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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.
