EXCERPT

 

ONE  

November 9, 1977

A CRISP NEW ENGLAND chill punctuates the early morning air. A solitary figure skillfully pushes his way through the brush. The man, a dedicated sportsman, has hunted game in these woods many times before. As he moves along the familiar trail, he recalls his first encounter with this autumnal splendor twenty-five years ago. The tranquil New Hampshire setting is reminiscent of his youth in Bolton, Massachusetts, where he and his father enjoyed many a pleasant weekend together hunting and fishing. It is a time he quietly longs for—before youthful enthusiasm and unimpeachable ethics succumbed to the conflicts and controversy that overcame a once-heralded career.

He is the first to arrive at the rendezvous point, a small clearing about two miles from his truck, where he is to meet two of his companions. A check of his watch indicates he is nearly thirty minutes early. Those who know him understand this is a normal circumstance. He is an early riser, always has been. Indeed, as he advances in age, his body and mind seem to require even less sleep; the cherished gift of time, he quips to friends and associates. At home in this pristine world—one unspoiled by civilization, he settles himself onto a comfortable boulder and inhales the environment.

As the sun begins to appear over the horizon, he is suddenly aware of a pronounced, yet inexplicable, sense of apprehension. Uncertain of the cause, he slowly scans the perimeter. It is not about what he hears, but what he does not hear, that is responsible for his disorientation. The woods, a short time earlier throbbing with activity, have fallen strangely silent. It is a sound not unlike the eerie silence a hunter hears as he closes in on his prey—as if the woods held its breath in anticipation of the kill.

With growing uneasiness, the man slowly rises from his perch and looks about the area with sudden urgency. He calls out to his companions with the hope that they somehow are to blame. However, after a few hopeful moments, he realizes that no reply is forthcoming.

With a look of resignation, the man again settles himself onto the boulder. All at once, guided by instinct, he fixes his gaze at a point to his left on the other side of the clearing. He envisions the look in the eyes of a deer as it appears to stare back at him through his riflescope—a last majestic look of defiance by the hunted into the face of the huntsman.

Just then, the woods explode with a fl ash. A flock of geese, startled into action, flee en masse to the north. A deer patrolling beyond the boundary of the kill zone pauses, appears to bow his head in acknowledgement, and then quickly moves away. The terrible deed done, the woods seem to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

 

TWO

 

(From New York Times , November 10, 1977)

WILLIAM C. SULLIVAN, EX-F.B.I. AIDE, 65, IS KILLED IN HUNTING ACCIDENT

 

 

William C. Sullivan, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations intelligence operations, who broke in dramatic fashion with the late J. Edgar Hoover, was killed early yesterday in a shooting accident near his home in Sugar Hill, N.H. He was 65 years old.

Maj. Mason J. Butterfi eld, law enforcement director of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, said that Mr. Sullivan, who had been on the way to meet two hunting companions shortly after daybreak, had been shot and instantly killed by another hunter, Robert Daniels, Jr., 22, who had mistaken Mr. Sullivan for a deer.

Major Butterfi eld said that the shooting was under investigation, and that no charges had been filed.

Mr. Sullivan’s 30-year career with the F.B.I. began in the early days of World War II, when he was dispatched by Mr. Hoover on an undercover intelligence mission to neutral Spain.

After several months of tangling with Axis spies in Madrid, Mr.Sullivan returned to bureau headquarters in Washington and took the first in a series of administrative posts that ultimately included a decade as head of the domestic intelligence division, and a brief tenure as the bureau’s third-ranking official behind Mr. Hoover, the director, and his longtime companion, Clyde A. Tolson.

Mr. Sullivan, who acquired a reputation as the only liberal Democrat ever to break into the top ranks of the bureau, retired in 1971 after he arrived at his office one morning to find that Mr. Hoover had ordered the lock on his door changed and his nameplate removed.

That incident, widely reported at the time, was the culmination of increasing friction between the two men over Mr. Sullivan’s private, and then public, insistence that Mr. Hoover had greatly overemphasized the threat to national security posed by the American Communist Party while devoting less attention than was warranted to violation of Federal civil rights laws in the South.

Mr. Sullivan was known both within the bureau, and by a wide and distinguished circle of acquaintances outside it as less a policeman than a scholar; one whose interests ranged from theoretical Marxism, on which he was an acknowledged expert, to modern English poetry.

Mr. Sullivan held advanced degrees from American and George Washington Universities, and an honorary doctorate from Boston College.

In retirement, Mr. Sullivan became even more vocal about Mr. Hoover’s nearly five decades of unchallenged leadership of the bureau and of its controversial counterintelligence programs, including some that he himself had conceived and administered.

Testifying two years ago before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which termed some of his official actions abusive and even illegal, Mr. Sullivan declared: “Never once did I hear anybody, including myself raise the question, is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful, is it legal, is it ethical or moral?”

The Senate investigation uncovered considerable detail about the counterintelligence programs, collectively labeled COINTELPRO by the bureau, that were intended to spread confusion and dissension among extremist political groups in this country, ranging from the Communist Party on the left to the Ku Klux Klan on the right.

It also developed in the Senate investigations that Mr. Sullivan had been instrumental in the arranging for the mailing of a tape recording in 1964 to Coretta Scott King, wife of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that contained snippets of Dr. King’s conversations with other women that had been overheard by concealed F.B.I. microphones.

Mr. Sullivan was in the news most recently when he acknowledged that he had passed to subordinates instructions from Mr. Hoover to use whatever means were necessary in tracking down fugitive members of the Weather Underground organization in the early 1970’s.

One former agent, John J. Kearney, is now the subject of a Federal indictment charging the bureau with having employed illegal wiretaps and mail intercepts in those investigations, and Mr. Sullivan was expected to be a principal witness at Mr. Kearney’s trial.

Mr. Sullivan, whose hopes for replacing Mr. Hoover as the bureau’s director were dashed when the Nixon Administration installed L. Patrick Gray III as Mr. Hoover’s successor, infuriated many of his longtime colleagues in 1973, a year after Mr. Hoover’s death, when Mr. Sullivan publicly questioned Mr. Hoover’s mental acuity during his last few years in office.

“I’m no doctor,” he said at the time in assessing Mr. Hoover. “I can’t make a judgment. But he had an unusual personality. In the last three years, you couldn’t depend upon him. He became extremely erratic.”

Surviving are Mr. Sullivan’s wife, Marion, two sons, William and Andrew, both law students in Boston, and a daughter Joanne Tuttle. A funeral service will be held on Saturday in Hudson, Mass., Mr. Sullivan’s birthplace.

THE MAN CAREFULLY folds the newspaper and places it on the kitchen table. He has read the article three times, searching between the lines for clues that only he could recognize. His practical sense told him it could eventually come to this—especially once that committee began to issue subpoenas—and he long ago prepared himself accordingly. Nevertheless, he’d hoped to be spared the decision he now faces, between two mutually exclusive courses of action. With a glint of apprehension on his face, he reaches for the pack of cigarettes and removes one. He packs down the cigarette on the back of his hand before flicking it to life with his gold-plated lighter. As if inhaling inspiration, he draws deeply from it, savors the feeling, and then slowly expels a long plume of smoke into the beam of sunlight that is coming through the kitchen window.

He met Bill Sullivan back in the 1950s when they were both working counterintelligence—Bill with the FBI and he with the CIA. He liked Bill from the start, believed him to be an honorable gentleman endeavoring mightily to keep a wayward FBI on course, despite the incessant raving of a self-motivated, dysfunctional director. Although an adversarial state of affairs dictated otherwise, the two men quietly advocated a policy of cooperation between the two agencies while maintaining an open line of communication with each other. With the passing years, their careers following dissimilar paths, they still managed to keep in touch, if with nothing more than a congenial note or an occasional phone call.

With his vacant stare fixed across the room, the man rolls the cigarette between the thumb and index finger of his right hand as he considers the circumstances as presented. The very idea that Bill was mistaken for a deer and gunned down in cold blood is utterly preposterous. He was an experienced hunter who went strictly by the book. Bill would never take risks—never expose himself to the carelessness of rank amateurs. So profound was his concern, he placed himself in the minds of these “Elmer Fudds” and followed the necessary precautions. Rule number one: he would never hunt in the predawn hours. The article did note that the shooting occurred after daybreak, thereby eliminating darkness as an excuse. Finally, with a growing sense of indignation, the man arrives at the unavoidable conclusion.

With some reluctance, he lifts himself from the chair and moves slowly down the hall to his bedroom. He opens the closet door, bends down on his hands and knees, and clears the fl oor space to the left. With a tool fashioned from an ice pick, he carefully pries up the ends of six wood slats, and removes the sections of floor, revealing a rectangular-shaped compartment. Using a flashlight to illuminate the chamber, he reaches in and dials the combination to the safe bolted under the fl oor. He opens the door and retrieves a black and white notebook, frayed around the edges from age, and returns with It to his seat in the kitchen. He opens the book to the appropriate page and scrolls through the list of phone numbers maintained through the years. Finding the desired listing, he reaches for the wall phone over his shoulder. With the dial tone cutting through the uneasy silence, the man pauses and taps pensively with his index finger on the table. Old allegiances, no matter how misplaced, can be difficult to sever.

A moment later, his second thoughts assuaged, he dials the number. After the third ring, a throaty voice answers the call. The accent is recognizable; the conspicuous hoarse quality, not unlike his own, he attributes to the passing years and too many cigarettes. He recites the appropriate coded message.

“Good morning. Is Mr. Engels at home?”

There is a moment of silence as the party considers the question, before the anticipated reply follows. “I am terribly sorry. Mr. Engels is not to live here anymore.” The man smiles at the syntax and replies. “Oh, I see. I guess I have some investigating to do. Sorry to bother you.”

“It is not a problem. I understand these things happen.”

The message relayed, the man carefully replaces the handset on its cradle, retrieves his cigarette from the ashtray and settles back in his seat. Puffing through a thoughtful gaze, he abruptly reaches forward and draws the newspaper toward him. Quickly scanning the article again, he stops at the name of the accused hunter and copies his name onto the notepad he keeps by the phone. “No charges have been fi led,” he utters with cynical undertones. “And none will,” he adds with a deprecating sigh. In time, he will contact his sources, and they will conduct a thorough background check of this individual. With any luck, an indication of a trail will soon be evident.

As he sits contemplating his own future, the man understands that an issue of far greater importance demands his immediate attention. At once resigned to the fact that his fate is now of little consequence, he takes one last drag from the smoldering cigarette butt, extinguishes it in the ashtray, and then moves across the kitchen to retrieve a writing pad and pen from a drawer. For a short while, he thinks about how to say it. Then, with sudden determination, he begins writing the letter that will undoubtedly change his life and perhaps alter the course of history.

 

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