A Very Private Plot Read Online Free PDF Page A

Oakes?”
    â€œWhat do you think the old coot came up with? Leave it to Bob Dole. He said, ‘Look, Oakes, you can cite prosecutions in the past under Section 1001—’”
    â€œWhat’s Section 1001?”
    â€œThat’s the ‘false testimony’ statute the Special Prosecutor—Walsh—used against North and threatened to use against Elliott Abrams. You remember? 1991? Abrams had been Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs? He tried to conceal that he had got some sultan or sheik or somebody to help out the Contras. The old law says that nobody can, well, sort of hold out on Congress—not tell Congress things the witness really should have known Congress would have been interested in, but wasn’t aware of. It’s a hell of a provision, very old, early this century, but wasn’t ever used except against people who were hiding out on money questions. Dole’s point is that the committee could turn Oakes over to Justice and ask for an indictment not on the grounds of what Oakes told them, but on the grounds of what Oakes didn’t tell them—things they found out about from somebody else, and Oakes’s failure to tell them in the first place is ‘false testimony’ under 1001.”
    â€œIn other words, Oakes could take the Fifth … Hey, that’s good! ‘I plead the Fifth on the grounds that I might forget to tell you something you might think relevant to whatever it is you decide later is relevant …’ Have the courts passed on Section 1001 used like that?”
    â€œThere’s pressure on the Court to clamp down on the Walsh use of it. Get the AG to tell you about the Wohlenberg case, if you want particulars.”
    â€œDid Oakes cave?”
    â€œHe told Dole he would think about it.”
    â€œThink about it in jail, or before he goes to jail?”
    â€œOakes is tough enough to accept jail. But he doesn’t go in for melodrama, at least so far as we can figure. He thinks the position he’s taken is the correct position for somebody in his shoes, and he doesn’t want to give the impression that he is willing to abandon his position in order to spare himself a month or two in jail.”
    â€œBut how in hell would he be sacrificing his position if he appeared and then didn’t give out his secrets—by taking the Fifth? He would simply have outwitted Blanton, no?”
    â€œDole stressed just that. But Dole couldn’t deny the public perception: Oakes would be seen as hiding behind the same Fifth Amendment that sheltered the Commies for a couple of generations and is mostly used by criminals. On the other hand, Oakes says he doesn’t want to go to jail for the purpose of becoming a martyr.”
    â€œSo what’s he going to do?”
    â€œHe’s going to think about it.”
    â€œHow long’s he got?”
    â€œI imagine the Senate will act within a week.”
    â€œIf the Senate acts on anything within a week, it will make history. Thanks, Mack.”
    That was the signal. The chief of staff got up and left the Oval Office. The President had already started talking over the telephone before he reached the door. Mack shook his head slightly. The President had, in his presence just a moment ago, gone a full three minutes without talking or being talked to. Time spent thinking. Grave stuff. Heady stuff.

CHAPTER 5
    AUGUST 1975
    Nikolai Trimov was raised by an aunt whose job it was to cook eighteen meals every week for the kolkhoz—collective farm—in Brovary, a half day’s journey from Kiev on bicycle, over mostly flat farm country, lumpy only here and there with groups of glistening birch trees. His aunt was responsible for feeding 112 farmers, and they breakfasted at 6:45. This meant that she had leisure time with Nikolai only on her day off, which was Wednesday; but Nikolai was at school for most of Wednesday, so that it was only late in the