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When the inmate asked for his lawyer, I’d say, “I’ll see if he’s available,” then pretend to go off the line for a minute. I’d come back on, tell him his attorney wasn’t in at the moment, and ask his name. Then, nonchalantly, as if I were taking down all the relevant information, I’d ask, “And what housing unit are you in?”

Then I’d say, “Try calling back in an hour or two,” so no one would notice that a lot of public defenders never seemed to get their messages. Each time an inmate did answer, I was able to identify another housing unit and take that number off my list. Jotting down the details on a notepad, I was slowly constructing a map of which phone numbers connected to which inmate housing units. At last, after several days of dialing phone numbers, I reached an inmate on Six South.

I remembered the internal extension for Six South from when I was in solitary confinement at MDC. Among the things I had done during that time to keep my mind active and preserve my sanity was to listen to announcements over the prison’s PA system and store in my memory every phone extension I heard. If an announcement said, “C.O. Douglas, call Unit Manager Chapman on 427,” I’d make a mental note of the name and number. As I’ve said, I seem to have an uncanny memory for phone numbers. Even today, years later, I still know quite a few of the phone numbers at that prison, as well as many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of numbers for friends, phone company offices, and others that I’ll probably never have any use for again but that were seared into my brain anyway.

What I needed to do next seemed impossible. I had to find a way to call the prison itself and make arrangements for a phone call with Kevin Poulsen that would not be monitored.

Here’s how I went about it: I called the main number of the prison, identified myself as “a unit manager at TI” (Terminal Island Federal Prison), and asked for extension 366, the number to the Six South guard. The operator put me through.

A guard answered, “Six South, Agee.”

I knew this guy from when I had been a prisoner there myself. He had gone out of his way to make my life miserable. But I had to keep my anger in check. I said, “This is Marcus, in R and D,” meaning Receiving and Discharge. “Do you have Inmate Poulsen there?”

“Yeah.”

“We have some personal property of his that we wanna get out of here. I need to find out where he wants it shipped.”

“Poulsen!” the guard screamed, much louder than necessary.

When Kevin came on the line, I said, “Kevin, act like you’re talking to someone in R and D.”

“Yeah,” he said in a completely flat tone.

“This is Kevin,” I said. We had never met, but I knew him by reputation and figured he’d know about me the same way. And I figured he’d know there wasn’t any other Kevin who could be calling him in prison!

I told him, “Be at the Public Defender’s phone at exactly one o’clock. Pick up the phone, but keep flashing the switch hook every fifteen seconds until I connect.” (Since the ringer was turned all the way down, he wouldn’t know the exact moment when I would be calling in.) “Now, give me your home address so Agee hears it. I told him I was shipping your property there.” After all the trouble Agee had caused me, it was sweet to have tricked him into getting Poulsen on the line.

At exactly one o’clock, I called the Public Defender’s phone in Six South. Because Poulsen hadn’t said much in the first call and I wasn’t familiar with his voice, I wanted to be sure I was really talking to him when I called back, so I tested him. “In C, give me a syntax for incrementing a variable.”

He easily gave the correct answer, and we chatted at leisure, free from any concerns about Federal agents listening to our conversation. I was amused to think that as I was evading the Feds, I was also hacking into a prison to speak to an inmate charged with espionage.

On January 27, a lucky break provided Shimmy and his team with the first strand of the net they would weave