Faith said.
CHAPTER 16
ROBERT THORN HILL REPLACED THE PHONE RECEIVER and looked around his
office, a disturbed expression on his face. His men had found the nest
empty, and one of them had even been bitten by a dog. There had been
reports of a man and woman running down the street. This was all just
a little too much. Thornhill was a patient man, used to working on
projects for many years, but still, there were limits to what he could
tolerate. His men had listened to the message Buchanan had left on
Lee’s answering machine. They had taken the tape and played it back
for Thornhill over his secure phone line.
“So you’ve hired a private investigator, Danny,” Thornhill muttered to
himself. “You’ll pay for that one.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll
make you pay.”
The police had responded to the burglar alarm, but when Thornhill’s men
had flashed official-looking IDs they had quickly backed off. Legally,
the CIA had no authority to operate within the United States. Thus,
Thornhill’s team routinely carried several types of identification and
would select one depending on who confronted them.
The patrolmen had been sent off with instructions to bury deeply all
that they had seen. Still, Thornhill didn’t like it. It was all too
close to the edge. There were holes there, ways for people to gain an
advantage over him.
He went to the window and looked outside. It was a beautiful fall day,
the colors starting to turn. As he studied the pleasing foliage, he
primed his pipe, but unfortunately that was all he could do. CIA
headquarters was a nonsmoking building. The deputy director had a
balcony outside his office where Thornhill could sit and smoke, but it
was not the same. During the Cold War, the CIA offices had been as
foggy as steam baths. Tobacco helped one think, Thornhill believed. It
was a minor thing, yet it symbolized all that had gone wrong with the
place.
In Thornhill’s opinion, the CIA’s downfall had accelerated in 1994 with
the Aldrich Ames’ debacle. Thornhill still winced every time he
thought of the former CIA counterintelligence officer being arrested
for spying for the Soviets and later the Russians. And of course, as
fate would have it, the FBI had broken the case. After that, the
president had issued a directive ordering an FBI agent to be made a
permanent employee of the CIA. From then on, this FBI agent oversaw
the agency’s counterespionage efforts and had access to all CIA files.
An FBI agent on the premises! His nose in all their secrets! Not to
be outdone by the executive branch, the idiotic Congress had followed
with a law requiring all government agencies, including the CIA, to
notify the FBI whenever there was evidence that classified information
might have been improperly disclosed to foreign powers. The result:
The CIA took all the risk and gave the prize to the FBI. Thornhill
seethed. It was a direct usurpation of the CIA’s mission.
Thornhill’s rage was building. The CIA could no longer even put people
under surveillance or wiretap. If it had suspicions of someone, it had
to go to the FBI and request surveillance, electronic or otherwise. If
electronic surveillance was desired, then the FBI had to go to FISC,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and obtain authorization.
The CIA couldn’t even approach FISC on its own. It had to have its
hand held by Big Brother. Everything was stacked in the FBI’s favor.
Thornhill’s thoughts went into a tailspin as he reminded himself that
the shackles on the CIA weren’t just domestic; the Agency had to get
authorization from the president before commencing any covert
operations overseas. The congressional oversight committees had to be
told of any such operations in a timely fashion. And with the world of
espionage becoming more and more complicated, the CIA and FBI found
themselves continually running into each other over jurisdictional
squabbles, use of witnesses and informants and the like. Though it was
supposed to be a domestic agency only, the FBI, in reality, did
considerable work abroad, where it focused on antiterrorism and
anti-drug operations, including the collection and analysis of
information. Again, that hit right at the CIA’s home turf.