Chapter 5 - The Issuer Code
The OSI investigation moved fast.
It moved fast because Michelle Okafor was not a person who liked to sit on things, and because Raymond Vance at the IG's office had personally called the OSI commander at Nellis and told him that the audit was not going to be forgotten, and because the audit itself was a document that could not be unwritten. It existed in the OSI's evidence system and in the IG's case file and in Lauren's private email and in her father's private email and in a folder that Special Agent Okafor had placed in a sealed evidence bag.
It moved fast because it had to move fast. If Keene had been given a week to work with, he would have destroyed the programmer. He would have wiped the log. He would have found a reason to transfer Lauren and reassign Priya to a remote assignment in the Pacific. He would have made the audit a story that only two people in the Air Force believed.
Instead, Okafor arrived at the security director's office at 07:30 on Wednesday morning with a federal search warrant and three other agents.
They seized programmer three.
They seized the logbook.
They seized Keene's laptop.
They seized his cell phone.
They seized his calendar and his appointment book and his duty roster and the drawer in his desk where the programmer had been kept.
They also seized his executive assistant.
Her name was Master Sergeant Tanya Vo. She was forty-four years old. She had been Keene's executive assistant for two years. She had a key to his office. She knew his schedule. She knew his habits. She knew, Okafor suspected, more than she had been willing to say for two years.
Vo was interviewed for four hours on Wednesday afternoon.
She was not charged with anything. She was not placed under caution. She was asked, politely and repeatedly, whether she knew who had used programmer three on Monday afternoon, and she said, each time, that she did not know.
Then Okafor showed her the audit.
Vo read it in silence for a very long time.
Then she said, "Specialist Shah did not do this."
"I did not ask you whether Specialist Shah did this," Okafor said.
"I know. But I am telling you anyway." Vo set the audit down. "I am telling you because I have been sitting in that office for two years, and I have watched Colonel Keene make the programmer out for visitors a hundred times, and I have never seen him log it. Not once. Not one single time. And last week, on Monday afternoon, at 15:15, he came into the office and he took the programmer out of the drawer and he put it in his briefcase and he walked out. And he came back at 15:45 and he put the programmer back in the drawer. And he did not say a word to me. Not one word."
Okafor wrote it down.
"Ms. Vo," she said, "who else has access to programmer three?"
"Colonel Keene has the only signed-out copy. There is a master programmer in the safe, but it is logged and it requires two people to open. The programmer in the drawer is the personal one. The one he uses when he does not want to walk down the hall."
"And who has the key to the drawer?"
"The colonel has the key. I have a key. The two duty officers on his staff have keys. But the drawer is inside the office, and the office is locked, and the only people with the office key are the colonel, me, and the two duty officers."
"Who were the two duty officers on Monday afternoon?"
"Captain Ellis and Captain Rios."
"Where were they at 15:15 on Monday?"
"Captain Ellis was at the range. He signs out for range qualification every Monday afternoon. He was there from 14:00 to 17:00. There are range records."
"And Captain Rios?"
"Captain Rios was in the security director's office from 15:00 to 15:30. He was updating the access control plan. He was at the desk in the outer office. He could not have gone into the colonel's office without me seeing him, because I was at my desk the whole time."
"So Captain Rios was in the outer office. Captain Ellis was at the range. You were at your desk. And the colonel walked in at 15:15, took the programmer out of the drawer, put it in his briefcase, and walked out."
"Yes."
"And he came back at 15:45 and put the programmer back in the drawer."
"Yes."
"And between 15:15 and 15:45, someone used that programmer to create a cloned credential with Specialist Shah's name on it, and that credential was used at 15:47 to open Vault 4."
"Yes."
Okafor set her pen down.
"Ms. Vo," she said, "I am going to ask you one more question. And I want you to think very carefully before you answer it, because the answer you give me is going to determine the rest of your career."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Did you see Colonel Keene use that programmer on Monday afternoon?"
Vo was quiet for a long moment.
May you like
"No, ma'am," she said. "I did not see him use it. I saw him take it out of the drawer and put it in his briefcase and walk out. I saw him come back forty-five minutes later and put it back in the drawer. I did not see what he did with it while he was out of the office."
"Thank you, Ms. Vo," Okafor said. "That is the truth. That is what I needed."
