CET Franz Herlicher closed the door to his office, carefully locking it behind him. Since the events of the last few days he’d become conscientious in following standard security protocol. Now he set out with briefcase in hand. Work had been hell. The status of his report was up in the air since no one could be sure what data was authentic and what had been tampered with. The documents, pictures, e-mails, and other evidence they had that Iran was on the verge of detonating a device was being reviewed by the department’s staff and they found more and more original material that appeared to have been modified, sometimes in major ways and sometimes in subtle ones. No one was sure anymore what was real and what had been doctored. He was determined that his months of work not go to waste and this huge opportunity for advancement and recognition be missed and was urging his superiors to circulate the copy of the report he’d verified as unaltered, but he was meeting resistance. They couldn’t publish a report with such implications without all the supporting data being in order, certainly not with their records in a state of disarray.
