From: Lee Burwasser Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 20:43:35 -0400 Subject: NEW: Transcript (1/1) Title - Transcript (1/1) Author - Lee Burwasser E-Mail address - lburwasser@crs.loc.gov Rating - G Category - V Spoilers - "The End" Summary - If they'd had any sense at all . . . *#*#*#*#*#* Transcript, by Lee Burwasser [2 inches of text blacked out] STATEMENT OF SPECIAL AGENT DANA SCULLY: The arson in the X-Files has already given rise to some humor at the Bureau's expense, and several Freedom of Information Act requests, both for the report of the arson investigation and for a list of the destroyed files. The arson investigators [1 inch of text blacked out] clearly was neither random malicious mischief, nor a random piece of terrorism. Someone was determined either to destroy the X-Files Unit by destroying the files, or to conceal the theft of one or more of those files. In this day and age, it is hard to believe that anyone has not heard of backup. Every X-File created for the past five years is backed up in at least one location; those with wider applicability are in more than one. It may be argued that anyone familiar enough with this Unit to desire its destruction must be aware of our clerical budget, or rather our lack of one, which has precluded a mass retrospective backup. Perhaps the arsonist wished to destroy an old X-File, and counted on it not having been backed up yet. Unfortunately for such reasoning, it is clearly the best use of our limited clerical resources to back up the older files as they are consulted in the course of current cases. Unless the arsonist wanted to destroy a file that has no relevance whatsoever to any case pursued by this Unit for the past five years, he has failed. And I do not believe that anyone seriously thinks that a file of no relevance to the present work of this Unit is a plausible cause of arson. Our best working hypothesis is that the arsonist has taken one or more files from the office, and set the fire to conceal the theft, or at least the identity of the file or files stolen. This is supported by the evidence of Special Agent [words blacked out] , that a man carrying at least one file folder left the area of the X-Files office just before the alarm went off. The arson investigation report tells us that this was a low-tech job. The accelerant was commercial lighter fluid, [1/2 inch of text blacked out] as the investigators reconstruct this aspect of the crime, the arsonist opened the drawers of the cabinets near the desk, soaked the papers on the desk with lighter fluid, and set them alight. The second source-fire was set *inside* a file drawer. Here again, other drawers in the same and neighboring cabinets were opened. One would expect that the source-drawer would be the bottom drawer of a strategically placed cabinet. Instead, it is one of the middle drawers of its cabinet. [1/2 inch of text blacked out] suggests that the file drawer in question was of great interest to the arsonist. This drawer is the second half of the abduction alphabet. As the issue has been of great interest to several agencies recently, all the abduction files are backed up. Clearly, the first place to look for the reason for this arson is in those backup files. I will go so far as to suggest that the first files to search are those marked [remainder of page blacked out] *#* finis *#*