quite a few months ago in my world, past employer, my previous employer, I did talk to an attorney and as he's a friend, he couldn't give me legal advice as a friend but he could be as a friend can coach me a little and so he urged me to come forward and make this public and his, his wife was actually on the Supreme Court here in Poland, accusing justice in Supreme Court. And he talked it over to her and she said up he said that she's very interested in the story. They'd like me to come forward and make a statement, and they will try to give you whistleblower protection. Okay, and my response was, you know, in this town, there's no such thing as perfection. Once you burn an employee or you burn somebody's count formula, you're pretty much blacklisted. Okay. And I'm not my career's not over yet and I'm really worried that I will shut myself down for the rest of my career if I actually come forward with damaging information.
Sure. Yeah.
What I could tell you though, is it's really, it's very incestuous here. Everybody belongs to and so I wanted that attorney o'clock. I race against them all the time at the same Yacht Club. Okay. We're friends. And then some of the other security consultants from around town are at the same Yacht Club and it turns out Pacific resources, they, one of their members was at the same young I observed a lot of reputation. Okay. But I was talking to when the security consultants last night, we were laughing about the story going oh boy, this is going to go big and and what he told me was, the interesting thing about your story is is I'm not familiar with this company, the Avid, Avid, avid Gillan equipment you quoted in your story. The AVID Gillan stuff on Pacific security resources never installed in the installed a another system that was actually left things mess up apparently, they Avigail and stuff I was totally this high in excellent equipment is good, right. And it turns out they're not the sole supplier of it in town anyhow, but what they did end up stumbling with another brand and I can't remember what what I was told. But apparently, they didn't even install it. It's much cheaper.
Okay. Yeah. But Ken, if we could just take a step back for one second, I just want to address something that I understand what you're saying about, you know, coming coming forward as far as burning bridges and things like that. So I want to make sure that you know, the conditions we're speaking under are acceptable and okay with you before before we go any further so what I what is, what would you what can what conditions are you looking to speak to us under because what my understanding is it's is that we are not able to attribute anything that you tell us to you obviously.
My concerns I don't want to get into since I was involved in capital improvements for the judiciary, I was actually the head of department that does not have secured your purchases. And then my staff was the eldest purchasers and and so I was any information I come up with will be clearly attributed to me talking about what happened in the judiciary, okay, it's only one person, okay? It's it's I don't work. It's pretty clear that I'm the guy.
I understand that and what what what we have is a condition called deep background. And basically what that is, is a condition that we if we use anything you tell us I'm not talking about cause I'm taking any kind of information you give us not only can we not attribute it to you but we can only use it if it is not traceable back to you. Okay, okay. So what what what the difference is on background or, you know, on background it would be something like a source inside the judiciary or a former judiciary employee, okay. And now, you said that would trace right back to you. Right. Right. Right, right back. So so obviously, that's not going to work. So deep background is something that you know, we use in journalism to protect sources in situations like this. So, what I can tell you is this, your speaking to me. I ethically am bound to the conditions that we set. Okay. You can look me up I've been in journalism a long time. I've worked at major publications. I am not going to take a sources identity lightly. So I can assure you of that. So
how about this are you a bonafide news organization? Yes. That's true guys talking to you guys are real. And I am not familiar with you. I'm not in those circles. So make sure because my my concern is if this does blow in, what's going to happen is if this story gets any bigger, it's gonna get local news here and the politicians will get involved, maybe lawsuits going back and forth, who knows where it's going to go, right. It's my name is Snowbird. That's what I found out. You're not going to end up on the screen. Right, right. Yeah.
Well, I can tell you this. I consider it my job to make sure that it's not discoverable by anything that we release. I don't know where this is. I mean, you know, much better than I do where the story could go. So I can't I can't say that if we report this story out. You know, it won't touch you Because clearly, you have inside information from somewhere at some point. But what I can tell you is that I my number one concern in reporting this story out is going to be keeping your identity confidential. That I will guarantee you Okay, and again, I know you don't know a whole lot about us, but I can number one, I can give you access to the site. If you'd like to see some of the investigations that we've conducted. Recently. You can certainly Google me. You know, I've worked at the New York Daily News, New York Times up front magazine Marshall Project. So, you know, graduated from Columbia Journalism. School. I'm not somebody who doesn't know my first rodeo, so to speak. So I mean, I've worked with organized crime sources in the past, if that gives you any kind of indication. And prior to becoming a journalist, I was a corrections officer investigating prison gangs. So Wow. Those are sources that you protect, or else they get killed. So I take source source protection very seriously. You know, still to this day, so
yeah, that's me a little ease. I'm still always just melted. That's what scares me. I've learned from previous employers that in Hawaii, you can hate the person you work with. You can not trust them, but you can still work together and make money together. Yeah, you don't have to be partners or friends. And that's that I learned that very young in my career here in Honolulu. And it's kind of stuck with me that even though you may not like the person you're working with, you may not trust person, you can still work together in the partnership and money together. Sure. And so I've learned I can't burn bridges here.
Well, listen, I totally understand that. Yeah. And that's and honestly, you know, what I'm going to say is I would like to ask you about that one product that was not installed since you brought it up. But But what I want what I want to tell you is this I'm not going to ask you a bunch of questions right now. I would like you to just maybe, maybe take a day and just think about what you want to do. Because you don't you don't seem Sure. And I don't want you to go in a direction you're not sure about if you're not sure about
it, to be honest. My first career. This is not my first architecture. My first career. My first career was journalism on my actual work at CNN.
Hi, there you go. Okay, so you know, you know what, I'm talking about them?
Yeah, I do. But I also know I told my wife I told my friends if you're ever involved in horrible story, and you stick a camera in your face, don't talk to them. Of course. They're gonna say that they care about your story. They want anyone to hear you as somebody that they care about realities is trying to get out. And so their interests are very short. They're not they're not really interested in your welfare or your well being they're trying to is a lot of work to produce the stories and information quick. So I know that you can journalism journalists have the right intentions. Sometimes.
Yeah, people the interview are not always taken care of. Well, that's why I'm telling you. Instead of asking you a bunch of questions right now, I just want you to take take 24 hours or so and we can we can circle back tomorrow and think about how you want to handle this. If you want to, you know we can you know like I said we can we can work with you. And my concern is going to be protecting your identity that I can give you my word about but take take take the day and just think about it please because I really I don't feel comfortable sort of going down this road with you if you're not sure you want to go down this road. The one The one thing I do want to ask you about you mentioned that you had heard that that product was not installed.
That's hearsay, I heard that another security vendor in town. This other security vendor and I we also race against each other and we also race against the attorney. And both of us have talked about attorney independently of one another together and he's heard the story from sort of from a competing vendor in the sort of the German officer okay. And so last night I saw that other you know, their security consultant and II, you wouldn't believe if it's a video, it's all the equipment. And so that's here, and I don't know if that's true or not at this hurt. We
can look into that and celebrate what is the name of the product, the brand name I'm sorry, I didn't catch it
in your article. I mean what's your past year? The article was atopy Guillen. Avigilon Yeah. Avigilon okay. Yeah, yeah, he's an absolute Avigilon is an incredible product. It's a wonderful product. It's state of the art on that's not what was installed.
Okay. Do you do you have any idea what was installed did he mentioned like,
you know, he did mention that the product and if I throw out a name, but I'll just be guessing right now,
would you know if you heard me by any chance? Excuse me. Would you know it if you heard it?
Yeah, I made I have a couple things in mind but I'm not sure if they're correct. Yeah.
I could talk to the other security consultant and ask him again
Yeah, I mean if you want if you could that'd be great. I mean, if I could just get a any any sort of details because we're going to look into that obviously.
But he very carefully emails we're not putting anything in writing. He writes me, he said, so this is an interesting way back. I said, Yeah. We're not really communicating over email to the person right now because we know you just can't take him. Yeah. But the like, let me see if I can find out more about okay, what stop and again, it's going to be hearsay. It's gonna be what I heard somebody else
understood. And we were not going to take it as gospel but it's it's it's kind of pointing us in in the right direction. Maybe Yeah. And then listen, I'll touch base with you on if you want to continue to talk but I certainly respect where you're at Mark and I don't want to put you in a bad spot. so. Okay, yeah.
All right. Okay, yeah, you can call early in the day. I know you're at the end of your workday right now.
Yeah. Okay. all right. why don't I do that? I'll touch base with you tomorrow and we'll see kind of where things are at Okay. All right, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
