And… he wasn’t interested in learning. To the FBI agent, Jack Wilson was about as worrisome as a Nigerian con game.
And then one morning, Burke got up early and in a fit of masochism took a cold shower. To his surprise, it made him feel better. Virtuous, even. Then he made a cup of coffee for himself, and carried it to his computer. Sitting down before the monitor, he told himself to Get it together.
He was tired of treading water while the world wound down around him. If he didn’t do something soon, he’d drown. So watcha gonna do, boy? Join the circus, learn the guitar? Look for a guru in old Siam?
How about: Find Wilson.
Now that’s an idea, he thought. I could find Jack Wilson. But what would he do with him? He could FedEx the sonofabitch to Ray Kovalenko, and it wouldn’t do any good. On the other hand, they deserved each other. They might even be good together. And then, at least, this would be over – and I could move on.
So he typed a search string into the Google bar: “jack wilson” stanford indicted.
Somehow, Wilson had gone off the deep end, matriculating from a dormitory at Stanford to a cell block in Allenwood. That was quite a transition – and maybe enough to have made the papers.
The cursor changed to an hourglass and, in an instant, the screen refreshed.
There were dozens of hits.
He clicked on the first one, which was dated November 22, 1995 – a news story from the San Jose Mercury.
STANFORD MAN GUILTY
By Judi Whitestone
San Francisco Bay Area inventor and Stanford graduate Jack Wilson was found guilty in federal court today of soliciting the murder of U.S. Attorney Joseph Sozio.
Sozio’s office indicted Wilson last year for violation of the Invention Secrecy Act.
A summa cum laude graduate of Stanford’s prestigious School of Engineering, Wilson listened impassively as the verdict was read.
The prosecution’s case was based on surreptitious tape recordings made by Wilson’s former cellmate, Robert Maddox, who also testified at the trial.
Sentencing is expected next week.
Jesus, Burke muttered. And I thought I crashed and burned.
He spent an hour trawling for details on the Net. And what he found was enough to make you weep: Horatio Alger hitches a ride with Icarus…
The story had been well covered in the Silicon Valley press, where Wilson came to be seen as a golden boy with feet of clay.
According to the papers, Golden Boy was an orphan. In 1969, he was found in a box outside the emergency room of the county hospital in Tonopah, Nevada. Attached to his blanket was a round sticker with a smiley face. Under the word, HI!, someone had printed the words I’M JACK WILSON.
Wilson’s defense attorney played the orphan card and the Horatio Alger card as if they were a pair of aces. Brought up in a series of foster homes, young Jack Wilson was both prom king and valedictorian of his class at Churchill County High School in Fallon, Nevada. A national finalist in the Westinghouse science competition, he won a full ride to Stanford. Graduating at the top of his class, he was awarded the Ratner-Salzberg Prize (an inscribed pewter bowl and a check) and carried the Engineering School’s banner at commencement.
Other awards followed as he went on to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering. In 1993, he formed Wovoka Enterprises, applied for his first patent, and began to approach venture capitalists.
Patent? What kind of patent? Burke wondered. He searched a dozen different ways, but there was nothing about it.
It was at this point that Wilson’s seemingly unstoppable ascent to fame and fortune came to an end. In July of 1994, the Stanford man was indicted for violating the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951.
According to a trade publication called Silicon ASAP, Wilson’s invention had been seized by the U.S. government through the process of eminent domain. That is to say, it had been taken in the same way that the government seizes real estate in order to build a highway or railroad. Washington declared Wilson’s patent government property, remitted a check for what it considered appropriate compensation, and classified the invention “Secret.”
Relying upon the U.S. attorney’s complaint, Silicon ASAP reported that Wilson attempted an end run around the Invention Secrecy Act. Ignoring the seizure of his patent, Wilson attempted to raise mezzanine financing with a presentation at the offices of a venture capital firm in San Francisco’s financial district. According to an executive who witnessed the presentation, Wilson intended to produce the invention at a manufacturing facility offshore. Anguilla was mentioned.
FBI agents arrested Wilson as he left the meeting. The next day, he was indicted for violating the Invention Secrecy Act.
Burke found out what that was through the Federation of American Scientists’ website. The act was passed in 1951, and established protocols for the government’s seizure of inventions deemed vital to national security. Within the Patent and Trademark Office, special examiners look over all patent applications to determine if there is a national interest. Qualifying applications are referred to boards in the affected precincts – most often, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Their recommendations are usually final.
In most cases, the seizure of a patent is not a hardship for the inventor, because the patent was developed with government funding. But for some inventors it is a hardship. In 2003, for instance, nearly half of the one hundred fifty patent secrecy orders related to private, or so-called John Doe, inventions.
The inventors’ appeals almost always failed, as did their complaints of insufficient compensation. How do you establish the commercial value of something that has never come to market – and never will? How do you make your case when you’re forbidden by law from discussing the invention itself?
Burke rocked back in his chair. Now he understood Wilson’s affection for Atlas Shrugged and Francisco d’Anconia. But what did Wilson invent? Given his interest in Tesla, and the government’s assertion of eminent domain, it was probably a weapon.
Burke went back to the well.
Following his arrest, Wilson was transported to San Francisco County Jail #1, where he shared a cell and small talk with a motorcycle thug named Robbie Maddox. Before the despairing Wilson was able to arrange bail, Maddox met secretly with sheriff’s deputies, insisting that his cellmate was planning to kill the U.S. attorney.
Two days later, Maddox initiated another discussion with Wilson. This time he was wearing a wire.
At Wilson’s trial on charges of solicitation of murder, the following exchange was played for the jury:
Sozio? Yeah, I would definitely… like to see that sonofabitch go down.
How much would that be worth to you?
You gotta be kidding!
No, really! How much?
Christ, I don’t know… Why?… You know someone who could do it?
I could do it…
Get outta here… is that a deal?
…yeah, sure… deal.
Wilson’s defense attorney, Jill Apple, agreed that her client was angry at the government for seizing his invention. And yes, he had undoubtedly vented that anger to Maddox. But, she argued, the government’s assertion that Wilson’s remarks constituted a threat, much less a contract, was ridiculous. If Wilson was conspiring to murder anyone, where was the overt act to further the conspiracy? It didn’t exist. He didn’t do anything. All her client had actually done, Apple insisted, was shoot off his mouth – because his world was crumbling around him. That was a mistake, she said, but it was not a felony.