The president assigned a special prosecutor-one of the few people in Washington actually capable of keeping a secret. The prosecutor questioned people in camera-meaning that none of his meetings were open to the public-and the records of those meetings were sealed for fifty years. The president figured that whoever was president half a century from now could decide if he or she wanted to declassify this god-awful debacle and let the world of the future know about it.
DeMarco was questioned several times by the prosecutor, and one time he was questioned with Dillon present. The prosecutor wanted to see if Dillon would deny any of DeMarco’s accusations-which Dillon didn’t. Dillon admitted that he had David Hopper and Colonel Gilmore killed but only to protect the lives of DeMarco and John Levy. He also admitted he planted bugs in Charles Bradford’s office and manipulated John Levy to kill Bradford. That is, he freely admitted he did his very best to rid the United States government of Charles Bradford while trying to keep secret everything Bradford had done. In other words, he admitted that he tried to do exactly what the president was now trying to do.
What Dillon refused to do was provide the names of anyone at the NSA who had helped him, and the only people DeMarco could identify were Alice and the three men who guarded him at the farmhouse in Maryland. But DeMarco didn’t know anyone’s last name, and Alice and the guards had disappeared. The one thing Dillon lied about was that he’d intercepted the transmission of Paul Russo being killed intentionally. He explained, in complex technical language, how the intercept had been inadvertently obtained due to “satellite malfunction.”
The president’s special prosecutor didn’t believe him.
Admiral Fenton Wilcox and his deputy director were fired and a new director was appointed to the NSA. The new director was a bright fellow, a three-star air force general who had previously worked at the agency, and he was told by the president that his first task was to ensure that the NSA was eavesdropping in accordance with all the rules. To assist the general in this task, seventy independent inspectors descended upon Fort Meade to review everything the agency was doing. Naturally, almost all the inspectors were former NSA employees because the new NSA director couldn’t find other people with the appropriate security clearance and the technical knowledge to do the review.
After six months of grueling work, the inspectors found a few minor compliance and procedural problems but failed to uncover the true nature of Claire Whiting’s secret division. One reason for this was because the day after DeMarco gave the recordings to Justice Antonelli, Claire’s personnel all began to perform legitimate-albeit less useful-functions, and the only American communications they intercepted while the inspectors were conducting their review were those permitted by FISA warrants. Claire’s ability to hide her true role in Dillon’s organization was also made easier by the fact that after Dillon was incarcerated, the new NSA director, deciding he needed to raise the glass ceiling at Fort Meade and have a few more women in high-ranking positions, concluded that Claire was the best person to fill Dillon’s former position at the agency.
The president’s special prosecutor also questioned the two young soldiers who had killed Paul Russo and the reporter, Robert Hansen. They sat there, shell-shocked, saying how they’d been told by John Levy that the men they had killed were foreign terrorists, and the prosecutor had no doubt the soldiers had been duped by Levy and the late Colonel Gilmore. The soldiers, however, knew nothing regarding Levy’s connection to Charles Bradford.
The prosecutor realized that there were probably ten or twenty soldiers out there, present and former members of the Old Guard at Fort Myer, who had committed assassinations under Bradford’s orders. He was sure all these dedicated young men had no idea that they had done anything illegal, and he was equally sure they had all been sworn to secrecy. And he was confident that Charles Bradford and Martin Breed had selected only men who could keep a secret. The prosecutor decided-and the president concurred-that it would be in everyone’s best interest to probe no deeper into the activities of the Old Guard. Without a Charles Bradford to lead them, the sentinels who guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier would go back to being nothing more than exceptional sentinels.
Charles Bradford, as Dillon had expected, presented the president with an impossible dilemma. There was no direct evidence proving Bradford had ordered Martin Breed to assassinate anyone-and Bradford, when questioned by the prosecutor, denied giving Breed any such orders. Bradford said he may have supported in principle what Breed had done, but he would never have acted in such a unilateral, illegal, and dangerous manner. And he noted that, at the end of his life, Martin Breed had been afflicted by a terrible case of brain cancer, and the last time he saw Breed, the man had been unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.
The prosecutor did have in his possession the recording DeMarco had given to Thomas Antonelli, the recording in which Breed admitted to carrying out thirteen assassinations for Charles Bradford. The prosecutor was sure that Breed’s admissions on the recording, combined with DeMarco’s testimony, would be sufficient to convince any reasonable jury of Charles Bradford’s guilt. When he told Bradford this, Bradford’s response had been: So try me.
Bradford knew the last thing that the president wanted was a public trial or a court-martial. Bradford also knew that when the public heard about who Breed had assassinated-mostly people with known links to terrorists-a large segment of the population would consider Charles Bradford a hero for what he had allegedly done. The rest of the world would, of course, have a different view of his actions-and it was really the rest of the world the president was trying to keep in the dark.
The president considered convening a secret military tribunal; after Bradford was found guilty he would be locked away in a maximum security prison in total isolation. He was afraid if he did this, however, someone on the tribunal, someone sympathetic to Bradford, would talk to the press. Someone always talked to the press. He also considered simply having Bradford killed and wondered if he could do as King Henry II had done with Thomas A Becket- Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? — and hope that someone on his staff would show some damn initiative for a change. In the end, though, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted whatever he did with Charles Bradford to have at least the appearance of being legal.
While the president was deliberating, Chief Justice Thomas Antonelli was leaping up and down in his black robes, demanding that the president do something, and do something soon! Antonelli had knowledge that crimes had been committed, and this knowledge weighed heavily upon his conscience. And he pointed out that Bradford hadn’t just assassinated foreigners, he’d also killed a number of U.S. citizens, including Paul Russo and a member of the press.
Thomas Antonelli didn’t see the big picture either.
Then the president’s devious, brilliant, special prosecutor found a solution.
The right of habeas corpus-basically, the constitutional right to be tried before one is imprisoned-had been overturned several times by past presidents via executive order. Lincoln issued an executive order to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War. Japanese Americans were interned during World War II because of an executive order issued by Roosevelt. In more recent times, executive orders had been issued to suspend habeas corpus in the case of folks like the terrorists in Guantanamo.