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LOOKING BACK ON THE EVENTS OF 2007 |
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Hi Bevi. May I still call you that? I suppose a nickname is presumptuous given the brevity of our connection, but that is still how I think of you. By my time clock, you've now been out of the I'll cut to the chase: Even though we have not kept up, I know a news junkie like yourself must have followed every beat of the 2004 election, including the litany of conspiracy theories about the paperless electronic voting machines and how they were used to steal the election. The stories have finally died and many, frankly, deserve their place on the trash heap. But if you are the hound I remember, I believe I have some information that will interest you. I'm not talking about Internet rumors, Air Two and a half years ago I hired on with Wiebold Electronics‑‑yes I did become a programmer‑‑and I think you might guess what my assignment was. I am not the person who wrote the code, but I am in close contact with the individual who was considered the technical lead. We both feel very conflicted about our involvement in this project and are looking for a way to make this public. You can reach me at the number below. Obviously there are risks involved. If I haven't heard from you in two weeks I will absolutely respect your reticence and take the information elsewhere. Sincerely, Wesley Keats * The letter trembled in If she read it again maybe she could find the phrase that would turn it into a joke: the prank of a mischievous friend, or Wesley himself, pursuing some wrongheaded notion of a funny way to re-connect? But Wesley did not traffic much in humor‑‑a major reason she had never been that interested in him, despite his thick tawny hair, sidelong smile, and one of the best clitoral‑attention ethics she had ever experienced. Obviously there are risks involved. That was the sentence she ought to be thinking about. Just reading the letter made risk a land she had already entered. A clamminess took hold in her skin, as she watched a tumble of images: a thuggish forefinger stopping under her name in the phone book, the door splintering, glass shattering. Wesley's circling hand: that was also in the brew‑‑once you had a thought like that it was hard to dispel, just as she could not dispel her regret that she was not the abundantly published, Lois Lane-spunky journalist he had undoubtedly supposed. She had actually gotten fired from her first journalism job as an editorial assistant for a suburban newspaper chain. Deadlines made her eyes water, but the politics had been worse. After her one assigned interview‑‑it was with a member of the Housing Commission whose only qualification was his acquaintance with the Mayor‑‑her subject ultimately came after the paper with lawyers, claiming he had been misquoted. The good news was that Who needed such pressure at waitress wages? Now she coordinated sales appointments for a linoleum company. A holding pattern, she told herself, while she pursued journalism at her own pace, on subjects of her own choosing: "Women in Unions," "Was Jesus Real?" Most eventually saw publication‑‑not in Harpers, the New Yorker, the Nation, whose rejections she let trickle in first‑‑but in a small online magazine with a circulation that just slightly outnumbered its contributors. What did she remember of Wesley Keats? There were his edgy silences, his encyclopedic knowledge of tea, the way he slid into every political discussion the declaration: "I think of politicians as entertainers." But her epithets he disciplined: "You can't always resolve things by vilifying the other side," he once told her in front of friends, making her feel like an ideological shrew. At the time it had seemed less connected to a passionate equanimity than to a core belief that only his rants were to be trusted. But still, he was a level-headed guy, hardly a candidate to go flying over the edge a few years down the road, or to become the follower of someone who had. The clamminess in her skin returned. Maybe this was the sort of thing you immediately turned over to the police. Or perhaps she should call her old journalism professor, Dr. Massey. Would he still be on the faculty? No matter. She already knew what Massey would tell her‑‑the only thing he could legitimately say‑‑the course of action she knew she had already decided upon: meet the guy and see what he's got. * Five minutes later the door opened and there he was, looking trim and at ease in a dark leather jacket, a multi-zippered travel bag strapped over his shoulder. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, and somehow less tawny, almost a standard brown, as if hounded into conformity by time. But his eyes were still bright and alive, swiveling rapidly as he walked past the tables, and stopping the moment they found her. "Hi, Bevi" "Hello." "Am I late?" "I think you're still technically early. I just got here first." He nodded pleasantly, then excused himself to head to the service counter, returning shortly with a thick steaming mug. "They have good ginseng here. They use Siberian leaves which are much milder than what's grown domestically." "So you're still up on all that?" "It's a cheaper fixation than wine." She was not prepared for small talk, but maybe it was best‑‑a chance to assess him in a familiar realm, where insanity would be easier to pinpoint. In short order they covered the traffic, campus food, the short days of January, and even the old Bush I.Q. story: the hottest rumor on campus a few years back, known to journalism and non‑journalism students alike. According to most versions, someone had obtained the results of George W. Bush's National Guard I.Q. tests and was shopping them to whoever might be interested, including some media-connected icons of the U.C. Faculty. "I guess nothing ever came of it," said "Nothing comes of a lot of things. " "There were a half dozen lawsuits filed after the election, but you'd never know it from the network news. On election day 2004, at "I thought you didn't like those academic speculations." It came out more contrarian than she had intended, and she tried to soften the effect with a smile. "It's not a question of like. They're just not proof. It’s one thing to call something surprising, but another to explain how it happened." He spoke with his arm fishing through the mouth of his travel bag, eventually withdrawing a thick manila envelope and laying it flat on the table. "What's that?" "What I mentioned in my letter‑‑the serial numbers of five thousand machines containing malicious code. There's also some technical stuff‑‑don't worry, you don't have to understand it‑‑that would tell a technician what he had to do to retrieve the code. Or she. Heh, I do that." He spoke with a muted voice and she hoped it was low enough. As an experiment, she tried to see if she could still hear the two women behind her. Good. Nothing. But when she peeked over her shoulder they were gone. "And, two years later, this code is still sitting on those machines?" she asked, turning back to Wesley. "Wouldn't it have been erased by now?" "It has been erased. And the code doing the erasing has been erased too. But when something is erased from a hard drive‑‑I'm giving you the short version‑‑it doesn't just go away. It simply becomes invisible to the average user looking through a Windows interface. But if a tech-savvy person knew where to look, and it's in here,"‑‑he tapped the envelope‑‑"they could still find the traces. In this case, those traces would reveal instructions to record every fourteenth Kerry vote as a vote for Bush. Do the math. Those machines processed over twenty percent of the total vote. Skewing the numbers by just seven percent would be more than enough to change the outcome." She took a deep breath. To hell with the journalist persona‑‑the important thing now was clarity. "Why do this through me? Why don't you call the New York Times, or Washington Post, or any news organization with actual resources? I don't have any clout." Wesley shrugged. "I'm a techie, not a journalist. You're the only person I know who has the vaguest idea of how these things work." "How they work? I once got run out of Dodge for pissing off a Housing Commissioner. If this got printed, true or not, do you have any idea what would come out of the woodwork?" "Of course. That's why all the relevant information is backed up on the Internet, or will be. If the need arises, I'll see that you have a way to retrieve it." "Wesley, I'm not sure you're comprehending the rather formidable state of my obscurity. Do you really think I can just hack this out and have someone turn it into headlines? I can't get my own stuff published‑‑even when it's not political. And, as you just pointed out, those Wesley nodded as she spoke, for a moment seeming to grant the validity of everything she was saying. Then she realized it was not his intent at all. "I think this is different, Bevi." "How?" "I've just given you the location of a smoking gun. If I'm making this all up it will be easily exposed. But if not, if there is irrefutable evidence the 2004 election was rigged, call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think that somewhere in America there is a news organization that would print that, or at least consider the evidence. Doesn't that make sense?" She thought about that. It did. * She turned off the set and looked at the envelope again. I don't know whether this information is true or not, but I'm passing it on to you, she would say tomorrow when she called the New York Times, or the Associated Press, or maybe even the police. She could do that; pass the burden to legitimate authority, get off the hook, and no one would be the wiser, except for one former boyfriend. Good. Case settled. And the more her stomach relaxed, the clearer it became that this was the sensible course. But later, as she washed some left-over dishes, the hot water running over her wrists, she found herself probing that other reality‑‑the one where she actually wrote the article, taking her shot at the journalistic jackpot, despite the infinitesimal odds. It took awhile to recognize the fragments of self-honesty that were still trying to coalesce‑‑a part of her had already factored it out: there were times when the infinitesimal came through. And if it did, she wanted the glory. * PROGRAMMER CITES MASSIVE VOTE FRAUD By Wesley Keats, a programmer who worked for Wiebold Electronics, the nation's primary manufacturer of electronic voting machines, claims to possess direct evidence that over 5,000 Wiebold machines were rigged to increase the vote count for President Bush in the state of Keats, who worked for Wiebold 2002-2004, did not write the code himself, but claims to have been in contact with one of the lead programmers. He also claims to possess technical information which can recover the original programs, even though those programs have been "erased" in the conventional sense. "What you have is 5,000 machines that still contain instructions to award President Bush votes that were intended for his opponent," Keats told a reporter. President Bush carried As of this writing neither Wiebold Electronics nor the Bush Administration have responded to requests for comments. According to Mr. Keats, the existence of the malicious code was known to members of the Wiebold hierarchy, including CEO Walter O'Kell, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a major donor to George W. Bush's presidential campaign. O'Kell attracted brief attention before the election when he pledged his commitment to "helping The article continued with additional details about the code and closed on Keats' pledge to cooperate with law enforcement should he be approached for additional information. She called the New York Times, fully expecting‑‑though she should have known better‑‑to be given a secret fax number so the article could be evaluated immediately. Instead she was instructed to send it in by mail and take her customary place over-the-transom. As punishment, she also mailed copies to the Washington Post and the Associated Press. And then she waited...and waited...and waited.... * DEAR CONTRIBUTER: THANK YOU FOR THINKING OF THE NEW YORK TIMES. YOUR SUBMISSION HAS BEEN GIVEN CAREFUL CONSIDERATION, HOWEVER WE ARE UNABLE TO OFFER PUBLICATION AT THIS TIME. WE REGRET THAT THE SHEER VOLUME OF SUBMISSIONS DOES NOT PERMIT INDIVIDUAL COMMENT. WE WISH YOU LUCK IN PLACING YOUR WORK.
In short order, similar replies arrived from the Washington Post and the Associated Press. On one level she was hardly surprised; she was accustomed to rejection, and, in fact, had never placed anything within her first three tries. But on another level‑‑the optimistic, ya'-gotta-believe level‑‑she knew she had sold herself the notion that this time, given what had been dumped in her lap, the dynamics would be entirely different. "They couldn't deal with what you had to say," her friend Liz Pettibone told her. The artist's lament. She could not believe how quickly she was ready to run with it, even though she knew exactly how small it looked when other wannabes took on this mantle. The critical question was what to do next: did she try other large news organizations, now that a taste of the likely outcome had brought her back to Earth? Did she go straight to old reliable MindBlog, which was always friendly to her submissions, offering instant online exposure to its national readership of ninety? She knew how that would sit with Wesley and formed a sentence in defense: "I did not just take the easy out. Sometimes you settle for what's possible." A decision put off for a day can easily be put off for another. And then an entire week. When the phone rang in the middle of her Tuesday dinner she assumed it was Wesley, checking up, even though they hadn't spoken since the café. But the voice on the line was somebody else, and her first reaction was relief. "Yes, I'm Ms. Handerly. You're who?" "Sandor Mendez, She aborted a reflexive "yes." She was a journalist, Keats was a source; this sounded like law. "What's this about?" "I understand that you have had conversations with Mr. Keats about computer code that may have resided on certain voting machines that were used in "Go on." "Well, Mr. Keats has also been in contact with this office, and has made some fairly serious charges. I have a forty-eight hour window to decide whether or not these charges can be substantiated, and if the answer is yes we are prepared to start requesting warrants and the right to impound a number of machines. Mr. Keats has gotten our attention by providing a limited number of these machine IDs, and he's indicated that you have the rest." Her mind was a scramble. What were the journalistic ethics of this? It was what Wesley wanted, right? Surely ethics could not demand that she continue collecting rejection slips, even as someone with clout offered to pick up the ball. Please hold while I patch in Professor Massey. Out of nowhere, a question presented itself, and she was determined to ask it calmly. "If Mr. Keats is trying to get your office to act, I'd think he'd be all too willing to give you those serial numbers. Why would he force you to go through me?" "You're complaining?" "I beg your pardon?" "Ms. Handerly, the county prosecutor's office does not usually conduct its business by negotiating with members of the media. I've just given you information known to no other reporter in "I'm not complaining." He had called her a reporter! Was it wrong to savor that, even in the midst of a crisis? If only she had said something smarter than, not complaining. "Look, I can't do a quid quo pro here, and I'm not expecting you to propose one either. The fact is that I could legally subpoena those serial numbers, but it would be a lot easier, and faster, if I didn't have to. Besides, I'm a cooperative fellow. Do you have questions? Send them down. I'll tell you anything I legally can." "How do you mean send them?" "Same way I'd like you to send me those machine IDs. I'll give you a special fax number." * "Nightline" broadcast of
* There was her mother, complaining about her difficulty getting through and then saying, twenty different times, be careful. There was a television station in Professor Massey agreed to see her immediately, canceling his student appointments. She sat in his office, staring at the phone on his desk, uncoiling a bit with every second it did not ring. "I'm freaked," she told him, feeling about half her normal size in the high-backed leather chair. "That's how I'm handling it. I'm totally fucking freaked." He stared back softly, his thick white hair with its too-centered part tumbling over his ears. His eyes, which had always seemed a little owlish, were now reservoirs of sympathy, or was there something else in their gleam, perhaps a guilty thrill? One of his own in the spotlight, how cool. " "But how would that happen? The judge isn't saying anything, the county prosecutor isn't saying anything‑‑so far I'm the only person outside of the legal system who knows what this impound order is about." "On paper that's true. In practice, with the resources these national news organizations have, you are not going to be the only source for long. In a week you'll be such old news that you couldn't get one of these outlets to talk to you if you wanted them to." "You think so." "I know it. And, by the way, I'm very proud." * She left feeling somewhat calmer, through still afraid that half the people on the street were secretly following her. At home, ten messages were waiting on her machine, but for the first thirty minutes the phone did not ring at all. And when it did ring, she found herself surprisingly less apprehensive. Thirty minutes‑‑not bad‑‑clearly Massey had been right; the peak had past, the frenzy was winding down. "Am I speaking with Beverly Handerly?" "Yes." "Ms. Handerly, this is Joan Wilkerson with the NBC News division. I'd like to inquire about your availability for a February twenty-fifth 'Meet the Press.'" * She was to appear a week from the following Sunday. So how weird to find herself, on the next morning, just another person scrunched onto the bus on her way to work. A numbness permeated her core as she gazed at her mostly Asian and Hispanic coach mates, feeling as if she now inhabited an entirely separate dimension; she could scream in their faces, blow in their eyes, and they would never flinch, never break from their morning stupors. As soon as she got to her desk she called her home answering machine and already there were two messages: one from a newspaper, one from a crank. She repeated the cycle every half hour, and on her third call there was a message from NBC‑‑ah, someone from her new dimension‑‑saying that, before the broadcast, they needed to undergo a confirmatory check with her source; could she put Mr. Keats in touch with them? At home she rummaged through the packet Wesley had given her for any trace of additional phone numbers, but nothing offered the slightest promise. Damn, why hadn't she asked where he was living? Was there any chance he had kept his old college apartment? But that was in When she pulled up to the austere two-story stucco building at the Arguello address, it was immediately obvious that the upper unit was vacant. The single window was a black curtainless void, but the bottom floor was clearly occupied. The lower window was also dark, but it was framed by draperies, which flickered with the telltale dance of television light. "Excuse me. I'm looking for Wesley Keats." "He move." "Do you know where he moved?" She regarded "Tuesday. Still owe money." "So you have no idea where he is?" "No. If you find out, please tell me." And with that the door swung shut. (space) Back in her apartment, She grabbed the remote, and pressed the button. On screen, a portly white‑haired man was standing on the steps of a glassy building; multiple microphones eclipsed his face. "...I can just repeat what has already been released by consul. Wesley Keats has never worked for Wiebold Electronics. We've combed through our records and cannot find anyone by that name who has as much as sent us a resume. If someone is now claiming otherwise they are either making it up out of whole cloth, or they've fallen for a hoax." * Rush Limbaugh broadcast of ...this is what they do. It's pure character assassination‑‑the same kind of biased misinformation we'd expect from Michael Moore, or one of the other luminaries of the left. It's based on nothing. They can't even find this guy, and here's something I will flat out guarantee you, a lot of people are going to be wiping egg off their faces over this‑‑I'm taking about the Ohio district attorney, or prosecutor, or whatever they call them. And that freelance reporter, what's-her-name, and all the network executives who aired this bilge. Mail them towels, folks. And what do you think they'll learn from this stupidity? Nothing. A big fat zero. Because‑‑and here's another guarantee‑‑two years from now, three years, they'll be recycling the same garbage. * Voice mail message time stamped: "Hi, * On the bus ride home she felt freer to more fully examine her feelings. Hadn't she wanted it to all go away? But now it felt much like grief for an unwanted stillborn; once it was gone, there was a hollowness she hadn't expected. It wasn't until she was in her kitchen peeling the packaging off some frozen lasagna, that something Wesley had said at the café came back to her: "...all the relevant information will be backed up on the Internet." She set the half-opened lasagna down, and went straight to her computer, where she summoned Google and keyed in every combination she could think of: "Wesley Keats" Election Bush Keats "electronic machines" Wiebold Keats She got plenty of hits, but most were simply regurgitations of the news. And, even as she typed, she fully understood that a clandestine site‑‑especially the kind Wesley was likely to have set up‑‑was highly unlikely to be exposed in this fashion. Eventually, she gave up and checked her email, which was full of several days' accumulated junk: penis enlargement penis enlargement V*I*C*O*D*I*N wanna cum to my party meds meds free free free She was about to delete the tenth penis enlargement offer when something different about it caught her eye. The full subject line read: Penis enlargement with Siberian Ginseng tea. Her heart pounded as she clicked on the email. There was no text, only a link. She clicked on the hypertext, then stared at the floating hourglass, briefly fearing the computer had locked, until an image slowly resolved. It had that speckled, scratched, microfilm look; something you might get from a copy machine at Walgreen's, back when they were still called Photostat machines. The block type heading read: "Wiebold Electronics Application for Employment." The lines below were filled in with freehand print, starting with the name: Wesley Keats. Below this document were several others which looked like payroll deposit notices, replete with account numbers. And below that was a W-2 form, signed by Wesley Keats. Her first call the next morning was to the New York Times. This time she found, quite miraculously, that her name alone was enough to get her the National Desk. Her next call was to NBC. (space) "Meet the Press" broadcast of
"Well, I was fresh from college‑‑"...out of college. Syntax. Syntax. "‑‑learning an early lesson. That's what politicians will say when they don't like what you've written. But when you compare that to an election that's been‑‑” "You haven't answered the question. If there wasn't some validity to that Housing Commissioner's charges, why would a publisher fire you?" She sensed the seconds slipping away; she would only be on for a few minutes. Russert gazed back at her with a vague half smile, eyes swimming, his face looming like something wooden in the ashen sheen of his makeup. She could actually smell it. Or was that her own makeup she was smelling? Calm. Calm. Sometimes the best answer is the truth. "My credibility? Well, I think you're right to question that. All I can offer are those things we already know. Wesley Keats really did work for Wiebold, as those documents proved. There really were machines that shaved votes, which the county prosecutor has confirmed. You'd also be right to question the integrity of the entire election‑‑" And whatever else you do, you can't come off sounding like a bitch. "‑‑and we shouldn’t forget that Wesley Keats is really missing. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to suggest it might have something to do with his involvement in this. He’s a friend of mine so it would be pointless to feign disinterest. But I want to know‑‑where's Wesley? Russert: Hold that thought. Back in a minute. * She spent the flight back savoring certain moments of the broadcast: there really were machines that shaved votes and squirming over others: how would those deep breaths have looked on the air? Like someone in the throes of apoplexy? And what about: that’s what politicians will say...? That could have sounded bitchy. The last thing she expected when she emerged from the exit tube was a crowd. Her first thought was that she had walked into the middle of some labor action‑‑had there been something in the wind she had missed? But why would her name be on the picket signs? WELCOME, "I had nothing to do with this," said her friend Liz Pettibone," walking toward her with a pumpkin smile and swinging her car keys. "Jesus Christ. How can this be happening?" "I guess some people like what you said." * So here was the plan. She would quit her job at the linoleum company, cash in her new notoriety, then freelance on a full time basis‑‑a political thing here, a human interest piece there, maybe an occasional music review‑‑hopefully moving out of the white-hot spotlight as the political situation quieted down. But as more became known about the election, the situation grew anything but quiet. The first demonstrations were small, but quickly gathered momentum: 300,000 in The experts also battled. Some said that despite the enormity of the crime there was essentially no constitutional remedy; that the Constitution simply stated that once the electors counted the votes, "the person having the greatest number of votes...shall be the President." George Will, Newsweek ...and, of course, from predictable quarters, we’ve already heard the calls for impeachment. They have gotten it half right: impeachment is a constitutional remedy, but like the analogous remedies in our criminal justice codes, it may only be applied to the actual perpetrator of a crime‑‑not a bystander, however he may have benefited. So an election was fixed. Has anyone proved that George W. Bush fixed it? That’s the bar the impeachment crowd has to hurdle.
There is, of course, a constitutional remedy: Mr. Bush can resign. And while this may not be something he would ever do willingly, if a delegation comprised of the elder statesmen of both parties were to knock on the White House door, and publicly beseech him to make such a sacrifice for the good of the country, the pressure would be overwhelming. (space) On April 14, 2007, apparently concluding that only dramatic action could save his presidency, President Bush, speaking in the Rose Garden, announced that in order to, "...heal the divisions caused by the election’s uncertitude, Vice President Cheney has voluntarily chosen to step down. And in the spirit of a new unity, I have decided to replace him with a Democrat‑‑Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta." Some hailed this move. Some disparaged it. Some cynically scoffed that nothing could be healed by so transparent a gesture as turning to the most milksop Democrat in the land. Was it the milksop talk that spurred Mineta? Was it simple opportunism, as Bush’s numbers continued to plummet and more of the electorate screamed for his head? Historians may never agree. All that is known for certain is that on (space) "Nightline" broadcast of
And it lasted a full five minutes until she had to acknowledge the truth. She knew she wanted the glory.
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