

“I know,” replied Schreiber. “Like the telephones. But all of our data transfer operates via satellite uplinks and downloads.”

“Have you seen the news? There’s hell of a lot of smoke and ash in the sky.”

“It doesn’t matter. Only water molecules can wreak enough havoc to interrupt transmission, and it wasn’t raining in New York. Even if it was, we had contingency systems in place.”

“So people weren’t responding to your e-mails,” stated Caldwell. “So what? You don’t think people were focused on the attacks?”

The young NSA employee looked right at him. “That’s the problem. According to the information we were receiving, our people weren’t focused on anything but their computers. Everyone was working. Everyone was processing data just like they should be, but nobody was on the e-mail system.”

“So what did you do?” asked Lawlor.

“Nothing. Not until the third location went unresponsive and Stanton blew me off about it again. I had pinged all the servers and everything seemed normal, but it didn’t make sense.”

“And that’s when you violated the security protocols?”

Schreiber nodded his head. “I ran a series of remote diagnostics over an unsecured channel.”

“What did you find?”

“I didn’t find anything. I wanted to talk to Stanton about it, but he’d left the building. Somebody told me he’d gone somewhere via helicopter and that was the last I heard of him until security came down to my office, asked for my ID, and took me to the polygraphs.”

“Did you test the fourth location?”

“Of course I did. It came up the same as the other three-the servers appeared to be working, but I couldn’t establish any human contact.”

“And that’s all you did?” asked Lawlor.

“Yes, that’s all I did. I swear to God.”

Gary gave Schreiber a long, hard stare and then signaled Caldwell to pick up the file and follow him out of the room.

Seventy-Four

A few minutes later, Director Maxwell exited the monitoring station across the hall and said, “So what do you think?”

Lawlor handed the polygraph transcripts back to Caldwell and replied, “I think your polygraphs are inconclusive.”

“What are you talking about? We asked all the right questions.”

“Sure, but you asked them in all the wrong ways. Mark Schreiber is guilty, but not of treason.”