I agreed with that. “I think I can say pretty confidently that I either do or do not know the source.” I glanced at Howie. “Howie?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding firmly, “that’s a good way of putting it.”

Pfiser dutifully wrote down my answer. Each of us in that room knew this whole interview was a charade. We were playing our roles. They knew they had to ask the questions; we all knew Howie and I weren’t going to answer them. I actually was a little embarrassed for them. After all, they probably had been yanked out of bed to come in and play this game. When they were done, we shook hands with both of them and I got ready to go home. I didn’t delude myself, though, I knew that wasn’t the end of it. Not even close.

By the following afternoon we had been overwhelmed by the avalanche of technology. This was as close as social media could come to the excitement of stopping the presses. The video became a front-page story in both the print and digital worlds. It was viewed more than 4 million times within a day. Our site crashed; new servers were added, and it crashed again. We still had some landlines in the office, which rang incessantly. Online, a roughly equal number of congratulatory and threatening comments were posted. Several current advertisers canceled existing contracts, while about the same number of new companies requested a rate sheet. Our IT guys strengthened the firewalls to fend off the hackers we knew would be coming after us. I couldn’t tell you how many requests I got from TV outlets and other media for an interview, but I turned down everything. There was nothing of importance I could add to those three minutes.

Among the people who called me was Miss Jenny Miller, calling in her capacity as congress member McDonnell’s chief of staff. Chairman McDonnell’s Homeland Security subcommittee was officially requesting a copy of the video and would like Roland Stone to appear voluntarily to answer a few questions. Rather than responding, in my capacity as a journalist I dutifully forwarded the request to the Pro’s attorney, Jon Lindsey, who politely turned it down, citing First Amendment protections.

Jenny was especially careful not to cross the line between her professional and personal worlds. That was our agreement, and we both stuck to it. It wasn’t exactly bedroom conversation; she never said, “Oh, I love how you touch me there, and by the way, where did you get that video?” And in response I never said, “Oooh, go ahead and subpoena me, baby.”

We did talk around it, though. At dinner several nights later, she asked me why I hadn’t tried to get a comment from the administration before running with it. Her tone suggested disapproval, but I didn’t want to get into it. I just said, “Sometimes we’re gonna find ourselves in a tricky spot. It’s just inevitable. The best thing we can do is avoid talking about it. Are you really gonna eat all those fries?”