Late Wednesday night I had received a short, cryptic call from a distracted and extremely official sounding version of my friend.

The shocking and exclusive revelations of the terrorist angle came to light during one of the cryptic calls.

The cryptic call pierced through the night.

The first was a cryptic call from Senator James Waggoners cell phone to a Washington, D.C." telephone number, 339 * demanding to know when some kind of "Special Unit" would commence action and threatening to "have" someone's "rear end.

He told her about the drug stuff and about the cryptic call from the NSA guy.

Spector made one cryptic call to Lennon, claiming to have the "John Dean tapes" from the recent Watergate scandal; Lennon deduced that Spector meant he had the album's master tapes.

On Monday, the day before the espionage scandal broke, Mr. Yuzhin received a cryptic call at his home in Northern California.

"But the call for E-mails - which in many instances are very susceptible to being incomplete, cryptic and misunderstood - has led a lot of people to shun the use of E-mail, and I think that's most unfortunate."

Just as his committee was about to announce that America would adopt Von Braun's Earth-orbit rendezvous, he received a cryptic call from Mrs. Pope in the Washington office: "Senator Glancey wants you to fly directly to Huntsville.

The day before Hanssen's arrest on February 18, 2001, Yuzhin received "a cryptic call" from an FBI contact telling him to "watch the news tomorrow."