12 A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

By the end of that summer, White began to suspect that there

was a mole inside the investigation. When one of his agents was
questioning a seedy local attorney—who, according to an
informant, was trying to “strangle” the government’s probe—the
attorney betrayed a shocking knowledge of the inner workings of
the case. Finally, he admitted that he’d “seen part of the reports
made by the Bureau...and had an opportunity to see more of
them.”

The bureau’s probe had long been plagued by leaks and
sabotage. One agent complained that “information contained in
reports immediately gets into the possession of unauthorized and
unscrupulous persons.” A U.S. attorney also discovered that the
reports furnished to him by the bureau had vanished from his
office. The breaches threatened the lives of agents and created
insidious doubts, with officials questioning each other’s loyalty.
One federal prosecutor demanded that no copy of his report be
“handed to any representative of the State of Oklahoma.”

Perhaps most damagingly, two private eyes, including one from
the Burns agency, tried to expose the bureau’s main informant,
Kelsie Morrison. These private eyes leaked to several local officials
that Morrison was working with the bureau, then went so far as to
detain him on a trumped-up robbery charge. Agent Burger said
that the conduct of one of these private detectives was
“reprehensible” and was “certainly hurting our investigation.”
Obstruction, he noted, appeared to be these private