68
Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 8AM Eastern Standard Time
“What the…” Hunter Laszlo said, over his muffin in the socially-distanced corner of the DuPont Starbucks.
“What the…” He reread the headline in the New York Record on his phone.
Administration Finds No Manipulation of Data by Federal Agencies
Says Complaints by Some Insiders Part of “Deep State” Resistance
He paged down to the text.
An Inspector General’s report has concluded that complaints that official statistics were altered to provide the President’s re- election campaign “good numbers” to support his re-election were “completely unfounded.”
“I specifically told her I didn’t think they had succeeded in doing that!” Hunter said to himself.
A senior administration official told the Record that accusations that Department of Health and Human Services numbers for virus cases and deaths, which some sources have said began to rebound around the country in the fall of last year, had been systematically “smoothed” and a downward trend shown in order to benefit the President were “categorically false.” The official, who spoke anonymously in order to comment frankly on administration policy…
“In order to lie about administration policy,” Hunter muttered.
…said that they were aware of complaints regarding statistics issued by the executive branch, as well as organizational changes such as moving long-established statistical agencies out of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and that these complaints had been investigated by independent Inspectors General…
“Independent my ass,” Hunter said. “They fired every Inspector General who showed a lick of independence!”
He read on, increasingly angry.
…and found to be “without merit.” No official Inspector’s General report has been issued on the subject, but the official stated that he expected it would come out “no later than summer.”
And when summer comes, well, the official administration statisticians will say it’s still winter, so technically they’re not late issuing this report, Hunter thought to himself. I have to call her, he thought next.
He stood up and walked out of the Starbucks onto New Hampshire Avenue. He stalked north a hundred feet, to get away from the DuPont Circle noise, and hit her number on his phone.
“Kathleen Kiersay,” a voice answered.
“Kathleen,” Hunter said.
“Who is this?”
“Hunter Laszlo,” he responded.
“Oh, hey,” she said. “You saw the story?”
“Yeah, I did,” he said.
“So, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” he said. “What do I think? I think you fucked the whole thing up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I gave you something that was going to require deep digging,” Hunter said. “I gave you a story that, if reported correctly, might have helped save the republic, and truth, and democracy.”
“Really? I thought it was about the Department of Agriculture.”
“I can’t believe this,” Hunter said. “I put myself on the line for this.”
“You think you’re the only source on this?”
“Obviously not. Obviously, you simply took what I said and went to get comments from the most senior official you could find, to sweeten your beat. Who was it, anyway?”
“You know I can’t reveal my sources. I protected you, so I have to protect them.”
“Somehow I think they can protect themselves. Me, I just might be fucked, however.”
“How?”
“These people know who’s who. They have a way of making their displeasure known that tends to end careers. Or worse.”
What a paranoid loon, thought Kathleen.
“Well I’m sorry you feel this way,” Kathleen said.
“What do you think your job is?” Hunter said.
“I think I know what my job is,” Kathleen said. Great, another Jim Hasselblad telling me I’m personally destroying America.
“I don’t think you do,” Hunter said. “I gave you the Pentagon Papers and you turned it into just another Five O’Clock Follies Vietnam body-count pass-through report. Did you even check into the departments I named? Did you even investigate the whole privatization thing?”
“I did,” Kathleen said, increasingly testy.
“And?”
“It’s been a trend for decades,” she said. “It’s not something new. You know why they call it ‘news,’ right?”
“But has anyone reported it in all those years? How schools, and armies, and intelligence, and space, and public transportation, and government administration, and even courts and prisons, and now of course official government numbers, are all being sold off to the highest bidder? And especially how it’s gotten a hundred times worse since 2016?”
“I asked about it, and they answered.”
“Did you press them? Did you do adequate upfront research to figure out the nature of the problem, so they couldn’t just put you off with some plausible-sounding sound-bite? You didn’t, did you?”
“Listen,” Kathleen said angrily, “I am a professional.”
“You’ve got the degrees, right?”
“I do, and I’ve got the experience as well. I’ve been doing this job for decades.”
“So how come it doesn’t anger you that the Secretary of Homeland Security – sorry, the ACTING Secretary of Homeland Security – is a fucking college student? That the Acting Director of National Intelligence is some Hollywood agent? Why do YOU have to have degrees and experience to do your job, and I have to have degrees and experience to do my job, but the people in the most important jobs in government don’t have to do anything but service the President’s nether regions?”
Kathleen was silent.
“You know this could kill us all, right? We don’t even have an Acting Secretary of Energy. But who cares, right? All that guy does is watch over our nuclear stockpiles, right? So you’re not watching while maybe someone decides to privatize our nuclear stockpile! If not you, WHO? This is your job, right? I don’t see anyone else out there with the resources, reach, or budget to even think about covering that beat. For all we know, the Russians could have already taken it all away!”
Raving, thought Kathleen.
“You left me hanging,” Hunter said. “Did you tell him my name?”
Kathleen was silent again. Then she said in indignation, “I never reveal my sources.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you on that,” Hunter said. “I really don’t. That was some pause right there before you answered. I gave you a real story. A big, big story. I thought you cared about the fact that this administration is breaking every norm, breaking our government. How can you take what I told you about this crime spree, and simply take it to the criminals and ask them what they think? This is what I mean by, ‘Do you know what your job is?’”
“I have to go,” Kathleen said, with a cold edge to her voice.
“How can you trust these people? How can you simply take their word for anything?”
Hunter hit the button on his phone to end the conversation. As the call disappeared from his screen another New York Record story popped up:
Virus Deaths Fall to 10-Month Low, Says HHS
He muttered a curse under his breath, shut off his phone screen, wheeled around in disgust, and walked back toward the Circle.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian