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Whaaaat?!?!?
Not under arrest?! I couldn’t believe it. That made no
sense. But he wasn’t toying with me. None of the other agents even
flinched. It must be true. Let’s test this:
“If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving,” I said.
“Where to?” the supervisory agent asked.
“To my dad’s, to ask him if I should cooperate.”
Cooperate—
yeah, sure.
But whatever I needed to say so I could get out of there, to someplace I
could feel comfortable.
The agent thought about it for a moment. If I wasn’t being arrested, what
was the point of making me stay there watching them ransack my
apartment?
“Okay,” he said.
They frisked me, found my wallet, and searched it. They found nothing
interesting inside. And they let me walk out.
Three agents followed me to my car. After I unlocked it, they started to
search. Shit!—they found a box of floppies I had overlooked in the glove
box. I was dismayed and worried. They were delighted.
When they had finished searching my car, they opened the doors and got
in, sitting there like we were best friends going on an outing together. I was
shocked.
I said, “What are you guys doing in my car?!”
“We’re going with you to your dad’s.”
“No, you’re not. Get out of my car!”
And whaddaya know? They did.
They got into two FBI cars and followed me for the drive to where my
father was then living, with a new girlfriend I didn’t much like.
When we got to my dad’s house, they said they wanted to go in with me.
I told them they couldn’t, that I wanted to have a discussion with him alone.
They didn’t leave, just got back into their cars and sat while I went
inside.
I hadn’t finished my cleanup at Teltec and needed to get back there
without an FBI surveillance team. When I looked out, they were still sitting
there. I went out and told them my dad and I had decided I was going to
consult an attorney before speaking with them. I was trying to give them a
glimmer of hope that I might cooperate, even though I had no intention of
doing so.
They finally left.
As soon as they were out of sight, I hustled to my car and sped to Teltec.
And why didn’t I get to meet Agent Ken McGuire or Pacific Bell’s Terry
Atchley on that fateful day? They had gone to De Payne’s, hoping to get
him to flip on me, rat me out.
Lewis offered to do exactly that. I’ve read the FBI report of the
conversation: Lewis keeps offering to talk, but keeps asking for assurances.
And he keeps saying that I’m dangerous and he’s afraid of me.
So I hadn’t been arrested, and I knew the agents wouldn’t find anything
incriminating in my apartment. My guess was that they were looking for
something more serious than cavorting with Lewis to charge me with.
At the time I still didn’t know that Teltec had been raided months earlier,
so I had no reason to think the Feds might be shaking down Kasden’s
apartment at the same time they were searching mine. But that was exactly
what they were doing, apparently having figured that my hacking might be
tied in somehow with Teltec’s illegal activities—accessing TRW with stolen
merchant credentials, and so on. So much for my bright idea that I could
safely stash my disks and notes at Mark’s.
But time might be on my side. My supervised release from my
conviction for hacking into DEC with Lenny DiCicco was due to expire in
less than three months. If the Feds hadn’t shown up with an arrest warrant
by then, I would be scot-free.
The computer I was using at Teltec didn’t have any encryption tools on
it, and I had to make sure the agents didn’t get anything more on me.
I pulled up at Teltec and dashed up the stairs. Fantastic—no team of
Federal agents at work. Unbelievable!
I sat down at the computer in my office and gave the commands for
erasing all data. In case you don’t already know this (it’s been in the news
from time to time, perhaps most notably when White House staffer Marine
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North’s cover-up attempt over the Iran-Contra
affair got tripped up), simply giving “Delete” commands doesn’t truly erase
data from a computer’s hard drive. Instead, it just changes the name of each
file to simply mark it as having been deleted; those items no longer show up
in searches, but they’re still stored on the drive, and they can be recovered.
So instead of just giving Delete commands, I used a program called
“WipeInfo,” part of the Norton Utilities suite. WipeInfo is designed not just
to mark files as deleted but to write over them several times so they can no
longer be recovered. When the program was done, there was no way a
single file of mine could have been recovered from that drive.
I called my Teltec boss Michael Grant and told him about the raid. He
wanted to know, “Where are you now?”
“I’m at the office.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m wiping my computer clean.”
He was furious and tried to order me to stop. Incredible. I had thought
we were a team; I had thought he and his father would be on my side.
Instead he was trying to talk me into leaving the evidence on my computer.
It sounded like the Teltec bosses might be hoping to slime their way out of
the trouble they were in by helping the Feds build a case against me.
In fact, one of my fellow employees at Teltec—another investigator who
had become a buddy of mine—later confirmed that this was exactly what
Michael Grant tried to do shortly after that: make a deal with the Feds to go
easy on him and his dad in exchange for their testifying against me.
I was sad and disappointed when my suspicions were confirmed. I had
thought Michael Grant was my friend. I never gave evidence against
anyone, even though I could have made deals that would have greatly
benefited me.
I guess when your friends are people who are breaking the law, you’re
naive if you expect loyalty.
A couple of days later, Michael Grant told me I was through at Teltec. I
guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
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