The House Special Subcommittee's Findings at CTU

by Marc Cerasini

  REP. PAULINE P. DRISCOLL, (D) CONN.: Can you give us another example?

  BAUER: A few months before, when Nina and I were first getting involved, we wanted to keep our relationship private. We usually left CTU in separate cars to avoid raising any eyebrows.

  The Agency frowns on fraternizing. I was her superior, and we both knew it wouldn’t look good to be seen together. So I would take a circuitous route to her place, where she was waiting.

  One Sunday evening we were out having dinner. She and I both got separate calls on our private cell phones to come into the command center for an urgent meeting. The radio warned of some major tie-ups en route to her place, so she told me not to waste time taking her home to get her car. She suggested that we just go straight to CTU. I did, hoping no one would notice our arrival in the same car on a Sunday evening.

  Unfortunately, George Mason was getting out of his car in the underground parking garage around the same time we drove up together in my car. He stood there and watched us get out. As we passed him, he gave us a smug look and asked in a mildly sarcastic tone if there was something wrong with Nina’s car.

  “No,” she told him without even a second’s pause. “Jack and I were following an unofficial lead on an Al-Adel associate. Gee, George, guess it’s been a while since you did fieldwork if you think using two cars on a tail doesn’t make you twice as likely to be spotted.”

  She said this with such a cool head and such perfect disdain that Mason looked away, obviously embarrassed that he’d made the insinuation in the first place. I myself was dumbfounded.

  DRISCOLL: Dumbfounded or Impressed?

  BAUER: At the time, I admit, I was impressed. I told myself then, as I did the day of the California primary, that her lies were okay because they were protecting me.

  DRISCOLL: And now?

  BAUER: Now I know better.

  FULBRIGHT: Please continue.

  BAUER: While all this was going on at CTU, I was still worried about my daughter, who had sneaked out of the house. And I was worried about my wife, too, who was now driving around looking for Kimberly with a man I didn’t know.

  My cell phone rang and I expected it to be Teri, but it was Administrative Director Richard Walsh. He was under fire and asked for my help. I wanted to call for backup, but Walsh insisted that I didn’t. He still didn’t know who to trust. Despite the danger, he asked me to come alone.

  He’d gone downtown to Dunlop Plaza for a secret meeting with a CTU security systems analyst named Scott Baylor. Baylor, I found out later, had been enlisted by Walsh to help track down the mole in CTU.

  FULBRIGHT: Tell us more about Baylor. What exactly did your administrative director ask him to do?

  BAUER: About a week before Super Tuesday, Walsh sent around his assistant to abruptly collect every CTU employee’s key card. He claimed it was a security system upgrade and that all cards would be destroyed once they were turned in. He also said that new cards would be issued through supervisors. But this was a ploy. Walsh didn’t destroy the cards. Instead, he secretly put Baylor in charge of analyzing the old key cards. Baylor was supposed to be running cross-checks on time clocks, looking for red flags.

  REP. ROY SCHNEIDER, (R) TEX.: What sort of red flags?

  BAUER: Anything out of the ordinary. Patterns of entry by personnel that didn’t make sense given their work schedules. Or a pattern of entry into secure areas where they otherwise would have had no business.

  SCHNEIDER: And what did he find?

  BAUER: Baylor found something even more incriminating. The magnetic strip on one of the key cards contained more than just the minor bit of coding that allowed access to buildings and secure areas. Someone had embedded a file with a great deal of data on this card. It was ingenious. Having that information on a key card would have allowed a mole to smuggle classified intel out of a restricted area without ever being questioned.

  DRISCOLL: And whose key card was it?

  BAUER: Well, that was the problem. Baylor didn’t know. Any identifying information had already been erased from the card. And the remaining information had been encrypted. He could only partially read the data. But it was clear from what he was able to read that much of the information concerned David Palmer.

  Obviously, the person who embedded information onto that card was taken by surprise the day Walsh announced the key card revocation. Wiping the ID info was easy, but the encrypted data couldn’t be as readily removed. It was locked in. He or she was obviously forced to hand in the card before the data could be properly wiped, too. Since Walsh announced the cards would be destroyed, and since no one knew about Walsh’s plan anyway, the person must have reasoned that not handing it in would draw a lot more unwanted attention.

  As far as decoding the encrypted data, Baylor needed many more man-hours to complete the job, but by that time, Baylor wanted out.

  DRISCOLL: Why? He agreed to help Walsh, didn’t he?

  BAUER: Baylor never knew why Walsh wanted the cross-checks. The key card information made it clear to Baylor that he was about to finger a mole in CTU associated with a hit on Palmer. It was too much for him.

  Baylor was an analyst, not a field man. He’d never so much as fired a weapon. It wasn’t as if he’d signed on for hazardous duty or anything. So the moment he discovered the incriminating key card, he put his wife and two children on a plane to Canada and called Walsh for a final meeting. His plan was to hand over the key card, resign, and get on a plane himself. He never got that far. Baylor was shot and killed during his meeting with Walsh.

  SCHNEIDER: And that’s when Walsh called you?

  BAUER: Yes, Congressman. I phoned Nina for the entry code into the Dunlop Plaza garage and she gave it to me. I found Walsh alive but wounded. He suspected there might still be shooters loose in the building. As we tried to escape, we managed to kill one of the men.

  I wanted to ID the man, but there were no papers on him, and I wasn’t about to carry his body with me, so I cut off his thumb, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and headed out with Walsh—

  DRISCOLL: Excuse me, you cut off his what?

  BAITER: I cut off his thumb, ma’am, so I could ED the man through a print.

  Before we could get to my car, though, Walsh was shot again. He was wounded very badly this time, and I couldn’t get to him. A shooter or shooters had pinned me behind a concrete wall.

  I told Walsh to lie still. If he played dead, he wouldn’t draw fire. But Walsh was bleeding to death and he knew it. He didn’t want to lose consciousness without giving me the information that Baylor had given to him, so he showed me the key card and told me to have Jamey Farrell decode it.

  “Take it to Jamey,” he told me. “She’ll match it to a computer. Find the computer, you’ve got the dirty agent.”

  I already knew Walsh trusted Jamey. He’d been the one to recruit her in the first place. And he also made a point of telling me that Baylor trusted her, too, which made sense, since Baylor had been one of the people who’d helped to train Jamey in how our systems worked.

  After Walsh told me this, he moved to throw me the card. The movement attracted the attention of the shooters. Walsh knew it would. He didn’t care. He knew he was acting to save the life of the man likely to be our next president.

  So Richard Walsh moved … and they shot him again…. That shot finished him…

  FULBRIGHT: (After a pause) Agent Bauer? (Pause) Agent Bauer, would you like a short recess?

  BAUER: Yes, if you don’t mind.

  FULBRIGHT: Not at all. Let’s take fifteen minutes.

  FULBRIGHT: Special Agent Bauer, are you ready to resume your testimony?

  BAUER: Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman.

  FULBRIGHT: Then continue, if you please. Pick up with the key card.

  BAUER: In my car, I put the key card into my mobile scanner and sent the information to our programmer, Jamey Farrell. I asked her to tell me whose computer had encoded the card. The scan came back with a name: Nina Myers.

  I remem
ber reading that name on the screen in front of me and feeling physically sick. I told myself there had to be some explanation—

  Nina had defended me, she’d gone out on a limb to help me countless times. I trusted her—and as I said, at the time I was desperate for allies.

  Now that Walsh was dead, I didn’t want to believe Nina was dirty. I resolved to confirm the information with Jamey the moment I returned to the command center. And if it was true, I would confront Nina.

  In the meantime, during this same hour, my daughter was being driven around in a van, kidnapped by two punks. And my wife, Teri, was driving around looking for her with a man claiming to be Alan York, the father of my daughter’s friend.

  Since York claimed his daughter had received an e-mail about a meeting at an address in Van Nuys, Teri agreed to accompany him there. It turned out to be a furniture store, Paladio Furniture, and a work schedule there included the name Dan on it.

  Dan was the name of the boy who had become involved with Janet and arranged the rendezvous.

  When Teri arrived at the shop with York, they found Janet’s car parked in the lot, but the girls were gone.

  KIMBERLY BAUER: I refused to call home and pretend everything was okay I knew the longer I was out, the likelier my dad was to send the police looking for me. So I told Dan to go to hell. He looked like he was going to slap me, but I didn’t care. I was so pissed!

  Then Rick said, “Gaines told us not to hurt her, remember?”

  I didn’t know who Gaines was, but it sure worked on Dan—it scared him real bad because he backed right off. I thought for a minute that Janet and I were going to be okay.

  Like I said, Rick was sticking up for me, which made me feel safer. It was clear that Dan was the boss, you know? So Rick wasn’t that bad a guy. It was Dan who was the creep.

  Anyway, the three of us were standing there beside the van, and Janet was in the passenger seat. Dan just went and yanked Janet’s arm out of the window so it hung down next to the van door. She didn’t even notice. Dan had given her something earlier—I thought it was a rufie, you know, because she’d been totally out of it for the past hour.

  So Dan held up a crowbar and looked at me like if I didn’t call he would smash Janet’s arm up.

  Well, Rick had just said we weren’t supposed to be hurt. So I didn’t think he’d do it, but he did. He completely crushed it! He broke her arm right there in front of me!

  Janet started screaming and crying, and I was completely terrorized. I called my mom’s cell right away and told her I was at a party and I’d be home soon. I did my best to pretend I was going along. Then I said “I love you” at the end.

  With all the bad karma between us for the last few months, I knew my mom would know that was a signal something was wrong. Normally, “I love you” is like the last thing I would ever say….

  2:00 A.m.-3:00 a.m.

  REP. PAULINE P. DRISCOLL, (D) CONN.: Agent Bauer, I’m curious about that man’s thumb. Were you still carrying it around?

  SPECIAL AGENT JACK BAUER: Yes, ma’am. I dealt with it after I scanned the key card. I switched my mobile scanner from magnetic to optical and sent the thumbprint to a tech at CTU’s data services.

  DRISCOLL: And what did they find?

  BAUER: They found nothing on record for the shooter, which was pretty nearly impossible. Given the extensive international databank available to us, and given the tactics the shooter used to covertly track, then ambush Baylor and Walsh inside a secure facility, it seemed logical to me that the man would have a record somewhere—as an ex-law enforcement employee, government agency worker, or as a criminal with priors … something. But there was nothing.

  The only possible explanation was that his file had been erased, which meant that someone with high-level clearance had manipulated the data systems to protect his identity—and that was pretty unsettling.

  DRISCOLL: You have his body, don’t you? Can you ID him now?

  BAUER: My understanding is that there is still no ID on the man. He’s a John Doe.

  CHAIRMAN FULBRIGHT: And the other shooter or shooters at Dunlop Plaza? Can you speculate about their identities?

  BAUER: My best guess, looking back, sir, is that they were Ira Gaines’s men. Gaines had access to CTU security camera images, and eventually he had Jamey slow the decoding process on the card.

  It’s possible Gaines found out about Baylor’s having the card, then supplied the shooters to tail and kill Baylor—and anyone else they suspected he might have informed.

  I have to say, I honestly don’t think Jamey knew Scott Baylor or Richard Walsh were ever in danger. Baylor had helped tram her. And Walsh had been a real mentor and friend to her.

  When I got back to the command center and informed her that Walsh had been murdered along with Baylor, her reaction was genuine. She appeared truly shocked and disturbed.

  DRISCOLL: So whose key card was it?

  BAUER: Well, the ID information was wiped, and someone, we don’t know who, disposed of the remaining cards the night Scott Baylor was murdered. So discovering the card’s owner wasn’t even possible by a process of elimination. However, if I had to speculate, I’d say the key card was Jamey Farrell’s all along.

  DRISCOLL: What makes you think so? You said the embedding had taken place on Nina Myers’s computer? Jamey had shown you evidence of that, correct?

  FULBRIGHT: Excuse me—I’m sorry to interrupt you, Pauline, but I think it’s important that we hear about the events in order, as they happened. That way we’ll be able to understand what was in Agent Bauer’s mind as he took the various actions he did that day. Agent Bauer, please pick up with what you did next during that hour.

  BAUER: Let’s see … (papers shuffling) after I scanned the key card and thumbprint, I began driving back to the command center when my cell phone rang. It was Teri with good news. Kim had phoned to say she was at a party.

  I felt such relief. I was convinced that all Teri had to do was pick up Kim and the family crisis would be over. But apparently Kim told Teri she didn’t know where the party was and then hung up before Teri could get anything else out of her except the words I love you. Frankly, those words raised a red flag for both Teri and me. It had been a long time since Kim had said “I love you” to her mother.

  I tried to tell myself it would be okay. At least Teri had heard from Kim, and her friend Janet was still with her. I assumed we’d just have to keep it together and wait until she came home or called Teri again. But I’m a father, and I couldn’t help it—I continued to worry.

  FULBRIGHT: Agent Bauer, after your wife’s call, did you return to CTU’s command center?

  BAUER: Yes, I returned at approximately 2:15 A.M. By that time, I was working hard to control my emotions. I wanted to grab Nina and shake the truth out of her. But I knew I couldn’t. Not without absolute proof.

  REPORTER’S NOTE: Kimberly Bauer testified that between the hours of 2-00 A.M. and 3:00 A.M., she and her friend Janet attempted to escape from Dan and Rick, fleeing on foot through back alleys in an area of North Hollywood.

  They managed to elude the two young men long enough for Rim to place another call on her cell phone to her mother, verifying that she was in fact in danger. She gave the name of an auto body store she saw nearby, but she was forced to hang up when the two young men found and recaptured her.

  Janet York, on the other hand, attempted to flee and was hit by a car. The young men then left Janet for dead on the street, carrying Kim back with them to their van.

  Kim also testified that before the escape attempt, she witnessed Dan talking seriously on his cell phone. She assumed the conversation was with the person who had hired Dan and Rick to kidnap her and Janet.

  Phone records show that Ira Gaines had in fact called Dan about that time. Later notations found in an encrypted log kept by Gaines—apparently meant to be used for an after-action report for the Drazens—revealed that his plan was running late.

  After “Mandy”—the suspected
assassin aboard International Flight 221—had blown the plane to pieces and parachuted her way down to the Mojave Desert floor, she lit a fire, burned her clothes, and hid Martin Belkin’s ID in the sand.

  At approximately 1:00 A.M., one of Gaines’s men picked her up by Jeep, using the light of the fire to find her, and took her to Gaines’s desert house.

  In the meantime, Mandy’s associate “Bridgit” used a tracking device to find the ID, which Mandy had placed inside a case along with an electronic homing beacon. Bridgit was to hold the ID until Mandy had received her one million dollars in cash and signaled Bridgit to bring the ID to the desert house.

  If I wrongly accused her of being dirty after all we’d been through, and all she’d done to back me up, she would never forgive me.

  You see, Nina told me that I had deeply hurt her when I broke off our intimate relationship to return to my wife, but she also said she wasn’t going to ask for a transfer. She prided herself on being a professional. She wasn’t going to let our personal history get in the way of our working relationship.

  I respected that choice. By then, I knew I didn’t love her—in fact, I’m not sure I ever did love her—but I did care about her very much. I admired what I saw as her strength and dedication, and that morning I counseled myself to be careful. I had to be sure of my judgments. A big part of me was praying that Jamey was wrong.

  From a hiding place in the hallway, I called Nina on my cell and asked her to wait for me in my office. Then I went over to Jamey, gave her the encrypted key card, and asked her to produce evidence that it had been burned on Nina’s computer.

  Jamey asked me to distract Nina long enough for her to access her computer files. I did. I went to my office and kept Nina occupied until Jamey called me on the phone.

  She had absolute confirmation that the key card came from Nina’s terminal—proving that Nina was indeed the dirty agent, because each of our terminals is locked with a personal password.