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Poems Raise Security Concerns Based on DEA concern, Gus Fortan agreed to delay the operation for a day. During this time, certain texts that were recovered led CIA to believe Fluegel's fellow code-talker Hope Hearst was a potential security compromise. Poems by Hearst were being examined continually by NSA intercept staff. The usual subject of the poems was the jungle landscape of Colombia. The poems themselves were extremely evocative, if somewhat rushed and amateurish. They were in the genre of nature poetry. NSA analysis detected certain patterns, beyond those usual in versification, that they believed may have indicated encoded messages within the poems, revealing material of sensitive nature of the operation. The concern was that these texts were being forwarded to unknown organizations. Copies of poems intercepted from Hope Hearst's computer using NSA technologies were sent to a high-level US intelligence textual scholarship department, operating, at that time, as Brown University's Intertextuality and Scansion Research Facility. This group, now relocated, was a government-funded think tank with no direct connection to the administration of Brown. The sonnet that aroused most suspicion follows: Limonium, drunk on a jungle breeze After a series of tests, our analysts were able to ascertain that the sonnet, while formally flawed as a sonnet, was in fact a perfect acrostic. The octet contained the word "langujge" (very similar to the word "lenguaje") while the sestet clearly encoded the word "flower," as is illustrated below: Limonium, drunk on a jungle breeze Neither Hope Hearst nor the other civilian code-talkers had been formally briefed on the existence of the lenguaje or on this objective of the mission. It was of great concern to CIA that Hope Hearst would encode a message on this topic. It was considered imperative by Gus Fortan that CIA determine the intended recipient of this message. Hearst claimed that this poem, and all the other poems penned during the operation, had as their intended reader her husband. This particular sonnet, however, was never handwritten for mailing and was not printed out or otherwise transmitted from Hearst's laptop. Two days later, Hearst composed a poem which, although ostensibly "free verse," may have been subject to hidden constraints. Our analysts determined that the poem may contain encoded coordinates indicating the precise location of Humbaba's compound and the rumored lenguaje field nearby. This second poem was brought to CIA attention when Hope Hearst requested that it be mailed on a postcard to her husband in the United States. The postcard was cleared by a CIA censor for mailing, and was sent by diplomatic pouch to Rancho Mirage, CA, where it was mailed, in order that the postmark maintain the consistency of Hearst's cover story. Four days later, analysts located the hidden message from a photocopy of the original card. An attempt was made, with the cooperation of the U.S. Postal Service, to intercept the card. The card could not be intercepted, indicating that it was either delivered in an unprecedented four days, or that it may in fact have never left Colombia. The latter possibility suggested that Hope Hearst might be working in affiliation with powerful individuals in the Colombian government. Stateside agents were subsequently dispatched to keep Hope Hearst's husband under surveillance. (Hearst's husband will be referred to, for reasons of privacy, as Jorge Hearst in this report. This is not his real name.) The agents reported no suspicious activity. Nor did they find, in a clandestine search of the Hearst house when Jorge Hearst was away, any evidence of mail from Colombia. After the conclusion of the operation, a third poem was found, written on a napkin in block letters. The napkin had a business process diagram of no importance scrawled on the other side. It had fallen behind a chest of drawers in the room that served as Hope Hearst's quarters. It was only during the dismantling of the SBA headquarters that the poem was discovered. There once was an innocent flower It is the conclusion of this Commission that the above limerick is not very good in any of the possible formulations, and that the poem's being abandoned before completion was wise. The mention of the flower was noted as curious, but CIA found, in the end, no reason to conclude that the message contained further coded content or that it was intended as a message. After a one day delay, DEA determined that the operation should not proceed. Gus Fortan disagreed, and he informed the CIA LA Division chief that the operation should proceed without DEA support. Although he used as his reasoning the urgent nature of the operation, it appears more likely that he was aware that the absence of DEA would make it easier to conceal the importance of lenguaje from other U.S. intelligence organizations. DEA did withdraw support and recalled their agents from Fortan's command. Fortan decided to proceed with the operation, although his staff had been reduced by almost half. The DEA agents who were to be involved had been intentionally placed in peripheral roles, to avoid their gaining knowledge of the lenguaje, and Fortan believed the operation could be successful without their involvement. The military contingent, brought in with DEA funding, remained with Operation under CIA direction. A tropical storm had worked its way inland on the evening before the operation, but it was predicted that the weather would clear the next day. |
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