Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy Read Free Page B

It sent other information to a former Soviet military intelligence officer for help in understanding the Russian angles. It passed a copy of the draft report on to a former FBI agent, Tom Locke, inthe hope that the FBI might take an interest in IPOC. Locke, a legendary figure who had been in charge during the first weeks of the FBI’s mammoth investigation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, forwarded the report to Chip Burrus, the deputy assistant director of the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI.
    Day and Diligence took elaborate precautions to make sure Enright wasn’t himself a plant or a corporate spy. In this business, one can never be too paranoid. Who knew what schemes the opposing spies were working on? After every meeting, operatives from Diligence followed Enright to his next destination. And when he left his meetings with Enright, Day followed a process spies call “dry cleaning,” designed to detect whether he himself was being followed. He walked a prescribed route through several narrow choke points. That way, Diligence’s employees in preset lookout positions could identify anyone who might have been tailing Nick Day.
    Day knew that there were a lot of spies on contract in the battle between Alfa and IPOC. His firm worked alongside allies at other private spy firms who were hired to work other angles of the complicated case. And Day had created a detailed dossier on the long list of spy firms that he believed were working on IPOC’s side of the battle, and that might at any moment be targeting his own operation.
    But the most dangerous threat to any spying operation doesn’t come from outside. It comes from within. On the morning of October 18, 2005, an anonymous package turned up at the front door of the offices of KPMG in Montvale, New Jersey. Inside were detailed internal business records from Diligence, including e-mails and other documents, which made it clear to managers at KPMG that their firm had experienced a terrible leak, and Diligence—a firm they had never heard of before—had access to KPMG’s innermost secrets. To this day, it is impossible to say for sure who tipped off KPMG. But Nick Day suspected a recently fired employee who had access to scores of Diligence operations, including the documents dropped at KPMG.
     
    M IKE B AKER SETTLES into a plush armchair by the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan with the nimbleness of a man who has spent much of his life slipping into and out of quick conferences in posh hotels like this around the world. With spiky hair and boyish good looks just beginning to show the signs of age, at forty-eight this veteran CIA man could pass for the actor Kevin Bacon. As if to enhance his Hollywood image, Baker is wearing a black suit and white shirt unbuttoned to the point where a tuft of graying chest hair is just visible.
    Mike Baker cofounded Diligence with Nick Day, and he’s here to explain how the firm got its start. With a smile, he promises a boring interview.
    Baker was born in England to American parents. With a father in the military, he traveled the world at an early age. In 1982, he joined the CIA, becoming a covert operative. Baker says his own exploits paralleled the priorities of the CIA during the following decades: counterinsurgency operations, counternarcotics, and counterterrorism. He loved it—the people, the travel, the operations. And he won’t share any of the details. “I’m just one of those people who believe that you keep your yap shut,” Baker says apologetically.
    He does say that his nearly two decades as a spy taught him how the world works. “You peek behind the curtain, and you realize that there’s not a one-world government, and the CIA is not out to hose the average American,” Baker says. Although he worries that most people harbor conspiracy theories about the CIA, Baker depicts it as much like any other government bureaucracy—always shifting direction to please its civilian masters in