Fatal Conceit (53 page)

“Objection, Your Honor,” Faust said.

“I'll withdraw the question,” Karp said. “I don't think I'm going to get an honest answer anyway.”

T
UCKER
L
INDSEY
'
S HAND SHOOK AS
he poured himself a glass of water on the witness stand, spilling a little as he brought it to his lips. As his attorney, Bill Caulkin, took a break in the questioning to look over his notes, he hazarded a glance over at Karp, but quickly looked away as if he was a schoolboy who'd been caught doing something naughty. The cool reserve he'd always presented to the American public as the president's national security adviser was a thing of the past, and Karp took note of it.

As trials went on, Karp studied how a defendant's demeanor changed. It varied, of course, but generally, the weight of the evidence, particularly the defendant's “inner secrets”—that evidence that the defendant believed would never be revealed—had the most profound effect on his mood. Without appearing to pay much attention, he watched how defendants interacted with their attorneys and sometimes, in a case such as this one, with their codefendants. He studied their body language, listened to their voices, and gauged their faces to see how they were sleeping or to search for the telltale signs of their being medicated.

Of the two defendants in this trial, Rod Fauhomme had exhibited the widest variety of behavioral changes. In the beginning, he manifested confidence and contempt for the charges brought
against him and for Karp himself. He was constantly writing notes, many of which he'd pass to his attorney, as if directing his defense. His interaction with Lindsey was minimal but always with a macho, take-charge flair. But as the prosecution's case had gone forward and the evidence against him—carefully laid out by Karp—mounted, and his attorney's attempts at countering the prosecution were thrown back in her face, cracks appeared in his deportment, like the fissures in a dam about to give way. With each witness and every motion denied, anger, worry, and even fear would play across his face before he had a chance to control them.

By the time Karp rested the people's case, Fauhomme's florid countenance often had the look of a hunted animal. His eyes darted around and his smile looked more like a grimace. He frequently turned during breaks to glance back at the gallery, not as if he was searching for friendly faces but more like a deer looking for danger. He hardly spoke to his attorney, though he glared at her often, and he and his codefendant might as well have been sitting in different rooms for all the interaction they had.

Tucker Lindsey had also changed, but in a different way. He'd begun the trial as one might expect a national security adviser used to dealing with high stakes. He was cool and collected to the point where it often appeared that he was listening to an interesting discussion that hardly involved him. His body language indicated that he didn't care at all for Fauhomme or have much faith in Faust, but more as if they were two people who didn't matter to him than with any real acrimony. He'd occasionally leaned his head over to listen to Caulkin, but otherwise was basically as he was in life, haughtily self-assured.

However, as with Fauhomme, as the trial went on and the case against them piled up, the arrogant veneer gave way to fearful concern. Soon after Huff's testimony he would sit through the entire proceedings with his head down and his hands on his lap or on the table in front of him, hardly moving except to pour a glass of water. The neatly coiffed hair and designer clothes gave way to
a rumpled look, and sometimes he appeared to not have shaved. He'd grown noticeably thinner, with the hollows of his cheeks becoming more pronounced.

Karp noticed when he walked over to the defense table that if Lindsey looked up, it was with red-rimmed eyes, beneath which dark circles appeared as if painted on. His body language portrayed a man who heard the bell tolling his doom and had given up, or whose conscience was robbing him of sleep.

In the past, Karp had often seen defendants flag and take on the look of beaten men during the people's case; after all, that's when the deck would appear stacked against them. But then they would perk up when their attorneys began to present their case and at least appear to level the playing field. However, for Lindsey, the appearance of Ariel Shimon, who was followed by two more men who claimed they'd been blackmailed by Blair, Lee, and Baum—and had been as easily dispatched during cross-examination—had done little to change his deportment or appearance.

Karp had wondered if the defendants would take the stand and expose themselves to cross-examination. With all the trump cards in his advocacy arsenal, combined with his aggressive competitiveness, he hoped that one or both would try to challenge him.

After their last witness appeared the previous afternoon, the defense attorneys had put their heads together and then told Judge Hart that they'd like some time to confer with their clients over whether they'd appear on the stand. Hart had given them until the morning.

When court reconvened, Hart asked if they'd reached a decision, at which point Caulkin said he would be calling Lindsey but that Fauhomme had not yet decided. A few minutes later, with the jury seated, Lindsey stood, buttoned his suit coat, and then, like a man summoned to his execution who just wanted to get it over with, took a seat on the witness stand.

During the direct examination, Lindsey had toed the company line by testifying that much of the testimony from prosecution
witnesses had been misinterpreted or taken out of context. “For instance, the event described by Miss Lee in which she walked in on a meeting among myself, Mr. Fauhomme, and Mr. Baum did happen,” he testified. “However, her chronology was inaccurate. We were actually discussing the president's performance during the debate on foreign policy the previous week when one of my men interrupted us with a report he'd just received on the events that had been transpiring in Chechnya. We were watching a taped version of the aerial reconnaissance vehicle's view of the events—not a real-time transmission. Miss Lee walked in on us
after
the recording was delivered and
that's
what she saw.”

“What about her claim that she overheard Mr. Fauhomme exclaim something in regard to Al Qaeda?” Caulkin asked.

“To be honest,” Lindsey said, “I don't remember him saying that in particular. However, my focus was on what was going on in Chechnya, and the safety of Americans, not who was responsible at that particular moment.”

“Can you explain why you were looking at a recording from the drone several hours after the attack as opposed to in real time?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey shook his head slightly. “I'm afraid the man who can answer that is dead. The recording was delivered to us by General Allen's agency.”

“Was it common for Mr. Fauhomme to be present during what had to be a top priority event for you?”

“Like I said, we were there discussing foreign policy as it applied to the campaign,” Lindsey said, looking over at his codefendant without much expression. “I needed to see what was going on and I was at Mr. Fauhomme's office. However, it was not uncommon for him to sit in on foreign policy discussions. It was a busy time for the president leading up to the election, and he relied on a lot of his closest advisers to keep him abreast of what was going on. Mr. Fauhomme obviously had a role in helping the president address some of these matters—both domestic and foreign
policy—as they came up. I saw nothing unusual or untoward in that.”

“And what about Mr. Baum?” Caulkin asked. “Much has been made about his questionable background and why he possessed NSA identification cards if he was working for Mr. Fauhomme.”

Lindsey bit his lip. “Unfortunately, we did not do a good job of vetting Mr. Baum,” he said. “He came recommended to us—I believe by some of his former officers in the Marine Corps, who led us to believe that the charges against him in Afghanistan, which by the way were dismissed, had been overblown. Mr. Fauhomme indicated that he needed someone who could be trusted with sensitive matters, as well as someone who could work as his personal security. Mr. Baum volunteered. He never really worked for the NSA, but it allowed Mr. Fauhomme to have a liaison who had the necessary low-level security clearance he needed. Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Baum, in concert with Miss Blair and Miss Lee, decided to work his own game.”

Caulkin brought up Stupenagel's testimony regarding a source named “Augie” who had told her that orders had come from “you and Mr. Fauhomme” to attack the trucks bearing the American hostages at the Zandaq compound and then again the mosque in Dagestan before it could be ascertained that the hostages were safe.

“That's nonsense,” Lindsey said with a scowl. “As I pointed out, we were not watching the attack on the compound in Zandaq in real time. It was too late to do anything regarding those events by the time we viewed the recording, much less attack our own people. As for Dagestan, well, I think the proof of the pudding is that Deputy Chief of Mission David Huff and the hostage we've now been told is the district attorney's daughter are both alive and well. Believe me, if someone had wanted them to die during that attack, they would not be alive today. The president's decision to order the attack came after the hostages were free and clear.”

“Why then would someone make that assertion—if they did—to Miss Stupenagel?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey shrugged. “You'd have to ask this ‘Augie,' but it sounds to me like someone covering his butt at the CIA.”

Lindsey conceded that many of the original talking points regarding the attack on the Zandaq compound were “inaccurate.” But he blamed that on the administration's well-worn rhetoric about “the fog of war” and “a fluid situation” compounded by the difficulty of not having enough “human intelligence gathering on the ground.” Part of his implication was that the CIA was at fault, and by association, the leadership of General Sam Allen.

“I don't want to disparage General Allen,” Lindsey said. “He is a true American hero. However, he was new to the job and the agency was—how shall I put this—in turmoil due to the complete inadequacy of his predecessor, as well as the deterioration of the agency during previous administrations.”

Lindsey confirmed that he and Fauhomme had met with Allen at the latter's request to discuss concerns regarding the events in Chechnya. “In my mind, it was nothing more than a quite normal disagreement between colleagues, which happens all the time with intelligence agencies based on who has what information,” he said. “I'm not saying that General Allen was completely wrong, but I did feel he was making assumptions based on disjointed, incomplete, and sometimes refutable facts.”

“I'm taking it that this was a pretty heated discussion?”

“Yes, it was,” Lindsey conceded. “General Allen came from a background where his opinions and decisions were rarely, if ever, challenged. He was a man of action;
act now and ask questions later.
For better or worse, that's not how we operate in the intelligence-gathering world. We prefer to wait for all of the facts before making decisions, or even discussing the events; however, the media was all over this one, and the decision was made to try to give the American public our best assessment. In that situation, it is no surprise that we erred on some of the facts. However, at the time, General Allen got his back up, and to be honest, left in a huff. It was the last time I ever spoke to him.”

“Was General Allen at any time threatened with blackmail by you and Mr. Fauhomme regarding his relationship with Miss Blair?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey looked as if he'd been asked an incredibly stupid question. “Absolutely not,” he said dismissively. “I was aware of the affair and concerned. As one of the president's closest advisers I was worried about the possible repercussions on the president if the press found out. In fact, I was in New York when the general died, talking to Mr. Fauhomme about how to approach the subject with General Allen, as well as trying to find a common ground regarding Chechnya, when Sam Allen was killed.”

“I understand that you've met Miss Blair,” Caulkin said. “Could you tell us your impressions of her?”

Lindsey twisted his lips. “She and Miss Lee were both what we in politics call ‘power groupies,' ” he said. “They're like rock-and-roll band groupies but they gravitate to people with political power; money is important, too, but it's almost secondary. We see them a lot in political circles. Some of them are fairly harmless, such as the obsessed housewife who volunteers for everything and is gaga for the candidate. Some just want to be where the action is, or they're collecting notches on their bedpost like a baseball fan collects player cards. But others have more sinister motives . . . powerful men are susceptible to blackmail if they give in to temptation.”

Looking over at Fauhomme, Lindsey said, “I never told Rod this, I figured it was his business and I know he truly cared for her, but I always felt that Lee was one of these political groupies and that she was taking him for a ride. He was spending a lot of money on her—shopping trips and vacations—but it was never enough. And he once told me that she was putting a lot of pressure on him to take her to White House functions and introduce her to important people, which was entirely inappropriate.”

“And what about Miss Blair?”

“Like she said, I met her at Mr. Fauhomme's party on Long
Island,” Lindsey replied. “But I could tell right away that she was sizing up some of the men who were there. She zeroed in on the general pretty quick and then stuck to him like white on rice. It was pretty shameless the way she threw herself at him, whether he was exercising or reading a book in a hammock; she made sure she sat next to him at the dinners and followed him around like a . . . well, I think everybody knows what I mean. You heard how she dragged him off into the dunes after knowing him for, what? Twenty-four hours? And knowing he was a married man? She wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue.”