The Accused (32 page)

51

I
T HAD BEEN SEVERAL DAYS SINCE
the first session of subcommittee hearings chaired by Senator Jason Bell Purdy. Today, the subcommittee would reconvene. The senator had only one witness slated for the morning. He had recalled Major General Harlan Koeptke—Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Projects. Koeptke had testified on the first day, but Purdy had recalled him to address a number of areas that he had delineated in a letter to the Department of Defense. The assistant secretary was seated, unmoving, at the witness table. His gaze, focused and intense, was fastened on Purdy.

Purdy had spent time questioning Koeptke on the basis of military budgets and then emphasizing—as he had on the first day of hearings—the fact that neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Defense had revealed any expenditures for the experimental BATCOM program.

“General Koeptke, I would ask you again,” Purdy then said, “whether you find any disclosure of expenditures for the development of a BATCOM special operations military unit in this budget document?”

“Actually, I do, sir,” Koeptke answered matter-of-factly.

Jack Hornby and a few other members of the press corps sat up a little straighter in their chairs.

Purdy parted his lips, but said nothing. His eyes were wide and unblinking. After a few seconds of reflection, he pressed on.

“Did you say, General Koeptke, that the BATCOM expenditure item is somehow reflected in this budget document?”

The witness nodded nonchalantly.

“Yes, Senator, that's exactly what I said.”

“Well, first of all, General, let's make one thing clear. At your last testimony before this subcommittee, I referred you to your testimony before an oversight committee last October concerning the budget for special operations activities. Do you remember your testimony? I pointed out that, at page 146 of your testimony before the oversight committee, you had indicated there were no specific allocations in that budget for special operations activities involving the possible assassination of terrorist cell groups within the borders of friendly nation states. Do you recall that?”

The general nodded confidently.

“Yes, I certainly do.”

“Well,” the senator said, lifting both hands in the air dramatically, “I don't see how you can explain the contradiction. Are you telling us something different now from when you were in this hearing before the oversight committee?”

“No—not at all, sir.”

There was a manufactured smirk on Purdy's face—but it hid the sinking feeling that things were not going his way—that his name-recognition voyage was heading for the reefs.

At this point, Senator Wayne O'Brien slipped into the back of the hearing room and seated himself in the last row. Purdy caught sight of him, and then quickly tried to refocus.

“Well then, General, maybe you can explain the mystery. How could an allocation for BATCOM both be in this budget—and not be in the budget—at the same time? Back in Georgia—my home state—folks would say that you're shucking shells with no peanuts inside.”

There were a few titters from the audience.

Koeptke waited for the response to die down. After that he responded.

“Senator—over at the DOD the kind of shells we shuck, I assure you, are fully loaded. If you would direct your attention,” he continued, “to page 79—line item 24. See the words ‘Iron Point'?”

Purdy quickly leafed through the budget document and located the line the witness was referring to.

“Yes,” he responded, “I see it. Now what's the point? What is that, General?”

“Well, Senator, I believe the answer should be apparent to you—because the letters S–A–P appear right next to the words ‘Iron Point.' Do you see that, sir?”

Purdy nodded, but looked up with a slightly bewildered expression.

“Senator—are you familiar with an unacknowledged SAP?”

The Georgia politician now knew he had ventured into territory with which he was not intimately familiar. With all of the briefing and research made available to him by his staff, something had slipped through. He was heading for the rocks, and it was time to take a dramatic turn back to deep water.

“Well, General, let me go into something else—”

But the assistant secretary wouldn't let him go.

“Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting,” Koeptke said, his voice now resounding, “but we have to straighten this out so the record is clear. You have implied that I may have changed my testimony about whether or not a special operations unit, referred to as BATCOM, was part of this budget document. Or that we, somehow, failed to adequately acknowledge the existence of this program to the oversight committee—an oversight committee, I don't need to remind you, that is
not this subcommittee
. So I think I should have a right to explain myself.”

With that Purdy gave him a wave to proceed, but at the same time he looked back, furtively, to his staff for help.

But each of his staff members was stone-faced.

“So to continue,” Koeptke said, “do you know what an unacknowledged SAP is, Senator?”

Purdy moved himself slowly toward the microphone.

“I really don't think it's appropriate for me to be answering the questions—I'm the one asking the questions in this hearing.”

“Then let me assume that your answer is—that you don't know what it is. So let me give you a primer. An unacknowledged SAP is a special access program, which is, from a traditional budget standpoint, extra-documentational. It does not appear in the traditional budget documents. The reference here is to ‘Iron Point.' That is an unclassified code reference to a program of which BATCOM was a part. Now there are further delineations—there are classified code names for the project, but those cannot be disclosed. ‘Iron Point' was mentioned because it was designated for decision by the SAPOC. Now, Senator, are you familiar with the SAPOC?”

Purdy again cautiously approached the microphone and said, “Well, as I explained, I should be asking the questions—”

But the witness plowed ahead.

“Again, Senator, I will presume that you have no idea what it is. So let me tell you—it stands for Special Access Programs Oversight Committee. There are approximately 150 special access programs that involve what federal regulations refer to as a ‘core secret'—the compromise of which could result in an ‘unrecoverable failure.' In other words, it would undermine, directly, the military value of such a project if its details were made public.”

“Right there, now, I see a problem,” Purdy leaped in, hoping to recover some of the offensive in the session. “More than a hundred of these programs kept from the public eye—I see a real danger in that.”

“The only danger,” Koeptke countered, “is releasing the information about these sensitive programs so that our enemies—so that terrorists—so that those barbarians and thugs who mean to do us harm—could use that information against us. That's the only real threat, Senator.”

“And yet—you still haven't answered my question,” Purdy pointed out, struggling for some kind of control over the testimony. “You said that the expenditures for the BATCOM project were part of the budget. And yet all you've pointed to is a code word for the program. There are no allocation amounts—there's no evidence that this oversight committee was ever informed of the money that would be expended or the manner in which that money would be put to use—for possible assassinations around the world.”

“Judging by your statements today, Senator,” Koeptke replied, his posture now ramrod-straight in the chair, “perhaps it's time to explain something that will shed some light on why this particular subcommittee is—if I may be so blunt—starting to take on some of the characteristics of a misguided missile. Full of firepower, but liable to do damage to innocent parties—and never hit the target.”

Purdy's face flushed with anger, and he was ready for a volley of political finger-pointing, but the witness beat him to the punch.

“So here it is, Senator. Here's the reason why this subcommittee—and your questions, I believe—are aimed at the wrong target.”

Now Jack Hornby was leaning forward over the chair in front of him, madly scribbling in his notebook, his eyes fixed on the interchange. The reporter smelled blood. And he was going to sponge up all of it for his news service.

“Here is the bottom line, Senator,” Koeptke continued, readying the final stroke. “Shortly after my testimony before the oversight committee, the Special Access Programs Oversight Committee met in secret session. Such a procedure is allowed by existing regulations—you may not realize that, but that is the fact. Under those provisions, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, a full reporting to Congress may be waived by oral disclosure to the full SAPOC and the chairmen and ranking minority members of the four congressional oversight committees.

“That was exactly what was done in the situation involving BATCOM. You will not find it in the Congressional Record. You will not find it in the traditional research material that I'm sure your staff dutifully prepared for you. But those who are intimately involved in the process of overseeing military expenditures, and the development of military programs, know this procedure well. And they will tell you—as I've just told you—that this budget item was approved using that established secret procedure. The Secretary of Defense himself gave the verbal waiver and disclosure.”

There were a few chuckles that broke out among the press corps as the full realization of Koeptke's disclosure sunk in.

Purdy stared blankly at the witness and tried to manage a smile, but was unsuccessful.

Koeptke had time for one final thrust.

“And also, Senator,” he added, “I come from North Carolina. And down there we also have a saying. Senator, it looks like you've bought yourself a dog that won't hunt.”

Now the laughter filled the hearing room. Purdy's face flushed, and he tried to regain his composure and his control over the hearing. But the laughter continued. Senator O'Brien stood up in the back of the room and caught the glance of his fellow Georgian. O'Brien narrowed his eyes, smiled slightly, and turned and left the hearing room.

The ranking member of the subcommittee turned to Senator Purdy.

“Senator, I hope you'll excuse me, but I have business in another hearing right now.”

As the ranking member stood to leave, so did all of the other members of the subcommittee. After a few moments, Purdy was left alone before the microphone—in a Senate hearing room that was now alive
with reporters jumping to their feet and exiting, members of the public laughing, and onlookers shaking their heads in disbelief.

Washington insiders were used to seeing politicians make mountains out of molehills. But this was the first time that they had ever seen a fledgling senator take a mountain and—after discovering it was actually a volcano—throw himself in.

In the corridor, Jack Hornby was already on his cell phone.

“All right, here's the headline,” he said, and then paused for a second. Then he barked it out:

SENATE FLAP OVER BATCOM TURNS BATTY

52

O
NCE
W
ILL HAD SETTLED IN ON
the international flight over to the Netherlands, he had a chance to review the rest of the research that Professor Redgrove had prepared for him on the International Criminal Court, and on the substantive criminal offenses with which Caleb Marlowe had been charged. Because the Court was still relatively new, it was clear that this case had the potential of cutting a pattern for cases yet to come.

On the flight over he could also prepare for his jail interview with Caleb Marlowe. Will was intimately acquainted with
some
of the facts of the Chacmool incident—but only those that his client had permitted him to know, and that the Department of Defense had not restricted as classified information.

Now it was time to begin unraveling the mystery. What was it about Caleb Marlowe's mission, and the nature of his military unit, that required such secrecy? And why had Marlowe traveled back to Mexico immediately after resigning his commission from the marines? To Will, it seemed too much like his client was engaged in a one-man vendetta.

Will had an aisle seat on the plane, with no one in the seat to his left. But there was a businessman in the window seat. He was a well-dressed, polite man with a vague, almost indistinguishable accent. He struck up conversation with Will from time to time, telling him he had guessed he was a lawyer. The man said he was a business representative for an international investment firm.

The attorney found the conversation to be a pleasant break from his work on the case. The gentleman shared that he made frequent trips from the EU countries to New York and Washington. Will noticed that he had a copy of
Roll Call
—the official Capitol Hill newspaper—
tucked under his copies of the
Wall Street Journal
and the
International Financial Times.