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ADVANCE LETTER

Sometimes people ask me if I’m jaded, or if I’ve stopped caring about our witnesses, and I can honestly say no. Apathy is not an issue. After thirteen years with WITSEC, I actively hate the witnesses. They’re hustlers and leeches, always looking for an angle on me and the Program and the American taxpayer. If you had this job, Madame Inspector, you’d hate these bastards, too.

Then along comes a case like the one in question, and everything feels different. Not only because this case would make or break my career, but because of the family involved. Because of Ana.

You already know the skeletal facts of the case, Madame. Which key players ended up dead or gone. How, as the Director-designate of WITSEC, I was responsible for the witness. And how, even though that witness flaked out of the Program, scuttling the case before it could come to trial, I was still confirmed as the permanent Director.

I can’t blame you for ordering an investigation; I know how curious these facts must look out of context. But don’t confuse facts with truth. Facts, alone, are lies of omission.

I’m not going to dispute your facts. I will put them in context to reveal the truth of the case. I will not, however, grant your request for an interview.

Before you take a notion that I’m not cooperating fully with your investigation, take a closer look at Department Administrative Order (DAO) 207- 10, section 6, and Department Organization Order (DOO) 10-10, section 4, which you so thoroughly referenced in your summons. Note the provision for a target of an investigation to “furnish sworn oral or subscribed statements.” This is my statement, so help me God. What’s more, if the courier has done his job, this letter has reached you before our Friday appointment, which you may now consider canceled.

I understand you’ve already heard one version of the story from Deputy Marshal Peter Crews. Allow me to be blunt, Madame: Pete doesn’t know shit. In the Program, information is distributed on a need-to-know basis, and a low-level operative like Pete didn’t need to know much to do his job, which was to keep the Easterday family safe and on track for the trial. Basically, the job of a sheepdog. Which he failed to do.

Some might suggest that if the Department of Justice was truly interested in holding individuals accountable for blowing cases, Pete would be the one under investigation right now. I’m not naïve enough to make that suggestion. I understand this town, Madame. I understand you’re hunting big game. You want the chief’s head on your pike. And I suppose I can’t blame you for working with Pete to make that happen. After all, that’s my signature move: Flip an underling on his boss. Live by the sword, die by the sword, right?

Only I’m not going to fall on this particular sword.

If you’ve done your homework, Madame, you’ll know that I spent a couple years at seminary before defecting to law school. But do you know my favorite Proverb? Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment. That’s the advice I give witnesses when I tell them to spill it all, confess everything, even the stories that incriminate them—these are precisely the stories that make a witness credible, judges and juries tell us—and now I’m going to follow my own counsel, trusting it will deliver me through this investigation.

Unlike Pete, I know all, and I’ll tell all. In the spirit of full disclosure, all documents related to the case will be delivered to your office on Friday afternoon, along with the rest of my statement. After you read my entire statement, you can decide whether to unseal the criminal Complaint against me and send out the requisite news release. Though I don’t think you’ll do that.

The investigation is yours, but the apologia is mine. You keep your facts; I’ll give you the story. As you’ll see, I always keep my word.

District of Columbia, 1996 D.W. Boxelder