Dear Mr. Littman,

I am writing this on behalf of the Legion of Doom, and Phucked Agent 04 in
particular. There is a major error in your book _The Watchman_ page 88, namely
the assertion that Justin Petersen (Agent Steal) = Phucked Agent 04. This is 
NOT the case, and needs to be corrected in future printings of the book.

Agent 04 was one of the original members of the LOD, having entered in 1984
and left in 1987, well before this Mr. Petersen stumbled onto the scene.
This is well known and documented in the History of the LOD as found in Phrack
issue #31, as well as in Bruce Sterling's book, _The Hacker Crackdown_.
Whether or not Mr. Petersen attempted to pass himself off as the retired
Agent 04 in order to glom onto the LOD image is another story in itself.

As you illustrated in your book, Mr. Petersen was not in the LOD nor was he
ever considered for membership for reasons which you explain very well. In
his article for the LOD technical journal, which you cite, he even references
one of Agent 04's old articles from the first issue of the tech journal. How
could you have overlooked this? Even a casual perusal of Agent 04's article
would tell you that there is no way it was written by Petersen.


If this seems like a minor error, consider that details of this sort carry
extreme weight with your primary audience, technical enthusiasts. It is
like saying that Steve Wozniak was also known as Captain Crunch -- what makes
this worse is to be wrongly mistaken for, or even associated with, a person
who is rightly viewed by many to be a prime destroyer of the hacker ethic.

Your books are consistently the best in the field, due to your reliance on
primary sources and solid technical detail. It is therefore distressing to
see an error of this magnitude creep in, which undermines what is otherwise
an excellent and entertaining book.

Here are a few smaller errors/typos which you may want to fix in the next
printing as well:


1.      Page 183, "a mechanized lube testing trunk test set" -- 
        This should read "mechanized loop testing."

2.      Page 128, the manufacturer of the dialed number recorder (DNR)
        is Hekimian Labs, not "HIKAMIN." See www.hekimian.com - buy one today!

3.      Page 122,etc "Kevin is interested because he knows NTTs are Numbered
        Test Trunks...". The correct term is "No-test trunks," which derives
        from the fact that they do not test the line to see if it is busy
        before dropping in, hence the ability to wiretap. This may be a simple 
        mistaking of "No. test" for "No test" in your notes. On the 1A ESS that
        you describe Kevin accessing, the connection is made thru the no-test
        vertical in the line link network, resulting in a metallic connection
        to the target line. In addition to test access for SAS, LMOS, etc, the
        no-test trunk is used by Operators to emergency interrupt busy lines.

4.      Page 22, references an "internal Watts extender number". This most
	likely is a WATS (Wide Area Telephone Service) number, another
	name for an 800 (and now 888 as well) number.

Best wishes for your future
projects -- keep in touch

Agent 04
The Marauder
Mark Tabas
Doctor Who