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The Trial

2016-2017 ... Kent Bailey in the flesh ... The observer effect ... McConnell gets pinched ... RX Limited on trial ... An outcome foretold

In the spring of 2016, I published a series of articles about Le Roux online, in The Atavist Magazine, laying out the still incom- plete picture of what I’d learned. The stories, which unfolded at the pace of one article a week between March and May, generated an influx of new sources. Each time a new article went online, I’d hear from people eager to relay their own Le Roux experiences. Some tips came in the form of cryptic emails from anonymous sources offering secrets that went far beyond what I’d reported. A manila envelope arrived at my house containing a foreign govern- ment’s intelligence report on Le Roux. Someone who claimed to have ties to the U.S. embassy in Manila wrote with information about the status of Lachlan McConnell. A whistleblower at an in- vestment firm in Hong Kong contacted me to provide information on Le Roux’s financial records, and Le Roux’s relatives emailed with stories of the confident young genius they had known. These I had mostly expected. What I hadn’t anticipated were the ways in which I now became a minor participant in the drama myself. It was, in part, a byproduct of the wall of secrecy the U.S. gov-