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THIRTY-SEVEN
Winning the Scapegoat Sweepstakes
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M
y new home was the Wake County Jail in downtown Raleigh, which
offered a decidedly different form of Southern hospitality. As I was being
booked, the Federal agents gave strict orders again and again and again that
I was not to be allowed anywhere near a phone.
I asked every uniform going past my cell to let me call my family. They
all might as well have been deaf.
But one jailer seemed to be a little more sympathetic. I gave her a story
about how I needed to call my family to arrange bail. She took pity on me
and after a short while moved me to a cell with a telephone.
My first call was to my mom; Gram had driven over so the two of them
could worry about me together. They were both in a highly emotional state,
very upset and distraught. How many times had I done this to them,
bringing such pain into their lives because their son/grandson was going
back to prison, perhaps for a very long time.
After that I called De Payne. Since all calls from jail cells are monitored,
I couldn’t say very much.
“Yes, hello?” mumbled a sleepy Lewis De Payne. It was around 1:00
a.m. California time, the morning of February 15, 1995.
“This is a collect call,” said the operator. “Caller, what’s your name?”
“Kevin.”
“Will you accept the charges?”
“Yeah,” said De Payne.
“I just was arrested by the FBI tonight. I’m in jail in Raleigh, North
Carolina. I just thought you ought to know,” I told my coconspirator.
He didn’t need me to spell out that he had to go into immediate cleanup
mode once again.
The next morning I’m taken to court for my first appearance, still in the
black sweats I wore to go to the gym some twelve hours ago, on my last
night of freedom.
I’m stunned to see that the courtroom is buzzing and packed, with every
seat filled. It seems like half the people in there have either a camera or a
reporter’s pad. It’s a media circus. You’d think the Feds had caught Manuel
Noriega.
My gaze settles on a man standing near the front of the courtroom, a
man I have never met in person but immediately recognize: Tsutomu
Shimomura. The FBI might never have caught me if he hadn’t become irate
enough about the break-in to his servers to drop everything else and lead the
parade to find me.
He glares at me.
He and his girlfriend are giving me the eagle eye, especially the lady.
John Markoff starts scribbling.
The hearing lasts only a few minutes, ending with an order from the
Magistrate that I be held without bail. And once again, that I be held
without access to a telephone.
I can’t stand the thought: I’m headed back to solitary.
As I’m being led out in handcuffs, I pass Shimmy. He’s won. Fair and
square. I nod to him and figuratively tip my hat: “I respect your skills,” I
tell him.
Shimmy returns the nod.
Coming out of the courthouse in chains, I hear shouts of
“Hey, Kev!”
I look
up to the balcony, where what seems like a hundred paparazzi are aiming
their cameras at me and now clicking away, flashbulbs going.
Oh, my God
,
I think.
This is a lot bigger than I thought
. I’m beside myself. How did I
come to be this much of a story?
Of course I didn’t see it when it was published, but Markoff’s article in the
next day’s
New York Times—
even longer than his Independence Day piece
of the year before, and once again on the front page—seemed certain to
cement the image of Osama bin Mitnick in the public’s mind. Markoff
quoted Kent Walker, the Assistant U.S. Attorney from San Francisco, as
saying, “[Mitnick] was arguably the most wanted computer hacker in the
world. He allegedly had access to trade secrets worth billions of dollars. He
was a very big threat.”
At the time of Markoff’s original July 4 story, I was wanted only for
violation of my supervised release, yet the story left readers with the
impression that I was a supervillain, a threat to every American. His
account of my arrest now ignited a fire under the rest of the media. The
item was picked up on
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