Good points, all, but I was increasingly unconvinced. The timing of the assassination attempt bugged me, the poor aim of the shooter, the resulting fanfare and rise in Hutchins's favorability ratings. Still, it was far-fetched, so I felt silly pushing it. I said, "At the least, we need to get someone out to Wyoming, ASAP, to pay a call on this militia leader, and I don't know if that's what I ought to be doing right now."
"You're right," Martin said. "And done. I'll send Phil Braxton"-another bureau reporter-"out there today."
"One more thing," I said. "I just got an off-the-record tip that Nichols's guys, Tommy Graham and Mick Wilkerson, are being looked at by the FBI as possibly having some sort of link to this."
Martin stared at me incredulously. "Link to the assassination attempt?" he asked, skeptically.
I shook my head.
"Who the hell is telling you this?"
"It's off the record," I said. "But it's coming from Lincoln Powers."
"Sounds like a stunt," Martin said. "Sounds like they're just trying to create some sort of negative buzz about their opponent a week before the election. We've got to be careful of that." He paused, then added, "And we also have to check it out." Then he got up and retreated to his office.
Other reporters were beginning to arrive at the bureau, including Julie Gershman, who walked in wearing a short, rust-colored skirt that inspired a sense of warmth in any man fortunate enough to see her, including me. I say this in a good way, as another indication that I was becoming whole.
She gave me a come-hither look-okay, so I have no idea what a come-hither look is, but I read about it once in my wife's Cosmopolitan-as she tucked her hair behind a tiny ear.
"We ever going to grab that drink, or are we going to continue to be two emotionless drones, coming to work, making small talk, going home?" she asked.
"Hey, you leave my lifestyle out of this, okay?"
She laughed. "Tonight?" she asked.
"Can't, unfortunately. Already meeting someone for a story. Let me dig myself out of this assassination story, and we'll get together then."
"I'm going to hold you to it," she said, and I hoped she was good for her word.
The telephone rang, and I fairly well jumped on top of it, only to find it was my friend Harry Putnam, wanting to head to the Capital Grille for steaks, cottage fries, some red wine, and cigars that night. Who am I, Dean Martin or something? Everyone thinks I'm available at the drop of a dime for an offer of a beer?
I turned up the volume on my ringer and roamed across the room, toward Havlicek. This felt all right in here today, better than I would have expected. We had some good hits behind us. We had one in the pipeline. Things were popping, and they would continue to be in the near term. Despite the debacle of Idaho, the looks I was getting, the comments, the backslaps, told me I was firmly back on top, on my game.
"Hey there, slugger," Havlicek said as I pulled up to his desk and caught a glimpse of the photos. I rounded the desk so I wouldn't have to see them.
I said, "I'll spread around a few calls on this, but only to people who'll keep the information close. I don't want to let word around on what we have."
"Good show," he said. "Let me know what you turn up. More important, let me know when you hear from your guy. You'll press him on the issue?"
"Of course. Let's just hope he calls."
Havlicek leaned back for a minute, taking his eyes off the computer screen for the first time. "He'll call," he said. "We've got him.
He's in this thing, and wants to get in deeper, and he knows we're a good vehicle. If he doesn't know that now, he'll sure know it tomorrow morning when he reads this story."
At that precise moment, I heard my telephone ringing across the room and sprinted around desks and over one chair in my attempt to reach it.
I felt like O. J. Simpson running through the airport, or maybe from a murder scene on Bundy Drive. I caught the phone mid-ring and breathlessly blurted my name. The caller promptly hung up.
Rather than stand there and agonize over what I may have missed, I punched out the number for the main switchboard at the FBI and asked for the office of Assistant Director Kent Drinker. Some, or even most, reporters would spend the better part of a full day preparing just the right questions and practicing the best tone to strike in this interview. I didn't even have anything formed in my mind. I just knew I was curious and angry, and that combination usually worked better for me than any other.
When Drinker came on the line, I said, "Sir, I'm going with a story tomorrow detailing the highly unusual fact that you paid a personal call on one of the nation's leading militia leaders a week before the assassination attempt on President Hutchins. I was hoping, for your sake more than mine, that you would see your way to providing me with some sort of rationale for your visit."
Well, that sounded pretty damned good to me, but probably less so to Drinker. All I heard on the other end was dead air, then some heavy breathing. I had half a mind to say, "Hello? Anyone home?" but wisely and successfully suppressed that urge.
Finally, he spoke. "I don't know where you could have gotten this, but you have wrong information."
"Well, if it is, then I'll run a correction. But I don't think that's going to happen. I have it solidly, reliably, and on the record that you were up at Freedom Lake the week before the assassination attempt.
If you want to deny it or dispute it, you do so at your own peril."
Federal agents in general, and assistant FBI directors specifically, are not accustomed to being addressed quite like this. No, they're used to being the ones in control, calling the shots, making others sweat. That partly explained the enjoyment I was deriving from this call. The fact I was in the right explained the rest of my good mood.
During the silence that followed, I played out my vague theories. I believed that Drinker and Nathaniel had met. If they had met, it had to have been for a reason, and I had the nagging suspicion it involved the ease with which Nathaniel had offered me the details on the Wyoming militia, and the willingness of Drinker to confirm the story. If this were indeed true, I didn't know why. But what I did know, and all that mattered in giving me the upper hand in this discussion, was that a federal agent meeting with a militia leader a week or so before an assassination attempt made for significant news, whether I knew the reason or not. In the newspaper business, that's what's known as leverage.
Drinker said, "Can we talk off the record?"
Playing hardball, I replied, "No. Not now. Not until I get some sort of on-the-record explanation."
That was met with more silence. Eventually Drinker said, "Well, then, maybe I'll just refer you to the bureau flack."
"Fine," I replied. "Either way, there's a story in tomorrow's paper about you flying out to Idaho two weeks ago. You can either enlighten me or ignore me. Your choice."
"If I tell you the truth, if that truth gets published in your paper, it puts someone's life in imminent danger. I don't want that on my head, and I don't think you want it on yours, either. We need to be off the record."
In the news media, there are four conditions of discussions between sources of information and the reporters who seek knowledge from them.
The first and most obvious is known as "on the record." It is also the best and most straightforward, meaning anything and everything that a given person tells you can be used in the newspaper, fully attributable to whoever said it. Unfortunately life, and especially the journalism that supposedly reflects it, isn't always so cut and dried. People might be fired for talking to reporters, or reviled, or even endangered, so all too often conversations between sources and reporters tend to be "on background." That means all the information is fully usable, attributable to some mutually negotiated title such as a "senior administration official" or a "ranking federal law enforcement officer." But the vague attribution not only masks the identity, it also shades the potential motives for spreading that information. Reporters have to beware, but often don't. The third condit
ion is "deep background," which means a source will provide information to a reporter provided it is not attributable to anyone or anything at all. In this case, the reporter-or more often, a columnist-can use the information in an analysis as either opinion or fact. The fourth, and most extreme, is "off the record," which, in its purest form, means the source is providing the information only to give the reporter a better understanding of what is happening, but the information cannot be used in a story unless obtained elsewhere.
The problem with all this is that only the best reporters and most knowledgeable sources fully understand the intricacies of the ground rules. Most don't actually have a clue, and "off the record" too often means "on background" to the reporter or the source. Inevitably and invariably, people get burned, sources become irate, and inaccuracies end up in print.
Interesting gambit by him. I said, "All right. Tell me off the record, and we'll figure out afterward how to attribute it."
As if trying to get the words out before I changed my mind, he immediately said, "Daniel Nathaniel is a paid federal informant. I received a tip on an assassination conspiracy, and I went to him to try to measure its validity. We had worked together on other cases, and he's always proven helpful and reliable."
To say the least, I was stunned, though I tried not to show it. Here was a guy, Nathaniel, whose entire purpose in life was supposed to be rallying against the federal government he claimed to despise, and instead he was actually on the FBI payroll, squirreling away money made from informing on his militia brethren. And I thought I knew the guy.
In the verbal gap, Drinker said, "You see what I mean. You write this, Nathaniel's underlings kill him by tomorrow night."
That they would, but that wasn't my particular problem, or even my most significant concern. I asked, "So were the two of you on the level about this Wyoming militia leader, or was that a concocted story?"
"We believe it to be true, though obviously I don't have it hard enough to bring charges yet. But Nathaniel told me then what he seems to be telling you now. This is what he had heard."
I frantically tried making sense out of what he was saying, but trying to piece the information together felt like shuffling a deck of cards.
"So are you saying that you suspected an assassination attempt was coming before the president ever got shot?"
"Yes."
"And you couldn't do anything about it?"
"Well, we tried."
I said, "I'd like to put that part on background, that a federal informant-unnamed in print-confirmed your suspicions of a conspiracy."
He paused for a moment, then said, "Sounds like as reasonable a compromise as I can get."
I said, "Two more things. First, on the record. You're sure that corpse you have is of a guy named Tony Clawson?"
Sounding taken aback, he said, "We have no reason at this moment to think it's anyone different." Back in the Watergate investigation, that's what Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee called a nondenial denial. Interesting.
"Second, on background, are you guys investigating any connection between any Democratic campaign operatives and this assassination attempt?" I threw that out there bald, trying to get an answer equally as blunt.
"Look, we pursue lots of leads and head down many different avenues in an investigation as comprehensive as this," he said. "I'm not going to comment or even acknowledge every specific one."
I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, so I said, "Specifically I'm wondering about Tommy Graham and Mick Wilkerson."
"Not going there."
I said, "I'll be in touch."
He replied, "If I were you, I would do that. This case is breaking fast."
We hung up, and sitting at my desk with nothing to look at but the back of Julie Gershman's neck, I was left to wonder, breaking as in breaking news, or breaking as in breaking apart?
There is something intrinsically wonderful about the bar at Lespinasse, a French restaurant in the heart of downtown Washington. The polished mahogany walls soar perhaps thirty feet toward a frescoed ceiling.
Portraits of dead presidents gaze at waiters quietly shuffling across the thick floral carpet. Soft leather chairs and upholstered couches exude the aura of a corporate boardroom or a private men's club, which, according to some women activists, are one and the same.
If nothing else, it is a haven from the constant slights and indignities of official Washington, where a twenty-something receptionist for a freshman congressman will answer a call for the press secretary from the New York Times and ask impatiently, "And what is this regarding?"
Not here, not now, not when the nice members of the Lespinasse management are fetching upward of $6 for a cold beer, though they don't even carry Miller. For me, that was a small price to pay for such comfort and civility. For Peter Martin, guardian of the bureau budget, the costs here always seemed a bit excessive, though as with so many other finance-related matters, I largely ignored his protestations with no discernible penalty. Once, when I turned in an expense form for a $179 lunch for two here, he looked the bill over quizzically and asked,
"What, you break a window or something?"
The bar seemed particularly soothing this evening. At the very least, I was fairly confident no one would take a shot at me. So I ordered a Heineken and slumped deeply into a soft settee with my eyes closed and my feet up and thought of the frustrating afternoon I had just left behind. I had made calls to anyone I could reach in the realms of federal law enforcement and national politics, asking whether Tommy Graham and Mick Wilkerson were being investigated in connection with the assassination attempt. From everyone I asked, I got only incredulity. In fact, I suspected I was starting to sound pretty stupid, and wondered if I was being intentionally led astray by Powers in the house of mirrors that was this story.
When I opened my eyes, I found the alluring figure of Agent Samantha Stevens looming above me.
"My God," she said in the way of a greeting. "You don't look so great."
"That's a risky thing to say," I said. "I feel like a million bucks.
As a matter of fact, I've never felt better. I feel like I could go out and complete a triathlon right about now, which would make it my third this month."
She seemed unsure how to take this reaction, so I flashed her a sizable smile. "Long day," I added.
She looked typically beautiful, her face freshly washed and largely void of makeup, her jet black hair glowing in the soft light of the wall sconces, her short navy blue skirt revealing perfectly toned legs that seemed, as my friend Harry Putnam is fond of saying, to start on earth and ascend toward the heavens. She settled into a leather chair diagonally across from me. I was increasingly smitten by her, though I recognized the need to rein it in.
"I appreciate you meeting me on short notice," she said, speaking deliberately. "I know how busy you are."
I said, "You've piqued my curiosity. I've been racking my brain, wondering, did I miss something from the shooting scene, is there something I overlooked, is there something I heard or saw wrong?"
I looked at her expectantly, and she said, "Actually, it's not that at all." She paused, staring down at the drink that the waiter had just brought her, a glass of merlot, perhaps a whimsical one.
"I don't really know any journalists, professionally," she said. "I don't know if I'm supposed to do this, or if this is wrong, or what."
You have a crush, I said to myself. You've developed a crush on me, and you don't know how to tell me. Just let it out. You'll feel better. Just let it all go.
She said: "I wanted to ask you about that story you had in yesterday's paper that you ended up killing for the later editions."
Oh, well. She looked at me. I stayed quiet. She continued,
"Obviously, I've read your story inside and out, and there are a couple of things I don't quite understand, as in, A, how you got that information, and B, why it is that you decided it wasn't any good. I thought you might be able to share."
This w
as an easy one for me, and something of an unexpected gift at a time when I needed it most. "I love to share," I said. "It's one of the first things my mother and father taught me to do. But when I share, I usually expect, and get, something in return."
She took a sip of her wine, then absently smoothed out her skirt, looked me in the eye, and said, "Okay. Why don't we start with that story. I'm interested in what else you know about Wyoming."
"Big, beautiful state," I said. "And I love the Tetons. There's a nice hotel, the Jenny Lake Lodge, overlooking the mountains, with a terrific fixed price dinner every night."
She didn't even pretend to find humor. "The militia," she said.
It was a curious question, but I was doing my best to hide any look of surprise. "No way," I said. "Let's start with you, and what you might have for me."
"Why?" she asked. "I'm the one who called you."
"I don't trust you." There, I said it.
"You don't trust me?" she asked, taken aback.
"I don't trust anyone, not my sisters, not my editors, no one."
Quickly, I tried to break the mild tension that had formed. "Check that. I do trust my dog, but even that took me a couple of years."
She raised her eyebrows and leaned back in her chair. "What do you want to know from me?"
"We could start with the question of why you people couldn't prevent a presidential assassination attempt that you knew about in advance."
She remained silent, looking at me, waiting.
"Then we could take up the all-important question of the real identity of this would-be assassin, because you and I both know it's not this guy you call Tony Clawson."
Now her forehead was scrunched up in a look of confusion-whether feigned or not, I couldn't tell.
"The shooter's name is Tony Clawson. Case closed," she said snappily.
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