Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (10 page)

Burton had a sadistic grin on his face. “Well, I don’t know exactly know how to say this to you, but there was a lot more happening that day in your office that you haven’t told us about. We traced all of your computer transactions that morning and came up with some unusual entries and some serious inconsistencies in what we would call a normal work routine. Would you like me to go over them and maybe we’ll jog your memory?”

Jonathan just stared at him in disbelief.

“Do you know or remember anything about a string of emails from a user named
Heliracer
99?”

“No, I don’t know anyone by that name, but I just told you I was working on emails, so it could very well have been that username. I reviewed hundreds of emails a day.”

“Take your time and think,” piped in Friedkin as if waking from a trance. “It is very important that you tell us everything you know about a user named
Heliracer
99.”

Jonathan closed his eyes and after a long minute answered, “Not a clue, I don’t ever remember seeing that name.”

Agent Snyder chimed in, “Here’s another clue. We went through your user account and followed your tracks into the Yahoo database and found that you researched this user and a series of emails he sent to 7 other recipients with information that spoke of the forthcoming attack, another that was named Eye to Eye which is a username registered to you and your address. You were communicating with terrorists, six months prior and continued, right up to the day of the attack!”

“That’s ridiculous!” yelled Jonathan as he started to come unglued.

Burton drummed his fingers on the table and looked so hard into Jonathan’s eyes that a deep single wrinkle appeared and stretched all the way across his forehead. Jonathan could feel the pressure of Burton’s forceful stare, “And then we have evidence that you reset the Yahoo database so that there would be no trace of a
Heliracer
99
, no trace of Eye to Eye. Nothing, as if the name had never been issued. Now tell me why an innocent man would do that. It was very cleverly done too, because you also erased your activity in our exchange server and its back-up server, but what you didn’t know was that we had an independent server backing up every
Blue Heron
transaction on a real-time basis.”

Jonathan threw his hands into the air and said, “Why would I do something as stupid as that?“

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” said Burton.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all. If I was researching an incriminating email, I would never erase the username. That would be concealing evidence.”

Burton smiled, “Well now you see why we’re in a little bind here, because you don’t remember and we have evidence that says that you were involved.”

“Someone else must have done it. It’s pretty obvious that I’m being framed.”

“By whom?” asked Burton.

“I don’t know, perhaps the terrorists somehow hacked into my account.”

“Impossible,” laughed Snyder. “No one has ever hacked into the agency’s systems. You know as well as me that the encryption is impenetrable.”

Burton confirmed, “No, not even a tech inside Yahoo has the ability to eliminate all traces of a user and all of his emails. There are too many controls. It takes an expert in computer engineering, someone with a license to do whatever they want within other people’s systems, someone who could use their authority and access to by-pass all of the internal controls.” Burton raised his voice, “And according to this list of transactions, initiated from your corporate headquarters, you did it!” Burton adeptly flipped another tab open as if playing his trump card. “You made the changes through a series of JCL at 12:23, 7 minutes before the explosion, and deleted the audit trail with another pre-written JCL at 12:26, 4 minutes before the explosion. And then you grabbed your daughter and ran to the most secure part of the building, the stairwell. Fortunately our server captured a snapshot of the whole series of transactions. Jonathan, we have a trail so clear a blind man could follow it showing that the emails were changed from your id through your access authority.”

Jonathan stood up, pushed his chair aside and looked directly at Burton, You’ve got to be crazy if you believe I had anything to do with that. I would never do anything like that! For Christ’s sake, I can’t believe you’re trying to make me a part of this thing? My kids were in that building! Why in the world would I kill my own son and put my daughter in mortal danger? It doesn’t make any sense. What would be my motive? You talk about a trail, but you guys know me. Someone obviously figured out how to trick the system and was logged onto my account. Can’t you see what’s happening here, there was another person manipulating the system to set me up as a diversion.”

“Mr. Anderson, you know as well as I do how secure our system is,” answered Snyder. “If you were sitting on this side of the table and someone suggested that our mainframe was compromised, you’d be the first one to say that it is impossible. Jonathan, think about it. The likelihood of someone breaking into your id, making all those changes right before the explosion is pretty far fetched.”

Burton interrupted, “Furthermore, you still haven’t explained why all the
Heliracer
emails were sent to
Eye2Eye
that has your address as the billing address. So the thought is now that you were in some kind of a cell and communicating with your raghead buddies on a personal account. You have quite a bit of explaining to do Mr. Anderson.”

Jonathan walked around the table and opened the door. There were 2 security guards posted outside so he couldn’t exit. He walked back to the head of the table and said, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Anyone can set up an email account, and use any address they want. That doesn’t prove anything! You think that I would conspire with terrorists to blow up a building with my own children in it? What do you think I am? If I was to do something like this, don’t you think I would make sure my children were absent and that maybe I was also outside the building.”

“Your children were scheduled to be at the pediatricians at that time, but it appears that your schedule was changed.”

“And I couldn’t have just walked out of the building with my son and daughter before the explosion? Even if I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t kill my kids.”

Burton answered, “I’m just telling you what we’ve found, and explaining that there are inconsistencies in your story.”

“I didn’t give you any story. You’re wasting your time thinking that I had something to do with this, because I didn’t. Give me a polygraph, but don’t give me your condescending bullshit.”

Burton ignored his comments and continued, “Now I have several other very incriminating emails that we discovered in our parallel search from
Eye2Eye
, also linked to your address that I would like to talk to you about.”

“If you’re accusing me of wrongdoing, I want an attorney.”

Burton laughed. “Under the Hart-Langley Act provision 36, suspects being investigated for acts of terror and treason aren’t allowed an attorney.”

“So now you’re formally charging me with treason.”

Burton answered, “Yes, you’re under arrest for conspiracy and treason. You understand that by not cooperating, you could subject yourself to mandatory indefinite imprisonment.”

“What about my rights?” asked Jonathan. “Are you going to read me my Miranda rights?”

“You forfeited your rights as an American by conspiring with terrorists,” answered Burton.

“This is un-American, what about my constitutional rights?”

Friedkin answered, “This is the new America and those rights have been suspended until we determine your role in this event.”

“I have nothing else to say to you,” said a disbelieving Jonathan.

Burton handed Jonathan a list. “We need you to give us all the agency’s property that you have in your possession.”

Jonathan scanned the list and saw each item listed with a description and a serial number.

“We have agents that are presently at your home retrieving our property and the guards at the door will escort you back to your desk so that you can bring us the remainder.

The guards took him back to his office. They quickly gathered his computer, his palm pilot, his blackberry, cell phone, memory sticks, bullet proof vest and all the other pieces of equipment listed on Burton’s paper. They then led him back to the conference room and laid all the items on the table where Burton took inventory. Friedkin picked up one of the memory sticks and stuck it into the USB port of his computer. He whispered something to Snyder and Burton and then turned to Jonathan.

“Personnel directories….you weren’t thinking of taking this home with you, were you Mr. Anderson? And it looks like CBL1 programming, why would you have that on a memory stick?”

Jonathan folded his arms and looked down at the table.

Burton smiled, knowing that they had caught him red handed said, “We are going to take you on a little trip. Don’t worry, we’ll call your wife and tell her that you’re not coming home for a while.”

Jonathan opened his eyes and knew that he was in a place that he had never been before. The heat was staggering and the sheet that covered his foam mattress was soaking wet from his sweat. His tried to wipe a drip of sweat from his eye but was too slow because of the handcuffs that bound his hands together. His feet were also bound. He squinted through the burn of the sweat and saw that he was in a prison cell made of stone, locked in by a solid steel door. There was one small window letting in the searing tropical heat. The window was barred but without glass. He sat up on his bed and felt dizzy. His body ached and the pain in his left arm was nearly unbearable. He looked at it and saw that it was bruised from his wrist to his elbow. He looked at his right arm and which seemed okay. He struggled to his feet only to find more pain, this time from the bottom of his feet and his toes, which were covered with dried blood. He forced his way with small hops to the window and looked out at the tropical landscape. The palm trees swayed and by the position of the sun, he surmised that it was sometime in the afternoon. The compound was surrounded with a high fence topped with concertina wire and there were uniformed soldiers all around. He now knew where he was: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His cell was about 8 foot by 8 foot. There was a single bed and no toilet. They had dressed him in light cotton pajamas that were bright orange and there was a number sewn over the left front pocket. He started to feel sick to his stomach and vomited on the floor. He had a difficult time making it back to his bed, because of the pain in his feet and arm. He rolled carefully back into his bunk and passed out.

He was awakened by the sound of the large metal door swinging open. He opened his eyes and tried to focus. There were two uniformed men in green fatigues and a man in a business suit. He recognized the man as Harry Davidson. Harry was a short stocky man in his mid-forties built like a bull. His hair was cut almost to the scalp and he didn’t have a trace of hair on his face. He wore a small gold loop earring in his right ear. Davidson walked over to Jonathan and yelled, “Get up!” Jonathan struggled to sit up, but before he could make it, Davidson grabbed the handcuff chain between Jonathan’s hands and yanked him so hard that he fell face first on the floor. The pain from his left arm hurt so badly that he screamed out loud.

“You ready to go for your daily walk?” Davidson asked.

Jonathan didn’t reply.

“Get him on his feet!” he barked to the soldiers who lifted Jonathan up by his elbows.

They pushed Jonathan out the door and down a long narrow hallway that contained other cells. He caught glimpses of the other prisoners and saw beaten men, all dressed in orange, shackled like him. He stumbled, not able to keep up with the pace, only to be jabbed with the butt of a gun. They exited the cell area and walked outside across the compound. The sun was intense and blinding. The ground was like a barren desert, hot and lifeless. Outside the fences was a lush, green paradise.

The light in the interrogation room was blinding as it reflected off the luminescent white walls. There was a large mirror about half the size of the wall opposite Jonathan, which was obviously hiding the team of experts who were watching him, studying to pick up clues through motions, expressions and attitude. He scanned the room and saw 2 other chairs, an IV on rollers and a stainless steel electronic cart containing several pieces of high tech equipment. His chair and one other were black leather with shiny aluminum frames; the third chair looked like something you would see in an optometrist’s office, with a big black pair of spectacles on a pivot attached to one of the arm rests. They tossed him into one of the black chairs and left him alone for what seemed like hours. It took him several tries to stand up and when he finally got to his feet he staggered over to the mirror and saw several contusions on his face and head and dried blood in his nostrils. He yelled at the mirror. “I didn’t do anything and this is what you do to me! I give my life to you and this is how you repay me. I lost my son God Damn it!” The words echoed in the empty room. The shouting exhausted him and he retreated back to the chair and put his hands on the chair back to keep himself from falling.

After several minutes, the door opened and Harry Davison walked in. “Sit down Jonathan.”

“Why, so you can beat me some more? Didn’t you find out everything there is to know? I’m sure you did because I don’t know anything!”

“Sit down and let’s talk.”

Apprehensively, Jonathan sat down in the black leather chair.

“Now, we’ve just gotten started and this is going to get a whole lot worse, so I need you to tell me who
Heliracer
99
is and where can we find the other 6 people from that email.”

Jonathan stared into Harry’s cold eyes but could see no life. “Didn’t you give me a polygraph?”

“We did,” answered Harry in a soft monotone voice.

“And did I tell the truth?”

“Jonathan, you know as well as I that those things are flawed, especially with a trained agent like yourself.”