Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (36 page)

“Do you have an answer?”

Maitland’s smile clung precariously to his mouth as he started to speak. “Gathering intelligence is a complex proposition at the best of times. The United States has a highly sophisticated network of satellites as well as human resources and other more oblique resources. That’s how we piece together what is happening in the world, and where threats might come from.”

I wrote everything down, and then looked up. The man was still smiling – a relaxed expression, like he was toying with me and doing it easily.

“Thank you,” I said politely. “Now would you answer the question I asked?”

The smile faded. “I just did.”

I shook my head. “No, sir, you didn’t,” I kept my tone respectful but firm. “I asked you specifically what lead the CIA to draw the conclusion that Iran was behind the zombie apocalypse. I asked you for the actual evidence you gathered to support your claim that the Iranian government perpetrated this act of international terrorism.”

The Director leaned back in his chair and set his hands on the armrest. He crossed his legs and narrowed his eyes. “I think the answer I gave you will be suitable for your interview,” he muttered the words carefully.

I shook my head again. “Sir, your answer sounded like something you would dish up at a press conference, but this isn’t one of those. I was told you would be fully co-operative.”

Maitland said nothing. I tried again.

“I happen to think the work the CIA did to follow the trail of terrorism back to Iran was quite brilliant. I’d like the opportunity to portray that to my readers. You sandbagging me this way is just going to come off as arrogance. I don’t want arrogance. I want reality. You’re giving me filtered fiction.”

The Director’s eyes flicked down to a single piece of paper on his desk. It could have been a Presidential directive, or it could have been a shopping list. He scanned it, his eyes moving in his motionless head, and then he looked up at me again and gave the kind of heavy sigh that sounded like a child blowing out birthday candles.

“HUMINT and OSINT were critical to following the trail back to the Iranians,” Director Maitland revealed at last. “Everyone thinks the majority of espionage work these days is done through satellites. They are important, but they don’t tell you anything more than what is in a picture. They can’t tell you the ‘why’… and that’s often critical when an organization like this one is analyzing data.”

Better. I wrote furiously. Maitland was talking quickly, as though he was keen to be done with the explanation and it took all my concentration just to keep up. When he paused for a breath my hand was aching.

“We also were fortunate that some of the men and women involved in this investigation were ‘blue skyers’,” Maitland said.

I looked up from the notebook. “Blue skyers?”

The CIA Director nodded. He steepled his fingers together as if he was trying a different kind of prayer position. “Yes,” he said. “Men and women who go above and beyond the normal means of investigation – they’re people that don’t follow a trail. Instead they see a situation and ask
‘what if’
. Those folks were the ones within the team that made the biggest breakthrough.”

I was intrigued. Fascinated. I had come to this interview at Langley with little expectation. Now my journalistic instincts were screaming. This was a thread of conversation I knew I needed to unravel. I also knew instinctively that I needed to be patient.

“What exactly is HUMINT and OSINT?” I asked.

“HUMINT is short for human intelligence – it’s the information that might be gathered from traditional spy sources.”

I cut in quickly. “You mean spies on the ground in Iran?”

The Director inclined his head. He rested his hands palm-down on the desktop. Clearly he had given up praying I would go away quietly. “That’s right,” he said.

“And OSINT?”

“That is an abbreviation for Open Source Intelligence,” Director Maitland explained. “It’s something that the average man in the street might not think about much, but over the past twenty years it has become a valuable form of intelligence gathering… without the James Bond glamor.” He smiled then, amused by his own comment.

I shifted my weight in the chair, arched my back as I sat up straight. “Can you explain the kind of OSINT you are referring to?”

Maitland glanced past my shoulder. I knew behind me was his office door and a wall lined with books. He hesitated for a moment and then brought his eyes back to mine.

“You have to understand that I am reluctant to divulge every source of intelligence our Agency uses…”

“I do understand,” I said. “And if Iran was still functioning with a government and an Army, I would understand it even more. But since that’s no longer the case…”

Maitland’s expression became pinched with a flicker of annoyance. He shifted his gaze back down to that single piece of paper on his desk. His eyes were moving like he wanted to look anywhere except directly at me… so I stared at him.

He capitulated with one final sigh. “Open Source intelligence is the gathering of material that is readily available to everyone,” the CIA Director began to explain. “In the old days it might be things like newspaper clippings, footage of foreign events broadcast on television… you understand?”

I nodded.

“In the last twenty years that has grown to include the kind of information that is transmitted through cell phone communications, and social media.”

“Facebook?”

The Director nodded. “It includes all forms of social media,” he confirmed.

“And Facebook gave you clues about Iran’s involvement in the zombie terrorism attack?” If I sounded incredulous, I was. I felt certain the Director was still playing his games.

“Yes,” Maitland said with conviction. “Facebook actually provided some of the early clues that ultimately led us to confirm that the zombie outbreak was an Iranian terrorism plot.”

I wrote all this down, but I wasn’t sure why. I had the feeling that at any moment, the CIA Director was going to break out into a bullroar of laughter, amused by my gullibility.

“Sir, are you serious?”

“Yes.”

I raised a questioning eyebrow and sat back in disbelieving silence. Maitland’s expression never altered. His features were set and rigid, almost as though this conversation was painful for him.

“I need more details,” I said.

Maitland nodded his head. “The Open Source Center is based in Reston, Virginia,” Maitland began. “Ironically it is the least understood intelligence discipline. That’s probably because the information gathered there doesn’t need to be stolen. The Center employs a large number of staff, and some of those staff operate social media accounts. Not all of those accounts are genuine. Do you understand where I am leading?”

I shook my head. I didn’t. “You’re talking about people at the Open Source Center operating fake accounts on social media?”

“I am,” Maitland said. “And not all of those fake accounts are created with American profiles. Understand?”

I shook my head again. The CIA Director was trying to lead me somewhere and I didn’t know where. I was getting frustrated.

“Can you just tell me where this is going, sir,” I asked. “I’m really not good at quizzes or puzzles.”

Maitland looked disappointed. Perhaps it had been his last attempt to answer my questions without actually having to directly say the words. He shook his head like a disappointed father when his son drops a high ball.

“We had people based at the Open Source Center and they operated social media accounts in the names of Middle East citizens,” he said softly. “They created profiles as Iranian students, or young adults and they interacted over social media networks with genuine Iranian citizens.”

“Like friends?”

“Online friends,” Maitland said. “They would log onto the accounts at times that corresponded with mornings and evenings in the Middle East, and they would assume their fictitious identities to engage in conversation with students, doctors… the youth of Iran.”

I was baffled and confused. “Just like that?”

“No,” Maitland shook his head. “Some of the accounts we operated have been established for several years. It wasn’t something that we just did overnight, and it’s not something that we operated only in Iran. We had fictional social media accounts created for various people right across the Middle East.”

“Had?”

“Have… had… Draw your own conclusions, Mr. Culver.”

I had stopped writing. Maitland and I spent a few seconds eyeballing each other, like we were locked in a staring competition.

“I didn’t know the youth of Iran even had internet,” I said warily.

Maitland smiled bleakly. “They do,” he said. “In fact the leadership of Iran itself is not immune to the power of Facebook and other social media sites. Some of them have used those sites to post messages and information.”

“But the country had internet filtering, surely.”

“Yes,” Maitland said. “They had draconian measures in place because they feared online social networking’s potential to challenge the narrative the regime was articulating. The ‘Twitter Revolution’ that threatened Moldova a few years ago and that swept the Egyptian government from power would have given the Iranian’s plenty to worry about. So they had draconian internet filtering. That wasn’t enough to stop the Iranian youth. One third of the nation’s youth were interconnected and politicized by virtual social networks.”

“So you are saying that the Iranian youth were actively disobeying or circumventing the social media bans imposed by the government?”

“Of course they were,” Maitland said bluntly. “In fact, according to Iran’s Ministry of Sciences, almost sixty percent of Iranian university students use Viber and WeChat, and almost the same amount admit to using Facebook. Iranian university students are just like students all around the world, Mr. Culver. They’re social – it’s just harder for them, so much of the social media activity was underground.”

“And your staff at the Open Source Center tapped into the social media network of information?”

“Yes.”

“What did you discover?”

“Nothing – directly,” Maitland admitted. “But in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of the zombie infection in Florida, there were photos and commentaries coming out of Iran’s social media about long lines of people around Tehran. Now normally that’s nothing too extraordinary. But the lines of people being photographed were all young men. Normally if the government was vaccinating the population for a strain of desert flu, then the lines would be mixed groups of men and women, and mixed ages in different parts of the city. But these groups were all young men, and the lines were not out front of hospitals or medical facilities – they were outside military barracks.”

I nodded my head in slow understanding. “And that was your first clue?”

“It was, but we didn’t realize it at the time,” Maitland confessed. “It was just something interesting that made it into a report and was then forgotten. The speculation in Iran from the people we were connected to through social media was vague, and certainly not alarmed. They didn’t know what the government was doing, and neither did the men in the lines. They received an injection – that was all they knew. They weren’t told what it was for.”

“And the human intelligence?”

The CIA Director didn’t flinch – didn’t resist. He adjusted the knot of his tie and fell back into the soft padding of his chair.

“Not ours,” he admitted. “The fact is that we have never been able to place a source high enough into the Iranian regime to be of any use.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “So where did the information come from?”

“The Mossad and the British.”

“Mossad – the Israeli secret intelligence?”

Maitland nodded. “They had a source in the Iranian government – a contact they only referred to as ‘Pegasus’.”

“A politician?”

Maitland made a face like he had bitten into something sour. “Most probably,” he agreed. “All we know is they had been running him since 2010. Apparently they caught him in a honey-pot operation during some European delegation visit. Quite frankly, that’s all we know about the guy.”

“Honey-pot? What is that?”

“It’s a standard method of trapping a source and blackmailing them,” Maitland said frankly. “This guy got caught with his dick inside the wrong under-aged girl. The Israelis set him up and he rolled over.”

I nodded. “And he told the Israelis about the zombie virus?”

Maitland shook his head. “If he did, Mossad didn’t tell us,” Maitland said softly. “They told us that the Iranian government was immunizing its Army – injecting them with some kind of antidote.”

“The antidote to the zombie virus, right.”

“That’s the conclusion we made – eventually. Once it was too late. At the time, it dovetailed in with what we were hearing on social media, but the reports were separate. No one put the two pieces of information together until later.”

“And the British? You mentioned their involvement somehow.”

Maitland nodded. “They intercepted two phone calls, one from France and one from Tehran, both made by a Russian scientist to a former comrade and fellow scientist. Apparently the two men had worked together in Russia. The man who received the call had defected to Britain.”