A Time for War by Michael Savage Read Free Book Online Page B

ideas to a few digestible lines, Griffith was moved to the Current Events Bureau, which wrote the daily briefings for the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Intelligence, and the Director of Naval Intelligence. Within a year of arriving she was giving briefings to representatives of foreign intelligence services. It helped that she had minored in Chinese at NYU. She was able to contribute a great deal to the ONI when it came to interpreting communications between Chinese agents and agencies.
    The jobs were fun and challenging; having a high-security clearance made her Big News when she went home to Whitefish, Montana, for Christmas; and her dating life was rich: thirty-three percent of the population in Washington was single, and the men were impressed with her position.
    Today the ONI was respectfully subdued but abuzz with the news of the SEALs’ deaths in Afghanistan the day before. As rescue teams reached the remote region and data began to come in, and a news blackout was lifted—a cautionary move that gave local commanders a chance to see if military movements were being leaked by a mole—the data was circulated among everyone involved with intelligence analysis. The attack was what the intelligence community classified as “all eyes”: everyone with appropriate clearance was asked to study and respond.
    Griffith was surprised, then concerned, that the initial reports cited zero communication from the downed Chinook; not even an automated Mayday. That kind of result came from running into a mountainside at high speed, which was not the case according to the first troops on the scene. There were no initial traces of an explosion—no obviously blown-out metal, no blast pattern on the surrounding terrain. The evidence pointed to an instant, catastrophic electrical failure, something that had never happened to this particular helicopter. But there was something that had affected it nearly three years earlier, Griffith found in her research.
    In 2006, billionaire industrialist Richard Hawke founded a company called CelesTellia that would provide wireless Internet bandwidth using a new broadband technology. Within a few months, the American military discovered that CelesTellia’s new technology was interfering with the GPS systems and electronics in some of its aircraft, including Chinooks. Pilots flying fighter jets identified the problem first. They would suddenly find their instruments going haywire, their planes unresponsive: total systems failure. In each case momentum brought the aircraft out of range quickly enough for the systems to recover before the jets threatened to nosedive.
    However, CelesTellia had announced plans to make its wireless Internet bandwidth available around the world—remote locations as well as cities. This meant that navigable space, by air, water, or land, would be effectively booby-trapped by the broadband technology. The military objected, publicly and loudly.
    Richard Hawke promised to shut down CelesTellia and abandon the broadband technology. The media furor continued for a few weeks, then faded out.
    Four months later Hawke founded a company called Squarebeam that used the same broadband technology. However, the company was now offering a new line of separate products: electronic components that would shield electrical systems from the broadband technology. Supposedly a fighter jet with these electronic components installed would not experience electrical failure when flying through the range of a Squarebeam unit.
    The military organized an investigation of Squarebeam but it was shut down within hours—reportedly because Hawke had strong ties with the White House.
    Griffith could find no further reference to the matter internally. Externally, however, she found a series of investigative reports from fringe journalists—and one mainstream report from an infamous journalist. There was a transcript of an episode of the TV talk show Truth Tellers