by S. P. Perone
Sandy had seen the old Robert Redford movie, “Three Days of the Condor,” where a naïve intellectual, Redford’s fictional character, had been the only survivor of a contract killing that had wiped out the rest of his branch of half-a-dozen investigators working for the CIA. Their only crime was stumbling on potentially embarrassing information while conducting computerized searches for key words in the world’s literature. She was very apprehensive of Shane’s involvement in this community.
Regarding this pretty little 23-year old redhead in front of him, Shane smiled to himself as he realized how incongruous her motherly posturing appeared. Sandy had truly endeared herself to him over the past year, and he felt as close to her as to anyone in his research group. Despite Sandy’s maturity, well beyond her tender years, and the professional closeness required of them, their relationship had never become intimate; and it never would. Even if Shane could be tempted, Sandy’s strong Christian upbringing left no room for marital infidelity. And Shane had not entertained any such thoughts either. In fact, Sandy was more like his little sister…and his sometimes conscience. She, of course, had known about the affair with Sarah, and had left no doubt in Shane’s mind where she stood on that little “indiscretion”.
Letting his internalized smile spread across his face, and feeling somewhat touched by her concern, Shane attempted to reassure Sandy that everything was OK. Reaching out, and placing his hand on her shoulder, he said, “Don’t worry, Sandy. The Senator probably forgot where we were supposed to go for dinner in San Francisco Sunday. He worries more about what’s on the evening’s wine list than he does about how many billions of dollars the government sends to Kuwait or Poland or wherever!”
Allowing a frown to grace her face, she stared up at Shane’s warm, understanding eyes. “I hope you’re right,” she said slowly. Turning from him, and walking back into her office, she said over her shoulder, “You know how I feel about the Senator. He’s bad news.”
“Oh, come on, Sandy. He’s a U.S. Senator! You’re not sounding very patriotic!” Shane shot back at her, with tongue in cheek, as he followed into her office. They were both well aware that Senator Gerald Moorhouse was a very powerful person. Shane had seen what Moorhouse could do to anyone who threatened to disrupt his agenda. Sandy only knew what Shane had had to tell her. But she was sure that one did not want to be among those that the Senator considered his enemies.
Attempting to change the subject, Shane asked Sandy if she had picked up his airline tickets for the Sunday flight to San Francisco. She reached into the top drawer of her desk and handed the United Airlines ticket folder to Shane. Looking up at him, she said, “You’re not fooling me, Dr. Shane. You’re just as concerned as I am about what this ‘urgent’ phone call is about.” With that, she picked up her purse from the side of her desk, and grabbed her sweater from the coat rack…signaling to Shane that the conversation was over, and she wanted him out of her office so she could lock up and go home.
Before leaving her office, Shane looked around to be sure no one was around, and then spoke to her in a low voice, “Thanks, Sandy, for being concerned. I promise you, I won’t let the Senator drag me into anything dangerous. I’m no hero, you know. Hell, I’m just a teacher!”
This brought a slight smile back to her face, and then she laughed as she shoved him out of the office. Pulling the door shut, she said, “I heard you were prettyheroic in your handball match this morning. Bill said you reserved the court with the glass walls, and whipped Marty and Keith. What a show-off!”
And with that she whirled and moved briskly, high heels clicking, down the short corridor leading to the hallway. Without missing a step, she turned her head to say, “Good night, Dr. Shane,” and swiftly slipped through the door into the hallway beyond.
Chapter 3
The Senator
The soft glow of indirect lighting that ran around the ceiling perimeter of his study washed the heavy cherry wood paneling with a warm reddish-orange luminescence. He sat there in the semi-darkness, a single banker’s desk-lamp with the traditional half-cylinder translucent green shade illuminating one corner of his massive over-sized desk. Impatiently, he looked again at the antique railroad station clock on the wall across from him. It was 10 p.m., and Shane still had not called.
Senator Gerald Moorhouse had expected Shane to call a few hours earlier. Delays did not set well with the Senator. He had an important message to deliver, and he wanted it over and done with. He didn’t relish the idea of conducting this business from home in the first place. But he had no choice. He and his wife and daughter had entertained the Kenyan ambassador and his family that evening. He had expected to receive Shane’s call before dinner. He would have excused himself for a few minutes; taken the call in his study; and then returned to his guests. Instead, with their guests having departed, he found himself in his study, waiting impatiently for Shane’s belated phone call.
Time was getting short. Carothers’ e-mail had been cryptic, but blunt. They needed StarSight operational. And fast! At their previous meeting, in Assistant Director Carothers’ office at Langley, within the security of the CIA facilities, Moorhouse had received the frightening news. Somewhere in Pakistan one of their operatives had penetrated a cell of the Middle-Eastern terrorist group, al-Qa’eda. His recent report stated unequivocally that a major terrorist strike…far greater in magnitude than that of September 11, 2001…would be made against the U.S. sometime during the forthcoming holiday season. And, here it was…the middle of October! There were no more details, and there had been no more reports. It was feared that the operative had been compromised and eliminated.
Without reliable sources of undercover intelligence regarding terrorist operations, the U.S. was practically defenseless. Even more unfortunately, as testimony before his Senate committee had demonstrated, numerous advance intelligence inputs…pointing directly towards the events of September 11…had not alerted the government to those attacks. It was not a lack of data that caused this failure. Rather, it was the absence of an effective mechanism for extracting theinformation from those data that had neutralized the very best efforts of the NSA, CIA and FBI.
It was maddening to learn afterwards that the data had been there. The sad fact was that there were too many data. The human interpretive mechanism was hopelessly clogged. The NSA alone was capable of monitoring over two million electronic communications each day. But, there were not enough interpreters to translate the Arabic messages that contained the clues. More importantly, what single human brain was capable of isolating and identifying the most relevant clues buried within millions of irrelevant data bits collected from three different intelligence agencies? Who could judge that they were correlated to an imminent attack? Who would decide whether a perceived threat was real? How many “false alarms” would the public tolerate?
This was why StarSight was such an important project. Conceived by the CIA, StarSight promised three enormous improvements to the country’s ability to combat terrorism. First, it would substitute the vast electronic data storage and lightening fast data processing abilities of computers for that of human observers. Second, computer-based interpretation of data would utilize artificial intelligence principles, implementing multivariate pattern recognition to find and “connect the dots” that were scattered and buried deep within mountains of irrelevant data. Finally, it would enhance the value of covert intelligence by its ability to include in the interpretive process the wealth of human activity data that was freely available. Data that did not require covert operations…like international airline traffic, financial transactions, immigration statistics, shipping records, police activity, and so on. Even seemingly unrelated data, such as weather patterns; marriage, birth, and death records; property transfers; school enrollments; tax payments; automobile traffic accidents; and numerous other accounts of human activity on the planet, might contain subtle clues to terrorist activities, normally too diffuse for human recognition.
Decades earlier, the
power of artificial intelligence had been demonstrated, when scientists first began using pattern recognition programs to enhance their grasp of inexact sciences. In the medical field, for example, they tried predicting heart attacks from dozens of previously unsuspected sources of information, like sleep patterns; hair and fingernail properties; joint flexibility; and body tissue elasticity. The basic idea was to predict unforeseeable events from telltale “signatures” contained in ostensibly unrelated, but easily attainable measurements.
In the case of StarSight, the “unforeseeable” were terrorist attacks, which had not been exposed by hard intelligence from probing operatives. The CIA believed that, with the collection of a sufficiently broad range of data on human activities…combined with inputs from satellites, sensors, and human agents…modern artificial intelligence programs could anticipate terrorist activities. The concept had only recently become feasible with the advent of computer data storage in the thousands of gigabytes, expandable virtually without limit; and with the development of ultra high-speed computers, like the ASCI White computer at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, capable of more than 10 trillion mathematical operations per second.
Obviously, considering the data sources and computer technology required, the StarSight project could only be conducted with direct government participation. But only a handful of scientists in the world had the required expertise. Tony Shane was the best of these. Moorhouse had had to recruit him for StarSight. But it wasn’t easy. Most academic scientists avoided classified research. The opportunity to publish results in the open literature was negligible; and publications were the lifeblood by which academics achieved everything…promotions, recognition, awards, and most importantly, research funds.
Moorhouse had thought that Shane would jump at the chance to take on the StarSight project. Even with the security measures required, it would provide him with an enormous advantage in conducting his own unclassified research…which he would then be able to publish.
Instead, the Senator had found Shane unwilling to even discuss doing classified research. Of course, at that point Shane did not know what the CIA intended to do with the fruits of his research. And, because the tragic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were over a year in the future, the urgency was not there. Without a security clearance, Shane could not be told how his research would be the key to developing this futuristic anti-terrorist weapon. It wasn’t until Moorhouse had recruited Professors Carson and Nagle to be a part of the team that Shane had become interested. Because they were in different fields, Shane had not previously met either of them, but knew them by reputation. Dr. Sharon Carson was an environmental scientist whose specialty was in the interpretation of satellite visual images and sensory data. Her groundbreaking studies included examination of the patterns associated with the growth and repair of holes in the ozone layer, and correlating these with global industrial production. Her sophisticated computer analysis had finally defined which of many hypotheses for ozone layer depletion were really correct. Her name was instantly recognizable in scientific circles. And her picture was up on the dartboards of executive suites in many of the world’s chemical industries.
Dr. Barry Nagle had degrees in anthropology, psychology and mathematics. He was widely recognized for his work using computerized cluster analysis tools to examine large governmental databases, and predict where clusters of various social problems might break out. His approach utilized data from seemingly unrelated sources…like employment statistics, traffic violations, community demographics, population trends, weather patterns, building permits, hospital statistics, and tax assessments. From these massive databases, he was able to predict specific communities where outbreaks of violent crimes, communicable diseases, cancer clusters, juvenile abductions, etc., might occur. His achievements had been recognized with the award of the President’s Medal, and he and his wife had been invited to attend the award ceremony at the White House. Moorhouse had taken the opportunity at that time to recruit Nagle for the StarSight project.
The specific contributions of Shane’s research program had been to develop artificial neural network procedures which were capable of processing enormous amounts of data to identify subtle underlying patterns obscured by the data. Such databases looked like digital “noise” to most data analysis techniques searching for subtle patterns. But Shane had demonstrated the superiority of his approach by producing accurate DNA sequences from neural network processing of simple laboratory measurements, which avoided the usual tedious enzymatic cleavage procedures. He used as inputs to the neural networks the readily obtainable measurements of infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, UV fluorescence, and mass spectroscopy. Clearly, any new DNA sequencing problems, and forensic DNA testing, would be utilizing Shane’s approach.
The Senator’s musings were interrupted by his wife’s gentle knock on the door. Ellen Moorhouse, still in the dark blue evening dress that complemented her striking long blond hair, opened the door to the study and walked in. Removing an earring, she said casually, “Will you be working late tonight, Gerry?”
The Senator regretted that he would not be accompanying his lovely partner of these past two decades to bed that night. At 47 years of age, Ellen seemed even more attractive to him than ever. She had kept her five foot seven inch frame firm and trim with a healthy diet and regular visits to the Georgetown Health Club. The hair was dyed, but still lovely, kept long just the way he liked it. Ellen had been his partner and soul mate since their marriage in his last year of law school. After the early years, when he had served in the Santa Clara County Prosecutor’s office, she had fully endorsed his choice to pursue a career in public service. His conservative views, rising political stature, and successes with several highly visible cases, caught the eye of the Silicon Valley technology giants; and they financed his subsequent successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. Moorhouse’s excellent political instincts, his attractive and articulate wife at his side, and solid Silicon Valley funding, combined to assure his election to the Senate 14 years ago at age 36. Now, after being re-elected twice, he was the Senior Senator from California, representing the majority political party, and he wielded considerable power from his positions on both Energy and Intelligence Committees of the Senate. As striking as this success story appeared, Moorhouse realized that his wife had been largely responsible. Invariably, he relied on her simple straightforward good sense to help him make difficult choices on political questions. He marveled at how she could cut through the flak and get directly to the heart of each issue. Her judgment was impeccable.
“I’m going to be up for a little while,” he replied. “Don’t wait up. And, thanks for the fine party tonight, honey. The ambassador’s family seemed to enjoy themselves.”
Ellen couldn’t help noticing that he was troubled. But she decided not to bring it up. She knew from many years of experience that he would confide in her when he was ready, and it was fruitless to probe before that time. Yet, she was concerned. This trouble, whatever it was, had been bothering him for a long time…at least the past month. It wasn’t just the seemingly perpetual frown that he wore, or the more frequent long work days, or the occasionally mysterious late night phone calls or e-mails that delayed his joining her in bed. It was also the tangible loss of the sexual activity that they had always enjoyed together. Ellen had begun to wonder if Gerry were having an affair. God knows it was more the rule than the exception in Washington! But, she had dismissed that thought. She knew her husband too well. Something very big was bothering him; and it wasn’t an affair. But what was it? She longed to ask him that question. But she knew it wasn’t time yet.
“Did you like the dessert?” she replied. “It was the only part of the dinner I could take credit for.” She moved over behind the desk, leaned over and gave him a kiss, letting the contact linger for a second or two, wondering if he might reconsider and join her upstairs.
Looking into his face as she stood up, she knew he would not be joini
ng her soon. The frown was still there, and the eyes would not meet hers. She sighed silently, and simply turned around and asked him to unzip her. He complied, and patted her on the fanny as she walked away. She turned and blew him a kiss as she left the room, shutting the door behind her…happy to see a smile briefly light up his handsome face.
As Ellen left the room, the Senator felt a momentary sense of enormous guilt, knowing that he had kept her completely ignorant of the mess they were in. A member of the Sanderlee family that had owned a large fraction of the strawberry fields in the lush Salinas valley of California, Ellen had been provided with a five million-dollar trust fund on her twenty-first birthday. The fund had been administered by the Sovereign Bank of Zurich all these years, and had grown to a peak of about forty million dollars, thanks to some very lucrative investments in several foreign companies at the early stages of exponential growth. This fact had benefited the Senator during his last re-election campaign. Succumbing to the intense furor regarding corporate campaign contributions that was sweeping the country, particularly California, he had pledged to support his campaign exclusively with their own personal funds.
When the election had been 18 months away, Ellen’s trust fund had been valued at less than 12 million dollars, while a Senate campaign in California could cost upwards of 20 million dollars. That the value could grow rapidly enough to support his campaign had been made evident to Moorhouse through a series of unexpected events. Because of his position as Chair of the Senate Energy Research Committee, he wielded unique influence over the DOE National Labs’ annual budget, both in terms of amounts and categories of support. With the CIA intensely interested in several DOE R&D projects, they lobbied discreetly, but intensely, with the responsible lawmakers, especially Moorhouse. During one conversation with Carothers, his CIA contact, nearly two years before the recent election, the Senator mentioned his desire to run his campaign with personal funds, specifically with his wife’s trust fund. Carothers had pointed out that Moorhouse only needed to recommend a few well-placed investments to the normally conservative Swiss bankers. When the Senator protested that highly profitable investments were generally quite risky, Carothers had countered, jokingly, that the Senator only needed to obtain some advance information regarding major corporate moves.
