Chapter 1455 There is a mole, terminate the transaction!

"Chinese spy?"

A stone stirred up a thousand waves.

The entire conference room was in an uproar, even more lively than when the previous meeting had just begun.

Most people's first reaction is that Catherine Morrison wants to shift the blame to the specific implementation level through this rhetoric.

But looking at the solemn expression on her face, it didn't seem like she was preparing to pass on the blame.

Moreover, the sentence just now first mentioned the specific people and time, and the core argument came at the end, which does not conform to the general characteristics of fabricating charges out of thin air.

"Is this a report from Chief Griffin himself?"

After all, it involves the former head of another important department, so even Gates himself has to take it seriously.

"This……"

Morrison hesitated.

"I was attending a NATO meeting in Brussels at the time, so I didn't read the original report. I only learned about it by chance through the coordinator at NASA after I came back. But later more than one person mentioned it to me, so it should be true..."

Although the entire "Global Anomaly Office" is an insignificant fringe agency in the Pentagon, due to its special functions and historical reasons, they are the department that has the closest interactions with NASA.

In fact, about one-third of the members have dual identities as NASA and the Department of Defense.

Therefore, Morrison's words are still authoritative in this matter.

But soon, someone else found a loophole.

"three years ago……"

Assistant Minister Sheikh Brandon opened the perpetual calendar on his computer and roughly recalled several key nodes around 2006-2007:

"At that time, the X51A project should have been returned to the Air Force for development, and HTV2 was still in the conceptual demonstration stage, and even the funding had not been approved. How could the then NASA chairman propose such an assumption?"

For a moment, Gates felt overwhelmed.

Morrison's statement does not seem to be fabricated, and the doubts raised by Brandon are also reasonable.

He has always been cautious in his actions, but sometimes, the other side of caution can be indecision.

"Everyone, let's take a break for now..."

He raised his hand and looked at his watch:

"I'll call the White House. If there really is such a report, we can definitely find it if we spend some time..."

After saying that, he left his subordinates behind and quickly left the meeting room with his deputy Sheikh Brandon.

Of course, it is said to be a recess, but under the current circumstances, no one can really take a break.

The leader's temporary departure only made the scene more chaotic.

"This is completely unreasonable."

Alexander Kisker, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), was the first to bang the table:

"The Chinese intelligence forces are not very active in North America, and are basically under our control... Judging from past situations, they can only complete some open-source intelligence analysis, or use diplomatic identities to conduct surveys in sensitive areas and other borderline operations... Even if there are some omissions, it is impossible for them to involve any key core departments!"

You can't blame him for reacting so violently.

As a military intelligence department, although the NSA's main task is to collect external intelligence, it also has the function of internal security.

It's no big deal to simply find an excuse to shirk responsibility, but if a long-term and stable spy network really appears within the military project, then Kisker, as the person in charge, will definitely have to take the blame.

Faced with such a powerful figure, Morrison seemed somewhat lacking in confidence, and hesitantly did not know how to respond.

"General Kisker, please don't be so hasty to draw conclusions."

Instead, it was Carl Miller who took the lead in speaking, and his tone was somewhat sarcastic:

"I remember that at the beginning of the year, someone in the Senate produced a report proving that the intelligence security threats we face are becoming increasingly serious, and called for additional funding for the US-984XN project..."

Hearing this code name, Kiske's expression changed slightly.

US-984XN is a secret surveillance project led by the NSA and participated by the FBI.

It also has another code name "PRISM".

Although the plan itself was launched as early as 2007, it was only in the last six months or so that it was truly taken seriously by the White House and expanded to an almost unlimited scale.

“That’s at the congressional level…”

After a long period of uncertainty, Kisik decided not to confront the other party head-on:

"In the media and Congress, the threat of foreign espionage is a dog whistle that is blown every now and then, but that is just rhetoric for ordinary people... In fact, since the end of the Cold War, we have rarely faced large-scale, organized intelligence and security threats."

His eyes flickered as he spoke, and it seemed more like he was excusing himself than explaining to others:

"And even if such an intelligence network really exists, as Brandon said just now, the Chinese Dongfeng 17 is a rocket-propelled gliding hypersonic aircraft, and it was tested as early as the middle of last year. At that time, our HTV2 Falcon project had just started. Even if it is one-way transparent to the Chinese, it cannot provide any useful information and cannot explain why they are suddenly ahead of us..."

These words drew everyone's attention back to the main topic -

For the current Pentagon, the top priority is not to catch any spies, but to give a reasonable reason for suddenly falling behind China in the field of hypersonic weapons.

The meeting room, which had just been as noisy as a roadside shopping mall, suddenly became quiet.

But Carl Miller didn't want to let go of such a good opportunity easily.

In the past, passing the buck required considering a series of complex exchanges of interests. After all, everyone is eating from the same pot. If you want others to be willing to take the blame, you have to give them enough benefits.

If the spy incident in front of him is true, it would be a perfect excuse, and he could even take the opportunity to settle many other bad debts.

Therefore, he quickly thought of another explanation.

"Is there a possibility that..."

Miller cleared his throat, drawing dozens of eyes back to him:

"The purpose of this traitor is not to speed up the progress of the Chinese, but to deliberately sabotage our hypersonic research and development plan?"

Including Morrison, many people instantly showed expressions of enlightenment.

Seeing that his colleagues' attitudes were softening, Miller quickly continued to increase his stakes:

"I'm not shirking responsibility, but a very serious analysis... Let's not talk about the situation of HTV-2. The X51A alone has experienced two launch failures in a row. The first time, the scramjet engine was started, but it suddenly disintegrated during the operation. The second time, it couldn't even start successfully. After the rocket booster finished working, it fell into the sea. This shows that the problem was not solved at all, but it was worse than before..."

"..."

After such a thorough analysis, even Kiske began to accept this statement.

However, he was not willing to be convinced so easily.

"As of now, even if there are some intelligence security problems, most of them are caused by negligence or individual behavior in a single link... Such lone wolf activities, whether they are simply for the sake of money or for other reasons such as revenge, can only have a very limited impact on the scale and scope, and cannot affect the progress of the entire hypersonic weapons development."

Kiske was trying to make amends, but when he got to this point, he was stunned for a moment:

"unless……"

He took a deep breath, and his Adam's apple hidden under his collar moved up and down:

"Unless this 'individual' is of a very high level and can control the progress of the project development by himself..."

At this moment, Gates and Brandon, who had just left, pushed the door open again.

The former returned to the conference table with a serious expression, but did not sit down immediately. Instead, he picked up the microphone on the table:

"Everyone, the White House has confirmed to us that such a report was indeed submitted three years ago. The reason is that Director Griffin believed that it was possible that the Air Force Space Command or a strategic weapons contractor related to the Air Force Space Command leaked the activity trajectory of the 0396/2006-037CQ space debris, allowing the Chinese side to make preparations earlier and capture the debris before us."

"Due to the principle of avoidance, the matter was initially handed over to the FBI for investigation, but because there was no concrete evidence and the scope involved was too large, there was no follow-up in the end..."