I said:
‘No.’
And he stood up and left.
I was discharged three days later. And a week after that I was working in Fort Meade in the department with the bleak name of ‘information processing’.
Why did I decide to do it? Fuck knows… I don’t think the Baseball player’s words, his flattery or hints convinced me. It’s more likely something else: he offered me an alternative to the dead end into which I had driven myself.
And I found that alternative quite attractive!
I can’t and don’t want to and I will not tell you in detail what the essence of my job was –what I consider necessary has already been published in the newspapers. Also, my frankness can harm America and I promised, you know to whom, that no matter what the circumstances are, I won’t do it.
Anyway we’ll come back to the BRISM programme later, and the internal kitchen of NSA is not for a stranger’s eyes. At the end of the day I am not a defector, spy or double agent. I am only an whistleblower and beyond that I really want to kill the octopus which has smothered the whole of my country – and the whole world – with its tentacles.”
00:47 A.M._
Kold’s story was now interrupted by yet another phone call. The Lawyer apologised and picked up the phone. It was his office. His secretary informed him that she has received copies of the documents for temporary asylum. The originals were kept in the Russian Federal migration service.
“That’s a good sign,” the Lawyer told Kold. “It’s already late at night but if this – what is called a document circulation – is taking place it means that people are not sleeping but working on your case.”
“I understand nothing of Russian realities,” Kold responded. “So I can only hope that your words prove to be prophetic.”
“I would like the same. But of course it’s a bit naïve to think so.”
“I think that naivety is a sister of ignorance.” Kold said seriously. “If we go back to my story, then I can tell you that only now everybody rushed to seek the octopus’ tentacles and discover where he had flung them. Here, have a look…”
Kold passed the Lawyer a tablet with an open page showing one of the popular internet news sites. A large heading caught the eye: ‘The National Security Agency has kept Americans under its eye for half a century.’
“Interesting…” the Lawyer murmured, reading.
“The National Security Agency of the USA was invading the private lives of Americans half a century ago, carrying out not very reputable and even completely illegal actions, according to the news agency France Press. The agency refers to declassified documents published by George Washington university.
The documents reveal that in the period between 1967 and 1973 the NSA carried out the Minaret program, in which it bugged the international conversations of 1650 American citizens. Among those who happened to be under the eye were the preacher Martin Luther King, the boxer Muhammad Ali, and Art Buchwald, the famous journalist from The Washington Post.
So the NSA provided presidents Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon with information about the overseas contacts of human rights defenders and opponents of the Vietnam War.
Also, it transpires from the documents, that two influential legislators – Democrat Senator Frank Church of Idaho and Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee – were under surveillance. The first one was a Johnson supporter and voted for American intervention in Vietnam but gradually became ‘more critical’ towards American policies there.
Baker on the other hand opposed Johnson’s politics but then supported Nixon’s Vietnamese strategy, while still being wiretapped. The news agency guesses that probably Nixon wanted to know what Baker was saying about him.
Remarkably, a few years later Senator Church was actively supporting an initiative for the creation of a secret department (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), intended to control the NSA’s activity in regards to its legality.”
After waiting for the Lawyer to finish reading, Kold grumbled:
“You see, now everybody tries to become an unmasker.
The Lawyer thought he heard the notes of envy in Kold’s voice but decided it was best not to say anything.
File 009.wav
“I found out about the octopus’s existence in Pretoria. I think it was in 2008, towards the end of the year. Yes, that’s right – I ended up in South Africa at the beginning of the winter during the rainy season. To be more precise, it was winter for the US, but there, in the Southern Hemisphere, this time of the year was summer.
In our embassy in Pretoria there was a technical checkpoint, and I was sent there to check the condition of the computers and equipment installed there. Actually, I should start in the correct order, because this trip had a strong influence on me and every detail is important.
The plane landed in Pretoria, one of the three capitals of SAR. The executive powers of the country are located here, while the judicial and legislative powers are located in Cape Town and Bloemfontein.
While our Boeing was circling over the city and its suburbs, waiting for its turn for landing, I was looking through the window at the green plains and hills gradually becoming small mountains covered in forest. From the air, South Africa gave the impression if not of paradise on earth, then at least of a land no worse than California and I was already anticipating that this routine trip might turn out to be a good vacation, regardless of the rains.
Our attaché Dick Walker was meeting me at the airport. He was a pleasant black-skinned man with a dazzling smile, a native of New Orleans. He shook my hand, picked up my bag and walked me through the crowds of the main terminal of Pretoria Vander Boom to the car outside.
‘First time here?’
I nodded:
‘Yes, first time. The only thing I know about Africa is that giraffes and hippos live here.’
‘And also Americans, Mongrels, Playboys, Naughty Boys, Hard Livings, Junkie Funkies and Corner Boys…’ the smile on his face faded.
‘What are those? If those are the names of the local sports clubs it sounds a bit high school.’
‘These are the names of the black gangs, which terrorize the country. Although organised crime is not the worst evil in the SAR.
Our car left the airport territory and dashed past the green hills, attractively overgrown by clumps of trees. Long bands of clouds floated along the sky, and the sun would appear then disappear behind them again. Dick turned the car at the cross roads and I saw a city in the distance – an angular line of building silhouettes, a lot of greenery and the skyscrapers, melting in the haze.
‘Pretoria,’ Dick said. ‘The safest city in this damn country. And really its only safe business zone.’
‘Is everything really that bad here?’ I was surprised, trying to recall everything I had ever read about South Africa.
I could remember a little about the Anglo-Boer War, the separation of the white minority and the black majority under apartheid, the fighter for freedom and democracy Nelson Mandela, the revolution of 1993 and… and that’s it.