The Watchers (38 page)

Sharkey's contract wasn't the only ball passed. Appropriators spelled out in the classified annex which elements would continue to receive funding. Genoa II was saved, and it reappeared with a name that harkened back to its nautical creator: It was now called Topsail.

Along with Basketball and Topsail, the evidence extraction and link discovery research also survived. This was the area where Jeff Jonas's NORA system had been tested. The new program was code-named Eagle.

Finally, the TIA network, with its central node in the Information Dominance Center, remained intact. Now known as the Research Development and Experimental Collaboration, or more simply, “the RDEC,” it continued the wind-themed experiments. In August, the very month that Poindexter resigned and Congress began to hammer out TIA's secret compromise, the network was in the thick of “Sharqi,” named after a persistent, dry Saharan wind that kicked up a thick cloud of dust and sand.

Poindexter had reason to celebrate. Not only had core elements of his research remained intact, but the vast network he'd established continued to grow. By the end of 2003 the RDEC—pronounced phonetically as “r-deck”—boasted more than 27 nodes and 350 individual users. An entire community had grown up, and it continued to flourish.

But he regretted that the privacy research had been tossed into the dustbin. He'd never felt that the idea got traction, and what little research there'd been would wither without funding. It was a fateful decision, since the agency inheriting TIA would soon enough find itself accused of a massive and illegal incursion into Americans' private lives.

 

Few officials in government actually knew how far the Bush administration had gone. More than two years after 9/11, headlines about the Total Information Awareness program obscured the real story playing out just below the surface. The NSA had already plumbed the depths of the global communications system. The agency was the nerve center of a new war. The analytic engine, the hub, the place where all those dots that the government had failed to connect were now coming together. More than any single agency, the NSA had become the all-seeing eye.

The war took its toll. In late 2003 Mike Wertheimer left the agency that had reared him. He took a job with a high-end technology company that mostly worked for the intelligence agencies. Washington's revolving door was well oiled. Senior officials routinely took more lucrative jobs in the private sector and ended up under contract to their old bosses. But when Wertheimer left the NSA, he left more than his job behind.

It had been two years since President Bush granted the agency extraordinary authority to monitor Americans' communications without warrants. In the beginning Wertheimer supported the move. It was the right response to a crisis, he thought. But those authorities, and the surveillance they unleashed, went on too long, Wertheimer decided. As the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil diminished, so too should have the NSA's special powers.

“When I walked away from that program,” he would recall years later, “I wanted nothing to do with it ever again.”

The agency's relentless pursuit to comprehend the once unknowable continued without him, and without customary restraints. Officials across the government saw that firsthand. One senior CIA official who was privy to the security agency's reporting routinely saw American citizens and other U.S. persons directly named in its reports without the minimization procedures that had once shielded their identities. It was a clear indication that the president's authorities really had pushed the agency into new territory—they could spy directly on Americans now.

After the TIA programs moved into their new home, Popp tried one last time to revive the privacy research. He spoke with ARDA's director about what funds were in the pipeline. Fortunately, the budget was laid out through the 2007 fiscal year. If the research group were looking for new areas to fund, Popp suggested, they might consider privacy research.

“Thanks, but no thanks” was the message Popp received. ARDA wanted nothing to do with all that.

 

 

 

 

John Poindexter had already proven F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong. There were, in fact, second acts in American life. And he was about to have his third.

He had held off on calling Fran Townsend. In May 2003, before he left government in a firestorm, she'd taken a new job in the White House. Townsend was now the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, working under Condoleezza Rice. She wasn't exactly the new Ollie North, or the new Dick Clarke, but she did have the terrorism brief. If Poindexter hadn't already admired her since their meeting at the Coast Guard, he might well have sought her out anyway.

Poindexter hadn't been far from Townsend's mind. When she read the first news reports about TIA, and the
New York Times
column, she felt a pit forming in her stomach.
This is exactly what I was afraid of
, she thought. Townsend had worried that Total Information Awareness would follow the path of Carnivore, the FBI's e-mail surveillance tool. She hadn't spoken to Poindexter since she took the White House job. But a few months after he left government, Townsend received a message that Poindexter had called. She contacted him right away.

Poindexter said that he'd like to get together. “Sure,” Townsend replied. “Why don't you come see me?”

He was cautious. “Why don't I
not
come to the White House?” he suggested. “Why don't we meet for lunch?”

A few days later Townsend walked across Lafayette Park to the Oval Room. The restaurant was a power stop for politicos where food was an afterthought.

Poindexter thanked her for coming, and said it took some courage. Townsend felt a mix of admiration and sympathy. She thought that Poindexter had been taken to the Washington woodshed, for the second time. As they dined together she considered that for John Poindexter to thank her for coming said more about him than about Fran Townsend.

There was no doubt about it. They were kindred spirits.

Poindexter wanted to explain what had happened. He made it clear that the government was still going to get something out of his presumably defunct program. The baby had not been thrown out with the bathwater. After they finished lunch Townsend walked back to the White House with a comforting thought.
All was not lost.

From then on, Poindexter and Townsend kept in closer touch. They swapped ideas, discussed current events. She revered him, and he admired her tenacity and her thoroughness, two qualities that could endear just about anyone in his eyes. Poindexter had a powerful ally now in the heart of the White House.

Poindexter also reemerged quietly in TIA's new home. He got the word out to the new crew of program managers who'd taken over his research that he was available for consultations. Some of them called on him. They wanted his guidance, and he gave it. TIA was not gone, nor was its creator.

 

Poindexter spent seven months underground reforging his alliances with key administration officials and the career class. Then, one chilly afternoon in March 2004, he reemerged in public.

Syracuse University had invited him to debate the prominent privacy advocate and legal journalist Jeffrey Rosen on the subject of privacy and security. A small, invitation-only crowd attended—mostly current and former intelligence officers. Rosen had a new book out,
The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age
. In it he decried Total Information Awareness and related programs that seemed to feed off the public's fear about terrorism.

Poindexter gave his trusty PowerPoint briefing. It was precise, thorough, and tedious. Rosen delivered a more passionate address, with no notes or slides. The two men were a discordant pair.

When it came time for rebuttals, the audience was primed for a verbal brawl. But Poindexter and Rosen hardly threw a punch. Each conceded points to the other. They kept eye rolling and groaning to an acceptable minimum. Rosen also acknowledged Poindexter's long career of public service and steered clear of the obvious targets—Iran-Contra, lying to Congress, spying on Americans. They argued over policies, not personalities. This was the kind of intellectual pugilism that Poindexter liked and hadn't gotten much of in a while. It was civil. Tidy.

After a spirited hour-and-a-half discussion, Poindexter appeared satisfied. He had wanted to test public reaction to his ideas—and to him—in an intimate setting before heading out for a broader campaign to salvage his concept. The members of the audience, several of whom knew Poindexter and had worked with him over the years, seemed intrigued.

When it came time for questions, the moderator called on a young, bespectacled man, apparently a student, sitting in the middle of the small crowd. Amid the gray usuits and jackets and the neatly trimmed haircuts, his baggy clothes and shaggy mop quickly raised eyebrows.

Sam Alcoff opened with the obvious and indelicate question. How could the public be sure that TIA wouldn't be incorporated into some larger, unchecked “domestic spying” program?

A few people in the audience winced at those two dreaded words. Others toward the front row craned their necks to see who was talking.

Simple, Poindexter declared. TIA would be used to monitor the people using it—watching the watchers, logging all abuses. Poindexter looked mildly annoyed. Hadn't Alcoff been listening to his speech? But he also looked cautious. How had this young man gotten into the room? This wasn't a public event.

Alcoff considered Poindexter's response. “I guess we'll have to take your word for it,” he said, his voice rising. “But how can we, Admiral Poindexter, when you lied to Congress and the American people!”

Poindexter sighed.

“You're a liar!” Alcoff shouted. “You authorized death squads in Nicaragua, who raped and murdered people!” A few gray-haired spies in the crowd shot Alcoff pointed looks. “Why don't you shut up?” someone grumbled.

“Do you have a
question
?” the moderator interjected.

“Yes,” Alcoff said. “Admiral Poindexter, if your system is so good at catching terrorists, how long will it take to catch you?”

The room froze. Poindexter's eyes narrowed. Everyone turned to face him.

“Young man,” Poindexter said, “you were probably in grade school when all that happened. You have a limited view of those events.” Poindexter waved his hands dismissively and signaled for another question.

Alcoff stayed quiet for the rest of the session. Later Poindexter learned that his was a familiar face around Syracuse. The campus chief of police, who provided security for Poindexter during his visit, told him that Alcoff 's mother was a liberal psychology professor.

Figures,
he thought.

Poindexter flew back to Washington that afternoon.

 

Alcoff was an outspoken campus activist. He had disrupted the visits of other prominent national figures. When Syracuse announced former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as its 2002 commencement speaker, Alcoff handed out flyers at a “teach-in,” enumerating several controversies of Giuliani's tenure. Racial profiling. Police abuse of prisoners. And the mayor's use of a “homeless army,” Alcoff told the student newspaper, to move the city's “undesirables” out of public view.

There was a saying in the Poindexter household: “No one is obliged to be ignorant.” If Poindexter had been quicker on his feet, he thought later, he might have shared that bit of wisdom with Alcoff. But the chief of police's report on the young man and his mother confirmed what Poindexter had already suspected—Alcoff wasn't worth the effort. There was no time to educate him.

And yet Poindexter didn't grasp, and didn't care to consider, how Alcoff was a proxy for so many reasonable people. What would it take, they wondered, for one such young man to be deemed a public threat rather than a private nuisance? A public outburst? A few suspicious purchases? Some phone calls to the wrong kind of people? This was the subtle equation that produced such anxiety among ordinary people. They might not comprehend the complexity of Poindexter's mind. But this much they knew for sure: If information was power, then Poindexter, with all the information, would have all the power. That, they thought, was untenable, and fundamentally un-American.

Poindexter himself was a proxy. Total information awareness looked dangerous regardless of who had it. But he thought that most of his strongest opponents were motivated by politics, not principle. Many of the same foes who'd come after him in the eighties were at his throat again now. He accepted it. But he refused to let them attack him without all the facts.

He thought it was time to set the record straight. After that bruising debut in Syracuse, Poindexter felt emboldened. Far from dampening his spirits, the fight had lifted them. He wasn't going to let the Sam Alcoffs of the world direct his agenda. No one was obliged to be ignorant. He'd have to teach them.

 

For his third act Poindexter fashioned a new public role. Part agent provocateur, part gray eminence of spy craft.

As he reestablished his ties within the government, he became a closer, and in some cases indispensable, adviser. Around Washington insiders started talking about Poindexter in a new light. People said he got a raw deal, that some of his ideas were actually pretty good. Poindexter started giving interviews with influential national magazines. He posed for photographs, something he never felt comfortable doing in the White House. Few rushed to his defense within range of a television camera or a reporter with a pen, but the ones who did tried to rewrite Poindexter's narrative.