Special Access

by Mark A. Hewitt

  “What do you have, Commander?”

  “Do you want to read it, or can I brief it?”

  “Brief.”

  “Mr. Duncan Hunter, GS-14, Air Force civil service. Born Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. TS/SCI with a polygraph.”

  “Don’t tell me—his mom was a convict.”

  “She wasn’t. His father, Technical Sergeant Lincoln Hunter, US Air Force, held a TS clearance and appears to have been en route to Turkey when the lad was born. Those records confirm the father was assigned to a special access program and a strategic balloon squadron that conducted secret aerial reconnaissance flights into the Soviet Union and satellite states.

  “Two brothers. Did well in high school but quit, awarded a GED in 1972 at age seventeen. Enlisted in the Marine Corps. First major note. He has one of the highest recorded GT scores—154. Reportedly refused Naval Academy seat and Intelligence assignment at boot camp. Assigned an avionics technician on an air contract. Awarded Naval Aircrew wings and spent three years with a search-and-rescue unit in Arizona. May be able to pilot small helicopters, like Hueys and Cobras.

  “He was always rated the squadron’s top sergeant or staff sergeant, one of many. His enlisted records are filled with interesting notes, such as he found an old F-4 Corsair in the desert north of Yuma, Arizona, and that airplane now hangs in the Marine Corps Museum.”

  McGee grunted.

  “Took college courses at night, eventually receiving a pair of bachelor’s degrees, electrical engineering in 1985 and professional aeronautics in 1991, and an MBA in aviation from Embry-Riddle in 1993. In Hawaii, he was squadron duty officer, as a SNCO, of a helicopter squadron when a helicopter had an accident. Appears he took all the necessary steps to secure the accident site and had everyone involved in the accident take a piss test. His actions determined several Marines had THC in their urine, which most likely contributed to the accident.

  “A note, ‘This event was the galvanizing factor for the Marine Corps’ stringent substance-abuse policy,’ and SSGT Hunter’s actions established the standard response for such an incident. Immediately afterward, he was nominated by the CG and selected for Officer Candidate School.

  “Went to OCS in early 1982, commissioned in April, ’82, flight school in Pensacola and went on to fly jets in Kingsville, Texas, where he was a distinguished graduate and set several records for airmanship and leadership. Transferred to Yuma, Arizona, to fly F-4s. A note in his flying training record on his very first flight in the F-4 from his instructor, ‘He flies the Phantom better than I do, and I have 1,000 hours. Could he be a former USAF pilot? If not, he needs to be dissected.’”

  “Does he have a call sign?”

  The commander smiled. “Seems like he was the original Maverick,’ as he didn't have a degree when he went through flight school. It appears the call sign was awarded early. All his commanders held him in the highest regard. He completed Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, and the Command and Staff College while learning to fly the F-4 as a lieutenant. There was a note that, ‘no one else in his squadron to include his CO completed those courses.’

  “His training was interrupted when he was selected to be a general’s aide for the Third Marine Aircraft Wing. Noteworthy, the CG was the former squadron commander of Sergeant Hunter. Noteworthy, he continued his flight training in El Toro flying RF-4s. Seems like Lieutenant Hunter conducted several investigations while he was the general’s aide and was awarded a couple medals for uncovering smuggling operations, but no citations are attached. They could be secret. It seems the general facilitated his TS/SCI clearance, and a polygraph was conducted by the CIA.”

  “That’s highly unusual for an aviator.”

  “Very. He returned to Arizona to complete his training and served with distinction as a student, but, during a training flight, he ejected from an F-4. He survived, but his RI-O, whatever that is, was killed.”

  “I think that’s Radar Intercept Officer.”

  “Yes, Sir. He was severely injured in the ejection and took over a year to recover, was medically grounded and became an aircraft maintenance officer.

  “Here’s where it starts to get interesting. Seems like Mr. Hunter began receiving unclassified and classified fitness reports beginning as an L-T and ending as a captain. His classified FITREPs are still under seal, signed by the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The CMC also appended a letter to his Officer Qualification Report that tells commanders, quote, ‘Captain Hunter can be counted on to perform any mission involving the highest level of special trust and confidence. This letter is to remain attached to this OQR. Any questions, contact CMC, Code 311A.’”

  “That’s unique, even in DEVGRU.”

  “Yes, Sir. His unclassified fitness reports highlight he won the Marine Corps Regional and All-Marine Championships for racquetball several years in a row, served on the Interservice team, and attended the National Singles Racquetball Championships ten years in a row. He continued to score the maximum on PFTs—300. Always shot high scores on the range, Expert Pistol and Rifle, and was the 1992 Military Male Athlete of the Year.”

  “Say again?”

  “He was the 1992 Military Male Athlete of the year. For what it’s worth, he won gold medals or trophies in five different sports over a single weekend. Served on the 1993 BRAC commission, was selected for promotion to major, but retired in 1993. Seems he served in O-5 billets as a captain after his accident, as Group Aircraft Maintenance Officer, Squadron XO, Senior Marine Liaison Officer, and Director of Training for all Enlisted Aviation Training. Sir, I really have never seen anything like this before.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sir, as you requested, he spent five years with the US Border Patrol, and we have some of those records.”

  “Go.” McGee leaned forward and tried to read the report upside-down.

  “Seems he was the US Border Patrol’s aircraft maintenance facility director. TS/SCI no poly for DOJ. He was the principal aviation advisor to the Chief Patrol Agent and managed aircraft maintenance and logistical support for the second-largest fleet of non-DOD aircraft and sixth-largest aircraft fleet in the US government. He developed and maintained a close working relationship with airborne law enforcement operations and provided technical and direct logistical assistance to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Drug Enforcement Agency, and US Customs Service. I’m not exactly sure what it means that he established and operated the DOJ’s and US Border Patrol’s only FAA-certificated repair station. He served as aviation subject matter expert for the DOG Office of Internal Audit and DOJ representative for the Interagency Committee for Aviation Policy.”

  “Grade?”

  “GS-13. Transferred to the Air Force, where he’s currently the deputy director of maintenance. TS/SCI no poly. I understand his base has over 250 training aircraft, supporting five flying training squadrons. Seems he won several Air Force Productivity Excellence Awards, was the Outstanding Senior Civilian Program Manager, and was selected for the Defense Leadership and Management Program. That’s why he’s here at the War College. It’s their capstone course. He served on the Airport Board at the local international airport, teaches graduate students at Laughlin AFB and Randolph AFB for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and is on the editorial staff of some aviation journal. Sounds like a slacker.”

  “No poly with the Air Force or Border patrol, but he has a TS/SCI with a poly? How about SAP?”

  “Yes, Sir. He’s cleared for Special Access Programs.”

  “TS/SCI with SAP. Anything else in JPAS? Is his poly active? Is that it?”

  “That’s it for his clearance.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m almost there, Sir. There’s very little from Embry-Riddle. He started teaching in 1995 in Del Rio. Taught seventy aviation-related graduated-level classes. Is an associate professor. Students primarily Air Force instructor pilots. Instructor of the Year last year.”

  “Anything from McLean?”

  “T
hey refused our request. Seems like there’s a war going on, and they don’t have time for us. I asked Dr. McIntosh to intervene, but she also got nowhere. I don’t know what to make of it, as they always responded to our requests before.”

  “Anything else?”

  “His financial report. It’s unremarkable until 1996, and then….”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, in 1996, he made $80K with his Border Patrol pay and his military retirement and veteran’s disability and from the university. In 1997, it jumped to almost $300,000. In 1998, almost a million. For the last four years, he made between $1.2 and $1.5 million dollars each year.”

  McGee was incredulous. “How has he made millions as a civil service employee and a college professor? Who else is he working for?”

  “His W2s indicate a company named GMS, but it’s not registered. We can’t find anything on a GMS.”

  The SEAL, staring hard at his security officer, wished he could ask how Hunter was at the Naval War College as a civil servant making millions of dollars, but all he said was, “OK. That’ll do. Please shred that. Thanks for your help, Neal.”

  McGee walked out of the security office and stopped in the middle of the passageway. Who the hell are you, Duncan Hunter? he wondered. It’s bullshit that the spook doesn’t know you. A TS/SCI with a polygraph? You’re CIA. Retired Marine? Air Force civilian? Making a million bucks a year? Who are you?

  CHAPTER NINE

  1030 November 10, 2002

  Seminar Classroom, Naval War College

  “The United States finds itself in Afghanistan, and we’re about to go into Iraq if we believe military intelligence.” Dr. Randy Norton spoke with a wry grin.

  The classes laughed at the implication of the hoary military joke that those two words were the ultimate contradiction in terms.

  He continued his lecture on Strategic Thinking. “So is it fair to say we’re in a war with Islam or a radical branch of Islam, or is it something else?”

  No one seemed willing to answer. Dr. Norton took a breath and asked, “Or is it something else? Mr. Hunter, what do you think?”

  “It could be viewed through a lens of good versus evil. It’s pure evil for the likes of bin Laden to send almost two dozen men to kill aircrews and turn airliners full of people into weapons of mass destruction.”

  “So you think this is a case of good versus evil? We’re at war with evil?”

  “I’m beginning to think so. I find the religious undertones to be striking and polar opposites but not at all incongruent. It’s hard to ignore the tangential relationship. Just a few decades ago, we found ourselves in a similar situation with two irreconcilable belief systems—Communism and freedom. We were essentially in a war of ideas and beliefs. Yesterday it was the Russians versus freedom. Today it seems the actors are Islamofascism and freedom. It seems we’re fighting evil at a concentrated level.”

  “That’s brilliant, Mr. Hunter. So you’re saying Communism was the embodiment of evil? A form of concentrated evil from the Bolshevik Revolution, while Islamofascism is the focus of evil. Does anyone want to challenge Mr. Hunter’s analysis that Islamofascism is the new, concentrated evil of our time?”

  There were no takers.

  “You might be on to something, Mr. Hunter. Can one argue that, as ideologies, both Communism and Islam are or were struggling for dominance? The Bolsheviks called it their struggle against the rich and privileged, and the Muslims have their jihad, their struggle against nonbelievers. Are we fighting these wars to determine if the whole world will become free? Is that your real purpose in uniform?”

  “I don’t know if we fight for the whole world to be free,” Hunter said, “but, the more I look at it, it seems that in a very strategic context that’s what our function appears to be. If you take that idea, at least for me, I have a better understanding of why the left is so agitated… aggravated with those who fight for freedom. It’s a struggle for dominance. They want to subjugate and control, while the right just wants to protect their freedom and other free men, or to set people free.

  “Is it the struggle for dominance? If free people don’t fight evil, will civilization, as we know it, be completely destroyed? Khrushchev said, ‘We will crush you,’ in a not-so-subtle threat that Communism would dominate the world with the backdrop of gulags for those they didn’t want to waste bullets on. Joseph McCarthy was painted as a Communist-hating senator who couldn’t find them hiding under every bed. Have we learned from that episode, that Joe was right, but the left hid their true ideology very well? Politicians on both sides of the aisle have fought each other as hawks and doves. Are we seeing a kindler, gentler struggle between good and evil?” Many heads nodded.

  “What does Islam have to show for itself, besides submit and become part of the caliphate?” Hunter asked. “Isn’t Communism, which claims to be a solution for all the world’s ills, really just a manufactured crisis? I read somewhere some loon from Hollywood said, regarding Communism, ‘It looks so good on paper,’ while someone else said something to the effect, ‘Don’t let a good crisis go to waste.’

  “It seems to me that Communism, and now Islam, I should say radical Islam, isn’t only a symptom of crisis but a stimulant of one. For the Communists, they manufactured a crisis, the crisis was sold as worker’s rights. It galvanized the workers to overthrow their masters, only to become slaves to a different set of masters.

  “For the National Socialists, the Nazis, the crisis of the day was presumably the Jews. Hitler galvanized a despondent Germany to eliminate them. I suppose for Islam and Islamofascism, it seems that some foment a crisis surrounding Jews and freedom—submit or die and all that.”

  Dr. Norton nodded. “Communism was the great alternate faith of man, and still is for many fellow travelers and liberals.”

  “Only they won’t admit they’re enamored of Marx,” Hunter said.

  The remainder of the class watched the two professors go back and forth like watching a ball at a slow-motion tennis match.

  Dr. Norton folded his arms and leaned against the lectern. “Bin Laden and his followers see Islam as the only ‘true’ faith of mankind. Like all great faiths—we’re talking a billion followers in China and Russia and a billion Muslims—their strength is derived from a simple vision. The Communist and socialist vision is derived from the concept of Man without God. You see that in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, where churches were demolished, and it was a crime to practice an alternate non-state religion. Communism and Socialism became the state religion.”

  Hunter offered, “You can say the same thing in many parts of the Muslim world, where Christians are virtually extinct in some places. In others, radical Muslims are extirpating Christians, Jews, and other infidels. Islam is the state religion. Is that why some on the left accuse us of being on another Crusade?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think yes, right now. I better understand the major religions. All had great visions, and they always had different versions of the same vision, which was basically the vision of God and Man’s relationship to God. I better understand the First Amendment better and what it means regarding an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

  Heads snapped back and forth with interest, as the debate reached a heated pitch.

  “That’s very good,” Dr. Norton said. “Conversely, aren’t the Communist vision, the National Socialist vision, and the Islamic vision rooted with some organizer, an accomplished agitator and mighty propagandist? Aren’t they the vision of Man without God, with the god in their case being the agitator—Lenin, Hitler, and Mohammad?”

  “And now that community organizer bin Laden? The time was ripe for someone like him. He has the money to bankroll jihad. I never thought we’d discuss these topics at the War College, but you’ve opened my eyes.”

  Those who’d been following the exchange wondered if the ping-pong dialogue was over. Some were glad it was, while others wanted more.
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  Dr. Norton smiled. “That’s a good place to stop. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss how does Communism, Socialism, or Islamofascism, whose horrors are on a scale unparalleled in history, where that ideology has killed or subjugated hundreds of millions, recruit some of the best minds to do something like kill hundreds of millions of their fellow human beings. By the end of this class, you’ll see why the left looks the other way, just as they’re doing in Iraq.

  “OK. Your homework for tomorrow. I’d like to see a five-page analysis on, ‘If given the opportunity to get their hands on WMD, specifically a nuclear weapon, would Osama or Saddam or the next Ayatollah Khomeini use it? If no, why not? Got it?”

  Heads nodded. Hunter gave a thumbs-up.

  “Mr. Hunter, can I have a minute with you?” Dr. Norton asked.

  “Uh-oh,” one wag in an Air Force uniform said sheepishly. “You’re in trouble.”

  After the students left, Dr. Norton said, “You should consider staying here as an instructor to teach. You’re really good.”

  “Thanks, Randy but I’m pretty sure I have to return to my job. I really do have a day job. This is temporary duty for a civilian. If there was a way, I’d consider it in a heartbeat.”

  “Let me work on it. Bin Laden as a community organizer?” He laughed. “That’s perfect. I’ll have to add that to my lecture with all the other aforementioned community organizers.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  1855 November 13, 2002

  Al-Azzam Islamic Center Boston, Massachusetts

  The man in the dark leather coat hurried across the snow-packed street from the train station and entered the mosque just in time for evening prayers. As one of the last to enter the prayer hall for maghrib, he quickly moved to an open prayer rug near the rearmost columns, and removed a small packet from his pocket. No one saw him slip the envelope under the front of the mahogany-colored rug as he knelt and waited for the ceremony to begin.