Terminal Compromise, Winn Schwartau [sight word books txt] 📗

are one on the biggest threats to personal

freedom the country faces. He thinks that the Bill of Rights

should be edited from time to time and now’s the time. He scares

me. Especially since there’s more like him.”

It was eminently clear that Tyrone Duncan had no place in this

life for Merrill Rickfield.

“I know enough about him to dislike him, but on a crowded subway

he’d just be another ugly face. Excuse my ignorance . . .” Then

it hit him. Rickfield. His name had been in those papers he had

received so long ago. What had he done, or what was he accused

of doing? Damn, damn, what is it? There were so many. Yes, it

was Rickfield, but what was the tie-in?

“I think you should be there, at the hearings,” Tyrone suggested.

“Tomorrow? Are you out of your mind? No way,” Scott loudly

protested. “I’m 3000 miles and 8 hours away and it’s the middle

of the night here,” Scott bitched and moaned. “Besides, I only

have to work one more day and then I get the weekend to

myself . . . aw, shit.”

Tyrone ignored Scott’s infantile objections. He attributed them

to jet lag and an understandable urge to stay in Sin City for a

couple more days. “Hollister and Adams will be there, and a

whole bunch of white shirts in black hats, and Troubleaux . . .”

“Troubleaux did you say?”

“Yeah, that’s what it says here . . .”

“If he’s there, then it becomes my concern, too.”

“Good, glad you thought of it,” joked Tyrone. “If you catch an

early flight, you could be in D.C. by noon.” He was right,

thought Scott. The time difference works in your favor in that

direction.

“You know,” said Scott, “with what I’ve found out here, today

alone, maybe. “Jeeeeeesus,” Scott said cringing in indecision.

“Hey! Get your ass back here, boy. Pronto.” Tyrone’s friendly

authority was persuasive. “You know you don’t have any choice.”

The guilt trip.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Scott called his office and asked for Doug. He got the voice

mail instead, and debated about calling him at home. Nah, He

thought, I’ll just leave a message. This way I’ll just get

yelled at once.

“Hi, Doug? Scott here. Change in plans. Heard about EMP-T. I’m

headed to Washington tomorrow. The story here is better than I

thought and dovetails right into why I’m coming back early. I

expect to be in D.C. until next Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. I’ll

call when I have a place. Oh, yeah, I learned a limerick here you

might like. The Spook says the kids around here say it all the

time. ‘Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It

followed her to school one day and a big black dog fucked it.’

That’s Amsterdam. Bye.”

Chapter 20 Friday, January 8 Washington, D.C.

The New Senate Office Building is a moderately impressive struc-

ture on the edge of one of the worst sections of Washington.

Visitors find it a perpetual paradox that the power seat of the

Western World is located within a virtual shooting gallery of

drugs and weapons. Scott arrived at the NSOB near the capitol,

just before lunchtime. His press identification got him instant

access to the hearing room and into the privileged locations

where the media congregated. The hearings were in progress and

as solemn as he remembered other hearings broadcast on late night

C-SPAN.

He caught the last words of wisdom from a government employee who

worked for NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technol-

ogy. The agency was formerly known as NBS, National Bureau of

Standards, and no one could adequately explain the change.

The NIST employee droned on about how seriously the government,

and more specifically, his agency cared about privacy and infor-

mation security, and that “. . .the government was doing all it

could to provide the requisite amount of security commensurate

with the perceived risk of disclosure and sensitivity of the

information in question.” Scott ran into a couple of fellow

reporters who told him he was lucky to show up late. All morn-

ing, the government paraded witnesses to read prepared statements

about how they were protecting the interests of the Government.

It was an intensive lobbying effort, they told Scott, to shore up

whatever attacks might be made on the government’s inefficient

bungling in distinction to its efficient bungling. To a man, the

witnesses assured the Senate committee that they were committed

to guaranteeing privacy of information and unconvincingly assur-

ing them that only appropriate authorized people have access to

sensitive and classified data.

Seven sequential propagandized statements went unchallenged by

the three senior committee members throughout the morning, and

Senator Rickfield went out of his way to thank the speakers for

their time, adding that he was personally convinced the Govern-

ment was indeed doing more than necessary to obviate such con-

cerns.

The underadvertised Senate Select Sub Committee on Privacy and

Technology Protection convened in Hearing Room 3 on the second

floor of the NSOB. About 400 could be accommodated in the huge

light wood paneled room on both the main floor and in the balcony

that wrapped around half of the room. The starkness of the room

was emphasized by the glare of arc and fluorescent lighting.

Scott found an empty seat on a wooden bench directly behind the

tables from which the witnesses would speak to the raised wooden

dais. He noticed that the attendance was extraordinarily low; by

both the public and the press. Probably due to the total lack of

exposure.

As the session broke for lunch, Scott asked why the TV cameras?

He thought this hearing was a deep dark secret. A couple of

fellow journalists agreed, and the only reason they had found out

about the Rickfield hearings was because the CNN producer called

them asking if they knew anything about them. Apparently, Scott

was told, CNN received an anonymous call, urging them to be part

of a blockbuster announcement. When CNN called Rickfield’s

office, his staffers told CNN that there was no big deal, and

that they shouldn’t waste their time. In the news business, that

kind of statement from a Congressional power broker is a sure

sign that it is worth being there. Just in case. So CNN assigned

a novice producer and a small crew to the first day of the hear-

ings. As promised, the morning session was an exercise in termi-

nal boredom.

The afternoon session was to begin at 1:30, but Senator Rickfield

was nowhere to be found, so the Assistant Chairperson of the

committee, Junior Senator Nancy Deere assumed control. She was a

44 year old grandmother of two from New England who had never

considered entering politics. Nancy Deere was the consummate

wife, supporter and stalwart of her husband Morgan Deere, an up

and coming national politician who had the unique mixture of

honesty, appeal and potential. She had spent full time on the

campaign trail with Morgan as he attempted to make the transition

from state politics to Washington. Morgan Deere was heavily

favored to win after the three term incumbent was named a co-

conspirator in the rigging of a Defense contract. Despite the

pending indictments, the race continued with constant pleadings

by the incumbent that the trumped up charges would shortly be

dismissed. In the first week after the Grand Jury was convened,

the voter polls indicated that Deere led with a 70% support

factor.

Then came the accident. On his way home from a fund raising

dinner, Morgan Deere’s limousine was run off an icy winter road

by a drunk driver. Deere’s resulting injuries made it impossible

for him to continue the campaign or even be sure that he would

ever be able to regain enough strength to withstand the brutality

of Washington politics.

Within days of the accident, Deere’s campaign manager announced

that Nancy Deere would replace her husband. Due to Morgan’s

local popularity, and the fact that the state was so small that

everyone knew everyone else’s business, and that the incumbent

was going to jail, and that the elections were less than two

weeks away, there was barely a spike in the projections. No one

seemed to care that Nancy Deere had no experience in politics;

they just liked her.

What remained of the campaign was run on her part with impeccable

style. Unlike her opponent who spent vast sums to besmirch her

on television, Nancy’s campaign was largely waged on news and

national talk shows. Her husband was popular, as was she, and

the general