"No question."
"Consider it done. I expect you all here at the same time tomor- row with preliminary game plans." He knew that would get their attention. Heads snapped up in disbelief.
"One day?" complained Andrew Coletree. "There's no way that we can begin to mobilize and organize the research . . ."
"That's the kind of talk I do not want to hear, gentlemen," the
President said. Coletree turned red.
"Mr. President," said Chambers. "If we were going to war . . ."
"Sir," the President said standing straight, "we are already at war. You're just not acting like it. According to you, the vital interests of this country have been attacked. It is our job to defend the country. I call that war. If we are going to sell a Computer War to America, we better start acting like we take it seriously. Tomorrow, gentlemen. Pull out the stops."
* * * * *
1:15 P.M., New York City
Upon returning from lunch, Scott checked his E-Mail at the Times. Most of the messages he received were from co-workers or news associates in other cities. He also heard from Kirk on the paper's supposedly secure network. Neither he nor the technical network gurus ever figured out how he got in the system.
The network administrators installed extra safeguards after Scott tipped them that he had been receiving messages from outside the paper. They added what they called 'audit trails'. Audit trails are supposed to record and remember every activity on the net- work. The hope was that they could observe Kirk remotely enter- ing the computer and then identify the security breach. Despite their attempts, Kirk continued to enter the Times' computers at will, but without any apparent disruption of the system.