One contentious meeting was with the heads of the FBI and the Secret Service. Louis Freeh was there for the FBI, and a guy named Brian Stafford was there as Director of the Secret Service. I had never met Stafford before, but he was a perfect fit for them. He had the same level of arrogance as the rest of the department! Almost immediately after they got into my office it descended into a turf war.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, I was told, was by law required to investigate all cases of terrorism on American soil. The Secret Service responded that, by law, they were required to investigate all threats and attacks on the President. I listened to them wrangle for a couple of minutes and then reached into my desk and pulled out a steel whistle I kept there. Charlie had given it to me as a gag gift to sort out the twins’ wrangling. When I became the Whip I took it to the office, and told him my fellow Congressmen were worse behaved than his sisters. I took a deep breath and then let out a piercing shriek of a whistle, and shocked them into silence. I also attracted some attention to my closed door, and I waved that off.
“Gentlemen, I am extremely disappointed in the both of you,” I started.
Louis Freeh said, “Mister Vice President, if you…”
I blasted the whistle a second time. “Mister Freeh, Mister Stafford, if either one of you says another word I am going to fire you on the spot. Now shut up and let me speak!” They glanced at each other but then they both nodded.
“This is the most disgusting thing I have seen since I first came to Washington. Thousands of your fellow citizens are dead, and you two are playing power politics over their corpses! Now, since you decided to bring this to me, I get to play Solomon.” I turned to Stafford and said, “There are only two ways this happened. One, there was a terrorist act and the President just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has nothing to do with him. The FBI investigates that. The second is that this is an elaborate plan to assassinate the President. If that is the case, however, the FBI is ten times the size of the Secret Service! No way, no how, do you have the manpower or resources to solve this! You would have to go to the FBI to figure it out. Are we agreed? Good! Thank you!”
Stafford looked angry and started to respond. I simply held up my whistle and moved to put it between my lips again. He shut up. “I am going to make this very simple.” I pointed at Freeh and said, “The FBI is going to be the lead agency,” and then I pointed at Stafford. “You get to name whichever of his deputies you want to run the investigation, and you get to name whichever of your deputies you want as the number two. I am going to make that announcement tonight on national television. If either of you don’t like it you can clean out your desk and then you can tell it to the Washington Post in the morning. I don’t have the time for this and neither does the country. Clear?”
Stafford looked like he wanted to argue some more, so I put the whistle to my lips and pointed them both to the door.
Assholes!
Paul Wolfowitz of the Central Intelligence Agency came through right after Matt and Mike ran through the first cut on the speech. I gave them a quick read-through and edit, and sent them out, along with a request to have somebody bring me a sandwich. I had missed lunch earlier. Wolfowitz came to the conclusion that it was Al Qaeda which had attacked us, something that Richard Clarke and I had been saying all summer long. He also thought this was an excellent opportunity to link terrorism to Saddam Hussein. I told him flat out to not say anything to anybody until tomorrow, no leaks, no nothing.
I sat at my desk and ate my late lunch while a camera crew tried to arrange my office for a camera. It was just too small. Reluctantly I agreed to give the speech from the Oval Office. Then I called in my secretary. She popped in and I said, “Mrs. Lowenstein, I need you to tell the following people to be in here tomorrow for a meeting. We can use either the Cabinet Room or the Roosevelt Room, whichever works better. I want to call the meeting at 9:00 AM and we’ll run however long. We should consider it a meeting of the National Security Council.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Who will be attending?”
I looked at some notes I had made. “I want the head person, director or Cabinet secretary, for the following departments: State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, the FBI, the CIA, National Security Adviser, and the FAA. I also want their deputy, whoever their number two is, or if that person isn’t in town, somebody else. Oh, and we’d probably better bring in the Secret Service, too. FEMA, we’ll need them.”
She was scribbling faster than I could without even looking. When I was done she said, “Sir, those planes, how could… how could somebody do that?!”
I simply shook my head. “I don’t know, Mrs. Lowenstein. There are some things I just can’t understand. Explain Auschwitz to me some day. That will be your answer.”
She nodded and left.
At 7:00 I was reviewing the latest edit on the speech when I got a call I had to take. It was from George H.W. Bush, Bush 41, George’s father. “Good evening, Mister President,” I said when we were connected.
“Good evening, Mister President,” he responded, although it sounded like his voice was cracking at that.
“I am only the Acting President, sir. Search and rescue operations are underway as we speak. We are all hoping and praying for George’s safe return.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Carl. Can I call you Carl?” he asked.
“Of course, Mister President.”
He continued, “I wanted to thank you for sending the plane. With everything shut down, I wasn’t sure how Barbara and I would get to Laura and the girls.”
“I am placing it at your command until this is resolved, sir. Could I ask a favor of you, sir?”
“How can I help, Carl?”
“Sir, would you come here tomorrow, when you get a chance? I need to speak to you about a few things. I understand your family obligations could get in the way, but it would help me a great deal,” I asked.
“Of course, Mr. President. Whatever I can do to help.” He paused for a second, and then asked in a heart wrenching tone, “Is there any hope? Have you heard anything?”
What was I to say to that? “Sir, there is always hope.”
I’m sure he heard the pause in my response. He sighed and thanked me, and then hung up.
I hung up as well. What could I say to the man? That I was the cause of his son’s death, because his son was a disaster in the making?
Ari grabbed me and pulled me into a small room next to the Oval Office and they slapped some makeup on me. As they did so, I saw Josh Bolten out of the corner of my eye. “Josh, I am going to need to see the leadership of the House and the Senate tonight, after this. We can do it here or at the Capitol, their choice, but I don’t want them to think I am snubbing them. Can you make it happen?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good man! I know this is tough, but we take it one step at a time. Pass that along. I have faith in you guys. We are going to make it through all this, and the payback is really going to be a bitch!”
“Yes, sir!” he said feelingly.