COVERT WRITERS TAKEDOWN by Joe Bergeron (best beach reads txt) 📕

would
either be discovered, or revealed to sources outside its
intangible boundaries. He’d also felt that disclosure
could, and probably would, come from within.
During the last ten years, he’d prepared
contingencies for a breach. His strategies had all been
approved by Wirtham and Pat McKenzie. All except
two, which he’d set up, but kept to himself.
Michael Courtney held the title ‘Master Of
Laws’ - an honor bestowed on him while still in college.
The title got him his job with the organization. It also
meant he had the responsibility of developing and
implementing a strategic plan if, and when disclosure
occurred.
He’d begun a battle plan, forming it with the intent of
using the only weapons he understood - The Universal
Physical Laws. 21
But he also knew these Laws wouldn’t be just
for his use, that any opposing force, even one within the
organization would also have their interpretation and
application available. He just had to hope he’d be
better at it than they were.
Colloquially, he knew Law Two as The
Leverage Effect.
He understood that the application of the
Second Law to natural phenomena was quite simple.
Occurrences such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and
thunderstorms were all easily identifiable as
unbalanced energies, and although they could be
extremely violent - they always passed.
In metaphysical terms, or in the world of
human realities, the Second Law was more complex
than it was in nature.
He continued thinking as he drove.
‘Yankee Echo never had a counter-balance’, he
thought. ‘it wasn’t set up to be balanced. It was
intended to be an unequal force, a powerful force, and a
big risk, but the risk is still worth the investment. It
took the Second Law a long time to catch up to the
organization, but it’s also going to affect the breachers.
They have to be an unbalanced force, and we need that
to work against them. We need to know how much
they’ve learned about us.’
He kept thinking.
‘Fifteen - we’re not only clandestine, we’re
hidden from each other. Our writers only know Robert,
me, and the Managing Agents. Robert said the network
is stable, no one else has been contacted. That means
whoever breached us only has Echo information on
Robert and me right now, and Kay by association.’
He glanced at her, almost as if to draw some
evolved inspiration.
22
‘They can’t have much of an idea of how
extensive we are, or which newspapers we’ve
infiltrated. They want to manipulate the manipulators,
but they have no idea of how many manipulators exist -
we have advantage on Fifteen.’
He paused, wondering how much he really
knew.
‘Thirty-Five - the breachers used a greater
force to get my attention than they used to get Kay’s.
Whoever took a shot at me was damn good. They must
have had my phone tapped thinking I’d call her, and cut
hers off to get me out of my office. I have the encoder -
it would take Robert a half hour to get someone over to
the office - time enough to search it, but they couldn’t
hear our conversation - why didn’t they search my
apartment - or did they and I overlooked it? There was
nothing to find there - it’s all in Washington. They have
something we don’t know about yet. I’ll give them half
of Thirty-Five. We won’t wobble.’
Courtney would weigh all forty Laws in the
eight hour journey to JGM Exports in Washington, D.C.
He felt an uneasiness with everything.
23
Chapter 2
Reasons Why
On September 25, 1798, The First Congress, at
its first session in the City of New York submitted to the
states, twelve amendments to the Constitution of The
United States that were intended to clarify certain
individual and state rights not named in the
Constitution. Ten of these amendments were ratified.
These are most frequently called The Bill of Rights
Amendment 1: Congress shall make no laws
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press, or the right of people to
peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for
the redress of grievances.
Newspapers in the United States enjoy
tremendous power under First Amendment protection.
At national, regional, and local levels, they have
emerged from thousands of court cases over the years
with their First Amendment rights in place. America,
as a nation, has fought bitter wars, not only for
ourselves, but for others to protect these rights. They
are a precious cornerstone of democracy.
There are times in the newspaper industry,
however, when the First Amendment is used more as a
shield for sloppy work, than as a guardian of our rights.
In January, 1950, Alger Hiss, former American
public official in the Departments of Agriculture,
Justice and State, was convicted of perjury as the result
of his prior testimony before the Committee on Un-
American activities of the U.S. House of
Representatives. The Hiss case was part of an
investigation led by Senator Joseph R, McCarthy into
Communist activity in the U.S.
24
Hiss was accused of turning over classified
documents over to Whittaker Chambers, an editor for
several years of TIME magazine, for transmittal to
Soviet Agents.
In testimony before the Committee on Un-
American activities, an associate of Hiss testified that
part of the classified information Hiss had passed on to
the Soviets involved top-secret work on bipolar
transistors as they applied to covert electronic
technology. Although his evidence was totally
circumstantial, and was written into the court record as
such, the associate was allowed to present oral
testimony against McKenzie Industries of Old
Saybrook, Connecticut, and its Chairman, Patrick
Gaffey McKenzie Jr. whom the associate accused of
delivering his company’s technology to Hiss in exchange
for lucrative government contracts.
Almost every newspaper in the country was
either covering this event, or was retrieving it from the
wire services at the time. In a period of six months,
McKenzie’s chairman had spoken with dozens of editors
and staff writers in newspapers around the country.
It was said Patrick McKenzie Jr. never refused
a telephone call or a personal interview, this against the
advice of the best attorneys and public relations
agencies representing the electronics manufacturer.
The Press continually challenged his plea of innocence
against the circumstantial evidence presented at the
Hiss hearings.
The celebrated case, in concert with the
McCarthy investigation, combined to create a national
mood of sensationalism, and an almost unquenchable
public thirst for more, which editors and reporters were
only too happy to supply.
It appeared no one wanted to believe that
either McKenzie or his corporation were guiltless. Both
had become victims of the Press, publishing at its
discretion, and without concrete reference, words that
were half-truths, here-say, and innuendo. 25
If reporters and editors injected opinion into a
story and based it on presented testimony from the
trial, then whatever they wrote was protected by the
shield of the First Amendment
In January, 1950, at the second trial of Alger
Hiss, it was revealed that the McKenzie Industries part
of the case, along with several other parts, was
completely fabricated by Hiss’ associate to divert
attention away from the major issues.
Patrick McKenzie Jr. died of heart seizure
shortly following the exoneration of himself and his
company. His only child, Patrick Gaffey McKenzie III
was eighteen years old at the time.
McKenzie’s son understood that in the U.S.
legal system, when there is uncertainty, acquittal
prevails over conviction. He found it incredible that in
the minds of people who had read newspaper accounts
of the case that a degree of guilt had still attached itself
to the uncertainty surrounding the proceedings.
The loss of his father created a void in Patrick’s
life that seemed impossible to remedy. Turing to his
high school sweetheart for support and comfort, he and
she decided to elope, and were married by a Justice of
The Peace on New Year’s Eve, three weeks after his
father’s death. That same night, Laura Worthington
McKenzie would become pregnant with the first of her
two children. Only a teenager, she would bear a son,
John Gaffey in September.
Even though he had married, Patrick’s mother
thought her son should attend the University of
Pennsylvania where he had been accepted for the
following academic year. She, as well as Laura’s
parents, were disturbed over the children’s matrimonial
decision, but she saw in her son the same determined
qualities that she loved and respected in her husband.
Patrick had gumption and intelligence like his father.
The young man, however, decided not to enter the
structured academic life of college.
26
He was being neither defiant, nor radical; he
simply felt he could learn more in the practical world of
business if he taught himself.
His mother resigned herself to this decision
thinking formal education could always come later - he
would succeed, she thought, with, or without a college
education.
She was a woman of great insight.
The young man threw himself into a learning
curve. Working daily in the McKenzie plant, he
assumed over time, positions in production, finance,
and management. His nights were filled with readings
- Samuelson’s Economics, Stockton’s Business
Statistics, Donaldson and Pfhal’s Corporate Finance,
Bethel and Atwater’s Industrial Organization, and the
metaphysics his father had been teaching him since he
was twelve.
Within four years, he was made President of
McKenzie Industries by its Board of Directors of which
his mother was Chairman due to principle stock
ownership. His move to the CEO’s position was clearly
an inside family move, but it was not a mistake.
The company flourished under his direction
and leadership. He sought out and hired the best
minds, not only in the electronics field, but also in the
field of Applied Physics. McKenzie technocrats created
and developed products far superior to its competition
which placed the corporation in a solid growth pattern.
Although he'd never had formal training in the
Application of The Universal Physical Laws, Patrick
McKenzie III engaged Law Forty as his own personal
philosophy.
During the ensuing years, McKenzie would
have many philosophical discussions with Robert
Wirtham, his best friend. Wirtham had attended The
University of Michigan, and eventually became a
corporate consultant, and also Professor of Physical
Laws at the University of Vermont.
27
It was Wirtham who first broached the
possibility of media control to McKenzie during one of
these conversations.
The corporate President hadn't forgotten what
he considered the unjust and malicious treatment of his
father at the hands of the Press. Captivated by the idea
of clandestine media control, he reserved any
implementation of this concept until the next trauma in
his life place him once again at the mercy of the
newspapers.
John McKenzie, his only son, had enlisted in
the United States Marine Corps at the age of seventeen.
An adventurer, he told his father he would eventually
finish high school and college, but he didn't want to
miss the opportunity of missing a real war. Following
military occupational specialty training at the Marine
Corps facility on Paris Island, South Carolina, John,
and the rest of Bravo Company were assigned to duty in
the Republic of Vietnam
It was in the La Dang Valley during the Tet
Offensive when Corporal McKenzie refused a direct
order from his Company Commander.
They'd stumbled upon a group of six women
and three children during a fierce firefight with the
Vietcong. McKenzie and his Lieutenant were alone on
the Northwest perimeter of a battle line, separated by
two hundred meters from the rest of their unit. The
young marine had discovered the group huddled under
a tarpaulin after he’d heard a child cough. The
Lieutenant, feeling the women were part of the
Vietcong, and possibly concealing Russian AK-47
Kalashnikov rifles, ordered McKenzie to terminate the
group. Refusing the order, he told his commanding
officer he was returning to the point position on the
perimeter.
In the next thirty seconds,