Black Hat Blues (17 page)
sent him.”
“So we’re about ready to go?”
“As soon as c1sman sorts out that weird delay issue and assures me
there’s no problem, then yeah, I’d say so. Isaiah should be able to start
printing tonight and then do envelope stuffing and distribution over
the next twenty-four hours.”
“And Monday morning the shit hits the fan,” Chloe said. She
sounded tired but also very pleased with herself, with all of them. “This
is really big.”
“They won’t know what hit ‘em,” Paul said. They left unspoken all
the worries about hitting a target this big, with this many connections.
No, the bastard would have no idea what hit him, but after he’d been
hit, he’d do everything he could to find out. And it was the kind of
thing that, if they didn’t play it just right, would attract a lot of law
enforcement attention, something they’d been good about avoiding up
until now. They’d thought all about that of course, planned and fall
back planned, and emergency contingency planned for months. But
there was always… always something that if you thought about it too
Rick Dakan
85
much, you’d drive yourself nuts. He moved on to other topics. “How’s
Sacco holding up?”
“He’s good. Way into it all, like you’d expect. Wants to be doing every-
thing, everywhere, all at once, also like you’d expect. But he’s good. Has
his shit together. It’ll be interesting to see his anarchists in action.”
“Did you end up meeting any of them?”
“I changed my mind at the last minute. I listened in on Sacco’s phone
call with them last night and I can just tell that some of those guys are
gonna get arrested, no doubt about it. They’re itching for it. I decided
it was best that they never had any idea at all that Sacco had a woman
friend who knew something about what they were doing.”
“Good,” said Paul. They’d fought about that one, and Chloe had
decided to meet them in heavy disguise. She had good reasons—review
the troops, make sure they knew the rules of engagement, sniff out any
weak links or possible undercovers in their midst. But Paul always liked
to err on the side of caution with people from outside the Crew, and
these black bloc cats were way, way outside.
“Yeah, yeah, you were right, I was wrong. But I wasn’t wrong about
c1sman was I? Did he forget his phone somewhere or just ignore it?”
“Claims he couldn’t feel the vibration in his bag.”
“Which is no doubt why he put it in his bag in the first place. He’s
freaking out a little.”
“Just a little. Bee keeps him focused. The work keeps him even more
focused.”
“Bee needs to keep her focus on him then, because there are some
cutie little hacker snots down there with their eyes on her.”
“Oh yeah? Good for her.” Bee had come out of her shell quite a bit
since they’d dived into this uber-complex caper of theirs. Part of that
was time and distance from past events, part of it was her newfound
role as third in command and mentor/leader to c1sman, Sacco, and Mr.
Data. Some cute boys lusting after her would only boost her confidence
even more.
“It’s good for her, maybe, but it’s bad for c1sman. He’s probably the
jealous type.”
“You’ll…”
“I’ll have a talk with her. Although a little competition is probably
just what c1sman needs. I don’t want him taking Bee for granted.”
“As far as I know, they haven’t even kissed, I doubt he’s taking any-
thing for granted.”
“Well then, I don’t want him thinking he’s got ‘dibs’ or some bullshit
like that. Like I said, it’ll keep him on his toes, and give him something
86
Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
to focus on, as long as he doesn’t get discouraged or give up on her.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Paul, closing his eyes. He wondered
if they could squeeze in a quickie. Then he wondered if he could squeeze
in a fifteen minute nap. Then c1sman knocked on the door and he and
Bee and Sandee all came piling in. The delay was fixed, Bee’s phone
was working, Mr. Data was ready with the package. Time to get back
to work.
While downstairs the Friday night dinner outings and hacker competi-
tions had begun, in their suite it was all work. Counter to the standard
caricatures of government wastefulness and sloth, Danny, the congress-
man, and the target all worked late into Friday night. Most of it had
to do with pretty arcane matters of legislation and/or fund raising. The
target didn’t attempt any more contact with the congressman or his
staff that night, so Paul was left in the role of passive voyeur, letting
all the mail and text messages go through as written. The congressman
stopped sending mail and making calls around 9:00 PM and the lobby-
ist knocked off work around 8:00. Judging from the data from the GPS
in his blackberry, Danny the aide didn’t leave the Capital Hill office
until 11:18. It was only when he was sure he was halfway through his
walk home that Paul sent a wholly fabricated e-mail to Danny.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Heads Up
Danny,
Just wanted to let you know, I got a tip from a media
friend who says there’s something brewing out there
about our man. Someone’s digging into a story about the
Congressman’s record on national security issues. Border
security stuff. I don’t know what exactly, but thought you
might want a heads up. I’m with the wife this weekend and
won’t be answering phones, but text or e-mail me if you
have any questions or need a hand and I’ll get back to you
as soon as spousal harassment permits.
K
Rick Dakan
87
Paul watched on his remote mirror of Danny’s phone as he opened the
e-mail, and presumably read it. Ten minutes later, by which time Paul
could see on the GPS that Danny was back at his apartment, he started
sending out e-mails and even making phone calls of his own. Paul let
them all go through as written, since they served his purposes just fine.
Danny was putting out feelers to his own media contacts, looking to see
if anyone out there had heard any rumors about this supposed investiga-
tion into Congressman Wolverton’s record on border security, which
he assured them was spotless and above reproach. Just by asking the
question, Danny was laying the groundwork for what they planned to
unleash the following day. When reporters heard rumors of a story, the
assumption was that there must be something there. Even if the story
turned out to be bogus, the rumor still meant that someone out there
at least thought they had a story worth investigating. And when Paul
and Chloe and the rest of the Crew provided that story to them, they’d
already be primed to jump all over it.
Danny stopped sending and answering e-mails at 1:30 AM, and
there’d been nothing from the congressman or the target in hours. Paul
checked in with Chloe and confirmed that the package had gone out to
Isaiah as planned and that he’d started printing down in Florida, also
as planned. Bee and c1sman were out in the hotel somewhere, hopefully
having fun, and hopefully with their phones on. Sandee had passed out
on his bed on the other side of the suite, and Sacco was snoring away
in his chair. He and Chloe set up a watch schedule. She agreed to take
the first shift, watching the e-mails to make sure nothing happened
during the night with any of the phones or e-mail accounts they were
tapped into. Paul would take over at 5 AM and let her get some sleep.
He kissed her goodnight, leaving her with a Red Bull and the laptops
and Sacco’s snoring.
Paul took the early morning shift, fished out a Red Bull from the
water-filled cooler that used to have ice in it, and started pulling up the
e-mails he’d pre-written to go out to internet media figures and bloggers
that he hoped would put some pressure on the congressman starting
today, building up to a crescendo come Monday morning. The gist of
all the e-mails pointed to a series of posts and articles spread around
the Web that Paul and Mr. Data had dug up or fabricated/enhanced in
the last month. They were based on a solid core of truth, namely that
Congressman Wolverton had been a strong opponent of changes to
labor policies in the U.S. controlled Mariana Islands. He hadn’t been
on the forefront of the issue, nor had he taken any paid-for-by-lobbyist
junkets to play golf or otherwise enjoy the islands’ offerings. But he’d
88
Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
voted straight down the line over the years against any kind of tighten-
ing of restrictions or even investigation into labor conditions on the
islands, and had gone on record a couple times to reporters opposing
any such changes.
The fabrications came in the form of a couple of pieces of gossip
that the Crew had seeded out on blogs and various sites, including a
rather risky hack into one of the newspaper websites from Wolverton’s
home town in Missouri. C1sman hadn’t had much difficulty making
the switch in the paper’s online archives, but if anyone searched either
the physical archives or the Way Back Machine for the original web
pages, they’d find the change. The charade only had to last through
a couple of days anyway, and there would be enough else going on
that Paul doubted anyone would have interest in checking right away.
Even the Congressman wouldn’t necessarily have cause to doubt he’d
said the fabricated quote, since, as Paul had suspected based on the
man’s record, it was totally in line with his actual beliefs as expressed
in the private e-mails Paul had been reading through in the past six-
teen hours.
Paul started by posting links to some of the articles in comment
threads on Daily Kos and the Huffington Post and some other sites,
using screen names that he’d established and cultivated for months,
some of them even dating back to his first big scam in San Jose. Then
he set up a series of time delayed posts to launch on the handful of
blogs he’d been running as well, with alerts in his e-mail to remind
him to post links to those blog entries back in those comment threads.
Then he started refining the e-mails he’d send out to the more main-
stream press and big time bloggers and news sites. He made quite a few
changes, mostly incorporating a few choice facts he’d gleaned from the
Congressman’s e-mails about his general opposition to immigration
reform that focused on local enforcement instead of showy, make-work
projects like the border fence. There wasn’t a lot there, but it was enough
for Paul to build a really smoky, if not very hot rhetorical fire.
His kindling in place, Paul moved back to the big issue: the legislative
changes. He and Sacco had worked hard researching and coming up
with the perfect and legal wording for the budget earmark, and then
Paul had spent a good chunk of the early morning hours going over
the other e-mails that Mr. Data’s search program had pulled from the
target’s servers about exactly how he worded such requests. When he’d
composed his first draft of the bogus earmark request he’d used circum-
spect language full of euphemisms, and so he was surprised to see that
the target tended to be very straightforward with his requests, especially
Rick Dakan
89
when dealing with someone like Rep. Wolverton with whom he had a
long history. The quid pro quo that would get everyone in trouble was
never quite spelled out, but the camouflage was the bare minimum.
The target’s bread and butter was a very specific kind of lobbying. It
was Isaiah who’d first turned them on to Ken Clover, lobbyist. He’d
worked in the Department of the Interior during the first president
Bush’s term in office and before that had been on staff for a couple of
Republican Congressmen. During the Clinton years he’d cashed pay-
checks from several different conservative think tanks before setting up
on K Street. He had no particular issues and no huge industry clients
that he specialized in. Indeed, unlike many lobbyists, he did not stay
on retainer for specific clients. Instead he was a kind of lobbying con-
sultant, brought in when others couldn’t get the job done or needed a
little extra something. He was, in short, a deal maker, and for the past
seven years he’d become known (within a very small circle of trusted
clients) as a procurement trader.
Budget procurements, or earmarks as they were more commonly
referred to in the media, were the best way going for a representative or
senator to bring some money home to their district or state. The more
money that came in, the more likely they were to get re-elected, or at
least so went the conventional wisdom. But inserting earmarks often
left fingerprints and could be used by political opponents or media
critics to paint a very unflattering picture, so the fewer of these ear-
marks that could be specifically tied to electioneering greed and/or
lobbyist paybacks, the better. If a congressman like Wolverton put in
