“Simple. I want Abu Khalif’s head.”
“It’s not that simple, Collins.”
“Mr. President, do you really understand who this man is, what he wants, how far he’s willing to go?”
“Me? Do I understand?” Taylor bellowed, suddenly rising to his feet. “You’re honestly asking if I understand who we’re up against?”
“Sir, this is not Saddam Hussein. It’s not bin Laden. It’s not Zawahiri or Zarqawi. Abu Khalif is not like any enemy we’ve ever faced before. This is a man who thinks he was chosen by Allah to bring about the end of the world, a man willing to use genocide to hasten the coming of his messiah and establish a global caliphate.”
Taylor was seething. But I didn’t stop.
“And he’s coming here, Mr. President. Here. To America. To our streets. He’s said so. He’s promised to kill you and as many Americans as he possibly can, and he will—unless you take him down.”
Taylor shook his head in disgust and walked over to the windows. As he looked out at the snow falling on the Rose Garden, I stood as well.
“You’re a real piece of work, Collins, you know that? You need to take a deep breath and calm down and show a little trust in the armed forces of the United States and their commander in chief. We’re winning. We have the enemy on the run, and we’re not going to let up.”
“Mr. President, I watched Abu Khalif behead two men. I saw him test sarin gas on prisoners who died a grisly, gruesome, horrifying death. I’ve looked in his eyes. I know who he is. And he told me exactly what he was going to do.”
Taylor didn’t say anything. He just glanced at his watch and then again stared out the window into the icy darkness that had descended on the capital.
“Look, Mr. President, I know you’ve gone against your party, your cabinet, even your own campaign promises by putting U.S. forces back into Iraq. I’m not saying you’re sitting on your hands. You want to win. I see it. But, sir, don’t underestimate this man. Abu Khalif has kept every threat he’s made so far. How many times has he bragged how his experienced, trained, battle-hardened jihadists are coming here carrying American passports, fighters who will easily slip across our border and blend into society until they’re ready to strike? He’s coming here, Mr. President, and unless you stop him, it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
At this, Taylor turned to face me. “You think I don’t know that, Collins? Are you really that arrogant?”
“Then tell me you’ve signed a presidential directive to hunt down the emir of the Islamic State, wherever he is, whatever it takes. Give me that, and I’ll back off.”
“I’m not going to get into operational matters, Collins—not with you. Not with any reporter from the New York Times.”
“So I’ll take that as a no.”
“Don’t play games with me, Collins. Don’t twist my words. I didn’t say no. I said I’m not going to discuss it—not with you.”
“Off the record,” I said.
“Nice try. This entire conversation is off the record.”
“But—”
“How many ways can I put it to you, Collins? I get it. Abu Khalif is a thug, a cold-blooded killer. He’s the face of ISIL, I grant you. But you’re making too much of him. He’s just one man. We’ll find him. We’ll take him out. But don’t kid yourself. That won’t be the end of it. There’s going to be another thug after him, and another after that, and another after that. And we’ll find them and neutralize them as well. But I’m not going to paralyze my administration in the hunt for just one guy. We’re going to go after the entire ISIL leadership and their infrastructure and their money—systematically, step-by-step, until we’re done, until it’s over. But you’ve got to understand something, Collins. ISIL is a threat, but it’s not an existential threat to America. They can’t destroy us. They can’t annihilate us. I don’t care about all their talk of building a global caliphate. It’s never going to happen. You want to talk about a potential existential threat? Then let’s discuss climate change, not ISIL.”
What in the world is he talking about? I asked myself. I hadn’t called ISIS an existential threat. And how on earth did this compare to climate change? “Mr. President, Abu Khalif is not just one guy. He’s different—brilliant, savvy, charismatic, irreplaceable.”
“Nobody’s irreplaceable.”
“This guy is. He’s not some back-alley street tough like Zarqawi. This is one of the smartest foes we’ve ever been up against. He’s got a doctorate in Islamic theology and another one in Islamic eschatology. He’s fluent in seven languages. He’s a genius with social media. He’s casting a spell over the entire Islamic world. He’s a magnet, attracting jihadists from 140 different countries. He’s mobilizing and training and deploying foreign fighters on a scale unlike anything we’ve ever seen. This is no longer just a terrorist movement. Abu Khalif has built himself a full-scale jihadist army—a hundred thousand men consumed by the notion that Allah has raised them up to conquer the world. His forces may be in retreat in Iraq, Mr. President, but they’re spreading like a cancer across the Middle East and North Africa, they’re penetrating into Central Asia and Europe and Latin America—and they’re coming here next.”
3
A Secret Service agent entered the Oval Office.
“Mr. President, it’s time. The motorcade is ready.”
Taylor, the hard-charging former governor of North Carolina and onetime founder and CEO of an enormously successful tech company in the Research Triangle near Raleigh, was not a man accustomed to being challenged to his face. He kept his eyes locked on mine for a few more moments.
“Mr. Collins, I invited you here to thank you for all you did to save my life. I asked you to be my honored guest tonight at the State of the Union. Tomorrow you will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the ceremony we have planned, and this is how you thank me, by telling me I’m not doing enough to keep Americans safe? We’re on the verge of a great and historic victory against the Islamic State, and you’re standing here in the Oval Office asking me for vengeance.”
“No, sir—I’m not asking for vengeance. I’m asking for justice.”
The president shook his head. “I’m an antiwar Democrat, Collins, yet I went to Congress and demanded they pass a formal declaration of war against ISIL. I’m the man who pulled the last of our forces out of Afghanistan, yet I just sent thousands of American ground forces back into Iraq. Why? To crush ISIL once and for all. And that’s precisely what we’re doing. Did we find Abu Khalif in Alqosh? No. Did we find him in Mosul? No. But are we going to keep hunting him? Absolutely. And for you to suggest I’m not serious about getting this guy is not just crazy. It’s downright offensive.”
“Are you going to attack Raqqa?” I asked, speaking of the ISIS capital in Syria.
“We’re focused on Iraq right now, and you know it.”
“Are you going to take Homs? Aleppo? Dabiq?”
At this, the president’s entire demeanor shifted. Instead of fuming at me, he laughed out loud. “Collins, have you completely lost your mind? I’m trying to put out the forest fire in Syria, not pour gasoline on it. I’m working night and day with the Russians and the Iranians and the Turks and the U.N. to try to nail down a cease-fire that will hold, something that’ll actually stop all the killing, not increase it.”
“But, sir, don’t you see? Agreeing to a cease-fire before destroying Khalif would be a disaster. You’d be giving him a safe haven. You’d be effectively handing him enormous swaths of territory he alone would control, territory he could use as a base camp to launch attacks against the U.S. and our allies.”
“So what would you have me do, exactly?” Taylor asked as he took his suit jacket from a hanger in the corner. “You want us to get sucked into a bloody ground war in Syria? Because that’s exactly what Abu Khalif wants. He’s practically begging me to put a quarter million American troops smack-dab in the middle of Syria’s civil war. He wants me to attack Dabiq. He wants me to get caught in a quagmire.
And why? To bring about the end of the world, right? You said it yourself. He’s consumed with establishing his global caliphate. He’s transfixed on slaughtering the ‘forces of Rome’ and ushering in the End of Days. And now you really want me to play into his sick, twisted game? I took you as smarter than that.”
This was going nowhere. But I took a deep breath, and one last shot. “Mr. President, I’m asking you a simple, straightforward question. And you still haven’t given me a simple, straightforward answer. So let me ask you one more time: Do you have a plan to hunt down and kill Abu Khalif, wherever he is, whatever it takes, or do you not?”
The president didn’t say anything. Instead, he buttoned his suit coat, walked back to his desk, and picked up the loose pages of his speech. He scanned several of them closely, as if looking for a particular section. Then he scribbled a few notes in the margin.
“Sir?” I asked after several moments of silence.
Taylor ignored me for a while longer, making more changes before putting all the pages into the binder.
“Yes, we have a plan,” he said finally, quietly, closing the binder and looking back at me. His voice was once again calm, collected, and presidential.
He pushed a button on his phone, then turned back to me and kept talking. “Abu Khalif came after me personally. Why? Because we’d actually hammered out a comprehensive peace treaty between the Israelis and the Palestinians. My predecessors tried to get it done, and they failed. I was this close. And then Khalif and his thugs came along and blew it all to kingdom come. I won’t forget that, Collins. Not ever. And as long as I am the commander in chief, I won’t rest until we take these guys down—all of them. On that, you have my word.”
He looked sincere. He sounded sincere. But I wasn’t convinced. Harrison Taylor was a consummate politician, and the simple fact was I didn’t trust him. It had been two months since the forces of the Islamic State had blown up his peace summit in Amman. Two months since ISIS forces had launched a chemical weapons attack in the Jordanian capital and captured the leader of the free world. Two weeks later, Congress had declared war and a coalition of U.S. and allied forces had “reinvaded” Iraq—albeit this time at the invitation of Baghdad—and made a big show of it on worldwide television. But ISIS was still slaughtering thousands of innocents. Its leader was still a free man. And it was now increasingly clear to me that this president had neither a plan to bring him to justice nor the will to see one through.
For years, the Taylor administration’s approach to the Middle East and North Africa had been a disaster. Foreign policy was driven by press releases and photo ops. Taylor had been repeatedly warned about the magnitude of the threat posed by the Islamic State, yet he’d been caught off guard by the ISIS onslaught in Amman. Now much of the region was on fire. The cost in human lives had been catastrophic. Yet there had been no political cost whatsoever. To the contrary, Taylor was more popular than he’d ever been.
The president loved to say that ISIL was on the run and that the caliphate had been cut in half. But he hadn’t asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Syria. He refused to conduct bombing raids there or send Special Forces to find Abu Khalif or any of the rest of the ISIS psychopaths. And yet, for now, at least, the public was giving Taylor and his administration tremendous credit for freeing Iraq and returning millions of refugees to their homes. The homecoming Iraqis cheering the American and allied forces and even bowing down before the cameras and kissing the land that had been returned to them made for great television, I admit, and I’m not saying it wasn’t a victory. It was. But it was a Band-Aid on a severed artery.
The region was bleeding to death, and ISIS was causing the bleeding. This wasn’t the Cold War. The jihadists couldn’t simply be driven out of Iraq and back into Syria and “contained” there. They were bloodthirsty lunatics, driven by an apocalyptic, murderous brand of Islam unlike anything the world had ever seen before. Abu Khalif and his men chilled me to my core. They were a lethal virus that had to be eradicated before they spread to every part of the planet, leaving a trail of death and heartbreak in their wake.
I had braved a mounting winter storm to come here to the Oval Office to see the president of the United States in person for the first time since we’d been airlifted together out of Erbīl at the beginning of December. I had come at the president’s personal request. I had hoped to find a man sobered by reality, a leader who had truly learned and absorbed hard lessons from all that had transpired. Instead I saw a risk-averse politician basking in the glory of an adoring nation, disturbingly unaware of the catastrophe I sensed was coming next.
4
“Why, James, what a pleasure to see you again,” the First Lady said in her typically warm and gracious manner as she entered the Oval Office and eased the mounting tension.
“Thank you, Mrs. Taylor,” I replied as she gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, leaving behind a smudge of pale-pink lipstick in the process. “It’s an honor to see you as well.”
“Please, James, it’s Meg,” she said as she drew a white cotton handkerchief from her purse and dabbed it on my cheek until the lipstick was gone. “How many times must I ask you to call me Meg?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said. “Guess I’m just not used to being on a first-name basis with a First Lady.”
“Hush—you’re practically family now, James,” she said in her distinctive Southern lilt. “Harrison and I can never repay all you’ve done for us, and we want you to feel welcome and at home in this house. Now, how’s your mother? Did her surgery go well?”
Whatever her husband lacked in Tar Heel charm, Margaret Reed Taylor made up for in spades. Now fifty-eight, the eldest daughter of a former North Carolina senator—and the granddaughter of a onetime president of UNC Chapel Hill—was as politically savvy as she was lovely. She’d earned her MBA from Wharton and her law degree from Harvard, and my colleagues on the White House beat swore she was the administration’s chief strategist, though she was far too clever to let anyone get a clear look at her maneuverings. Tonight, she wore a modest but elegant robin’s-egg-blue suit and a gorgeous string of pearls, and clearly she knew how to extricate her husband of thirty-two years from a delicate moment like a seasoned professional.
“It did, ma’am,” I said, impressed that she was aware of my mom’s hip surgery less than two weeks earlier. “Thanks for asking.”
“Is she up and about yet?”
“Not quite yet, but it could be worse.”
“I hear she’s one tough cookie.”
“She’d be glad to hear you say it, ma’am. She sure wishes she could be here tonight, and not so much to be with me as to meet you.”
“Well, bless her heart. Tell her I’d love to give her a call in a few days, and I’d certainly love to have you both come for a meal when she’s up to it.”
“That’s very kind, ma’am. She’ll be tickled pink.”
“Good. Now have your brother and his family come to Washington for all the festivities? Will they be in the chamber tonight?”
“Matt came, and I’ll meet him over there. He was having dinner with Senator Barrows,” I said.
“And his wife?”
I shook my head. “Annie felt she needed to stay with Mom and the kids. But she also would have loved to meet you.”
“You bring her with your mother and we’ll all do lunch. They’ll be watching you on television tonight, I’m sure?”
“Absolutely—and tomorrow, too,” I said. “It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Bar Harbor. I can tell you that much.”
“We hear you’ve become quite a hero up there.” She smiled, then turned to brush a few pieces of lint off her husband’s freshly pressed navy-blue suit and adjust the Windsor knot in his red power tie.
Just then, another Secret Service agent stepped into the room. He said nothing. But he didn’t have to.
“It’s time, sweetheart,” the First Lady said. “We mustn’t keep all your fans waiting.” At that,
she turned to me and smiled. “The American people just luuuv my husband, James,” she said with a wink. “Don’t forget that now, you hear?”
She held my gaze until I nodded. She didn’t say another word, but she’d made her point. My husband is beloved and thus more powerful than ever. You’re just a reporter. Don’t ever forget that, James—ever.
It was true that the president’s approval ratings were soaring. But on the issue of Abu Khalif, the American people were with me. It was a small comfort at the moment, but it was true. Earlier in the day, Allen MacDonald, my boss at the Times who had recently been promoted to D.C. bureau chief, had e-mailed me an advance look at the latest numbers from a New York Times/CBS News poll fresh out of the field. The survey found that 86 percent of the American people wanted the president to “use all means necessary” to bring the leader of the world’s most dangerous terrorist movement to justice, and 62 percent said they would be “satisfied” if the ISIS emir was captured, convicted, and sent to Guantánamo. But fully nine in ten Americans said they wanted Abu Khalif hunted down and killed in retribution for what he had tried to do to our country.
I was sure Taylor was aware of the numbers. Yet they’d apparently had no impact at all. Did the president really think the American people were going to believe him when he looked them in the eye tonight and told them he was doing all he could, even if he was clearly dead set against sending U.S. and allied forces into Syria under any circumstances? Did Taylor really think Abu Khalif was going to abandon his very public—and oft-repeated—pledge to assassinate him and raise the black flag of the Islamic State over the White House?