Agent John Gallagher was alone, patiently waiting inside the media conference room of the FBI’s New York office, slouched in one of a half dozen black padded chairs that surrounded a large glass table. An imageless HD flat-screen filled one of the room’s walls, where agents would routinely gather to watch and dissect recorded witness interviews and review surveillance footage. Gallagher’s video interview with New York’s favorite shock-jock radio host, “Ivan the Terrible,” was cued up and ready to go. But Regional Director Miles Zadernack was running late. Gallagher tried to pass the time by going over in his mind what Zadernack’s response to the interview would be, although he already had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Zadernack was a rule-book fanatic. Straitlaced to the hilt. Gallagher’s investigative techniques, though effective, were admittedly eccentric at times. And if there was one thing that his boss, Miles Zadernack, couldn’t stomach, it was anything that strayed outside the pages.
Gallagher took a couple of gulps from the carton of milk he’d brought with him. It was the only thing that could stop the crushing, burning sensation in his chest. The doctor called it gastric reflux. Jobrelated stress…but that was for the yuppie-types on Wall Street, not for him. Gallagher had his own personal diagnosis and figured the stuff he’d inhaled on 9/11 had finally caught up to him. So he didn’t bother filling the prescription. Downing some milk seemed to help. That was good enough.
“Come on,” he muttered as he shot a look at his watch. “It’s show-time; let’s go.”
Then he heard Zadernack’s footsteps in the hallway. Even paced. Not too fast or too slow. His boss stepped into the room, wearing a dark navy suit and solid nonpatterned tie as usual. And unlike Gallagher’s, Zadernack’s ties never had any hint of stains from his last chili-dog.
“Morning, John,” Miles began in his monotone. “Let’s see what you have for us today.”
“Teretsky, the talk-radio guy, better known as Ivan the Terrible,” Gallagher began. “I videoed my interview with him. Couldn’t believe he agreed without a fight. And no lawyer with him either. That was a shocker.”
“I see the man enjoys litigation,” Miles replied, glancing through Teretsky’s investigation file. “They must know him pretty well down at the clerk of the court’s office.”
“Yeah, I hear they had to build a new wing just to store all the files from his lawsuits,” Gallagher quipped.
Miles gave a courteous smile and said, “Says here he sued the NYPD—twice.” Then, in an attempt at a colorful exchange, Miles added, “Looks like he’ll sue any guy who wears pants.”
“Yeah, and some who don’t.” He didn’t want Miles, the posterchild for the humorless, to have the last word on anything, especially one-liners.
Miles closed the file and nodded toward the remote control. Gallagher clicked it and took another gulp of milk.
On the screen, Ivan was sitting in his studio chair. Just before speaking he reached up and pushed the boom microphone out of the way so he could look straight into the eyes of his FBI interrogator.
Ivan was bald-headed with a full black beard and a slightly wild, roaming look in his eyes. Ivan adjusted his dark-rimmed glasses.
“Okay, Mr. FBI man,” Ivan began. “You called for this party. So let’s p-a-r-t-e-e…”
Gallagher started with the usual drill. He declared for the record that Ivan was giving his permission for the recording. He gave the date, time, and place of the interview, and that Ivan was speaking with him voluntarily and under no coercion or duress and had the right to have an attorney present but had waived that right.
Gallagher chose not to give him his Miranda rights for two reasons. Technically he was simply a witness and not a suspect. But more importantly, he didn’t want to light Ivan’s fire. At least not yet. Not before they’d even started.
The FBI agent identified the scope of the interview for his interviewee. He told Ivan that they were investigating the North Korean missile crisis and the information Ivan had received regarding the nukes coming toward New York City.
Then Gallagher started into the details of that day. The time Ivan got to the studio that afternoon. The time he first learned about the missiles. And more importantly, how he found out about them.
“A telephone call,” Ivan said. “It was from some woman.”
“Who?”
“She said her first name…like I was supposed to know her or something, which I didn’t. Can’t recall her name now. I think I blanked it out of my head ‘cuz of what she said next.”
“Which was?”
“She started talking really intense at me, but not loud, sort of whispering like she didn’t want anyone else to hear, and she said, ‘Get out of New York now’…or if I couldn’t do that then I was supposed to head for the basement. That there were two North Korean missiles heading for Manhattan. Then she hung up.”
“You went on the air with the fact that New York was under nuclear attack based on a phone call from some woman you didn’t know?”
“‘Course not. What, do I look stupid to you? Naw, we then put a call in to a Pentagon contact. He sounded a tad nervous and refused to comment. We made one more phone call, to the woman at the local emergency preparedness office. I posed as an NYPD officer and acted like I knew what was going on…she spilled the beans in two seconds flat.”
“Which phone were you at when you got the original call about incoming missiles?”
“The call came directly into the studio line,” Ivan said pointing to the phone on his desk.
“Is that the same telephone number the public uses to call into your program?”
“Naw. The public line’s a different number. We use this one in the studio for internal stuff. We have our program guests call this number. Also, our tech guys call on that line.”
“Do you have any kind of electronic log or caller-ID on that line?”
“Nope. Only on the public line.”
“But your tech staff, and any special guests on your show, someone you’re going to interview on-air, they would have this studio number?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like to see a list of all your guests for the last twelve months,” Gallagher requested from the other side of the camera. “And all your tech people. Anybody with access to that number. Let’s start there.”
“Are you nuts?” Ivan blurted out. He was now sitting perfectly erect in his chair, as if he’d just received a low-voltage electrical charge.
“That’s confidential information,” Ivan said. “We got rights. My lawyer says we got a journalist’s privilege not to disclose information to people like you.”
“Tell your lawyer to go back to law school, Ivan,” Gallagher fired back. “The guest list is public information because you’ve already aired it. And probably put it up on your website. Besides, I could get it from the FCC or from your public file. Do you really want to play the legal game with me? I can have you served with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. Then you can be forced to testify. Unless you want to claim your Fifth Amendment right, that is. So, do you want to claim your right to remain silent because you might incriminate yourself, Ivan? You feeling guilty about the deaths of those New Yorkers who were killed in the melee that happened because you opened your big mouth on the air without talking to us first?”
Ivan exploded. “I don’t believe this! You saying I’m a murderer?” The shock jock was now on his feet swearing and screaming at his interrogator and putting his fists to the side of his head like he was doing some kind of bizarre ritual dance.
But Gallagher kept rolling. “Now you don’t have to answer my questions. Call your lawyer. We can stop right now. You have that right, Ivan. In the meantime, I’ll talk to my lawyers. Only difference is that my federal attorneys have the power to put people in prison. Your attorney, on the other hand, only has the power to send you and your radio station a bill in an amount close to the budget of a small country. So, you wanna rumble? Bring it on…”
Ivan kept on sputtering. What the video was not catching was the look on Gallagher’s face off-camera, grinning at the out-of-control talk-show host. Finally, Ivan started to collect himself. Then he pointed to the camera and shouted, “Turn that thing off!”
The picture went dark.
“What happened next?” Miles asked. Gallagher knew his boss and recognized in his voice that strained attempt to keep cool.
Gallagher reached into his briefcase, took out a substantial pile of papers, and tossed them onto the table.
“All the names and addresses of each guest on Ivan’s talk show for the past year. Plus the contact information for the station’s tech staff.”
“Your approach is not protocol,” Miles said matter-of-factly, but his eyes were closing nervously as he spoke. “You know the standard procedure. You go to the U.S. attorney’s office. They go to the DOJ and get permission for a subpoena to the telephone company for a listing of the telephone calls to Mr. Teretsky’s studio. Set a court date. The telephone company responds—”
“My way’s quicker.”
Miles pointed at the video screen. “I don’t like what I just saw,” he warned. “I’ll have to decide whether I write you up because of this.”
“Miles, think about it. We can still get a subpoena if you want. As this investigation continues—”
“If this investigation continues,” Miles threatened with a little less monotone than usual. Then he stood up. “Please secure that videotape in the evidence room,” he demanded and turned to leave.
Gallagher was stunned. He had to chew on that for a minute while he remained in his chair. Finally he reached over and snatched up the papers off the table. He couldn’t believe what his boss was suggesting. That the FBI would actually drop an investigation into leaked information which compromised national security.
Come on, Miles, what’s going on here?