Everett asked.
“Compartmentalization within the intelligence community is a high priority. I was in Kuwait at the time and heavily invested in relationships with ranking members of Al Qaida. If the government wasn’t involved, something should have leaked out and found its way to my ears.
“A CIA covert cell could theoretically be assigned a mission to recruit, organize, and fund an operation like 9/11 without anyone else in the agency knowing anything about it. Everything is on a need-to-know basis. The information flows are heavily guarded, and everyone keeps their mouths shut. Those who don’t, eventually become depressed or have delusions that they can fly off buildings. Once a mission comes from the top, you don’t question it or discuss it; you just do it.”
“So Project Prophecy was developed to catch inside traders who had advanced knowledge of terrorist attacks?” Everett wanted to know more.
“Yes. With the intent of deciphering exactly the nature of the threat. In the week prior to 9/11, there were massive short positions in American Airlines stock, as well as United Airlines.
“As a side effect, the program was soon able to predict market trends with a higher degree of accuracy than any other trading program to date. This lead to Project Markint. The name comes from market intelligence. It was designed to do everything Prophecy could do and more. The capabilities to predict a sovereign country’s intentions to financially attack another country are just the beginning of what this technology can do. The next generation of Markint uses the quantum computing capabilities at the Utah data center.”
“Utah has a quantum computer?” Everett asked.
“Seven. Six of the quantum computers handle specific tasks, and one acts as the soul that links them all together. The seven computers working in unison form Dragon.”
“I thought Utah was just a data storage facility.” Everett sat up straight with his eyes wide open.
“DARPA has a thumb drive that holds four terabytes of information. The NSA data center in Utah is over one million square feet. Can you imagine a thumb drive that size? There isn’t enough information in the world to fill that. We would never need that much space for storage.
“The intelligence community has learned that the best cover-up is to provide a narrative that is close to the truth. That way, when the inevitable whistle-blower comes out with information, it isn’t far enough away from the official story to get any play from the news.”
Everett was staring down the rabbit hole. “So the news is independent? You know, we hear all sorts of things around the water cooler. Mostly speculation, I’m sure.”
“Yes and no. One of the first initiatives when the CIA began was Operation Mockingbird. The objective was to control public opinion through media, both overseas and in the US. Officially, Mockingbird shut down, but Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby, admitted to the House Intelligence Committee in 1975, that the Company was still engaged in manipulating the media. The only difference between then and now is that we’ve perfected the art. And it’s not just the mainstream news media. We’ve got our hands in foreign media, Hollywood movies, the music industry, education . . . you name it.”
Everett struggled to take in all that Agent Jones was revealing. “The Company is controlling all of that?”
“I didn’t say we’re controlling any of it. We just have an influential hand in it,” Jones said.
“And Director Colby admitted to manipulating the press in a congressional hearing?”
Jones nodded and smirked. “Right before he was replaced as CIA Director by Skull and Bones member George H. W. Bush. We’re getting into more detail than I intended. Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
“No. I have all night. If you don’t mind my asking, why would you risk telling me all of this? It must be against protocol.”
Jones silently studied
Tiffany Snow
Misty Rose
Steve Miller, Sharon Lee
Suzanne Steele
Jane Smiley
Claire Adams
Mark Allan Gunnells
Janice Thompson
Ian Morson
Charlotte Louise Dolan