I want to start with the clearance, because it is the thing nobody warned me about and the thing that changed my life.

I had been Director of Cyber Intelligence for eleven years. On the morning after the breach, my Level 12 was suspended pending investigation — routine, they said, an abundance of caution, they said.

It has never been restored. Fourteen months of administrative leave, then unpaid administrative leave, then a resignation I submitted myself because I could not stand one more form.

I had built the architecture that half of Washington ran on, and I could no longer badge into the lobby of the building where my office was.

The prosecutor’s name was Ruth Adeyemi. Assistant United States Attorney, nineteen years, National Security Section. She was in her early fifties, in a suit that had been good four years ago, and she had a legal pad she did not write on, which I have learned means a person has already decided what they are going to say.

Rachel Mercer sat on my left. On my right was a white-collar defense attorney named Peter Vaillancourt, whom Rachel had made me retain in month three, over my objection, at a rate that made my eyes water.