The Director: A Novel

How could she tell Weber that he might still escape the holocaust of surveillance and deception and lies? If the director of the National Security Agency had been given warning that he could dismantle the programs that Edward Snowden later would reveal to the press—terminate them on his own, without the chaotic damage of disclosure—would he have seized the opportunity? If people were given the clear choice to do the right thing, would they take it? Kyle didn’t know. Graham Weber was heading toward a catastrophic conclusion, even if he couldn’t see it. One person had already died to protect the secret of James Morris’s identity, but there would be more. Would Weber see the escape hatch from history?

  Kyle thought of what she would say to the CIA director, if she were to communicate anonymously with him. She went to her bookshelf on the other side of the fireplace and took down a volume of British philosophy that she sometimes read to gather her thoughts. She leafed past John Locke and David Hume, until she found the essay On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill. It was dark in the room, except for the flicker of the fire. She turned on the table lamp beside her chair and curled up in its creamy light with the book. It was the comfort of truth.

  What was the region of liberty? Mill asked. It was “liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral or theological.” It required “liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.”

  Liberty could not be divided against itself, or rationed or temporized. “No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified.” And then Mill’s concluding injunction: “A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.” There it was. Could anything be more clearly stated? She would present Graham Weber, this man she had never met but imagined was in some part of himself a kindred spirit, a last opportunity to escape smallness and corruption and un-freedom.

  Kyle went to her desk at the back of the cabin, placing a few more logs on the fire as she went. A wolf was howling in the woods below her cabin, a fierce lone cry. She opened her computer and waited for it to come alive, and then she began typing, checking references in her files, and working the text back and forth until it was as concise and direct as she could make it.

  Dear Mr. Weber:

  I write you this message so that you may save yourself and the Central Intelligence Agency from destruction. You have taken control of a lawless organization that asserts the right to corrupt and destroy others around the world in secrecy. These covert powers are based on the flimsiest legal claims, which themselves violate the U.S. Constitution. You know this, because you yourself refused to obey orders that you knew to be illegal, when you were a private citizen. As a demonstration of my seriousness and bona fides, I cite for you the number of the National Security Letter to which you refused compliance. It was File Number NH-43907, issued subject to Title 18 United States Code, Section 2709. I believe your records will verify the accuracy of this information.

  Take the opportunity now to be a leader, in the true and moral sense, by halting the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency that violate the laws of every other nation and treat global citizens as objects for external control by the United States, rather than subjective human beings with their own consciousness and rights and freedoms. Liberty is not divisible, Mr. Weber. It must be for everyone, or it is for no one.

  I send you this message as a warning and an opportunity. If you do not reverse course, the process that is now underway will bring down your house around you. The liberating actions of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden were only a beginning. A global political awakening is taking place in every nation. If the security services are under attack in other countries—China, Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Britain—do you imagine that the United States can resist? The army is at your gates, even though you don’t see it. The Central Intelligence Agency will not survive this challenge. You must decide which side you are on, that of liberty or oppression. The hours left for you to make this choice are ticking away.

  Remember the words: “Arise ye prisoners of starvation; Arise ye wretched of the earth. For justice thunders condemnation: A better world’s in birth. No more tradition’s chains shall bind us. Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall; the earth shall rise on new foundations: We have been naught, we shall be all.”

  I await some public acknowledgment by you that you intend to make the necessary reforms. If not, there will be consequences.

  Yours sincerely,

  Anonymous

  Ramona Kyle printed out the message, then copied it, then photographed the copy and printed out the picture. She placed the sheet in a sealed envelope marked “Graham Weber, Personal,” and put that, in turn, in a larger manila envelope marked “David Weber,” which she sent by commercial courier to an associate in California who handled confidential financial business for her. At her instruction, he sent the package through several cutouts to the address of a preparatory school in New Hampshire, where it was delivered by a United Parcel Service messenger to the mailbox of David Weber, a senior at the school.

  When the young man saw the letter inside marked for Graham Weber, he immediately called his father in Washington. A government official arrived that afternoon and collected the letter, unopened, and carried it to CIA headquarters in Washington, where it was delivered, still unopened, to the agency’s director.

  Graham Weber read the peculiar text through twice. His first thought was that it was a hoax of some kind, perhaps a scheme hatched by one of his son’s fellow students, or more likely, a screwball teacher at the school who was playing out some revolutionary fantasy. But as he read it the second time, the proof of bona fides seemed more difficult to refute. He consulted his own files, and saw that the “file number” that had been referenced, “NH-43907,” was accurate. The letter had been sent by the New Haven division of the FBI to a Connecticut subsidiary of his communications company, demanding production of all subscriber information pertaining to a particular IP address. To Weber’s knowledge, that information had never been made public.

  What if the letter was in earnest? What if someone was, indeed, warning Weber to follow through on his hopes and dreams of reforming the conduct of intelligence activities—or face the consequences? Weber wanted to dismiss the entirety of the message, but he knew that one of its arguments was true. Liberty is not divisible. It is not a halfway condition. It either exists or it doesn’t. He knew that another assertion was largely true, as well: The CIA did assert a right to violate the laws of all other nations. That, in essence, was its job description.

  Weber laid down the letter. He called the personal number of Ruth Savin, the CIA’s general counsel, and asked her to come to his office immediately. He said he had received a letter that she needed to read, as soon as possible. She arrived in the director’s suite ten minutes later.

  “This is crap,” said Savin when she had finished reading the letter. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She was holding the sheet of paper in blue plastic gloves that she had brought with her, to avoid marking it with fingerprints. She gingerly took the paper and placed it in a translucent plastic envelope, which she marked at the top with the date and time, and then initialed and laid aside. She was flushed, from the urgent summons and the rapid trip to the director’s office. The color in her cheeks complemented the lustrous black of her hair and the rust red of the tweed jacket she was wearing over her black dress.

  “That’s it?” asked Weber. “No further comments?”

  “It’s well-wr
itten crap. I like where it quotes the Internationale at the end. That’s a nice touch.”

  “Does that mean the author is a Russian? Or some kind of communist?”

  “Maybe. Or perhaps the author wants us to think that. It’s impossible to know, Mr. Director. How did it get to you, anyway?”

  Weber sighed and shook his head. He hated the fact that this breach had come through his family. It made him feel that his boys were exposed.

  “It was sent to my oldest son at school, delivered this morning by a UPS courier as part of his regular run. The Office of Security has already checked on the delivery. They say the sender’s address in Boston is fake. They’re pulling the video recording from the location where it was sent, but they don’t think they’ll get anything useful.”

  Savin looked at the letter through the plastic envelope.

  “The reference number of the National Security Letter, is that accurate?”

  “Yup,” said Weber. “Precisely right. I checked. How did they get that, anyway? It’s supposed to be secret.”

  “Nothing is secret, really, Mr. Director. It could have come from an employee of your old company. It could have been obtained by one of the privacy groups that has been snooping around for details of these NSLs for years. It could even have come from some disgruntled person at the FBI. There’s no way to know. But that doesn’t prove anything to me, the fact that somebody got the reference number. That’s just bravado. Hacker street cred. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

  “You wouldn’t? It seems pretty real to me. Someone is warning me that our systems are going to be attacked, just the way the NSA’s were by Snowden. They’re telling me to make changes at the agency to avoid the damage. Shouldn’t I take that seriously?”

  Savin studied him: His hair was slightly disheveled; his sleeves were half rolled up his forearms; his open-neck shirt had popped an extra button. He had never looked younger and less like the director of an intelligence agency. He was an outsider, and for the moment he seemed to want to hold on to that status.

  “Frankly, no, you should ignore it,” she said. “We’ll look into all the forensics. The Office of Security will help the FBI try to figure out who sent it. We should probably send a protection detail to your kids’ school in Concord, discreetly, at least for a few weeks.”

  “Okay,” said Weber, rolling his hand impatiently. “But what about the content?”

  “Honestly, sir, stuff like this arrives in the mail room every day. The whole world thinks the CIA is a bunch of lying criminal bastards, and that we should repent now because it’s our last chance. That’s the elevator music around here. Usually this stuff gets intercepted by someone else and the director never sees it. This one just got through the net. But it’s still crap.”

  “What if it’s true?” asked Weber.

  “Meaning what, sir?”

  “Don’t I have a responsibility to make sure the agency’s activities are legal and ethical? I got this job because I made a commitment to the president that I would make changes at the agency and bring it into the twenty-first century. I need to follow through on that.”

  “Of course, Mr. Director: You do that every day. But can I give you some honest advice as your lawyer?”

  “I hate lawyers,” muttered Weber. “But yes, certainly I want your advice.”

  “Your job isn’t to protect civil liberties. The president has an Attorney General for that, and the constitution provides for a Congress to pass laws and a Supreme Court to interpret them. Your job is to protect the national security. You have unique powers, working with the president. It’s true, what the writer of this letter says. You do have the authority to violate the laws of other countries, under the National Security Act and Executive Order 12333. That’s what the CIA does. If you don’t put that responsibility first, then you’re not doing your job. You have to protect the agency and its people. They’re your tools. Sir. With all due respect.”

  “Including James Morris.”

  “Yes, Mr. Director. Unless he’s done something wrong. You’re the commander of this organization. He’s one of your troops.”

  Weber looked out the window. He wasn’t sure that he had ever felt the burden of responsibility in quite this way. People often talked in the abstract about the difficulty of striking a balance between liberty and security—but now it was like a knot in his stomach. He could quit. Or he could try to grope his way toward running the agency in a way that met his ethical standards, knowing that if he stayed, the second priority of protecting security would inevitably take precedence over the first, no matter what his conscience said.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Savin.

  “Call the Office of Security,” said Weber. “Tell them to handle it. Get someone in Concord, but keep them out of sight. I don’t want to embarrass my boys.”

  “And the warnings in the letter?”

  “I’ll assume they’re crap, as you said. I have no other choice, really.”

  Savin picked up the letter from the director’s desk and took it with her as she left the office. Weber sat alone. He put his head in his hands, and then let it fall to the desk, where he rested for several minutes, not exactly praying, because he wasn’t a religious man, but reflecting on his mission and asking for help. When he rose and called to Marie for the next appointment, he was in some subtle respects a different man than before.

  14

  BERLIN

  Edward Junot was a short compact man with a shaved head and a stubbly beard. He arrived in Berlin dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans and a black leather jacket, scuffed at the sleeves and elbows from years of use. The T-shirt read RED BULL on the front, and from his eyes, one might guess that he had been speeding for many hours on that drink or some other stimulant. He checked into the Hansel Inn near Nollendorfplatz, a hotel that was so gay-friendly that the manager posted a note saying that it was hetero-friendly.

  Before he left to go out, Junot put a stud in his left ear and two in his right. He checked the recording device sewn into the fabric of his leather jacket to make sure it was set at zero, and packed a thumb drive and two cell phones in his pocket.

  Junot had been a deep-cover intelligence officer for nearly two years. He had been recruited out of the military, where he had worked as a warrant officer for the Army doing “information operations” in Afghanistan, as they politely put it. His job was to hack enemy websites and, as ordered, attack them—shut them down, insert false information, or insert malware that would track other users. He was so good at that work that he came to the attention of the Kabul station, and he was offered a fast track into the CIA’s military transition program.

  The CIA recruiter had shown Junot a brochure that said he could make $136,000 annually as a data scientist, just using his computer skills. That was almost as much as Blackwater was paying, with less apparent risk, so he said yes. They sent him home for training—not to Washington but to a facility near Denver that handled interagency officers under nonofficial cover. Six months after that, he first met James Morris, who managed to get him transferred to what he called the “special access unit,” which was, and was not, part of the Information Operations Center. From that point, Junot had disappeared into Morris’s twilight army.

  Junot dressed himself for the Berlin night. He put on his scruffiest black leather boots and a belt with a silver buckle that displayed the skull and crossbones, which he had bought that afternoon in the Hackescher Market in Mitte, where he had been conducting preliminary surveillance. The belt buckle gleamed menacingly, but it was hidden by the black T-shirt hanging loosely over it. For the first time in a while, Junot tucked in his shirt. He was believable as a bad-boy hacker because he was one. Junot liked breaking into computers, making trouble and having rough sex with men or women, he didn’t care which so long as he was “top.”

  The last thing he packed was a paperback copy of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, a science fiction series published forty years before that had developed a
cult following among German hackers.

  Junot left the hotel at eleven p.m., when the Berlin night scene was just finding its legs. He took the tramway from Nollendorfplatz several stations, changed to the underground, rode north a few stations and then changed to another tram that took him to his destination back at Hackescher. Junot descended from the elevated train to the street. It was a pleasant late fall evening, the district crammed with Berliners and foreigners who, to watch them filling the bars, seemed determined to end the evening fall-down drunk.

  Junot had a beer in a bar near the market and then made his way east to Morgenthaler Street. At Number 19, he entered an archway into a courtyard that housed a techno bar that was a favorite haunt of Germans who fancied themselves the hacker elite.

  People in studs and leathers stood outside the entrance, smoking dope. Inside, the DJ was pumping out repetitive percussion, not at full volume yet because it was only eleven, but flexing his muscles. Junot entered the club and walked to the bar, a dimly lit place with wrought-iron fixtures and an illuminated panel under the rail, crossed with lacy ironwork like a nineteenth-century Art Deco lampshade that gave the bar a look somewhere between Bohemia and Belgravia.

  Junot took a stool at a small wooden table and ordered a tequila, and then another. In his line of work, he had learned, intoxication was a kind of cover.

  Just before midnight, a man in his late twenties, about Junot’s age, entered the bar area. He was tall and slender, with long black hair that fell to his shoulders. He was wearing a black jacket that, despite its tight cut, seemed to hang from his slight body. He was a handsome man, and he caught the eye of the crowd near the bar, men and women both. He was carrying in his hand a copy of The Eye in the Pyramid, the first volume of the Illuminatus! Trilogy.

  Junot slid his book forward on the wooden bar table like a calling card.

  “Are you a Discordian, my friend?” said Junot, gesturing toward the book the long-haired visitor was carrying.