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Aaron Hoffstein
SPECIAL TO THINK & ASK
NEW YORK CITY
Part 4 of 4
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"In fact, she did so through snail mail," said journalist Jeffrey Allen Miller. "Considering that I published this story electronically, I was a little surprised to see that Clinton's office located my real address to send correspondence." Sen. Clinton's note to Miller was brief, but stated that she supported the U.S.-involvement in Afghanistan, and that in these difficult times of combating terrorists we need to think of new ways to keep our homeland safe.
At the time Miller published his story, "I had a children's website -- just a fun site that I played with for the hell of it. I put the story out there and the search engines picked it up." While he was pleased with the story, the lack of response "thus interest" in the piece, Miller was prepared to walk away, until search engines flooded the story with visitors.
"Traffic went through the roof." According to website traffic report, government domains accounted for the greatest volume of traffic, "I had .mil, .gov and usdoj.gov all over my website along with many .com domains." Within two weeks the website was hacked. And e-mail threats from readers alarmed Miller. "People were angry with me for printing the story. So, I knew I had hit a cord inside this patriotism-of-sorts."
After his website experience a second attack, "I spoke to the service provider and they were unapologetic." Miller says after a few rounds with the company in California their final comment to him was that his content was unpatriotic and they were obligated to report him due to new rules in the Patriot Act. "We aren't talking about pornography here, or killing any political leader, I'm a journalist and I write. Even still, if this was an opinion piece, isn't that even protected anymore?"
Miller set up a new website called "Think & Ask" and found a new ISP, and he used the site for his publishing endeavors. During the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Miller continued investigating the White House as a sideline business to his job at IBM. "Something about Flight 93 [the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11] bothered me. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the fact that the actual wreckage of that plane was never shown, I set out to find why," Miller said.
The FBI announced two months after the crash of Flight 93 that 95 percent of the wreckage had been recovered. During his investigation, Miller found the FBI lied about debris fields and he, as well as other media outlets, found that what the government said about cell phone use onboard and the weather conditions were false.
"For one thing, they released aerial photos of the site crash with the south-facing north. And secondly, they claim it was impossible for military jets to be anywhere near the crash site due to distance restrictions, that too was not true." Two small-town newspapers in Pennsylvania had printed similar information in the weeks following 9/11; "However, neither newspaper put two-and-two together. Had the competing journalists shared notes they could easily have blown the cover of the FBI and the White House."
He released another story about Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations in February 2003. "Powell's presentation was so full of lies, I really expected headlines that afternoon to be laughable," but Miller said no media outlet in the United States even questioned the validity of Powell's presentation -- which since even Powell himself stated had credibility problems. "So, I did it again -- I blew their cover, and the White House was not pleased." U.S.-government domains combined accounted for the second largest group of visitors (behind AOL) to Miller's website, Think & Ask.
While world events continued to unfold, Miller now believes he was already under the watchful eyes of the FBI.
Five months after publishing the Afghanistan story, in January 2003, "I had two friends at separate times ask me on the telephone what I was doing to make so much static." He says they were bothered by a buzz or clicking on his side of the telephone -- "I didn't think much about it, and I assumed it was on their end, because I used an old-fashioned regular dial phone." But after one friend joked about his phone being tapped when the United Nations claimed their own phones were tapped by the CIA, Miller didn't take it lightly.
"I checked online about wire tapping, and found that such taps don't create clicks or buzz sounds -- and while that didn't convince me totally, I did feel as though something was different." He doesn't consider himself superstitious, "I do think I'm intuitive, and all I can say is that when I went outside I felt uncomfortable."
Miller worked as a mobile employee for IBM at the time, he spent much of his day indoors and on the telephone for conference calls. When a unannounced Verizon repairman was inside his building in February 2003, Miller was on the telephone with colleagues at work when without click, buzz, or any noise at all, a voice said, "'Mr. Miller?' I said yes, and he said, 'Could you hang up for a moment we are working on the lines in your building,' I said, 'Who is this?' and he said, 'The Verizon repairman, I'm downstairs.'" Miller excused himself from the IBM conference call.
Miller was shocked and left his apartment for the building lobby. "The building is only seven floors and our lobby is tiny, sure enough, he was down there in a closet working on wires.
"How long had the Verizon man listened in? We were actually discussing IBM-sensitive information, how did he engage the wires without announcing himself or making even background sounds?" Naturally, Miller's conclusion was, if that man could listen to a his phone call without detection, anyone could.
As the United States prepared for invading Iraq, Miller and another colleague prepared to meet with customers in Europe and they left the United States the day of Iraq's invasion.
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