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

The video call log was the second document they pulled.

It was in the network operations cell's meeting system, and it had Priya's name on it as the host, and it had a start time of 15:42 and an end time of 16:14, and it had four participants: Priya, Major Ensor, Captain Fuentes, and Ms. DiCarlo.

The recording was in the archive.

They pulled it up in the office of the network operations cell at 14:00 on Tuesday afternoon — Priya, Lauren, and a captain named Anthony Fuentes who had been on the call and who had agreed, after two phone calls from Priya and one from Lauren, to sit in a room and watch the recording.

Fuentes was thirty-four years old. He was a cyber operations officer. He was careful, and he was loyal to the command, and he was clearly uncomfortable with the fact that he was sitting in a room with a technical sergeant on administrative duty and a senior airman who had been relieved of her duties that morning.

"Specialist Shah," he said, "I want to say something before we start."

"Yes, sir."

"I want to say that I do not know what is going on. I have heard a version of it from the colonel and a version of it from the master sergeant and now I am going to hear it from you. I am not going to promise that I will believe you. I am going to promise that I will watch the recording, and that I will tell you the truth about what I see."

"That is all I am asking, sir."

They watched the recording.

The recording was forty-two minutes long. They watched it in silence. Fuentes took notes on a legal pad. Lauren did not move. Priya watched the timestamp in the corner of the screen and did not take her eyes off it.

At 15:47:11, on the recording, Priya Shah was visible in a small window at the top of the screen, sitting at her desk in the network operations cell, looking at her laptop, and typing on her keyboard.

At 15:47:13, on the recording, she was still there.

At 15:47:47, on the recording, she was still there.

At 15:48:02, she said, "Sir, I am pulling the traffic now. I will have the report to you in an hour."

At 15:48:14, Fuentes said, "Take your time."

The recording continued.

They watched the whole thing. It took forty-two minutes.

At the end, Fuentes set his pen down on the legal pad.

"Specialist Shah," he said.

"Sir."

"You were on the call. There is no question about that. The recording shows you were on the call at 15:47:11 and it shows you were on the call at 15:47:13. It shows you were on the call for the entire time that your credential was opening a door four hundred meters away."

"Yes, sir."

"Then the colonel is wrong."

"With respect, sir, the colonel is not wrong. The colonel is lying. There is a difference." Priya paused. "The colonel is telling the truth about the door opening. The door did open. The credential that opened it had my name on it. The colonel is lying about who did it, and he is lying about it because he knows who did it, and the person who did it used a programmer from his office to make the clone."

Fuentes looked at her.

"Specialist," he said, "you are making a very serious accusation."

"Sir, I am not making an accusation. I am reading an audit. The audit was printed by Senior Airman Price at 05:55 this morning. It shows the issuer code. The issuer code is SEC-03. SEC-03 is the programmer in the colonel's office. I did not put the code there. The code was put there by the person who used the programmer. The code is in the system because the system records it, and the system records it because I wrote the audit that records it, and the audit records it because the colonel's office did not turn off the audit when they decided to use the programmer to make a clone."

Fuentes was quiet for a moment.

"Specialist Shah," he said, "do you know what happens to a technical sergeant who accuses a colonel of lying?"

"Yes, sir. I am about to find out."

Fuentes looked at Lauren.

"Senior Airman Price," he said.

"Sir."

"You said you sent the audit to OSI and the IG and your father."

"Yes, sir."

"Your father is a retired chief master sergeant in security forces."

"Yes, sir."

"Does your father know a man named Raymond Vance?"

Lauren was very still.

"Raymond Vance is my father's oldest friend, sir. They served together in the nineties. He is now a civilian at the IG's office in Washington. He is the director of the office of special investigations for the inspector general of the Air Force."

"Then the audit is not going to sit on a desk for six months, is it?"

"No, sir, it is not."

Fuentes stood up.

"Specialist Shah, Senior Airman Price," he said. "I am going to make a phone call. I would like the two of you to remain in this office until I come back. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

He walked out of the office. The door closed behind him.

Lauren and Priya sat in silence for a long time.

Then Lauren said, "He is not going to come back."

"He is going to come back."

"He is going to come back in an hour with a lawyer."

"He is going to come back in twenty minutes with the OSI."

Lauren looked at her.

"You are very calm about this," she said.

"I am terrified," Priya said. "But I have been terrified since 06:00 this morning. There is a point at which the terror becomes a background noise. I have reached that point."

Lauren laughed. It was a short, wet laugh.

"Okay," she said. "Me too."

Fuentes came back in fourteen minutes.

He was not alone.

He had an OSI special agent with him. The agent was a woman of about forty named Special Agent Michelle Okafor, and she was carrying a laptop bag and a folder and a very careful face.

"Specialist Shah, Senior Airman Price," Okafor said. "My name is Michelle Okafor. I am a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I have read the audit that was sent to the IG. I have spoken with the IG's office. And I am here to open an investigation. I need to ask the two of you some questions. I need to ask them under caution. And I need to ask them in a room that is not this one."

"Under caution?" Priya said.

"Under caution, Specialist. Because you are the subject of a security investigation, and because I am going to ask you questions about what you did on Monday afternoon, and because if I do not advise you of your rights, then the investigation I am about to open will be compromised." Okafor paused. "I want to tell you something before we begin. I have been an OSI agent for seventeen years. In those seventeen years, I have opened more investigations into technical sergeants than I can count. I have closed most of them without a charge. But in those seventeen years, I have opened exactly four investigations into colonels. All four of them were opened because somebody below the colonel did the work that the colonel was supposed to do. Do you understand what I am telling you?"