COLLATERAL DAMAGE:
I regret to report there was also collateral damage. Two women—identities unknown—were killed in the bombing. Jack Bauer’s DA team had no knowledge these civilians were inside the house when they targeted it, and Captain Bauer—the only survivor of the DA team—has not been informed.
KIA:
Warrant Officer Dwayne Shelton, U.S. Army First Special Operations Detachment—Delta First Sergeant Brice Gardener, U.S. Army First Special Operations Detachment—Delta First Sergeant Haj Illijec, U.S. Army First Special Operations Detachment—Delta First Sergeant Gary Graham, U.S. Army First Special Operations Detachment—Delta Master Sergeant Fred Peltzer, U.S. Army First Special Operations Detachment—Delta Technical Sergeant Roger Voss, Combat Controller, U.S. Air Force Special Operations
SEE ATTACHMENT 0—Δ98π FILE NOT FOUND (Attachment Missing)
HOUR-BY-HOUR TESTIMONY OF EVENTS
MIDNIGHT—1:00 A.m.
SPECIAL AGENT JACK BAUER: We all have our weak moments, our times when we think that just a little cheating won’t hurt. Some of us even tell ourselves we’re entitled to it, and that we’re in total control of anyone finding out, of any damage it may cause. But the truth is we compromise that control the second we compromise our principles.
During my years at CTU, I had turned in colleagues for breaking rules and taking bribes. It’s not a popular thing, turning in your coworkers, but I believed that if you looked the other way just once, it made it easier to compromise the next time, and pretty soon you’d just start thinking that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It was the philosophy I had lived by—never compromise your principles. Not even once.
After everything that’s happened, I can see now that I should have followed my own philosophy. But I strayed from it—and because of that, I failed my wife and my daughter. I failed them long before any of these events began. I put my family in danger because I allowed myself to be compromised. As a result, I’ve been played like a chess piece: Worked on. Handled. Manipulated into position.
I guess the chess analogy comes to mind because that’s what my daughter and I were doing the night they put their plan into action, the night they grabbed Kim and put her through hell… and my wife, Teri … and me….
It was late for a school night, but Kim was still awake. She’s a natural strategist and she had just read a new chess book, so we started playing after dinner and the time got away from us. I was happy to be home, just beginning to feel comfortable again, but there was still tension in the house. I had been separated from Teri for about six months and had just moved back a few weeks before.
Teri was the one who asked me to move out, but I never blamed her. After I came back from Nightfall—after losing every man, apologizing to their families, and attending their funerals—I’d been having problems adjusting. I couldn’t talk to Teri about the mission, and I had a lot of trouble concentrating on just about anything else. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I felt as if I just didn’t have a right to be happy.
Teri saw my withdrawal as a symptom of marital problems and felt that some time apart might help. Kim only saw her mother asking me to leave—she was too young to understand that I had pushed Teri away first. So she blamed her mother and continued to give her attitude even after I’d moved back In.
That night, after Kim said good night to me, she gave Teri the brush-off. It upset me. I didn’t like seeing her treat Teri that way. So Teri and I had a discussion about her behavior, and we decided to talk with Kim right then, together. But when we went into her room, Kimberly was gone—she had sneaked out.
It was hard to take, Kim’s lying to us like that. The Kim I knew before I moved out would never have done something like that. At the time, I tried to tell Teri it was just a teenage rebellion thing, but now that I look back, I realize it was something much deeper. Teri and I had broken our trust with Kim when we split, so she felt entitled to break her trust with us.
While Teri and I began searching Kim’s room for some clue to where the hell she’d gone, Nina Myers, my chief of staff at CTU, called to inform me that Special Agent Richard Walsh, a highranking officer within the division, had summoned everyone into headquarters for a briefing.
Among our other recent assignments, CTU had been helping to provide intelligence to the Secret Service* for the protection of Senator David Palmer. Since the next morning was Super Tuesday,* I assumed Walsh’s briefing had something to do with Palmer. The senator was the first African-American with a real shot at winning the presidency, making him the target of some credible assassination threats.
I told Teri I would probably be home in an hour. I promised her that if Kim wasn’t home by then we would go out and look for her together. On the way to CTU I called Kimberly’s ex-boyfriend Vincent O’Brien, but he swore he didn’t know where she was. Then I called Nina again to see what more I could find out about the briefing. She didn’t know anything more than when she first called me. She sensed some tension in my voice, but I avoided any questions before she could ask. I told her I was minutes away from the command center and hung up.
In the CTU parking lot, I called Teri once more and tried to reassure her about Kim. I knew she felt abandoned, and I hated the idea of her thinking I was starting to pull away again, but I had to report in. It was my job.
After I arrived, Nina told me she’d activated the satellite uplink. About a half-dozen people were already in CTU’s command center, including Tony Almeida, one of my best information analysts. Our civilian computer programmer had also arrived, Jamey Farrell. She was dressed like she’d just come from a club—
REP. PAULINE P. DRISCOLL, (D) CONN.: Agent Bauer, I’m sorry to interrupt. I know I’ll have more questions for you about your staff, especially Nina Myers, but right now I’d like to ask you about this Jamey Farrell. At that time, did you trust her?
BAUER: I did. Jamey was clean when she was hired. She’d had the proper security clearances, no record at all, but I trusted her most because she had been recommended to us by a man I greatly respected, a man to whom I owed my life: Special Agent Richard Walsh.
Walsh was a former member of the Green Berets. He had earned a degree in psychology, so twice a week he counseled gifted inner-city teenagers. These were kids who weren’t in trouble yet, but who could easily go that route given their environment. He met Jamey in one of his sessions, recognized her brilliance, and helped her to make it into college by the age of sixteen. Just after college, Jamey had run into some troubles at her Microsoft job and she needed a new one. Walsh got her the civilian slot at CTU. Until that night, Jamey Farrell had been an exemplary employee.
At that point I suggested that perhaps Senator Palmer was the reason Walsh had called us in, and asked everyone to start pulling together information on the candidate. Tony Almeida was resistant to the idea—he didn’t feel it was politically correct to assume we had to pay special attention to the senator because he was African-American. I overrode Tony’s objections. It wasn’t our job to worry about how things looked—it was our job to protect the senator’s life.
As we waited for Walsh, I had trouble focusing on the problem at hand. I was still worried about Kim, so at approximately 12:14 I called an old friend, Fred Kirowan, from the LAPD Tactical Squad and asked him to lend a hand looking for my daughter.
Then Special Agent Walsh arrived and the briefing began. In attendance were myself, Nina Myers, Tony Almeida, and Jamey Farrell. Walsh informed us that the CIA had reason to believe that there would be an attempt on David Palmer’s life before the end of the day and that a well-funded shooter was coming from overseas.
Walsh was of the opinion that the people who hired the assassin were members of a domestic hate group, and ordered us to check the backgrounds of everyone close to Palmer and then cross-check those backgrounds with our database of known terrorists. The meeting was called after that, but Walsh pulled me aside.
He informed me confidentially that he suspected there was an element inside the Agency involved
in the hit on Palmer. He ordered me to do what I could to find out more. I told Walsh that because of my past in busting corrupt agents, I was the last person he should be asking to ferret out a mole. No one like that, I thought at the time, would ever give me reason to suspect them.
Walsh claimed I was the only person he could trust. We both knew how serious the situation really was—if Senator Palmer was assassinated, it would tear the country apart. So I told Walsh I would do what I could. He then informed me that George Mason was on his way to CTU to provide a more detailed briefing.
At approximately 1225 hours Nina approached me. She was concerned about not being included in a meeting with District Director George Mason. I told her Walsh had ordered me to meet with Mason privately. She spotted the lie immediately. I felt bad excluding her, but at that point I felt I had to shield Nina from what I was about to do.
I was glad to have the interruption of Teri’s call, even though she told me she had found marijuana in Kim’s desk. I suggested she check Kim’s e-mail account, but Teri needed to know her password.
I returned to my office to prepare for the meeting with George Mason. He arrived at my office at 1227 hours. Mason claimed the suspected shooter was European—probably German—and that he was either in Los Angeles already or was arriving today. Then Mason handed me a disk he claimed would give me access to secured data nationwide, but refused to tell me the source of the disk, saying he wasn’t “authorized” to reveal it.
I found this ridiculous and was immediately suspicious. Mason had to know that I couldn’t do a thorough cross-check of the data if I didn’t know its source, and he responded in a way that made me even more suspicious: he brought up Palmer’s politics, insinuating that the man was “no friend of the Agency’s,” and CTU would be eliminated should Palmer become president.
I got the distinct impression that Mason wanted me to go along with running a substandard cross-check. Was that because he didn’t want Palmer’s assassin to be tracked down? Maybe.
Maybe Mason wanted Palmer to feel the heat of an assassin getting close so that he’d appreciate the worth of the Agency. Or maybe Mason’s target wasn’t Palmer at all. Maybe it was me. Maybe he was looking to set me up for some blame later on. Given my past whistle-blowing actions, I didn’t exactly have friends around every corner at CTU anymore. It doesn’t matter what it was. Given Walsh’s warning to me that someone in the Agency was in on the Palmer hit, I decided to test him.
I insisted Mason call his boss, Regional Director Ryan Chappelle, and ask if I could get “clearance” as to the source of the info on the disk. Mason “agreed,” so I left him alone in my office to make the call. Pretending to go for coffee, I actually went to the command center’s first floor and had Nina patch me into his line. Mason had lied; he had placed a call to hear the correct time. That’s when I loaded the tranquilizer gun—
CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT: Excuse me, Agent Bauer—the what?
BAUER: The tranquilizer gun, Congressman—it’s a gun that shoots a tranquilizer dart. I had to buy some time to put the pressure on Mason, so I told Nina to keep everyone out of my office, then I shot him in the leg. The sedative worked in seconds.
While Mason was out, I told Nina to call up the Darcet file. Philippe Remy Darcet was a heroin smuggler and arms dealer. He was captured in Barcelona, extradited to the United States, and convicted in federal court of helping to fund and equip the failed terrorist attack on the United States embassy in Cairo in 1999.
I gave her Mason’s disk. If it truly allowed access to secured data nationwide, then we’d be able to access all the transactions that had been made dealing with the Darcet account at the Bank of Barcelona.
I had always suspected that George Mason had skimmed off a couple of hundred grand from Darcet’s account for himself. Here was my chance to prove it, and maybe get Mason to talk. We had a half hour or less before Mason woke up.
Nina was nervous about blackmailing a superior, but I persisted and she agreed to speak with Agent Tony Almeida about cracking the Darcet encryption. She and Tony had formed an intimate relationship, and I knew he’d do what she asked without questioning it.
DRISCOLL: Excuse me, Agent Bauer, but since you’ve brought up the subject, let’s be clear on this: Nina Myers was sleeping with Tony Almeida at that time, is that right?
BAUER: That’s correct.
DRISCOLL: And this was only a few months after she’d been sleeping with you, is that correct?
BAUER: (After a pause) I’m sorry to say it is.
DRISCOLL: Thank you. Go on with your testimony, please.
BAUER: I didn’t want to finger another CTU agent, ruin another career. But I had to do my job, no matter what that job entailed. After I’d shot Mason, I did try to reach Richard Walsh to inform him of my actions, but I got his voice mail instead. I was troubled by my assignment, bothered by what I might be forced to do. I was also still worried about helping Teri find our daughter.
At approximately 12:36 hours, my wife received a phone call at home. The call was from a man who identified himself as Alan York. He said he was the father of Kimberly’s friend Janet, and was looking for his daughter, who was also missing.
At 12:40 hours I locked my office and approached Jamey Farrell at her workstation. I asked her to trace the password for Kimberly’s e-mail account. I called Teri and told her that Kimberly’s password was (pause) LIFESUCKS.
Teri accessed Kimberly’s e-mail account and found an address where the girls might have gone. At that point, Teri was beside herself—she’d left a number of messages on Kim’s cell phone, but Kim hadn’t responded. I’m sure Teri was feeling desperate with me not there and Kim missing, and she had no reason to suspect that Alan York was anyone but who he appeared to be. So she called the man claiming to be York, and together they decided to try to track down the girls.
BAUER: Back at CTU, Tony Almeida finally cracked the Bank of Barcelona’s encryption code and accessed the Darcet account. Tony sent the information to the terminal in my office, and sure enough I found an unexplained wire transfer of two hundred thousand dollars to an unidentified account in Aruba. There was no evidence it was Mason’s, but I knew it looked bad enough to scare him.
I woke Mason, showed him what I’d uncovered, and suggested the account might be his. Mason denied it, but I threatened to send it to Chappelle, and the tactic worked: he gave me the information I needed to proceed with my investigation. He typed out the name of the source of the information on my screen and left.
The source was Victor Rovner, a CIA informant and freelance operator who does most of his work out of the Czech Republic. He had transmitted an encrypted message to the Counter Terrorist Unit at midnight L.A. time and 4:00 A.M. local time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Rovner is a dealer in arms, drugs, and information. He claimed that a shooter—a professional assassin—was on his way to Los Angeles, and that the assassin’s target was David Palmer.
At 12:57 Tony informed me that International Flight 221, on its way to Los Angeles from Berlin, had exploded over the Mojave Desert and that preliminary reports indicated the airliner was probably brought down by a bomb. It was a potential Stage One terrorist incident, and CTU had to investigate. I wanted to find my daughter, but I could not leave—I had to remain at my post.
1:00 A.M.-2:00 A.M.
SPECIAL AGENT JACK BAUER:
Military battles are won or lost before the first shot is fired. Victory lies in the planning, the strategy, and the surprise. By the time an attack begins, it’s often too late for the defender. He’s lost the initiative, and he may never get it back.
From the moment my administrative director, Richard Walsh, pulled me aside, told me about the mole in CTU, and warned me to trust no one—not even my own staff—I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t have a plan. All I was doing was reacting—to what Walsh told me, to the threat against Palmer, to the explosion aboard the commercial airliner.
I had to regain control of the situation and
get back my initiative, which meant I needed allies. But given Walsh’s comments, I wasn’t sure who I could count on.
From the beginning, I decided it wasn’t Tony Almeida. He challenged my leadership five minutes after George Mason walked out the door. In front of the whole command center staff Tony announced in an accusatory tone, “George Mason comes in, disappears into your office for half an hour, then limps out of here. What’s that all about?”
When the staff looked at me with suspicion, I found myself reacting yet again.
Thankfully, Nina Myers, my chief of staff, came to my rescue with a smooth, elaborate bluff about how Mason had made some nasty accusations about me and other people in the office because of past actions of mine that he didn’t like.
Rather than see me own up to the truth—that I’d blackmailed a possibly innocent district director—Nina jumped in and made it appear as if I’d just heroically defended myself and my staff’s honor against a superior’s unfounded accusations.
I could see Tony didn’t buy that explanation for a second, but the staff did. Nina’s bluff was so coolly delivered, I almost bought it myself. So Tony had no choice but to back off.
At the time, I saw Nina’s lie as an act of loyalty, proof that I could rely on her as my ally. Now I look back at that incident with new eyes. After everything that’s happened, it’s impossible not to see things differently….
CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT: Differently, Agent Bauer? I’m not store I understand what you’re saying.
BAUER: I mean it wasn’t the first time Nina Myers had come up with a smooth, elaborate he inside of three seconds. She was a pro at it, yet I never materially questioned it. I chose to see it as a highly developed mark of our trade. In retrospect I realize that when I cover quickly, I do it consciously. With Nina, it seems more natural—more like a reflex action. Something practiced … what you do when you’re playing both sides.
The House Special Subcommittee's Findings at CTU Page 4
