McKean S04 The Re-Election Plot Read Free

should do next. Professor Kyle Smith.’ ‘
    McKean asked Nagumo, “Have you ever seen any of this before?”
    “Not in the Seattle office,” Nagumo replied. “This sort of thing would normally be handled by the D.C. office, especially if it came to us via that congressman. I’m sure the agency had its authentication people explore the question of a fake when they first got hold of the tape.”
    McKean searched the web and found a copy of the finished tape. As we watched bin Laden give his pre-election discourse, his lips and goat-bearded jaw seemed to move in perfect synchrony with his words, at least as far as my Western eyes and ears could discern.
    McKean clicked his mouse to pause the tape. “Now,” he said, “let’s do a comparative study.” He clicked the Yamani file and bin Laden began the same lecture, but this time the lack of sync was obvious.
    “Smith had it right,” remarked McKean. “His student’s prank file doesn’t get close to matching lips with words. But on the other hand, the sound track seems to be exactly the same voice, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “Sounded identical to me,” Nagumo agreed. “Tell you what, I’ll get our voiceprint lab to make a comparison. But I’m confused about one thing: how is this in any way a motive for Smith’s murder?”
    “Answer: not obvious,” McKean reponded, restarting the video and watching bin Laden’s face move in herky-jerky, amateur animation. “Although the thought strikes me that more than one bin Laden video may actually have been a phony.”
    “Concocted by terrorists to strike fear into us,” I concluded.
    McKean shook his head. “Given that this one helped swing a close election in favor of Bush and other incumbents, your logic seems backward, Fin. If terrorists released this video at that crucial time, then they were their own worst enemies, keeping their greatest nemesis in power.”
    “If terrorists didn’t release it, then who?”
    “Someone who wanted to get re-elected.”
    We all pondered that one for a while. Then McKean asked Nagumo, “What was the buzz at the FBI at that time, regarding the bin Laden video?”
    “I once talked to a guy in authentication in D.C. There were multiple theories about the thing’s origins, but top brass ultimately told people to quit pursuing it. It doesn’t take a genius to know that if a video like this could help re-elect the president and some congressmen, there wasn’t going to be a lot of interest at the top in debunking its source.”
    “More germane to Smith’s murder,” McKean observed, “is the notion that he was bringing up something considered buried and forgotten after 2004.”
    “When I get back to my office,” said Nagumo, “I’d like to pass all this along to the D.C. bureau.”
    “I’ll email you everything,” McKean promised.
    When Nagumo had gone, McKean clicked off bin Laden’s rant and restarted the molecular model animation. “Notice the intricacy of the details,” he mused, running his thumb and fingers along his angular jaw. “Thousands of component parts, all animated independently, but the whole scene moves in an organized and believable way; a computer graphics problem of a hundred thousand variables, all of which conspire to make you feel you are there, witnessing the real thing.”
    Momentarily confused, I asked, “Which, the molecule or the bin Laden recording?”
    “My point, precisely,” McKean replied, intellectual light glowing in his eyes. “Both films may have been made the same way: tens of thousands of spots of light orchestrated by computer programs. To a computer, there is no difference between a molecule and a terrorist’s face. But Kyle Smith had the most practiced of eyes for spotting traces of computer fakery. No wonder he couldn’t let the matter drop.”
    The phone intercom buzzed and he punched a button. “McKean here.”
    The receptionist said, “You’ve got a visitor. She says her name is Fatima Yamani.”
    We