Free The Merchant of Secrets by Caroline Lowther

in early 2010.
     
    The drone program had been
gaining in popularity after the 2008 financial crisis because of its relatively
low cost and high efficiency. But while the budget crisis pushed drones to the
forefront of the US tactical aircraft arsenal, so did Abu Gharib .
The public outcry over advanced interrogation techniques, waterboarding in
particular, at black sites in Egypt, Poland, and Abu Gharib ,
left the C.I.A. feeling that it’s capabilities for extracting human
intelligence were diminished and it turned to an electronic substitute; drones,
to plug the gap.  Downloaded information was vastly more reliable than the
mutterings of a prisoner who had been subjected to days of torture. Unmanned
aircraft vehicles served the U.S. well as a platform for intelligence
gathering, especially in remote locations like the desert or the rugged terrain
of Afghanistan where human assets would not have been successful.  
     
    “IED’s”, short for improvised electronic devices, were
yet another reason for the increasing popularity of drones. The cheaply
constructed bombs hidden in containers, lying on roads and stuffed into the
clothing of suicide bombers were wreaking havoc on our military forces deployed
in Afghanistan. By pulling our ground troops and replacing them with
U.A.V.’s-drones, the military capabilities were expanded beyond the limits
imposed by the I.E.D. infested ground war. So the Department of Defense pulled
our ground troops out of Afghanistan and ratcheted- up the aerial
reconnaissance and attacks using drones
     
    Jones, ready to capitalize on the opportunity approached
investment banks to help finance the production of the drones in a hangar to be
located somewhere in Texas. The plan was to take the company public once the
lucrative contract with the Pentagon had been signed. He had houses in West
Palm Beach, and in Virginia. He may have had many others but they weren’t
listed.
     
    I was eager to get back to Keisha’s office in Maryland to
run Qureshi and Jones’ email addresses through a new
pilot program that could scan massive amounts of digital media within seconds.
The program could pull his received, sent and deleted emails, but also recover
any images. It could also allow me to trace messages to the servers from which
incoming email had been received or sent, anywhere in the world. It was an
intelligence goldmine.
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 12
     
    Apparently Todd had alerted the guards at Ft. Meade,
because  when I pulled up  the guard at the front  began asking
questions about my purpose for being there,who I was
to meet, and on and on as if I were a stranger or worse, a criminal. I gave up
and turned my car around, heading for our headquarters in McLean. Driving down
route 123, I took a left at the red brick gatehouse where the guard waived me
into the compound without question. I drove into the parking lot to the left
and parked my car, then walked to the next guard gate located inside the
compound to surrender my car keys to the guards behind the desk. I had no
explicit authority allowing me to be there and if Mulally knew, he would’ve been exceptionally angry.
 
     
    The guards looked at me and said “Okay, we’ll drive your
car around for a while, is that okay with you?” Then they broke out in
laughter, and said “We’re just kidding!” The lighthearted playfulness was
distracting me although I knew it was just a reaction to their boredom at
sitting at a front desk most of the day.
     
    Once inside the main building according to the rules of
protocol I was escorted by a security guard to my destination. It’s the same
procedure in every secure location except the one in which I was authorized to
appear daily to work.  The guard led me down a long hallway to the office
of someone I barely knew; some older man who used to work with my father 20
years ago and who probably would not appreciate the intrusion. As the escort
and I arrived outside his office we could see him