Support and Defend (7 page)

H
ARLAN
B
ANFIELD
was a print journalist by trade; he’d been at it for more than forty years and he certainly looked the part. He was small and frumpy, with permanently messy silver hair and bright gray eyes that conveyed kindness and empathy even when they were locked on a politician he was interviewing for the purposes of writing an excoriating hit piece.

Harlan’s day had begun in College Park, Maryland, at a breakfast meeting for an association of foreign correspondents. He’d been a foreign correspondent himself, with bylines from places as far away as Ho Chi Minh City and Montevideo, and even though he had settled down much in the past few years and rooted himself firmly to the D.C. area, he still liked to get together with other current and former globe-trotting reporters at the monthly breakfast.

The meeting broke up at ten a.m., and soon after Harlan climbed into his nine-year-old Volkswagen and made the drive down to his one-room office in a high-rise on K Street, deep in the District’s downtown Golden Triangle. He had a morning of phone calls ahead before he had to head back out to lunch with old colleagues at
The Washington Post
.

Banfield’s career began working the city beat for
The Philadelphia Inquirer
in the seventies. He served in New York with UPI in the eighties, before finally taking work as a foreign correspondent for
The Washington Post
. He was based in Europe and the Middle East, primarily, but he was both an excellent journalist and a single man without a family, so he was sent to all the hot spots for twenty years before returning to D.C. to work at the
Post
’s office on 15th Street in the twilight of his career.

Banfield was sixty-six now, but he had not retired. He still did some freelance work around town, writing mostly for various electronic media outlets.

In addition to his work for hire, Banfield also authored a blog about D.C. lobbyists from a decidedly anti–D.C. lobbyist perspective. His blog got him some small attention inside the Beltway, but he wasn’t doing it for the mainstream, because Banfield’s blog, like his sporadic freelance work, was, by and large, a front.

In truth, Harlan Banfield was much more than a journalist. He was also the U.S. liaison of an organization that called itself the International Transparency Project. The ITP’s website put their mission statement succinctly, identifying the group as a loose worldwide consortium of philanthropists, journalists, lawyers, and activists who endeavored to support government openness and accountability. They did this by seeking out, encouraging, funding, and protecting whistleblowers.

The homepage of the ITP’s website displayed a picture of a sunrise over Washington, D.C., with the phrase “Truth vs. Power” in bold type above it. There was something telling about having D.C. on the homepage of the website. The organization was—ostensibly, anyway—designed to expose government malfeasance in every country on the globe, but in truth, ITP focused the vast bulk of its efforts on what it saw as the evil empire, the United States of America.

Banfield didn’t hate America, though he thought it probable some of his foreign colleagues in the ITP did. Banfield just liked a good story, and nothing gave him a bigger thrill than unveiling closely guarded secrets. High-level government leaks were the coin of the realm around Washington, and Harlan Banfield loved serving as a clandestine clearinghouse for the biggest leaks in the Beltway.

Banfield felt there existed in the U.S. a Deep State, a shadow government, wealthy and well-connected members of industry who were the true power behind the scenes. And working as the U.S. liaison to the ITP was his way of peeling off the superficial layers of government secrecy, in hopes of someday digging deep enough to find the truth about this shadow government.

He wasn’t in it for any attention—members of the Project did not reveal their identities to the world at large. It was an attempt to minimize exposure to government surveillance, and in Banfield’s case, it had worked. As far as most people knew, he was just an aging foreign correspondent who’d long since been put to pasture, but he loved unlocking the secure doors around D.C.

He pulled into his building’s underground garage a little before eleven a.m. It had started to drizzle, and he was glad to have a dedicated spot under cover. He’d just locked his Volkswagen and began walking toward the elevator, when he sensed a figure in the dark on his left moving between the cars along the wall of the garage.

He stopped, clutching his keys in his hand as if they might be some sort of adequate protection against a mugging.

The figure came closer, but remained out of the light. He faced Banfield but said nothing.

“Hello?”

The man stepped into the light now. He wore a trench coat with the collar up and a knit cap on his head, pulled just above his eyes. He looked instantly familiar to Banfield, but it took him several seconds to identify him.

“Ethan? Is that you?”

“We need to talk.”

“
Christ
, son! You scared the living shit out of me.”

“Where can we go?”

“Why the dramatics? You could have just e-mailed me. Come upstairs. We’ll go to my office.”

“No!” Ethan Ross said, lurching forward as he spoke. Banfield recoiled a little, but it was in surprise, not fear.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Your office might be bugged. Your phone, too.”

“Why would it be bugged?”

“Let’s take your car. I know a place we can talk.”

A
T
R
OSS’S DIRECTION,
they drove west through Georgetown and crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge into Virginia. Here they merged into the northbound lanes of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which ran northwest away from the D.C. metro area.

“Shall I cancel my lunch meeting?” Banfield asked. Ross did not answer.

“Do I need to stop for gas? How far are we going?”

“Not much farther.”

Banfield pressed his luck, doing his best to engage Ross in conversation, but the younger man just stared out the window of the car and did not reply.

The rain was light but steady, and the only sound inside the Volkswagen was the soft whine of wet tires and the slow cycle of the wiper blades.

After only a few minutes on the winding, hilly road, Ross told Banfield to take the next right, and immediately the sixty-six-year-old reporter realized they must be heading to Fort Marcy Park.

The park was a wooded and secluded location, across the river and northwest of downtown D.C. It had been a real fort back in the Civil War, on a hill with sweeping views of both the Potomac and open farmland, and thoroughly fortified with earthen walls, dugouts, and trenches, many of which could still be discerned as unnatural-looking undulations in the landscape.

Now it was mostly overgrown, there were no buildings of any kind, but a couple cannons stood on the earthen berms above trenches filled with tall bare trees.

Banfield parked in the small lot and immediately turned to Ross for answers, but the younger man opened his door and began walking away from the car, up the hill and into the woods. Banfield grabbed an umbrella out of the backseat and followed him.

They walked for several minutes, until Ross sat on a wet wooden bench next to a lone cannon out of view of the parking lot behind them. Banfield sat next to him; they faced the Potomac but couldn’t see the river through the foliage on the hillside in front of them. Banfield winced as a wet, cold breeze stung his face. He had been deferential to Ross over the past fifteen minutes, but his patience diminished quickly while they sat there, staring off into the woods. “Ethan, I am an aging city dweller with bursitis in his hips and an allergy to almost everything, and you’ve brought me out into thirty-eight-degree rain and walked me into the woods. What the hell is going on?”

Ross ignored the rain. He stood from the bench and began pacing back and forth on the berm next to the cannon. “It’s fucking India, Harlan,
that’s
what is going on.”

“India?”

“The attack yesterday. You heard about it, right?”

“Well, yes. Sure. It was on the news. But I don’t know why—”

“It was a Palestinian assassination of an ex–Israeli commando.”

The blank look on Banfield’s face showed he had no idea what Ross’s point was. “I didn’t see that on the news,” he said, “but . . . sorry . . . why do I care?”

“The guy killed in India was the on-scene commander of the Turkish peace flotilla massacre.”

Banfield blinked hard, a show of surprise. Ross stared into his eyes, searching for clues that he knew this already.

“Oh,” the old man said softly. His shock seemed genuine to Ross. “I see what this is all about. Even so, we don’t know that—”

“We
do
know. I’m telling you, the FBI was waiting for us all this morning when we got to work. They are saying they know about the unauthorized download of the flotilla files. They say the dead Israeli in India, Colonel Yacoby, was mentioned in the files, as well as the fact he was living in that little village.” He stopped pacing and leaned down over Banfield. “He was referred to by name in the CIA docs!”

“I don’t remember that. There were a lot of pages in those files.”

“I don’t remember, either, but the G’s seem
fucking
certain!”

Banfield himself stood now, and he looked off over the trees. “When did you deliver the files to me? It had to have been three months ago.”

“It was four.”

“And only now do they reveal the breach was detected? Why is that?”

Ross answered in a whispering shout. “Because somebody got
fucking
killed! When I gave you that data you swore to me anything that could put lives in danger would be redacted, and the only people who would get the intel would be the media. You said you’d give them to an ITP-affiliated reporter at
The Guardian
, and he would reveal the fact the U.S. gave covert help to the Israelis in the attack on the flotilla. It was supposed to embarrass the White House, maybe nudge us away from covert ties with Israel. Maybe pro-Israeli hawks in the administration would get fired. And the next time some shit like this went down in Israel, Washington would be less eager to spy on behalf of a criminal regime.”

Ross pulled off his soaking knit cap and ran his hands through his sticky wet blond hair, then said, “Nobody said a goddamned thing about terrorists blowing up a family of four.”

Banfield positioned himself in front of Ross, blocking his ability to pace. He held his umbrella high enough for the taller man to fit under it, but Ethan did not come that close. Banfield said, “Listen to me carefully. The files you passed to me did not go to anyone in Palestine.”

“Where did they go?”

“We still have them.”

“Why haven’t you given them to
The Guardian
?”

“Remember what I told you when you gave me the information? If we released it so close on the heels of the breach, it could put you in danger.” Banfield squeezed Ross on the shoulder. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. My organization has refined the art of whistleblower attribution masking. You are safe.”

Ross sat back on the bench slowly. He wanted to believe, but wasn’t sure.

“I’d feel better if you told me the ITP doesn’t have contacts in Palestine.”

“Of course we have contacts in Palestine. We have contacts all over. But we didn’t pass this on to anyone. We would never be a party to such a brutal act. Our partners in Palestine are as far removed from the personality types that committed this crime as you and I are from the thugs who run around D.C. knifing people for their wallets. Remember, the Palestinian people have the same range of personality types as the rest of the world. There are bad apples out there. We just aren’t working with them.”

Banfield sat down next to Ross, and the rainfall blew in from the river onto their faces. The umbrella served no purpose, but Banfield held it anyway.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Ethan, and you are one hundred percent in the clear. This thing in India was unrelated to the whistleblowing you did four months ago, I’m sure of it.”

“Well, the FBI is
not
sure of it. They are conducting polygraphs later in the week.”

Banfield did not show any surprise. “That’s to be expected. It’s just a fishing expedition.”

“Perhaps, but they will be thorough.”

“You’ve never had any problems with polygraphs in the past.”

Ethan sighed, doing his best to regain composure. “Of course not. I went to Harvard, I’m not going to be outsmarted by a fucking state college grad with a box of wires and lights. But my other polys were just annual security recerts. A second rate investigator with no presumption of any deception. I
knew
I would ace the box, so I aced the box. This time will be different. It will be a single-scope poly, the best FBI investigators in CID, and they will know what questions to circle back to. It won’t be a cakewalk this time.”

Banfield tried to calm the younger man down. “The polygraph is a stage prop. It’s bullshit. The key to the polygraph is understanding the equipment is a hoax set out to intimidate the guilty into a confession. The examiner will interrogate you, and he will use the polygraph as a pretext to say he does not believe you. It is his tool to draw out a confession. Don’t confess, stay relaxed,” Banfield smiled. “And
believe
that which is true.”

Ethan glared at Banfield. “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.”

The older man put his hands up. “I’m sorry. Of course not. But just know this. You are not to blame for the attack in India. The information you gleaned from CIA files is as secure right now as it was when you downloaded it. We are just holding it for the right moment.”

Ethan looked off in the distance and mumbled, “I can beat the box.” He didn’t sound sure, and Banfield registered this.

“You
can
.” Banfield put his arm around Ross. “I’ll get you some medications to take. It will help.” He leaned down to look into Ethan’s face. He gave him another squeeze on the shoulder. “Listen to me. You’re fine. This sort of thing happens all the time. We work with a lot of patriots like you. Probably once a month someone gets pulled into a surprise polygraph. Nothing has ever come from it.
Ever.
”

“Don’t lie to me, Harlan.”

“I wouldn’t dare. And I’m not just kissing your ass here when I say it, but you are a hell of a lot sharper than some of the other whistleblowers out there.” He smiled and rolled his eyes, indicating the level of intellect of the others.

Ethan nodded, conceding the point without a hint of selfconsciousness, and he lightened up a little. He took a moment to look around the park, as if for the first time. He and Banfield were the only two people in sight.

“Okay. I’ll spend the next couple of days prepping for it. But I’m not going to trust any technology in the meantime. Who knows how wide and how deep this security review will go? We need to be careful. The FBI could get a court order to tap every one of us with TS clearance in the EOB. No phones or e-mail.”

“A phone is okay in a pinch if you buy a new one. Just go to a convenience store and get a cheap mobile. Only use it in an emergency. I’ll do the same.”

“Okay, but I’d rather meet in person.”

Banfield thought for a moment. “Do you still go running in the mornings?”

“Some mornings.” Ross said. And then, “Why?”

“Buy some chalk.”

“Chalk?”

“Yes. For the next few days, got for a morning jog down Wisconsin Avenue. Turn east on N Street. On the southeast corner there is a green fire hydrant by the road. If you want to meet me here, drag a small piece of chalk on the top of it, just three inches or so, big enough I can see it as I pass by on my way to work. If you put it there I’ll show up here at eight a.m.”

“And if you need to talk to me?”

“Same thing. I’ll mark the hydrant if I need to meet with you. Eight a.m. here.”

Ross nodded slowly. “A little old-fashioned, but okay.”

“The old ways are the best ways, son. Phones are tapped. Unsecure e-mail is read. Nobody out there is looking for chalk anymore.”