This is an I-Heart podcast.

The Michael Berry Show.

Cheryl Atkinson is our guest.

The book is Stonewall.

Cheryl, let's talk about what happened to you.

You went from being a reporter of news to being the subject yourself, sort of an awkward state of affairs. And CBS was a bit reluctant

about how that all came about. But talk about that if you would. During my Benghazi coverage,

my family and I had been suffering these amazing technical disruptions in our house for a couple

of years that really peaked during the fall of

2012, but never associated that with any sort of surveillance or intrusion. We just thought Verizon sucked.

You know, they couldn't fix the problem. A lot of it was associated with our Fios line. They'd been

out to the house so many times. But a couple of sources of mine implied that I was probably being monitored because of my reporting on Benghazi.

And these are people who, you know, are connected and well-informed.

So I didn't just blow it off, even though it sounded a little bit far-fetched.

And remember, this is before Edward Snowden, before we knew that the government had confiscated

records of Associated Press reporters or targeted a Fox News reporter as a potential co-conspirator

and a leak investigation.

Without that context, I really didn't think anything was going on, but I did listen to these folks.

And long story short, someone offered to get a really well-placed forensic expert look at my computer to see if there

was something in there that they could find. And indeed they did. They found evidence of a long-term

remote surveillance and operating effort that was in my computer.

Was Patel hired by CBS or by you?

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