27 My Colonel Cut My Badge In Half And Called Me A Security Breach — He Didn't Know The Audit Showed His Own Office Cloned It

Colonel Adam Keene was arrested six weeks later.

He was arrested at his home in Henderson at 06:00 on a Tuesday morning by two OSI agents and a deputy U.S. Marshal. He was charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conduct unbecoming an officer. The charge of conduct unbecoming an officer was later expanded to include dereliction of duty and false official statement.

He was placed in pretrial confinement at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he remained until his court-martial began the following spring.

His court-martial began in April.

It was held in a military courtroom at Nellis Air Force Base. It was presided over by a military judge named Colonel Helena Vasquez. It lasted nine days.

The prosecution called eleven witnesses.

Derek Vaughn testified for four hours. He was not granted immunity. He was charged separately in a federal court in Nevada with espionage, and he was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. He testified because his lawyer told him that cooperation was the only thing that was going to keep his mother out of prison.

He testified that he had cloned Priya's badge. He testified that he had used programmer three. He testified that he had installed the monitoring device in Vault 4. He testified that he had been paid $240,000 by a foreign buyer to do it. He testified that Colonel Keene had found out on the evening of the cloning and had told him to hide the evidence and to let the technical sergeant take the blame.

He testified that Colonel Keene had called the OSI at 06:30 in the morning on the day of the warrant and had told them where he was and had asked them to arrest him.

He testified that Colonel Keene had told him, on the phone that night, "Derek, you are going to be the one to take the fall. I am sorry. But it is you or me, and it is not going to be me."

The courtroom was silent.

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Priya Shah testified on the sixth day.

She was on the stand for two hours. She was asked about the checkpoint. She was asked about the badge. She was asked about the audit. She was asked about the recorded call. She was asked about the issuer code.

She was asked about the moment when Lauren Price stepped forward with the audit.

"Specialist Shah," the prosecutor said, "when Senior Airman Price showed you the audit, what did you think?"

"I thought that I was going to be okay," Priya said. "And then I thought that being okay was not enough. Because the audit did not just show that I was not the breach. The audit showed that the breach was in the security director's office. And if the audit had not been printed at 05:55 that morning, and if the audit had not been sent to the OSI and the IG and to Senior Airman Price's father, then I would have been charged with a crime I did not commit, and the person who actually committed it would have gotten away with it, and the base's classified network would have been compromised for as long as the monitoring device remained in place."

"And what did you do about that?"

"I did my job. I read the audit. I found the second cloned credential. I found the second badge. I found the timeline. I found the contractor's name. And I gave all of it to Special Agent Okafor."

"Did you make any mistakes along the way?"

"Yes, sir."

"What was the mistake?"

"I went to the contractor's apartment on my own. I did not do it to confront him. I did it because I wanted to see the building. But I should not have gone. Because when I went, he saw me. And he called Colonel Keene. And Colonel Keene told him to run. And the investigation was compromised because I inserted myself into it."

"What did you learn from that mistake?"

"I learned that the people who investigate these things are the people who investigate these things. And that a technical sergeant who has been wronged is not the same thing as a technical sergeant who is investigating."

"Thank you, Specialist Shah."

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Colonel Keene's defense was that he had not ordered the cloning, that he had not known it was happening until after the fact, and that when he found out, he had made a decision to handle it internally because he was trying to protect the Air Force from a scandal that would damage the base.

His defense attorney — a civilian lawyer from Las Vegas named Marcus Webb — cross-examined Priya for ninety minutes. He tried to make her say that she had been insubordinate. He tried to make her say that she had gone to Derek Vaughn's apartment to confront him. He tried to make her say that the entire investigation had been driven by a personal vendetta against Colonel Keene.

Priya did not.

At the end of the cross-examination, Webb asked her one last question.

"Specialist Shah," he said, "is it not true that Colonel Keene was trying to protect the Air Force from a scandal?"

Priya looked at him.

"No, sir," she said. "Colonel Keene was trying to protect Colonel Keene. If he had been trying to protect the Air Force, he would have reported the cloning when he found out about it. He would have reported Derek Vaughn. He would have reported the programmer. He would have reported the monitoring device in Vault 4. Instead, he cut my badge in half in front of sixty people and he told them I was the breach. That is not protecting the Air Force. That is protecting himself at the expense of the Air Force."