The President's chief of staff escorted the senior senator from Arizona into the Oval Office and left. The President closed the classified documents he was looking at and set his reading glasses on his desk. Hayes had also put on a suit. He rose to greet the man whom he thought was his ally.
"Hank, thanks for coming in." He stuck out his hand.
"No, problem, Bob." The two men had served in the Senate together, and Hayes preferred to be called by his first name when no one else was around. "Let's take a seat over here." Hayes gestured to the couches by the fireplace. "Can I get you anything to drink?"
"No, I'm fine, thank you." Clark unbuttoned his suit coat and sat.
The President took the opposite couch and said, "Well, your old buddy Al Rudin has created one hell of a mess for us."
Clark was very conscious of the President's tone. He worried briefly that he might know more than he was showing, Clark let out a sigh and said, "Tomorrow is going to be a circus."
"There's no doubt about that." The President leaned back and draped his right arm over the back of the couch. "How are you going to handle it?"
"That's a good question. As you might imagine my phone hasn't stopped ringing since this morning. Every reporter in town wants to know what's going to happen tomorrow. Practically every member of my committee has called; most of them are furious. They all pretty much feel the same way. If there is any truth to what Albert said on TV this morning, Dr. Kennedy is toast."
This was no great revelation to the President. His chief of staff had already talked to several of the Democratic senators on the committee and they were already trying to distance themselves from the President and his nominee. The President used the moment of frankness to ask a question that he normally would not. With a sly grin he asked, "And just what is your party leadership saying?"
Clark stared unwaveringly at the President. "They want your balls, and they want me to serve them up on a silver platter."
Hayes stared back. "Are you going to?"
Clark blinked and looked away. "You know I don't like this crap, Bob"
"You didn't answer my question."
Clark kept up his act of looking torn. "I'm not going to call your capabilities into question."
"But someone else on your committee will." The President moved his head in an effort to get Clark to look him in the eye. "Senator Jet land perhaps?"
"Bob, this is beyond us. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you, but you know how this works. There's blood in the water, and the sharks are circling."
"I'm sure they are." There was a trace of amusement in his voice. Hayes was silent for a while and then said, "Hank, you've been a good colleague over the years, so I'm going to give you a warning. Do yourself a favor and delay the hearings for a day or two."
"There's no way I can do that." Clark shook his head vigorously.
The President wondered how far he should go and after brief reflection decided that he didn't have to go far. The battle lines had been drawn. It was Republican against Democrat with Albert Rudin in the middle, a very dangerous place to be in Washington. "From one friend to another, Dr. Kennedy is going to be very tight-lipped tomorrow. Do yourself a favor and go easy on her."
"How tightlipped?"
"Invoking the national security nondisclosure document that she signed
when she went to work for the CIA, she is going to refuse to answer any
questions in an open hearing."
"I have a lot of respect for Dr. Kennedy, but this is beyond that. If she cops that kind of an attitude, she's going to give me no other choice but to go after her." "Don't," warned the President.
Clark frowned. "You remember the deal. If the Orion Team was ever found out, Stansfield and she were to fall on their swords." He paused to let the weight of his words sink in. "She needs to do the right thing and come before my committee and admit fault. I'll do everything I can to protect her."
"Well, she's not going to do it tomorrow, so be smart and go easy on her." The President stood. "As one friend to another. Hank, I'm giving you fair warning. Take the high road tomorrow."
Clark looked up at the President and wondered what he could possibly have up his sleeve. The man was clearly checkmated, and he had the gall to bring him into the Oval Office and think that he could intimidate him. Inwardly, Clark wanted to laugh in his face, but outwardly, he acted as if he was carefully considering the President's words, Clark stood and said, "I'll take your warning under advisement."
Situation Room, Sunday evening
the President left his meeting with Clark and went back downstairs where the secretary of defense, the national security advisor, Irene Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs awaited him. The secretary of defense Rick Culbertson had returned from Colombia just that morning and was briefed personally by the President on the situation in Iraq. Security was so tight around the ultimate target that the President had made the decision to keep the inner circle very small. The only member of the Joint Chiefs who knew was General Flood. To the individual heads of each branch, there was to be no mention of the Al Hussein Hospital and what lay beneath it.
The President entered the room and before anybody could stand he said, "Stay seated, please." Hayes took his chair at the head of the table and looked to General Flood at the opposite end. He nodded once.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs proceeded to distribute a briefing to each person at the table. "Gentlemen," Flood was speaking mainly to the Joint Chiefs, "you will be happy to know that in light of the recent aggressive behavior of the Iraqi air defenses the President has given the green light to go in and clear them out. If you'll open your briefings you will see a target list." Target lists for the Iraqi theater were updated on a daily basis as aerial, satellite and human intelligence was fed into the system. The military men at the table hadn't seen a list this comprehensive since the war. Eyes bulged and murmurs could be heard as the warriors flipped through over a dozen pages of targets. Each target was given a designation, a description, a GPS number identifying the exact location and the type of ordnance and delivery vehicle that would be used against it.
General Flood continued. "At twenty-one hundred tomorrow evening, Saudi time, we will commence operations against Iraq. The attack will proceed as follows. The first wave will consist of A-10's, Apache attack helicopters, F-117 stealth fighters and cruise missiles." Flood did not need to go into detail. Each officer had seen the plan outlined a thousand times. The first wave goes in undetected and takes out the air defenses, and then the second wave, consisting of bombers and attack fighters, goes in to take out the hard targets. The men sat stoically and listened to Flood. None of them asked a single question or added a thought. It was all predetermined. The men and women stationed in and around the Gulf trained for this 365 days a year. The military machine was in place. All that needed to be done was to flip the switch.
Flood finished his thumbnail sketch of the plan and said, "I apologize for not giving you more warning, but there are some other circum stances that figure into this. It goes without saying that we don't want to tip our hand on this so let's be real careful. Are there any questions?"
The admiral and three generals shook their heads. "Good," Flood said, "I'll let you men get back to your commands and put things in motion." As the men got up to leave Flood added, "I should be back in my office within the hour, if you need to speak to me."
When they were gone, the President held up his briefing book and said, "General, I don't see the safe corridor blocked out. How are we going to keep our Delta boys from getting bombed?"
"When the aviators go in for their final briefing they will be handed one of these." Flood held up a map of Baghdad with a portion of it blocked out in red. "Nowhere on their target lists will there be a site within this red zone. They will be given specific instructions before takeoff that they are not to drop bombs within this area."
"Won't they get a little suspicious?"
"Since the Chinese embassy incident the
y're used to being told to stay away from certain areas, but this cordon that we have marked off here," Flood pointed to several roads going in and out of the city, "this is pretty unusual."
"So they might wonder?" asked the President.
"Yes, sir, some of them will, but you have to remember they're going to have a lot on their minds."
"Sir," interjected Kennedy. "The hospital is in the Al Mansur district of Baghdad. It's very upscale and is home to several embassies, most notably the Russian embassy, the Jordanian embassy and the Pakistani embassy. It also happens to be where the Iraqi Intelligence Service and the Republican Guard are headquartered. It is not unusual for us to stay away from this area when we conduct strikes."
The President seemed satisfied with Kennedy's explanation of the red zone in the middle of Baghdad, but he still thought the corridor snaking out of the city to the south and west looked a bit unusual. "General, if one of these fly-boys saw a caravan of white cars screaming down the road in the middle of the air raid, what do you think their reaction would be?"
"They would radio the nearest AWACS and report the cars." The AWACS was the Air Force's Airborne Warning and Control System, used to coordinate attacks and vector fighter aircraft to intercept hostile targets. "You don't think they might take the initiative and strafe the cars?" he suggested.
The general thought about that and then said, "They might."
"That's not going to work," announced the President.
"No, it isn't," agreed Flood as he tried to come up with a solution. After a moment of deliberation he looked at the President and said, "Sir, I think we're going to have to let our people know that we will have troops on the ground."
The President winced at the idea. "Right now?"
"No, we can wait until the last possible moment, and at no point do we have to mention a thing about the nukes."
This sounded better to the President. "What about the white cars?" He looked to Kennedy for an opinion.
She kept her face expressionless while she thought about it. "I think we have to tell the pilots about the cars. They simply offer too much of a temptation. I respect their training, and I respect the command and control that the military has in place, but the bottom line is, these fighter jocks are cowboys. They're taught to push the envelope and take risks. Those white cars represent the same thing to our pilots that they represent to the Iraqi people. They are Saddam or at least the possibility of Saddam." She paused to give the President a chance to absorb what she'd said. "I know if I were one of those of those guys, and I thought I had a chance to take out Saddam, there's a good chance I wouldn't wait around for some AWACS controller to give me the green light."
The President leaned back in his chair and stubbornly folded his arms across his chest. Kennedy could see that he was struggling with the idea of letting too many people in on the secret. History was replete with stories of advantages that had been lost because someone had talked. Having worked in the CIA for more than fifteen years, she was acutely aware of the importance of guarding knowledge. Conversely, though, history also had many examples of knowledge that was too protected. The CIA's own James Angleton had practically incapacitated the entire Agency with his paranoia. Thousands of U. S. sailors and airmen died at Pearl Harbor because the powers that be in Washington were too afraid to disseminate intercepted Japanese messages that made their intentions very clear. At some point you had to let go and trust your people.
"Sir, if we alert the aviators and AWACS controllers an hour prior to the start of the bombing, I'm confident we won't compromise the mission. Even if, and it's a big if, Iraqi intelligence can intercept and decipher our communications, they can't move that fast. An intercepted message like this has to get kicked up the chain of command, and right about the time it would get to anybody who may or may not do something about it the bombs will start falling."
The President finally relented. "All right. We tell the troops one hour before the bombing starts, but that's it. No earlier."
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.
Capitol Hill, Monday afternoon
The nation's capital was in a state of frenzy that could only be brought about by scandal. And this wasn't just any scandal; this one involved the CIA, lying to Congress, diverted funds and the assassination of foreigners. Normally this would be more than enough to cause a media storm, but an early morning development had upgraded the story to a full-blown hurricane. At the crack of dawn, with search warrants in hand, special agents from the FBI had raided the home and office of Congressman Rudin.
The congressman had spent the entire morning ranting and raving in front of every camera and microphone he could find. Like all seasoned politicians he stayed on message, and his message was, "Constitutional Crisis." On the Today show, Rudin had complained bitterly that the executive branch was trying to bully the legislative branch with jackboot tactics that were reminiscent of 1930s Germany. He protested to anyone who would listen that the bedrock of the Constitution was being cracked asunder, that the separation of powers was being trampled on, and that the congressman from Connecticut wasn't alone.
In the new age of twenty-four-hour cable news, scandal ruled the day. There wasn't time to check facts or sources; there was barely time to think. Though there were a few wise politicians who stayed on the sidelines waiting to see what was what, by and large this was a group with a very healthy set of egos. It was almost impossible for them to turn down an opportunity to be seen and heard, so with 100 Senators and 435 Congressmen, the media had no shortage of opinions, almost all of them in the defense of Congressman Rudin. The thought of federal agents seizing files from their offices and homes was enough to rally most of his colleagues soundly behind the legislative branch. Despite his obnoxious personality Rudin was winning. Pundits and politicians alike agreed that President Hayes had miscalculated. Whatever he'd hoped to accomplish by raiding the congressman's home and office had backfired. Public sentiment was firmly in Rudin's corner.
This was the mood Kennedy faced as her motorcade approached the Hart Senate Office Building shortly before 1:00 P. M. Her security detail was planning on bringing their charge around the back of the building and through the loading dock, but Kennedy had shot down the idea. Despite their vehement protests she informed them that they would be dropping her off in front of the building, where no less than ten news trucks with large satellite dishes were parked, and several hundred protestors were loudly exercising their First Amendment rights.
Kennedy understood media manipulation as well as anyone in Washington, and she was not going to be seen slinking into the back of the Senate building between two Dumpsters, surrounded by a cordon of stocky armed men. She would walk right through the mass of screaming protestors and pushy cameramen, and she would look like she had nothing to hide.
There was too much going on, when the three cars pulled around the corner, for the protestors and media types to notice. The caravan came to a quick stop and the car doors flew open. Kennedy was on the curb surrounded by four of her bodyguards before the mob knew she was there. The Capitol Hill police had been kind enough to keep the walkway and entrance clear. They were halfway to the door before anyone noticed, and inside the building before the screaming started. They were waved through the security checkpoint and metal detectors and picked up an additional escort of four Capitol Hill police officers for the trip up to the committee room.
Set up in the broad hallway outside room 216 were correspondents from every network plus the cable news shows. One correspondent who worked for one of the more sensational cable news shows announced that Dr. Kennedy's cortege had arrived. The not so subtle implication was that she was on the way to her own funeral.
They continued up the sloped ramp and into the hearing room. At the door Kennedy shed the wall of muscle and steel and continued down the center aisle by herself. All of the Senators were already seated and looking down at her from on high, atop a U-shaped bench draped in front with crimson bunting. Kennedy's small witness table wa
s covered with a simple green tablecloth, and her chair was blue molded plastic with metal legs. It was the same style that the members of the gallery were sitting in.
The wall of marble behind the senators looked like a Rorschach test gone bad. Kennedy took a moment to study the seal mounted in the middle of the marble monstrosity. She had an overwhelming sense of calm as the flashes erupted around her. Her strength came from knowledge. One of the tenets of the intelligence business was to deceive your enemy, to get them thinking one thing, while you're planning something else. That's what this was about. It was her last gambit.
The upper galleries were bristling with black camera lenses and microphones. The room was packed, and the entire event was being carried live on national television. The senators on the dais with their phalanx of staffers behind them were peering down at her as if she were a mass murderer. Today Kennedy was the wounded animal. The vultures were circling and the hyenas were closing in and they all had their eyes on the diminutive Irene Kennedy. With a national TV audience, the stakes were high. Political careers would be made today, and for them to do that they would have to destroy the career of a public servant who, for fifteen years, had worked tirelessly for the cause against terrorism.
Senator Clark smacked the wooden block with his gavel. He looked tan and handsome in his dark wool suit and deep claret colored tie. The room ignored him, so he tried again with much greater force and better results. The talking trickled to a drip, and then there was silence, Clark looked down at Kennedy and was briefly reminded of his meeting with the President the night before. The odds were the President was bluffing, but there was a chance he might not be. Clark told himself to move cautiously. Like a king in a game of chess, he decided to let others move out into the field of battle before him.
"Dr. Kennedy," Clark started in a deep somber tone, "I'd like to remind you that you are still under oath." "I'm aware of that, Mr. Chairman." Kennedy made Clark look like a giant, sitting at the table all by herself.