Ted Dryser found dead.

     

    Former national security analyst in the Bush Administration found dead in Miller's Falls, N.Y.

    That headline was to turn my early retirement from the FBI lab in Quantico into an unwanted assignment to track down and capture the U.S. back-channel Saudi envoy who through a combination of the new Bush's Administration's frat-house judgment and bureaucratic incompetence had managed, in the late days of August, 2001, to alert Osama Bin Laden to imminent armed drone attacks on his camp in Afghanistan.

    The instant when I first learned of Dryser's death is lodged in my psyche just as indelibly as the moments on T.V. when the twin towers collapsed and when President Bush sat frozen in place after receiving news of the attack.  

    I had been living in Stowe, Vermont, having retired there following thirty years of service with the FBI labs in Quantico as a DNA Program Analyst. Before the 9/11 attacks my long career at the FBI was challenging and my colleagues were smart and at times, jovial. My hours were on a set schedule and I could rely on weekends of reading and hiking. After the attacks, any agency in government which had had even the most remote connection to the safety and security of the homeland was in a state of upheaval--- the FBI, the more so.

    As I paid my check at the Trapp Family Lodge where on most weekends I treated myself to breakfast, my hands were shaking, the newspaper fell in sections onto the floor and a young waitress helped me recompose myself.

    "Mr. Sloate, are you feeling O.K.?"

    "Thanks,", I said, "the mud season in Vermont always confuses me, can't decide on which skis to bring, but I'm going up on the mountain to see if the lifts are running."

    By the time I reached my car my flannel shirt was soaked with cold sweat and I needed to get my pulse rate down before my chest exploded---I had met Ted Dryser for the first time a month earlier and invited him to see my house which is on the Historic Registry. He wanted to look at the original stone cellar---a damp and dimly lit space with a dirt floor. Suddenly he had me cornered and was holding a piece of lumber in his hand. I nearly laughed at my own naivety---what a god damn stupid thing to do to bring a total stranger down here---he must have outweighed me by fifty pounds. In defense of my life I grabbed for the piece of wood---when he said,

    "You need a wedge at the top of this post to keep the floor joist from sagging further", and jammed a two-by-four up under the hemlock beam. He was soon on his way back to his hotel and while I was somewhat suspect about his motives in touring my house I hadn't given much thought to him until the startling newspaper story appeared. 

    It wasn't the irony of Ted Dryser's death on a dirt road in Millers Falls instead of my death in a cellar by his hand a few weeks before that had rattled me---but that the photo in the paper wasn't the man I had impetuously invited home. But I recognized the man they were calling "Dryser". I had seen him on several occasions sitting in the back of the room at meetings of a National Security Council subcommittee on forensic analysis which I attended a decade earlier and his face was not hard to recognize---he could easily have doubled for Donald Rumsfeld.

    I should preface the story of my role in the capture of the man who alerted Bin Laden to the armed drone attacks by explaining to you that I am a scientist by nature and that normally my view of conspiracy theories are that they are the hobgoblins of the lazy fringes of society. "No" ---on the JFK assassination conspiracy, and "No" on Vince Foster's death by secret operatives of Hillary Clinton.

    However, I had reason to study the transcripts of the 9/11 hearings in detail as well as thousands of pages of documents which focused on timelines leading up to the attack on the twin towers. Even before my tranquil retirement in Vermont was interrupted by the bizarre events surrounding the death of the man in Miller's Falls, I had enough facts in hand to know that the theories about why Bin Laden acted when he did which had been dished to the media had been fabricated and that the essential questions were unanswered.

    Was the Bush administration finally getting its act together to hunt down Bin Laden but was, tragically, just too late? Or were they getting ready to act and Bin Laden---in what might have been the biggest insight in his life, or because he actually learned something---became aware that his camps were going to be blown to bits and launched the attack against the U.S. before scattering into the mountains ahead of an armed drone attack against him? When I unraveled the reasons Bin Laden attacked when he did, my belief in the goodness of mankind was badly shaken. 

    The morning I read the headline on Ted Dryser's death I managed to get in a half day of skiing on a thin patchwork of corn snow and the next few days brought a few more inches of powder which barely covered the outcroppings of granite ledge. It was the last skiing I would do in my lifetime. The day they closed the lifts I had a late supper in the bar at the Trapp lodge, drove home, unlocked the house, and switched on an overhead light in the kitchen. The man I knew as Ted Dryser was sitting at my antique maple drop leaf table. A Glock nine was in his lap.

    "Don't make any sudden moves, Sloate", he said, "not until you hear me out."

      

    Comments

    Oh.  My. God. More!


    Thanks, CVille. A black Tahoe has just appeared out at my gate and I may have to deal with that before I start on the next chapter.


    Don't answer the door!  Or do...and then tell us about it!


    Ah ... gotta love a well-written mystery. Just don't keep us waiting too long for the next chapter, bloggers have notoriously short attention spans. I can't remember where I heard that.

    Great job, Oxy!


    Thanks, barefooted. In order to do the next chapter I'm going to need a research assistant. I'm already nervous about my google searches as to the location of the FBI labs---didn't know the labs were located in Quantico---hey, it's on Wikipedia and job titles are listed on the FBI recruitment site. I hope the Trapp Lodge doesn't mind, I have stayed there. Hmm, maybe there's an Austrian angle to this story.


     


    nitpick> The reference to drones is a bit before the time period as this article outlines. Cruise missiles were more common before nine eleven. </nitpick


    Thanks, Sloate--er Moat. Articles such as you reference are artifacts of the dis-information campaign surrounding the events leading up to 9/11---dis-information to protect the Bush family legacy. The particular article you reference is prominently displayed in the George W. Bush Library in Dallas. 

    In fact the armed drones were ready for deployment against Bin Laden but there were screw-ups due to the lack of coordination between the FBI, the CIA and Rumsfeld's Pentagon.


    My connection to the Bush clan can never be revealed.
    Thank goodness we are discussing this on an encrypted server.


    Can't wait for the next installment. 


    Thanks, momoe. You will be interested to know that the mystery man gets run off the road by an 18 wheeler on the two lane Rt. 9 in upstate New York.


    LOL...Are you sure?


    You're funnin' me - him? He taught my kids skeet-shooting (I was always crap with a 12 gauge). We had him up to the lake bunches of time, and I would have never suspected. A peculiarly American tragedy - redux. About that 18-wheeler, I'd swear there were only 16 last I checked...


    Just checkin' - is he still dead? Too many zombie alerts, can't be safe anymore...


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