briefing the enemy on her own quarry

The relay's darkest joke: the operative hunting the lethal Entertainment sends her code-name for it up the chain to be defined by the dead director's son. Steeply's question — spelled out because Orin can't — has Hal explain "samizdat" ("Sam—stem: 'self'; izdat—undeclined verb: 'to publish'") and then field question "1(a)," why "The Mad Stork's name would come up in connection with somebody saying samizdat." Hal unknowingly gives U.S.O.U.S., through two intermediaries, a tutorial on the very term and the very filmmaker at the center of its search. The intelligence the interview extracts is real; only its direction of travel is hidden from the people supplying it.