He took a deep breath. “Sir, at approximately 2030 today General Shelton told General Shinseki that tomorrow he is to issue orders recalling you to active service. At that time, you are to be taken into custody pending a formal investigation into charges of murder relating to your duty in Honduras and Nicaragua. Pending the outcome of that investigation, you will either face court martial or be extradited to Nicaragua to face charges there. Perhaps both.”
I stared briefly. “You must be joking!” What the hell was going on! We were hoping to force Clinton to overreach, but this was ridiculous!
“No sir. I am not.”
“And you expect me to turn myself in tomorrow morning? Is that what this is about? You can kiss that idea good-bye, buster.” I stood up and pointed towards the hallway. “Get lost.” Time to call my lawyers!
“Congressman, allow me to finish. General Shinseki told me that General Shelton received these orders earlier in the evening directly from President Clinton. General Shinseki would like you to be present tomorrow morning at a press conference he plans to hold. At that time he will announce that he is refusing the order, and then he will resign his position as Chief of Staff.”
I stared and my jaw dropped. After a few seconds I said, “Excuse me? You want to run that by me again.”
“Sir, tomorrow morning, at a live press conference at the Pentagon, when General Shelton and President Clinton expect that your imminent recall and arrest will be announced, General Shinseki will instead state that the orders given to him are illegal and he will refuse them. He would like to invite you to be present. The General is disgusted by the treatment you are receiving,” said McFaggin.
I sat down again, and sat there pondering what the colonel was telling me. I reached out and sipped my beer, but I could barely taste it. “Colonel, while I really appreciate what General Shinseki is offering, what would really help is the release of the investigation report from 1981. Is there any word on that?”
McFaggin sat back down and drank some more beer. He reached inside his uniform jacket and pulled out a folded up sheaf of papers. He tossed it on the bar top. “You might find this interesting reading.” I reached for it and he continued, “The General plans on handing out copies of this at the press conference tomorrow.”
I looked at the pages and flipped them right side up. It was the Article 32 Investigation Report prepared by Colonel Bruce Featherstone. So there had been an official Article 32 investigation after all. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered.
“This might not be my place to say it, but after General Shinseki got his hands on this last week, he lost any remaining respect for the President.”
I gave the colonel a hard look. “Mister, he might not respect him, but he damn well better obey him.”
“Congressman, I think we settled conclusively at Nuremburg that not all orders are created equal.”
I grunted noncommittally at that. Then I looked at the man. “What’s your deal? Why are you flushing your career down the toilet? Shelton is going to find out about you telling me, and even if you say that Shinseki told you to, you’re finished.”
McFaggin sighed. “I don’t know if you know this, Congressman. The General stepped on a land mine in Viet Nam, blew off a chunk of his foot. My old man was a corporal in the same unit. He told me that if Shinseki hadn’t stepped on the mine, he would have. He always felt like he owed the General. When he learned I was assigned to General Shinseki’s staff, he told me to watch over the man.”
I shrugged and nodded. “Good a reason as any.” I looked briefly through the report. Looking back at the colonel, I said, “It’s best that I don’t go to the press conference. I show up, there are going to be questions about my setting something up with Shinseki. It will be better if I go about my regular business.” I waved the report in the air, though, and added, “Still, tell him this is useful and appreciated, and that a beat up old battery commander still knows the value of good intelligence. I plan to read this and put it to good use.”
“Understood, sir.” He stood up and headed towards the door. I walked him out. “Congressman, good luck.”
“Same to you, Colonel. Same to you.”
I went back to the kitchen and grabbed another beer, and took it and the report into my office. I sat down and read the report. It was strange reading the military legalese, but it was all there, a complete investigative report — names, ranks, timelines, accusations (many), evidence (nothing), conclusions, and recommendations. I went through it a second time, and then a third, remembering back to that clusterfuck, and never going to bed. Eventually I got up and made several copies and stashed one, and then went upstairs and showered and shaved and dressed. Maybe I could sleep on the plane, but I doubted it.
The flight out of Reagan National was to lift off at 5:50 AM and landing in Boise seven hours later, around 10:50 AM Boise time. It was a charter flight in a 737, so maybe they could shave some time off it. The plane looked to be packed. Up in the front end, the first class section was reserved for me and my staff, with a curtain giving us some privacy, and a bouncer type to smile and keep the reporters in the back. The back was jammed with reporters, all waiting on me to A) go after Bill Clinton, and B) step on my crank doing so. I planned to do the first and to try and avoid the second.
I waved to everybody as we boarded the plane, but I simply smiled and waved while they yelled questions at me. I waited until everybody was on board and the plane was lifting off to speak to my staff. I swapped to an aisle seat with Frank and motioned Matt and Brewster into seats across the aisle, and then handed them copies of the investigative report. “This thing is going to break wide open today. I got this out of the Pentagon last night. It’s the missing investigation report that we’ve been screaming for.” I outlined what Shinseki’s messenger boy had told me was going to happen. They were stunned, but then everybody tried to speak at once, whispering at each other.
Brewster managed to out-whisper the others. “Okay, Carl, what do you plan to do?”
“Brewster, I plan to bend Bill Clinton over a barrel and ram this report straight up his ass! You got any better ideas?”
He grinned at me. “This ought to be fun!”
We spent the rest of the flight figuring out talking points and rewriting (by hand — no electricity for a laptop) the stump speech. We had to modify it to take into account the latest attacks from the White House. Meanwhile in the back of the plane a certain level of buzz was building. We had left too early for anybody to have heard anything about a press conference, but somebody back there must have heard something. After it got loud enough, I went back and schmoozed them some, simply walking up and down the aisle, smiling, shaking hands with the new people, joking, and saying absolutely nothing. Nobody knew anything, but the team from ABC must have heard late last night that there was a Pentagon press conference that would be about me. I just looked blank and asked what they had heard.
It was my dumb and stupid act. Whenever Marilyn gets pissed at me, she tells me it comes naturally. (The rest of the time she tells me I’m too smart for my own good. I wish she would make up her mind!)
As we approached Boise, however, the buzz in the back got louder! We were getting in range of cell towers, and even though the stewardesses were yelling at everybody to turn off their electronic devices, nobody obeyed. By the time we landed most everybody on the plane knew something was going on. After the landing we hustled our asses off the plane before anybody could ask and headed over to the campaign rally. On the way, I called Marty for the latest.
“Carl, you won’t believe, it, but we have a full blown constitutional crisis going on back here!”