Noah Shachtman

So what are we doing?

We're talking about the playoffs?

Yeah, absolutely not.

I mean, not that many, but too many.

Yeah, it was nuts, man.

You know, we were reporting the story a lot in this crazy cold winter that New York had.

And we had sources who like insisted on staying outside the entire time.

We had people who were absolutely convinced they were being tailed.

We had people that were terrified they were being watched.

Several of our sources were current and former members of the Garden security team.

And many of those people were former cops, you know, were figures in law enforcement or intelligence of some kind.

And it's a matter of public record.

You can go on LinkedIn and see that former FBI agents, former CIA officers, and former New York City cops

join the Garden security staff.

And so in a way, I know it sounds crazy, but these terrified people were part of James Dolan's deep state.

Yeah, me too.

Now look, he's a big guy.

You're going to need a lot of people in suits.

So what Oakley didn't know and what I was shocked to find out was after talking to one of the security sources for this story, and this is a direct quote, they wanted to have us doing covert surveillance operations on him just to see where he was at, what he was doing at the time, to try to dig up something to use.

Yep.