Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 Pearl Publishing
Bureau 42
Jonathan was 'surfing the Net'.
He had accessed a directory in the Cowboy's database which had
led him into a world that was over a century removed from his
current troubles, and he was like a kid in a candy shop, checking
out the wide range of insanity that had been available at that
point in history.
Revisionism, anti-Revisionism, alt.nudity.mormon, alt.usenet.cabal,
the 'Kook of the Month' website. Dr. Grubor, Dr. Vulis, Dr. Roberts,
and even Old Doc Parker, one of the Author's hidden personas.
Jonathan was cruising the Information Highway, the high point
of the InterNet, wherein everyone with a few dollars to plunk
down could have their own website and make their own particular
brand of insanity a Rest Area on the Highway to Hell.
The CypherPunks, Phreaks and Hackers were just bit players in
the insanity of the times. For all of the denigrating allusions
to them in the WebWorld scheme of reality, they were fairly normal
when compared to the millions of average Joe/Jane Doe lunatics
staking out their own rubber-room on the fringes of CyberSpace.
Jonathan eventually took a break from his 'surfing' and got down to the serious business of turning his attention to a renewed analysis of the life and times of the CypherPunks in the period surrounding the attacks on the lists, the remailers, and the individual CypherPunks.
Jonathan had turned up a Stego that had been part of the original release of Part II of "The True Story of the InterNet" on the CypherPunks distributed list that was created following the failed (?) takeover of the list in early 1997 AD.
The Author's second manuscript had been cut short by his ignonimous death in a scumbag motel room in southern Saskatchewan, but the torch had been picked up by a variety of individuals who added their own personal touches to its subsequent release.
One thing that piqued Jonathan's interest was the fact that the
Author's original title for the second manuscript had been "TV
World," and yet, the release to the CypherPunks list had
been titled "WebWorld and the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs."
Who was the mysterious entity who had released this version of
the manuscript at a time when WebWorld was not yet the living,
breathing entity that it had become in the decades since?
Jonathan's instincts led him to believe that the answer lay in
the innards of the mysterious Stego that comprised Chapter 25
of the release. He immediately set his sights to unlock this mystery.
Jonathan first sought out the source of the program that would
enable him to pry open the hidden secrets locked inside of the
Stego.
http://jengate.thur.de/ulf/stegano/
Steganography Tools 4 encrypts the data with IDEA, MPJ2 (up to
512bits key), DES,
3DES and NSEA in CBC, ECB, CFB, OFB and PCBC modes and hides it inside graphics
(BMP files), digital audio (WAV files) or unused sectors of HD floppies.
ftp://idea.sec.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt/code/s-tools4.zip
http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/crypto/software.html#stego
Jonathan booted the S-tools Stego program and ran a quick password
breaker on it. It took 48 milliseconds to crack. Obviously, secrecy
was not a concern to whomever had sent the Stego to the CypherPunks
list.
The password was "WebWorld."
Jonathan quickly uncompressed the resulting file with PKZip, another
archaic program of the period, and read the contents of the files
that were produced.
What he found gave him pause for thought.
The hidden post regarding the Author was not a great surprise.
It laid out the Author's connection to a variety of groups, mostly
referred to as 'cults' in his time, which were no great secret
to those with a serious grounding in the history of the Magic
Circle.
The Author had travelled widely and had been influential in the
formation of a variety of groups/cults in his time, although most
were perversions of his original concepts and philosophies. The
Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, Canadian Solar Temple offshoots,
the Montana survivalists and Elohim City tentacles had each taken
portions of his teachings and corrupted them to suit their own
ends.
The hidden post regarding Jim Bell, however, had surprised Jonathan
and was an indication that he should check further into just what
import it had in relation to CypherPunk history.
What he discovered would astound him.
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA03183 for cypherpunks-unedited-outgoing; Wed, 2 Apr 1997 17:40:11 -0800 (PST)
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From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 15:18:46 -0500
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Something of interest...
Sender: [email protected]
The Oregonian, Wednesday, April 2, 1997
20 armed federal agents raid home in Vancouver
By John Painter Jr. of The Oregonian staff
VANCOUVER, Wash. - About 20 armed agents from at least three federal
agencies in four states raided a Vancouver home Tuesday, apparently
looking for evidence of a plot to kill government officials.
Sources said James D. Bell…
Jonathan studied the headers from the message.
The header indicated that the post came from tcs_gateway2.treas.gov.
The header also indicated that the message was composed on April
1, the day preceding the news story of April 2, which it purported
to be quoting. Since the header could have easily been forged,
particularly considering the fact that it arrived at toad.com
on April 2, Jonathan could easily have dismissed it as a shallow
attempt at forged precognition.
Knowing that the Magic Circle was renowned for laying a cryptic
trail, however, Jonathan had to consider the fact that this shallow
forgery could well be a pointer to a more valid clue as to what
was really going on in the background of the Jim Bell affair.
Jonathan kicked in his date/time synchronicity module and it quickly revealed the presence of another post to the CypherPunks list which came a step closer to revealing preplanning by someone in relation to Bell's troubles.
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Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:32:07 -0800
From: [email protected] (Huge Cajones Remailer)
Dear Mr. Bell:
We have been both pleased and relieved to note
that over the past several months you have used
the troublesome initials "AP" much less frequently
than has been your habit.
This measurable improvement in your attitude
has considerably reduced the influx of damaging materials
into your files.
Today, however, it has been brought to our attention
that you took the opportunity to launch into an explanation
(relatively controlled, we hasten to say) of the
basic theory you have been propounding regarding AP.
More troublesome is the evidence that you, yourself,
posted the supposedly anonymous question to which you responded.
We sincerely hope that such felonious manipulation of e-mail traffic
and information does not indicate a return to your previous
unacceptable outbursts.
Always hoping for the best, we remain,
The Bell Team
[email protected]
Jonathan thought about the potential import of this post.
It had been sent mere minutes after the assault on Jim Bell's
residence, and a full day before the news reports of the event.
It was obviously done by someone with inside information on the
raid-someone who was poking fun at those involved in the raid.
Further inquiry suggested that it had been sent through a CypherPunks
remailer by [email protected], a known confederate of those claiming
to represent the Magic Circle of that era.
Another troubling feature came to light when Jonathan checked
the government paperwork regarding the Federal government's search
and seizure on Bell's residence, which was an obvious fishing
expedition meant to send a chilling message to those who dared
to express anti-government sentiments in public forums.
Greg Broiles, a C2Net foil on the CypherPunks list, had put the
documents up on his website at: http://www.parrhesia.com/jimbell.
Jonathan immediately recognized that the so-called application for a search warrant was pre-dated to March 28, as was usual when the government agencies had a desire to cover the trail of the motivations surrounding their activities. What surprised him, however, was the blatancy which they used in pointing to the true underlying motives in their attack on Bell.
The alleged 'time' at which the search warrant was signed was
9:02 am.
The exact hour and minute of the bombing of the Oklahoma City
Federal Building, which was the current 'cause celebre' of the
decade.
Jonathan had noticed, from other official documents of the era,
that the underground government agencies behind many of these
covert actions would use this 'time stamp' to indicate the true
nature of their probing actions.
Obviously, the agency behind this was trying to pry loose the
true connection of the Author to the execution of Snell, McVeigh's
role in the OK City bombing, and the fragile links of Bell's "Assassination
Politics" manifesto to the lunatic fringe whose web of treachery
wound throughout the the U.S, from Montana to Oklahoma, and points
west.
Jonathan compared the Oregonian press reports of the raid on Bell's
residence with the post regarding the Author's dark connections
(both of which he found in the Chapter 25 Stego).
The slimly disguised link was the reference to the origins of
the license plates on the vehicles used by the Author, and the
license plates on the government vehicles involved in the raid
on Bell's home. In both works, the reference to the license plates
seemed superfluous to the event being reported.
Further analysis convinced Jonathan that the CypherPunks post
in regard to the author, several days before the raid on Bell
took place, was the work of the same author who did the report
for the Oregonian about the raid on the Bell residence.
Jonathan also followed the trail linking the Author with Bureau
42 and realized that David E. Smith and Rich Graves, both CypherPunks,
had tentacles that reached far beyond the apparent simplistic
aims that the organization claimed for themselves, with links
that could be followed to the origins of the Holocaust that had
defined the grandoise efforts of the Evil One in an immediately
preceding time period.
The big mystery in Jonathan's mind, as usual, was what role various CypherPunks had played in this comedy of terrors.
Jonathan did a quick traffic analysis on the events preceding
and following the 'event' of the attack on Jim Bell, and found
the usual.
In this case, shortly before the attack on Bell, Kent Crispin
surfaced, replying to a few mundane posts on the CypherPunks list.
Immediately after the Bell situation caused discussion on the
list, Crispin jumped into the fray, attempting to muddy the waters
surrounding the Bell situation.
Then Hallam-Baker jumped in, adding to Crispin's efforts with
his own attempts to castigate Bell, leading other CypherPunks
to join in calling Bell a "loon" whose ideas were a
detriment to CypherPunk philosophy.
Jonathan followed the trail of posts and found nothing particularly
surprising. It was the same-old, same-old. The usual players coming
out of the woodwork to support each other's efforts to direct
the discussions in a manner that would lead the list threads away
from areas of concern to the government actors in the background.
Adam Back and John Young, Duvos, snow and the Fatman, among others,
would post missives which cut to the heart of the matter, but
their efforts would get lost in the more emotive posts by the
kooks and the disinformation artists.
After the intial plethora of posts regarding Bell, government
schills such as Crispin would begin posting a variety of items
containing bullshit logic which would then be set upon by those
who saw the fallacies contained therein, but who didn't realize
that their purpose was to evoke response which would further bury
matters of more immediate import to the future of the CypherPunks.
Even Tim May seemed to go through a period which was oddly supportive
of the government forces aligning against Bell, which only fueled
the fires of Jonathan's suspicions that Bell was actually playing
an active role in his own persecution.
"Ask not for whom Bell toils…"
Was Bell actually working as a government agent, lending himself
to the spooks' efforts to send chilling messages to free speech
advocates on the CypherPunks list?
"Ask not for whom Bell trolls…"
Was Bell setting up the government agents for a false start in
their attacks on the individual CypherPunks? Was he initiating
a 'wake up call' for those on the list who thought that the list
was nothing more than a grand game of "What if…?"
Jonathan poured himself a fresh shot of Jim Beam.
Crispin, Hallam-Baker, snow, Duvos and the Fatman. Each and every
one of them could actually be playing a role totally contrary
to that which Jonathan had attributed to them by virtue of his
far-reaching, in-depth analysis of their posts.
The more that he delved into the eternal mysteries of the anarchistic
CypherPunks, the more Jonathan realized that history was in the
past, and that the future lie in the actions that he would, himself,
would take today.
The future was in his hands, and Jonathan had absolutely no idea what to do.
There was a knock on the door of his old apartment…
Jonathan froze.
Chapter 29 - Bureau 42