I listened for a bit, and when he was finished, I said, “Okay, after we are done here, take us down to Four, but keep the overseas bases tight, and keep some planes flying. We’re going to need to begin taking security a bit more seriously.”
“Sir, that’s a call for President Bush to make,” interjected Cheney.
Time to handle this; the man just would not take a hint! I kept focused on Cheney, but raised my voice a bit, and said, “Mister Attorney General, is there anything in Article Four of the 25th Amendment specifying that the powers of the Acting President are not those of the President?”
I could feel all the eyes in the room on me. Ashcroft answered, quickly, “No sir, there is no restriction as compared to the President. As Acting President you have the full powers of the President.”
I kept looking at Dick. “Very, good, sir. So, Secretary Cheney, do you have anything to add to that?”
Cheney was working his jaw, but simply said, “No, sir.”
“Thank you.” I looked back at Powell. “You have my orders. Any questions?”
“None. I will probably modify a few items based on intelligence, but I understand your intent.”
“Good enough.” I turned back to the table and looked up and down. “Okay, now for the fun part. Yesterday was the biggest intelligence failure this country has seen since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor! Would somebody please tell me what the hell happened yesterday morning?” I pointed at Paul Wolfowitz, head of the CIA. “You first.”
Wolfowitz looked confident as he responded, and I was surprised by the level of information he had available. How much he had known before the attacks and simply ignored, that I wasn’t sure of. Basically, he had several dozen members of a terrorist group called Al Qaeda who had managed to travel to the U.S., in some cases months ago, and Al Qaeda was now making public statements that they were the ones responsible. He then pronounced that Al Qaeda was taking orders from Iraq.
I made a few noncommittal grunts and then pointed at Louis Freeh, head of the FBI. He was on his way out, so to speak, a holdover from the Clinton days, and unpopular in the Administration. Originally he was supposed to have left right after the Inauguration, but for some reason Bush held on to him as a sop to the Democrats. Nobody expected him to last through the year. “Louis, anything you guys have figured out?”
His report was similar, though he had less information. He didn’t know how many people were involved, or what weapons they had, or where they had been living, or where they had managed to learn to fly airliners. However, he promised that all that would be figured out, since every agent was being pulled off every other case to look into this. It was a remarkably unsatisfying response. Even though it had only been a day, I had expected more.
I turned to Brian Stafford of the Secret Service. “Who do you have working on this?”
He turned and pointed at a man behind him, who stood up. “Deputy Director William Basham, sir,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m sure we’ll be talking. Who’s the guy running this on the FBI side?”
“That would be Executive Assistant Director Collins Barnwell,” answered Basham.
“Is he here?” I asked, looking around. Nobody was jumping up, so I turned to Freeh and gave him a raised eyebrow.
“You only specified my deputy, sir,” he said lamely.
I muttered under my breath something else rude, and then finalized the decision I had been considering since last night. I simply nodded to myself for a moment, and then looked down the table to the Director of the FBI. “Well, that settles something for me.” I looked around the table. “It’s time for a frank discussion, folks. I met with Congress last night. One of the things that was mentioned was that the American people will be looking for some answers, and Congress will be holding hearings. They are going to want to know what happened, and they are going to be looking for a few heads to roll. People will be held accountable. We might as well get started.”
I opened my clipboard cover and pulled out a sheet of White House stationery. I slid it down the table to Freeh. “Mister Freeh, I am sorry to hear that you have decided to resign your position as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Your many years of service will always be remembered. Just write ‘I quit’ on there and sign it and date it. That should be good enough.”
You could have heard a pin drop, and everybody stared. I was firing somebody? That just wasn’t done! The usual Washington response would be that the President would admit to various unspecified lapses in judgment and take the blame for everybody. Nobody would be hurt and life would go on, business as usual. Screw that! Time for some people to get a wakeup call!
Louis Freeh just stared at me. I snapped my fingers at him and pointed at the paper. “Mr. Director, your performance a few minutes ago was totally unsatisfying. I have no doubt that when this finally gets figured out, the files of the FBI will have the names, ranks, and serial numbers of everybody involved. Do like I said. Write ‘I quit’ and sign and date it.” Stunned, he did as he was told. He passed it back, and I said, “Thank you. When you leave this room, turn over any identification, keys, etc. to somebody outside. Then, go home. You are no longer in the employ of the United States of America.”
“Jesus!” I heard somebody murmur. Freeh stood up from the table and slowly left, the look of a broken man on his face.
I looked over and saw his shocked Deputy Director. I crooked a finger at him and then pointed at the chair Freeh had just left. “Congratulations, you are the interim Director. From now on, when we have a meeting about what happened yesterday, I will expect your Executive whatever to be on hand, and I expect him to have a lot more answers than what I just heard. Are we agreed on that?”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
I turned back to the Deputy Director of the Secret Service. “Mister Basham, from now on, you and this fellow Barnhart…”
“Barnwell, sir.”
I gave him a dour look at the interruption. “Do I look like I care? Barnwell! You and he are joined at the hip. I want you two working so closely on this that you can finish each other’s sentences! If you get an itch, I want him to scratch it! This afternoon I am going over to the Pentagon to see what happened there. Afterwards I want the two of you to see me here, and I am expecting a heck of a lot more info than I just got. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Thank you. You are excused. I want you to go find him and get this sucker cranking!” Basham left with a lively step and a look of determination. After he left I pulled a second blank sheet from my pad. “Our next contestant is the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
“ME?!” came from a few feet down the table to my right. “What did I do!?”
“Ah, there you are, Ms. Garvey.” I slid a blank piece of stationery down the table. “Ms. Garvey, it’s not what you did, but what you didn’t do. Your agency is supposed to regulate the airlines, and instead they regulate your agency. Now, while I will admit that you didn’t create this situation, you did nothing to change it, either. We might not know what happened, but airplane security falls under the regulations of your agency. I can guarantee that in your files will be a list of proposals that could have stopped this but were never implemented. So, sign away.”
Jane Garvey was furious, but she signed a resignation and stormed out. Her replacement sat down in her place and I looked at him. “Your job will be to find that list of fixes and get them going. If you need political cover, I’ll give it to you. If you need an Executive Order ordering things to be done, I’ll give it to you. I will support you on this, but no plane lifts off until we are sure that this won’t happen again, and we need those planes flying as soon as possible. Understood?”