Don Brown - Treason

Levinson headquarters
Hotel del Coronado
Coronado, California
2100 hours (PST)

Y es!" Sitting on the corner of his bed, Wells Levinson thumped the report delivered to his suite moments earlier. "Yes!"

"You okay, Wells?" Terrie Bearden leaned against the doorjamb in a blue workout suit and unscrewed the cap on her bottled water. "I was just going down to the gym for a quick workout."

With a grunt of satisfaction, Levinson handed her the envelope. "Read this."

Terrie opened it and studied the papers. "You are ruthless, Wellington."

"This will teach the punk in the ice-cream suit to call my statements irresponsible."

"Aren't we lucky your investigators never followed us around when we were that age?"

"Terrie, postpone your workout. I want this leaked through our back channels to the LA Times , the San Diego Union , and every other media outlet in our database. Get moving on it now. I want it shouting from the front page tomorrow morning."

She shot him a look of disapproval. "Wells, do you really want to do this to the kid? I mean, it's not like you need this to win the case."

"You heard what Miller and the two talking heads said on Night Watch , didn't you? They want a knockout punch? They'll get a knock out punch." She looked uncertain, so he added, "Now do you want to get paid or not?"

"Okay, okay, Wells." Terrie draped a white Hotel del Coronado towel over her shoulders. "Give me the papers."

Prosecution headquarters
Navy Trial Command
Building 73
32nd Street Naval Station
San Diego
Day 2, 0415 hours (PST)

A fter working until midnight, Diane and Zack agreed to go home, get some sleep, and meet again at six in the morning.

For Diane, the adrenaline from yesterday's events, and especially from delivering the government's opening statement against Wells Levinson, made the notion of sleep a fleeting concept. Then, when she arrived at her Del Mar townhouse and plopped down on her sofa, she made the mistake of flipping on the television.

All night long, CNN played sound bites from both opening statements, along with Tom Miller's taped interview of Jeanie Van Horton. At the words "He did not deliver the knockout blow many expected against the younger and less experienced Lieutenant Diane Colcernian, who came across as poised and confident in the government's case," she sat up and took notice.

Heady stuff.

But what if they lost? She imagined the moment of defeat, if and when it arrived, and felt her self-confidence ebb.

"That's it. No more media for me till this trial is over." She flipped off the television and headed to bed.

Her "no media" vow lasted until 4:15 a.m., when dressed in her summer whites and ready for the long day ahead, she grabbed her briefcase and headed out the door. On her front steps, the early morning edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune beckoned.

She picked it up and glanced at the headline. "Oh no..."

She dropped her briefcase and stepped back into her townhouse for more light. Her heart dropped as she read. Oh, dear Lord. Please don't let this be true.

Forty-five minutes later, at 5:00 a.m., when she arrived at her reserved parking space at the one-story Trial Command headquarters on base, Brewer's Mercedes was already there. The rest of the spaces were empty.

She pushed the security code and came in the canal entrance of the trial wing--the entrance just across the narrow waterway separating the 32nd Street Naval Station from the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company.

Lights spilled into the hallway from Zack's office, and the sharp-edged clashing sounded like a fist punching a file cabinet.

"I'll kill him! I'll absolutely ring his neck!" Zack's enraged voiced carried down the empty passageway.

He's seen the article.

"That good-for-nothing, unethical rat!"

She stepped into his doorway. "You okay?"

"Diane?" Zack looked stunned. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting you for another hour."

"I understand why you're upset," she said. "It was a real low blow."

He gave her a puzzled look. "You know?"

She nodded.

"How?"

"I get the early edition of the Union ."

"The Union ? What are you talking about?"

"You've not seen it?"

"Seen what?"

"Seen this." She laid the newspaper on his desk. There it was, under the lead story about the opening statements.

DID BREWER HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH ENLISTED WOMAN?

SOME SAY PROSECUTOR VIOLATED MILITARY LAW

By Dennis Wacker, Military Affairs Correspondent

Did Lieutenant Zack Brewer, the government's lead prosecutor in the case of United States v. Mohammed Olajuwon et al., himself violate military law by having an affair with an enlisted woman?

Some say yes.

Witnesses close to the situation and speaking anonymously suggest Brewer, a Navy JAG officer, may have had a romantic relationship with Amy DeBenedetto, an enlisted paralegal who has since been commissioned as an ensign in the JAG Corps and is now attending law school in Virginia. Although DeBenedetto is now a commissioned officer, if an affair occurred with Brewer while she was enlisted, several former JAG officers interviewed say such a relationship would violate military law, demanding discipline against Brewer ranging from a private reprimand, to captain's mast, to a general court-martial. The Reverend JamesOn Barbour, reached at SARD headquarters in Chicago, called for an immediate investigation, and if the charges prove to be true, said Brewer should be prosecuted. "This is a continued example of the Navy's double standard. They prosecute a young, innocent man for rape, and now it appears the prosecutor should be prosecuted," Barbour said.

Zack tossed the newspaper on his desk, his jaw visibly clenching. "Aside from the fact that this is a bald-faced lie, I can't afford to get distracted by Levinson's garbage. Not now. We've got far bigger problems in this case than this, Diane."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's not what I'm talking about; it's who I'm talking about."

"Okay, who are you talking about?"

"Special Agent Harry Kilnap, Navy Criminal Investigative Service. That's who. The guy's a worm." Zack dropped into his chair and motioned Diane to have a seat.

"I thought his testimony went okay yesterday. Sure, Levinson crossed him, but we got the tapes in and scored some points."

"That's the problem, Diane. It went too well."

"I don't understand."

"Something didn't add up about how he just 'happened' to be in Shoney's restaurant with his tape recorder."

"What are you saying?"

"What I'm saying is that something didn't sit right. So I called him."

"You called Kilnap?"

"Right. I ran him out of his comfortable government-paid-for nest at the Harborside Marriott at four o'clock in the morning."

"And?"

"After I pressed the matter a few times, he admitted something to me that he hasn't revealed to anybody else."

"Go on."

"An hour or so before he got the recordings at Shoneys, Kilnap found al-Aziz's car parked in the base parking lot at Oceana Naval Air Station. Without a warrant, and without probable cause, he planted a bug in the car and waited for al-Aziz to get off work. When al-Aziz climbed into his car, Kilnap's bug picks up a cell call with Reska. Al-Aziz says they will meet at Shoney's. Kilnap follows them there. Or goes there based on information he has learned from bugging al-Aziz's car."

Their eyes locked for a few seconds. "What are we going to do?" she said.

"You were just a defense counsel. Tell me. What's the prosecutor's duty when he or she discovers potentially exculpatory evidence?"

"Oh dear..." Diane held her hand over her mouth for a moment, then removed it. "You're thinking about disclosing this?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. But you know as well as I do that a prosecutor, even a military prosecutor, has a duty to disclose exculpatory evidence."

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