Scott suddenly felt a twinge of guilt, but not enough to remove the anger he still felt. "What ever happened to the first amend- ment?" Irate confusion was written all over his face.
"Here me out before you pull the switch," Higgins sounded very tired. "About 10:30 last night I got a call from the Print Chief. He said that the NYPD was at the plant with a restraining order that we not print a story you had written. What should they do, he asked. Needless to say I had to come down, so I told him, hold the presses, for a half hour. I called Ms. Manchester and she met me here just after eleven. The officer had court orders, from Washington, signed by the Attorney General personal- ly, informing us that if we published certain information, alleg- edly written by you, the paper could be found in violation of some bullshit national security laws they made up on the spot.
"I called Doug, who was pleased to hear from me at midnight I can assure you, and he agreed. Pull it. Whatever was going on, the story was so strong, that we can always print it in a few days once we sorted it out. We had no choice. But now, we need to know, what is going on?" Higgins was clearly exhausted.
Scott was at a loss for words. "I . . .uh . . . dunno. What did the court order say?"
"That the paper will, will is their word, refrain from printing anything with regards to CMR. And CMR was all over your article. Nobody here knew much about it, other than what was in the arti- cle, and we couldn't reach you, so we figured that we might save ourselves a bushel of trouble by waiting. Just a day or two," he quickly added.
"How the hell did they find out ?" Scott's mind immediately blamed Tyrone. He had been betrayed. Used. Goddamn it. He knew better than to trust a Fed. Shit. Tyrone must have gone upstairs and told his cronies that I was onto a story and . . .well one thing led to another. But Jeez . . .the Attor- ney General's office.
"Scott, what is going on here?" Higgins asked but Doug wanted to know as well. "It looks like you've got a tiger by the tail. And the tiger is in Washington. Seems like you've pissed off some important people. We need to know, the whole bit. What are you onto?"
"It's all in the story," Scott said, emotionally drained before 9:00 AM. "Whatever I know is there. It's all been confirmed, Doug saw the notes." Doug nodded, yes, the reporting was as accurate as is expected in such cases.
"Well," Higgins continued, "it seems that our friends in Wash- ington don't want any of this printed, for their own reasons. Is any of this classified, Scott?"
"If it is, I don't know it," Scott lamely explained. He felt up against an invisible wall. "I got my confirmations from a couple of engineers and a hacker type who is up on computer security stuff. This stuff is chicken feed compared to SDI and the Stealth Bomber."