Rule of Law

by Randy Singer

  “Have you seen the news?” Kristen asked.

  “No. I’ve been out running.”

  “Can you come over?” Kristen’s voice sounded fragile, like she had been crying.

  “Sure.”

  “That woman who accused Troy of molesting her is all over the news this morning—” Kristen’s voice broke off.

  Paige waited, not knowing what to say.

  “I’m just really struggling.”

  “Let me change. I’ll be right there.”

  Paige toweled off and changed into some jeans and a T-shirt. She pulled her hair back and gathered it into a ponytail with an elastic band. She could put on her makeup later. Her friend needed help.

  Before heading out the door, she paused to check one of the national morning shows. The host was interviewing a woman named Jordan Johnson, who apparently went by the nickname JJ. She looked like she had walked off the set of an extreme makeover show—bright-red lipstick, lots of eye shadow, stylish brown hair. Her dress was modest, just above the knees, though she wore three-inch heels. She wore a cross necklace and folded her hands in her lap.

  She claimed Troy Anderson had molested her in a bar. Groped her and said things to her she couldn’t repeat on the air. She had told him to stop a couple of times, but his hands were all over her.

  She talked as if she might break down at any moment, and Paige wondered how many times she had repeated the same story already that morning on different shows, hitting the perfect emotional tone, one of pain mixed with anger. She hesitated, and the host gently prodded her to continue.

  “Finally some of the other guys in the bar came over and told him to leave me alone. But this SEAL guy told them to get lost and started pressing himself against me. That’s when the big fight broke out.”

  “Why are you coming forward to tell your story now?” the host asked. “Some will say this is just a move by the president’s political supporters to smear the reputation of a man who died for his country.”

  JJ looked offended and then, as if she were a seasoned actress, turned to the camera. “Nobody asked me to come forward. But I believe our president is a good woman. And I also know that the lawyer who filed this lawsuit against the president’s chief of staff is the same man who defended Troy Anderson and did everything he could to smear my reputation just for telling the truth about what happened. Before our entire country judges President Hamilton, I think they ought to know the kind of man making these accusations.”

  Paige had heard enough. She texted Kristen, telling her to hang in there and that she was on the way. She remembered what Wyatt Jackson had said. They must be onto something, because the president’s team was pulling out all the stops to shut them down.

  36

  When Paige arrived at Kristen’s house, several reporters were already camped out in the street and driveway. Paige parked in front of a satellite truck and walked through a small gauntlet of cameramen, thinking about how horrible she was going to look on TV. The half-dozen reporters apparently recognized Paige and started asking questions. She kept her eyes straight ahead, not even tossing them a “no comment.” Surely they wouldn’t put her silent walk on the news, would they?

  The front door was locked, and Paige rang the bell. Kristen cracked the door, peered out, and let Paige in.

  The women hugged, and Paige was struck by Kristen’s puffy eyes and the dark circles underneath.

  “When will they go away?” Kristen asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  The boys came running out, and Paige gave them a hug. She noticed that the television wasn’t on.

  “I can’t believe she’s saying these things about Troy,” Kristen said. “It’s all lies. The prosecutor would have never agreed to a suspended sentence if he believed that woman for one minute.”

  “I know,” Paige said. They retreated to the kitchen table, out of earshot of the boys, and talked while Kristen checked text messages and ignored incoming calls. They decided to put together a written statement that would deny the allegations. Paige was jotting something down when Wyatt called Kristen’s cell.

  Paige listened to one side of the conversation. Kristen was mostly nodding and fighting back tears and saying that she understood. She asked Wyatt if she could put him on speaker because Paige was there with her.

  “Are the reporters out front?” Wyatt asked. His voice was raspy, and Paige imagined that he was recovering from a hard night of drinking.

  “The local stations,” Paige said.

  “Good. That’ll be a perfect opportunity to tell them our side of the story,” Wyatt said.

  Paige tensed up. She could see where this was heading; as usual, Wyatt was about to make a bad situation worse.

  “We’ve got the goods on this woman,” Wyatt said. “Two friends of Troy’s were prepared to testify that she was hitting on them that night. She’s been married and divorced twice. Plus, she brought another charge once against some Navy guys at a bar up near Little Creek, and those charges were also dismissed. She cleaned up her Facebook page, but we have copies from my file that we can provide to the press. Paige, I can e-mail all this stuff to Kristen, and you can have an impromptu press conference right there on her front porch. Just go out and tell the press that you’ll be releasing a statement in an hour or so in order to make sure they don’t leave.”

  Kristen looked at Paige, who shook her head. She leaned toward the phone to speak. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Attacking this woman will just add fuel to the fire. And I don’t know the case well enough to start making statements I can’t back up.”

  “I’ll give you everything you need. We’ve got to get this stuff out there now. If we don’t, the press will move on to something else and it’ll be too late.”

  “That’s my whole point. Let the press move on. People will see this as a desperate woman trying to attack a dead war hero.”

  But Wyatt was insistent. “Kristen, do you see what I’m saying?” he asked, ignoring Paige. “They’re trying to play the woman’s card. They’re saying that I’m a misogynist who hates women and wants to bring down our first female president. Troy deserves better than this.”

  Paige could tell the words were having an impact on Kristen, and she despised Wyatt for it. Of course Kristen wanted to strike back. Who wouldn’t? But Paige was only two weeks into private practice, and she wasn’t about to start trashing the reputation of women who claimed they were victims of sexual assault. Not even women like JJ, though Paige was tempted to make an exception for her. “I’m not comfortable with it, Wyatt. We’ll play right into their hands if we do that.”

  “I’m asking Kristen,” Wyatt said. “I want to know what Kristen thinks.”

  Kristen stared at the phone. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I mean, it sounds like something we should do, but if Paige isn’t comfortable with it, then maybe we shouldn’t.”

  Paige felt sick. She had come to the house to comfort Kristen, and now it looked like she wasn’t willing to help her friend. But this was why people needed lawyers. Clients got too emotional to make good, objective decisions.

  “Maybe we could just issue a statement or something,” Kristen suggested. “I don’t know. I just feel like we ought to do something.”

  “Look, this needs to be answered,” Wyatt said. Paige could hear the exasperation in his voice. “Paige, if you’re not willing to say something, I will. I just think it would be better coming from a woman.”

  “It’s not that I’m not willing. I think it’s a bad idea.”

  “We can talk about this all day but we’ve got to do something. Kristen, are you okay if I go out there and defend Troy?”

  Kristen looked up and caught Paige’s eye. Paige shrugged. She had said enough. Maybe too much.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Jackson. Do whatever you think you ought to do.”

  When they got off the phone, Paige tried to get Kristen to talk it through. Kristen kept saying that she wasn’t mad at Paige and that she unde
rstood where Paige was coming from, but she seemed disappointed, like the phone call with Wyatt had taken the fight out of her.

  After a while, Paige shifted course and decided she was going to say something after all. She tried to call Wyatt, but he didn’t answer. She and Kristen jotted down a few statements that sounded good, and Paige rehearsed them a few times. At eleven thirty, Paige gave Kristen a hug and stepped out onto the front porch.

  There were only three camera crews left. Paige announced she had a brief statement to make, and they gathered around. Paige swallowed hard and tried to look as confident as possible.

  “As you know, a woman named Jordan Johnson is making the rounds today, accusing Troy Anderson of sexually assaulting her in a bar several years ago. These allegations are entirely false, and that’s why the commonwealth’s attorney ultimately dropped the charges. Mr. Wyatt Jackson, who was serving as Troy’s attorney at the time, had lined up several eyewitnesses, and the commonwealth could find no one to support Ms. Johnson’s version of events.”

  Paige watched the reporters jot down notes. She licked her lips and continued. “Troy Anderson is a decorated war hero who gave his life defending our country. He died so that people like Ms. Johnson could have freedom of speech, even if they use it to unfairly tarnish someone else’s reputation. I am proud to represent Mr. Anderson and his family, and I would ask the members of the press to please give them their privacy as they try to move forward without a husband and a father.”

  When she finished, a couple reporters asked questions. Paige politely refused to answer and requested again that they give the Anderson family some privacy.

  She walked back in the house and let out a deep breath.

  “Thanks,” Kristen said. “That was perfect.”

  None of the news shows that day aired Paige’s statement on behalf of the Anderson family. They didn’t need to. They had a much more colorful denial from Wyatt Jackson, standing on the steps of the federal courthouse after filing what he described as “an important legal document.”

  “This isn’t the first time this woman has lied about being sexually assaulted, and it probably won’t be the last,” Wyatt said nonchalantly. “I’m not saying that the president’s political team put her up to this, but the timing sure is suspicious. The only regret I have about that case is that we didn’t go to trial. I had plenty of witnesses, and she had nobody to back her up. But even if we had won that trial, the allegations alone would have been harmful to Troy’s career as a SEAL, and all he ever wanted to do was serve his country.”

  Wyatt Jackson shook his head as if he couldn’t understand the depths to which people would stoop in these troubling times.

  “What evidence do you have that the president’s supporters put her up to this?” a reporter asked. “She said she came forward of her own volition.”

  Wyatt smiled as if that were the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “Let me just say this. Sometimes you see a little creature running in the shadows of your basement, and you can’t really tell what it is. But one thing you saw was a furry little tail. That’s probably a squirrel. But sometimes you see a nasty little creature scurrying around your basement and all you notice is a long thin slimy tail on its backside. You don’t need DNA to tell you that creature is a rat. Bringing up discredited charges against a man a month after he gives his life for his country—that’s just slimy, folks. That’s a rat if I ever saw one.”

  37

  On Tuesday morning, lawyers for Philip Kilpatrick and John Marcano filed motions to dismiss the wrongful-death suit with long briefs arguing that the case had no merit. Both asked for sanctions against Wyatt Jackson and Paige Chambers personally for filing the frivolous case. Paige was notified of the filings via e-mail through the court’s electronic filing system. She sat at her kitchen table and read through the legal documents, growing more pessimistic by the minute.

  As expected, the defendants relied heavily on the Feres Doctrine and the Supreme Court case that threw out the lawsuit by military members who had been used as guinea pigs for LSD testing. The defense lawyers scoffed at the notion that the Anderson case was different just because Troy Anderson had been working for the CIA.

  Whether or not Mr. Anderson, a longtime member of SEAL Team Six, was technically deputized by the CIA for this mission is of no consequence. His team leader was Patrick Quillen, also a Navy SEAL. Mr. Quillen reported to the commanding officer of SEAL Team Six, who in turn reported to the commanding officer of the Joint Special Operations Command. All of these men were members of the military. Moreover, as the Supreme Court noted in the Stanley case, the question is not whether the plaintiff is technically working for the military but whether the case is “incident to military service.”

  The briefs also claimed that the case would jeopardize state secrets, though that issue was downplayed. They were well-written briefs, authored by lawyers from two of the largest firms in the country, and it gave Paige a new realization of how monumental the challenge was before her. It also made her consider, for the first time, what this suit might personally cost her. If a federal judge got mad and levied sanctions, both she and Wyatt could be fined tens of thousands of dollars. Typically, lawyers asked that the sanctions include the legal costs they have billed responding to the case. Just these briefs alone would probably cost $20,000 each, given the billing rates of the D.C. firms. Where could Paige get that kind of money?

  She fretted over the briefs for a while and then called Wellington. He asked if they could meet later that day to parcel out the work for their response. He also told her that the court had set a hearing for Friday, May 25, the day before Memorial Day weekend.

  “What did Wyatt think about the briefs?” Paige asked.

  “He said they’re both crap,” Wellington replied. “He was in one of his I-told-you-so moods. He’d predicted the defense lawyers wouldn’t push the state secrets defense because it would be like hiding behind the Fifth Amendment and would make the president look bad. And sure enough, he was right—they only spent a few pages even referencing the national-security concerns.”

  “Has Wyatt ever seen a case he thought he would lose?” Paige asked.

  Wellington thought about that for a long time. “Not since I’ve been with him.”

  NAJRAN, SAUDI ARABIA

  Brandon Lawrence couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t say something. In the past six months, two of his Hellfire missiles had destroyed houses where the CIA later learned that only civilians had been present. One had killed a pregnant twenty-three-year-old mother, and another had wiped out three children under the age of ten. “Collateral damage,” they called it. But for Brandon, it was the failure of the CIA to do its job. They were so busy using drone pilots to kill people that they could no longer be trusted to know where the enemy’s leaders were actually hiding.

  When he enlisted in the Air Force, it had seemed like the perfect job. Though he never learned how to fly a real plane, he had become one of the best drone pilots anywhere, his expertise in computer games finally coming in handy. Plus, he was patient and didn’t mind sitting through hours of drudgery as the drones flew over Yemen and looked for patterns representative of Houthi command and control.

  But he had not signed up to work for the CIA. It had started during the Obama administration and accelerated with President Hamilton. CIA operatives were now in charge of most drones, using Air Force drone pilots like Brandon to gather information and take out enemy commanders. He found the operatives to be haughty, demanding, and always secretive. They treated him like a creature of lesser intelligence, one who could not be trusted with sensitive information.

  All of that was bad enough, but it was the duplicity that finally spurred him to action. Less than twenty-four hours after the SEALs died at Sana’a, two CIA operatives had sat down with Brandon and made a request. About three weeks before the SEAL mission, another drone operator had launched a successful strike against some Houthi commanders holed up in a compound on the outski
rts of Aden. Brandon and two other pilots had been watching the house for two days in order to verify the identity of the Houthi leaders.

  The CIA operatives explained that there might be some investigations about that strike. For purposes of national security, Brandon should tell anyone who asked that they had been monitoring that site for nearly a month. It’s complicated, he was told, but failure to do so would compromise several CIA assets in Yemen. The CIA director, who had discussed it directly with the president, was making the request.

  At the time, Brandon had agreed. It wasn’t his job to ask questions. And though there had ultimately been no investigation, over time he felt less comfortable with the directive. He had discussed it with the other pilots who had been part of the two-day surveillance, confirming that they had received the same directive.

  “It’s not unusual,” one of them said. “That’s the way the CIA works. Their first priority is to never compromise an agent.”

  Brandon couldn’t figure out how it all fit together, but he somehow felt exposed. If there was an investigation, he might have to answer questions in some kind of official capacity. Who would be in charge of such an investigation? And what would happen if he lied to them?

  The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he became. His drinking, already a problem, became heavier. He couldn’t sleep. He went to the doctor and obtained a prescription for anxiety.

  But when he saw the lawsuit against the CIA director, he believed he had found a way out. He could call the plaintiff’s lawyers anonymously and provide a tip. That way, if he ever got in trouble for being part of some cover-up, he could have the lawyers confirm that he had exposed the CIA. It wasn’t perfect, but it seemed like the right thing to do. It was one thing to be part of a killing machine that all too frequently took out civilians. Perhaps that couldn’t be avoided. But it was another thing to lie about it to the authorities. He knew his history well enough to realize that the cover-up was usually worse than the crime.