Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  But despite papering Washington with his checks, Korman was no closer to getting any new contracts for his products. Finally, in near desperation, he invited Harrod to visit the SCTI plant while the National Security Advisor was on a trip to California. Harrod took up the invitation, and after walking through the facility wearing an extra-large hospital gown that made him look like a green snowman, he retired to Korman's office for a drink.

  “Marty, I hear you,” said Harrod after listening to Korman's complaint about not being able to sell his EncryptionLok-3 more broadly. “What you've got to do is make some contacts on the other side of the aisle. I suggest that you go see Senator James Waggoner.”

  “Who's he?”

  “He's the chairman of the Defense Programs Subcommittee. That's the Senate subcommittee that regulates what can and can't be sold to our allies and others.”

  “But isn't he in the other party?” asked Korman incredulously.

  “Yes, but we can work with him. So can you. If you know what I mean.”

  Korman knew exactly what Harrod meant. He made an appointment the following week to meet with the slow-talking, white-maned, aristocratic James Waggoner, the “senior senator” of the Eastern seaboard state he represented. Korman brought with him a check for $100,000 made out to the “Waggoner Science Foundation,” an entity describing itself as “an educational charitable trust to benefit the peaceful uses of defense technology.”

  In a matter of hours, Waggoner had appointed himself Korman's political mentor. It was Waggoner who tutored the Californian on the ways of Washington. Waggoner and his aides taught the heretofore apolitical computer-scientist-turned-businessman on the subtleties of campaign finance—and how vast sums of money could be contributed to a candidate, a campaign, a cause, and a political party with minimal risk of getting caught violating federal election laws.

  The senator had said, “Son, here's how it works. Every American is allowed to contribute one thousand dollars each time a candidate runs for federal office. That means you can write me a check for one thousand dollars for my primary campaign, and another grand for my general election. And every American is allowed to give five thousand dollars every two years to a political action committee. Now you're a bright young man—that means, in round numbers, you can write three five-thousand-dollar checks for my PAC and two one-thousand-dollar checks for my reelection.”

  “That's me personally,” said Korman. “But can't SCTI contribute as a company?”

  The senior senator's deeply lined face broke into a cadaverous grin. “No, son, that would be wrong.” And a mirthless chuckle came from deep within his wrinkled throat. “But, there is nothing to stop all of the employees of your company from contributing, just like you do. And all of your family, and all of your friends, and all of their friends, and all of your friends' friends …” The senator checked himself to see if Korman was getting his drift and concluded with the obvious, “If you know what I mean.”

  The light had indeed gone on. Marty Korman nodded his head. The computer-scientist-turned-businessman, now turned major political player said, “Yes, Senator, I know what you mean. You can count on me and my employees and my friends—and I know we can count on you.”

  Marty Korman wrote checks that afternoon totaling seventeen thousand dollars to the senator's reelection campaign and his political action committee. Just to be on the safe side, he wrote an equal amount to the presidential and vice-presidential reelection campaigns and their PACs. And within a week of returning to California, checks for similar amounts began to pour in from the employees of SCTI—all three hundred of them. By the end of 1993, the “SCTI Club,” as the donors were called at the White House, had contributed almost $5 million to the President's campaigns. Marty Korman was a regular on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And top-secret Encryption Lok-3 devices were being sold to customers who hadn't even known they existed the year before.

  LEARNING TOO MUCH

  CHAPTER NINE

  Special Projects Office

  ________________________________________

  Old Executive Office Building

  Washington, D.C.

  Monday, 5 December 1994

  2120 Hours, Local

  It was late when Newman flew back from New York to Washington National Airport. He had left his car at the airport and shivered as he turned the key to start it up. It took almost ten minutes before the heater began working. He was finally beginning to feel comfortable when he pulled the Tahoe into his parking place on West Executive Drive. Then he became chilled again as he left his car and walked down the sidewalk and into the OEOB.

  Newman plugged the codes into the various locks and performed the retinal scan as he flicked on the lights and opened the sliding door into his office. Once inside, Newman threw his overcoat on a nearby chair and checked his messages. Extremely fatigued, he sensed its source was more emotional than physical. He walked over to the huge fireplace and stood in front of it, debating whether to make a fire or not. Actually, he wasn't even sure the fireplace had ever worked. The logs were ceramic fakes placed atop a wrought-iron grate. He decided not to bother. Then he sighed and put his arms on the mantel to support his weight while he did some stretching exercises. Newman had missed his usual three-mile run that morning because of his trip to the UN, and he felt stiff.

  With his hands still on the mantel, Newman stepped back a little from the fireplace and leaned into it with his torso. He felt the muscles in his arms and chest flex as he pushed. He was a little off balance in this position, so he shifted his arms a few inches farther out on each side. He did sort of a vertical push-up and stretched his back muscles as he leaned in. Suddenly he felt the mantel move. It slid into the masonry that supported it by nearly three inches. Newman nearly lost his balance but recovered quickly. He was perplexed; at first, he was afraid that he had broken something. But it didn't seem like the mantel had shifted because of faulty workmanship or wear. He stood up straight to look at the mantel more closely. Then he saw something that told him that the movement had occurred because of parts that were engineered to move.

  When the mantel slid backward into the masonry, the firebricks that made up the rear of the fireplace also slid open, parting in the middle and leaving an opening in the rear of the fireplace that looked almost square, about two feet by two feet. Newman looked down and saw something in the hole, but his view was blocked by the grate with its fake logs. Newman quickly lifted them onto the floor in front of him.

  He stepped to his left to let more light into the fireplace. Then, looking into the hole in the back of the fireplace more carefully this time, he saw a single-drawer GI field safe, complete with built-in combination dial and unlocking handle.

  Then he remembered the office's former occupant—Oliver North. This must be left over from North's days here, he thought.

  Newman tried the handle of the safe. Incredibly it turned. It wasn't locked. That makes sense—you don't lock an empty safe, was the next thought that came to him.

  He pulled open the drawer and it nearly filled the fireplace. Then he reached inside to feel if something was there. His hand felt something, and he moved it around, feeling for an edge to grasp. When he had it, he brought it up and out into the light.

  It was a dark-brown file pouch, tied around the middle. Newman opened it. Inside were several file folders. He took them out and laid them on his desk. They were all marked TOP SECRET and, as he looked them over, he discovered that the files contained dozens of memos and interoffice correspondence from the 1980s, more than a hundred pages in all. And as Newman read the documents, his eyes widened. Some of the memos were signed or initialed by former President Reagan and his national security advisors.

  After a half hour of perusing the papers, it was clear to Newman that these documents were a bombshell. Some of the pages were authorizations for travel. Others were transcripts of conversations with foreign officials. Some of the papers pertained to the activities of others. One
, a document initialed by the President, authorized a trip to Beijing (North had spelled it Peking) and directed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to ask the Chinese to provide shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles for the Nicaraguan Resistance. He also found documents he didn't understand, memos pertaining to the diversion of a Soviet munitions train in Poland and the subsequent delivery of its contents to the Contras. The papers Newman found stunned him. Why hasn't anyone discovered these before? he wondered.

  Newman put all the papers back into the file pouch that he had pulled out of the safe and got up from his desk. He tried to think of what he should do with the find. He knew that simply turning them over to someone in the present administration had political ramifications, and the legal proceedings had ended several years ago so he wasn't concerned about “obstruction of justice” charges. Because he was tired and uncertain about what he had discovered, he decided to return the documents to where he had found them until he could think through the right thing to do.

  He put the pouch back into the safe and closed the drawer, careful not to lock it. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to close the back wall of the fireplace for access to the safe. He had to find the exact spots where he'd placed his hands when the mechanism was triggered, and then he pulled forward on the mantel. As the mantel slid toward him, the back wall of the fireplace closed. He looked carefully, peering into the fireplace to see if he could detect that it had been opened. Nothing showed. It appeared as a soot-blackened wall of firebrick with no discernable sign that it had ever moved since being built more than a century before. He replaced the grate and logs. And then he brushed the little specks of soot from his hands.

  By now it was 2230 hours, and he was exhausted. As he walked out to his car, it began to snow. Why am I not surprised? he thought, as he headed out the North West Gate onto an empty Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Situation Room

  ________________________________________

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Monday, 5 December 1994

  2300 Hours, Local

  “You told me to call you anytime something of significance happened, Dr. Harrod, and this is sort of interesting. I thought you ought to see it.” The watch chief of the White House Situation Room's communication center had phoned Harrod's cell phone number. The National Security Advisor was in the study, upstairs in the White House residence. He had just settled into a comfortable couch with one of the chief executive's good cigars, and the President had just started to say, “That was a great fund-raiser tonight, Simon. I thought I'd fall over laughing when you said—” Then the cell phone rang.

  Harrod said, “Excuse me,” and put the phone to his ear. “Harrod—what is it!” he snapped. He listened for a moment, then said, “All right … I'll be right there,” and hung up. He excused himself from the President's study and headed for a meeting with the caller.

  “Show me,” Harrod said, huffing a little from his walk down the stairs from the residence to the Situation Room on the ground floor of the West Wing.

  “I've got the surveillance tape in my office where you can see it,” the watch chief said.

  Harrod knew that his decision to place mini—video cameras in strategic places would one day come in handy. He just hadn't expected them to bear fruit so soon after being planted. The WHCA technicians had installed the cameras the previous Wednesday while they were hooking up the new communications equipment for Newman and his deputies in the Special Projects Office. There were two cameras hidden in Newman's office. One was integrated into the smoke alarm in the twelve-foot-high ceiling. The other was behind a cold air return at ceiling level in the other end of the two rooms.

  The tape began with a fairly clear picture of Newman coming into his office and throwing his overcoat on the chair. The time-code at the bottom of the screen recorded the time and date and the running time of what Harrod was watching. Then Newman was partially out of view as he walked into the other room to stand by the fireplace.

  “I need to switch tapes for the next sequences,” the watch chief said as he ejected the first tape and put in a second one. “This is the camera behind the register up high in the corner. It's going to be kind of hard to see what's going on, but I think I've figured it out.” The second tape began with Newman's back as he entered from the outer room and came into view for this camera. The view was looking down into the room, across the fireplace from the side, and from this angle it was not possible to see inside the fireplace.

  “We can't see everything, but watch what happens when he starts to stretch by the fireplace. Right there—did you see it?”

  “See what? I didn't see anything.”

  The man rewound the tape a bit and repeated the sequence. “There—did you see the mantel move?”

  Harrod did see the movement of the mantel of the fireplace as it recessed a few inches into the masonry.

  “Look at the way Major—I mean, Lieutenant Colonel—Newman reacted, Dr. Harrod. He stumbled and nearly lost his balance. It's clear that he didn't expect that to happen.”

  “Expect what to happen?”

  The watch chief pointed to the monitor. Newman was quickly grabbing at the fireplace grate and the logs. Then his body blocked the camera's view. He seemed to be doing some kind of action inside the fireplace.

  “What's he doing? Did he break something? What's so important about this surveillance tape?” Harrod asked impatiently.

  Then the video screen showed Newman standing, then turning to face the camera, holding a package of some kind.

  “What is that?” Harrod asked.

  “It looks like a file folder, sir.”

  “Where'd he get it? It looks like he pulled it out of the fireplace.”

  The two men watched as Newman took the package to his desk and sat down, opened the file folder, and spread out the documents on his desk. The watch chief ejected the tape and put the first one back into the video player. He fast-forwarded the action to the point where Newman sat down at his desk. The camera was positioned right over the desk and gave a perfect view of the documents spread out on Newman's desk. All the men could read, however, were the TOP SECRET legends on the folders.

  “Can you zoom in on those documents? I need to know what he's reading. It doesn't look like anything I gave him. Look, that blue folder is for the President—that's the presidential seal. He's got very sensitive, secret files in his office. I need to know what they are and how he got 'em.”

  “I'll get right on it, Dr. Harrod. You'll have my work on your desk when you arrive in the morning.”

  “Can you zoom in on that stuff now?”

  The watch chief grabbed a patch cord to route the video through a video editor nearby. By the time he had finished the connections, the program was up and running. After keying in some commands, he cued the tape to the overhead shot of the office desk and did a freeze-frame of the scene.

  He clicked the mouse and magnified the picture. It was now somewhat grainy, so he fiddled with it until the picture was clear. Then he magnified it once more, fiddled some more, and the documents were readable. The watch chief reached over and pushed the Play button on the video player, which then began to play back the surveillance tape on two monitors—the first one showing the wide angle of the room, and the second showing the highly magnified close-up of the documents on the desk.

  “Well, I'll be …” Harrod said disbelieving. “Look at the dates. From the sixties … no, those are eights … from the eighties—that stuff is from the Reagan-Bush period.” Then Harrod's eyes widened. “Of course,” he grinned. “I forgot whose office that was. North must've hidden those files. There's a secret hiding place in that fireplace.”

  The two men watched awhile longer and saw Newman collect the files, put them back into the pouch, and walk into the other room. Then they switched tapes again to see if there was any telling detail as to where the hiding place was. The camera angle was still not positioned well enough to se
e inside the fireplace. Newman was bent over for nearly a full minute before standing again.

  “He put it somewhere inside …” Harrod said.

  “Yes, and I think I know where. Look at this.” The watch chief rewound the tape to the place where the mantel first moved and Newman bent down. “See there, he grabbed the grate and logs and set them on the floor in front of the fireplace. The hiding place must be inside the fireplace, otherwise he wouldn't have moved the grate.”

  “Yes …” Harrod said slowly, still entranced with the tape. Then he said, “Who knows about this?”

  “You and me, sir. I was watching the surveillance tape bank, and it happened just before the 2300 hours' shift change. I took out the tapes and put in new tapes because Lieutenant Colonel Newman had already left his office. I called you right after that. No one else knows.”

  “Keep it that way,” Harrod ordered.

  “Do you want me to have some NSC security people go up to his office and check it out?”

  “No, don't do anything! I'll take it from here.” Harrod knew that if some NSC operators swept Newman's office, Newman would know it. The National Security Advisor remembered how Newman had reacted to being followed, and he didn't want the Marine's overactive (though accurate, Harrod mused) suspicions to gum up works for the UN mission ahead. Harrod took the surveillance tapes with him, stopping only to put them in the safe in his office.

  He reasoned that this would be a good test of Newman's loyalty. If he came forward and admitted to finding them, he could be trusted. If he didn't, well …

  Harrod wasn't sure what he'd do about it if Newman didn't turn over those files. There was no hurry to get a look at them—they'd been buried in that safe for all these years; another few weeks wouldn't matter. He was sure of one thing, however. He would have to increase surveillance on his Special Projects officer.