getting, the comments, the backslaps, told me I was firmly back on top, on my game.
'Hey there, slugger,' Havlicek said as I pulled up to his desk and caught a glimpse of the photos. I rounded the desk so I wouldn't have to see them.
I said, 'I'll spread around a few calls on this, but only to people who'll keep the information close. I don't want to let word around on what we have.'
'Good show,' he said. 'Let me know what you turn up. More important, let me know when you hear from your guy. You'll press him on the issue?'
'Of course. Let's just hope he calls.'
Havlicek leaned back for a minute, taking his eyes off the computer screen for the first time. 'He'll call,' he said. 'We've got him.
He's in this thing, and wants to get in deeper, and he knows we're a good vehicle. If he doesn't know that now, he'll sure know it tomorrow morning when he reads this story.'
At that precise moment, I heard my telephone ringing across the room and sprinted around desks and over one chair in my attempt to reach it.
I felt like O. J. Simpson running through the airport, or maybe from a murder scene on Bundy Drive. I caught the phone mid-ring and breathlessly blurted my name. The caller promptly hung up.
Rather than stand there and agonize over what I may have missed, I punched out the number for the main switchboard at the FBI and asked for the office of Assistant Director Kent Drinker. Some, or even most, reporters would spend the better part of a full day preparing just the right questions and practicing the best tone to strike in this interview. I didn't even have anything formed in my mind. I just knew I was curious and angry, and that combination usually worked better for me than any other.
When Drinker came on the line, I said, 'Sir, I'm going with a story tomorrow detailing the highly unusual fact that you paid a personal call on one of the nation's leading militia leaders a week before the assassination attempt on President Hutchins. I was hoping, for your sake more than mine, that you would see your way to providing me with some sort of rationale for your visit.'
Well, that sounded pretty damned good to me, but probably less so to Drinker. All I heard on the other end was dead air, then some heavy breathing. I had half a mind to say, 'Hello? Anyone home?' but wisely and successfully suppressed that urge.
Finally, he spoke. 'I don't know where you could have gotten this, but you have wrong information.'
'Well, if it is, then I'll run a correction. But I don't think that's going to happen. I have it solidly, reliably, and on the record that you were up at Freedom Lake the week before the assassination attempt.
If you want to deny it or dispute it, you do so at your own peril.'
Federal agents in general, and assistant FBI directors specifically, are not accustomed to being addressed quite like this. No, they're used to being the ones in control, calling the shots, making others sweat. That partly explained the enjoyment I was deriving from this call. The fact I was in the right explained the rest of my good mood.
During the silence that followed, I played out my vague theories. I believed that Drinker and Nathaniel had met. If they had met, it had to have been for a reason, and I had the nagging suspicion it involved the ease with which Nathaniel had offered me the details on the Wyoming militia, and the willingness of Drinker to confirm the story. If this were indeed true, I didn't know why. But what I did know, and all that mattered in giving me the upper hand in this discussion, was that a federal agent meeting with a militia leader a week or so before an assassination attempt made for significant news, whether I knew the reason or not. In the newspaper business, that's what's known as leverage.
Drinker said, 'Can we talk off the record?'
Playing hardball, I replied, 'No. Not now. Not until I get some sort of on-the-record explanation.'
That was met with more silence. Eventually Drinker said, 'Well, then, maybe I'll just refer you to the bureau flack.'
'Fine,' I replied. 'Either way, there's a story in tomorrow's paper about you flying out to Idaho two weeks ago. You can either enlighten me or ignore me. Your choice.'
'If I tell you the truth, if that truth gets published in your paper, it puts someone's life in imminent danger. I don't want that on my head, and I don't think you want it on yours, either. We need to be off the record.'
In the news media, there are four conditions of discussions between sources of information and the reporters who seek knowledge from them.
The first and most obvious is known as 'on the record.' It is also the best and most straightforward, meaning anything and everything that a given person tells you can be used in the newspaper, fully attributable to whoever said it. Unfortunately life, and especially the journalism that supposedly reflects it, isn't always so cut and dried. People might be fired for talking to reporters, or reviled, or even endangered, so all too often conversations between sources and reporters tend to be 'on background.' That means all the information is fully usable, attributable to some mutually negotiated title such as a 'senior administration official' or a 'ranking federal law enforcement officer.' But the vague attribution not only masks the identity, it also shades the potential motives for spreading that information. Reporters have to beware, but often don't. The third condition is 'deep background,' which means a source will provide information to a reporter provided it is not attributable to anyone or anything at all. In this case, the reporter-or more often, a columnist-can use the information in an analysis as either opinion or fact. The fourth, and most extreme, is 'off the record,' which, in its purest form, means the source is providing the information only to give the reporter a better understanding of what is happening, but the information cannot be used in a story unless obtained elsewhere.
The problem with all this is that only the best reporters and most knowledgeable sources fully understand the intricacies of the ground rules. Most don't actually have a clue, and 'off the record' too often means 'on background' to the reporter or the source. Inevitably and invariably, people get burned, sources become irate, and inaccuracies end up in print.
Interesting gambit by him. I said, 'All right. Tell me off the record, and we'll figure out afterward how to attribute it.'
As if trying to get the words out before I changed my mind, he immediately said, 'Daniel Nathaniel is a paid federal informant. I received a tip on an assassination conspiracy, and I went to him to try to measure its validity. We had worked together on other cases, and he's always proven helpful and reliable.'
To say the least, I was stunned, though I tried not to show it. Here was a guy, Nathaniel, whose entire purpose in life was supposed to be rallying against the federal government he claimed to despise, and instead he was actually on the FBI payroll, squirreling away money made from informing on his militia brethren. And I thought I knew the guy.
In the verbal gap, Drinker said, 'You see what I mean. You write this, Nathaniel's underlings kill him by tomorrow night.'
That they would, but that wasn't my particular problem, or even my most significant concern. I asked, 'So were the two of you on the level about this Wyoming militia leader, or was that a concocted story?'
'We believe it to be true, though obviously I don't have it hard enough to bring charges yet. But Nathaniel told me then what he seems to be telling you now. This is what he had heard.'
I frantically tried making sense out of what he was saying, but trying to piece the information together felt like shuffling a deck of cards.
'So are you saying that you suspected an assassination attempt was coming before the president ever got shot?'
'Yes.'
'And you couldn't do anything about it?'
'Well, we tried.'
I said, 'I'd like to put that part on background, that a federal informant-unnamed in print-confirmed your suspicions of a conspiracy.'
He paused for a moment, then said, 'Sounds like as reasonable a compromise as I can get.'
I said, 'Two more things. First, on the record. You're sure that corpse you have is of a guy named Tony Clawson?'
