Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [310]
"This'll look good in court," Ryan observed as he handed the frames back.
"It's not evidence," Murray replied.
"Huh?"
Shaw explained. "High government officials meet with… with strange people all the time. Remember the time when Kissinger made the secret flight to China?"
"But that was -" Ryan stopped when he realized how dumb his objection sounded. He remembered a clandestine meeting with the Soviet Party chairman that he couldn't tell the FBI about. How would that look to some people?
"It isn't evidence of a crime, or even a conspiracy, unless we know that what they talked about was illegal," Murray told Jack. "His lawyer will argue, probably successfully, that his meeting with Cortez, while appearing to be irregular, was aimed at the execution of sensitive but proper government policy."
"Bullshit," Jack observed.
"The attorney would object to your choice of words, and the judge would have it stricken from the record, instruct the jury to disregard it, and admonish you about your language in court, Dr. Ryan," Shaw pointed out. "What we have here is a piece of interesting information, but it is not evidence of a crime until we know that a crime is being committed. Of course, it is bullshit."
"Well, I met with the guy who guided the 'car bombs' into the targets."
"Where is he?" Murray asked at once.
"Probably back in Colombia by now." Ryan explained on for a few minutes.
"Christ, who is this guy?" Murray asked.
"Let's leave his name out of it for a while, okay?"
"I really think we should talk to him," Shaw said.
"He's not interested in talking to you. He doesn't want to go to jail."
"He won't." Shaw rose and paced around the room. "In case I never told you, I'm a lawyer, too. In fact, I have a J.D. If we were to attempt to try him, his lawyer would throw Martinez-Barker at us. You know what that is? A little-known result of the Watergate case. Martinez and Barker were Watergate conspirators, right? Their defense, probably an honest one, was that they thought the burglary was sanctioned by properly constituted authority as part of a national-security investigation. In a rather wordy majority opinion, the appeals court ruled that there had been no criminal intent, the defendants had acted in good faith throughout, and therefore no actual crime had been committed. Your friend will say on the stand that once he'd heard the 'clear and present danger' pronouncement from his superiors, and been told that authorization came from way up the chain of command, he was merely following orders given by people who had sufficient constitutional authority to do so. I suppose Dan already told you, there really isn't any law in a case like this. Hell, the majority of my agents would probably like to buy your guy a beer for avenging Emil's death."
"What I can tell you about this guy is that he's a serious combat vet, and as far as I could tell, he's a very straight guy."
"I don't doubt it. As far as the killing is concerned - we've had lawyers say that the actions of police snipers come awfully close to cold-blooded murder. Drawing a distinction between police work and combat action isn't always as easy as we would like. In this case, how do you draw the line between murder and a legitimate counterterrorist operation? What it'll come down to - hell, it will mainly reflect the political beliefs of the judges who try the case, and the appeal, and every other part of the proceeding. Politics. You know," Shaw said, "it was a hell of a lot easier chasing bank robbers. At least then you knew what the score was."
"There's the key to it right there," Ryan said. "How much you want to bet that this whole thing started because it was an election year?"
Murray's phone rang. "Yeah?