Unfortunately, no one, not even Molina, could have predicted the strange border attacks that the United States was complaining of. Though no one doubted that something was happening along the border between the United States and Mexico, everyone was at a loss to explain who was behind it and why they were attempting to provoke the United States.
Each member of the council had his own pet theory, based on his personal and political beliefs. Zavala was convinced that the provocateurs were leftists, attempting to egg the United States into doing what they them selves could not do, eliminate the Council of 13. Colonel Angel Ruiz, minister of justice, agreed with the motivation but thought that the drug lords were involved in the raids, providing financial support if not manpower.
Molina, ever the great mediator, refused to publicly support any theory.
Instead, he took a very practical approach. It didn't matter, he pointed out, who was behind the raids against the Americans. What was important was the fact that they were occurring and, more importantly, that they were preventing the recognition of the council by the United States and driving American politicians toward extreme measures for solving the problem. To succeed, the council needed time to establish itself and its authority, reorganize state and political apparatuses, and, equally important, revive Mexico's economy. A war, regardless of how short, would cripple these efforts. With this in mind, Molina, with the backing of the entire council, gave Guajardo a free hand to deal with the problem as he saw fit. The only restriction placed upon him was the need to do so quickly and without causing the Americans any further alarm.
Guajardo, as he half listened to his fellow councilmen, wondered how he could achieve the last. Any efforts to reinforce or increase military activity in the northern states were bound to increase American suspicions and fears. How, he had asked, can a man go about arming himself without worrying his neighbor? Eventually, he pointed out, that neighbor will feel the need to do likewise in order to protect himself. Not to do so, he said, would be, in the eyes of his family, criminal. Molina, speaking for the rest of the council, simply replied, "Do your best, my friend. That is all we can ask of you."
Finished with his morning run and fresh from a shower, Scott Dixon was ready to begin some serious work. Walking through the admin section of the G3 shop in search of his first cup of coffee, he told his deputy to have someone from the G3 plans section bring all of the GREEN plans and the briefing slides for them to his office and that no one, under pain of death, was to disturb him.
While Dixon sat at his desk, sorting through the heap of papers and memos stacked in his in-box, a clerk from the plans section came into his office and set a thick green loose-leaf binder, a large covered map board, and a stack of framed transparencies on the end of the conference table that sat perpendicular to his desk. As the clerk left, he asked her to close the door behind her. For a moment, Dixon looked at the loose-leaf binder, then at the muddle of notes and papers he still had left in his in-box. He thought about leaving the in-box until later, but decided against that.
Maybe, just maybe, he thought, there might be something of importance hidden deep in there. Against his better judgment, he finished sorting through his in-box. No doubt his deputy, whose task it was to ensure that all paperwork was straight, accounted for, and on time, would be relieved.
His routine complete, Dixon took his coffee cup and the stack of papers he had reviewed and written comments on and walked out to his deputy's desk. Dropping the papers in the center of the deputy's otherwise neat desk, Dixon wandered over to the coffeepot, refilled his cup, and then returned to his office to review the GREEN plans.
The name of the division's contingency plans for intervention in Mexico had a story all its own. Before World War II, the army had a comprehensive series of war plans, referred to as the RAINBOW plans, to deal with the threats that faced the United States in 1940. These plans were based on individual single-color war plans developed by the War Department, as the Department of the Army was then known, between 1920 and 1940 to deal with each nation that was considered a threat to the United States. Under that system, any plan dealing with Mexico was referred to as a GREEN plan. The GREEN plan, the most highly developed of all the War Department's plans, was in turn a derivative of the General Mexican War Plan that was first drafted in 1919.
The 1919 plan called for sealing the borders of the United States, seizing the Mexican oil fields in Tampico as well as the coal fields just south of Texas, blockading the principal Mexican seaports, and cutting Mexico off from other Central American countries. Since many of the goals of the current.XIX Corps war plans were the same as the old GREEN plans, Dixon, with a degree in history from VMI, had decided to name the 16th Armored Division's draft war plans for Mexico the GREEN plans. Big Al, the division commander, who liked to keep things simple, had kept the name.
There were actually six different and distinct contingency plans within the GREEN plans. GREEN ONE was purely defensive, dealing only with the sealing of the border of the United States and the repelling of attacks up to the Mexican-United States border but nothing beyond. The sealing of the border, the primary operation in GREEN ONE, was only an initial phase in all other GREEN plans. GREEN TWO included the sealing of the border but assumed the active assistance of the Mexican military, which allowed combined Mexican-American operations south of the border.
GREEN THREE called for destruction of hostile forces south of the border, but assumed that the Mexican military would neither cooperate with nor interfere with those operations. GREEN FOUR assumed that the Mexican military would defend its territorial integrity if the United States attempted to follow and destroy hostile forces south of the border.
GREEN FIVE called for occupation of selected areas in northern Mexico as a buffer against incursions against the United States. GREEN SIX, the thickest of the plans, called for an all-out invasion with the goal of toppling the military regime and reestablishment of a freely elected democratic government. There was a GREEN SEVEN plan, but since it included the employment of nuclear weapons, it was classified top secret, special compartmented information, and not available to the 16th Armored Division.
Each of these contingency plans, in turn, had at least three variations.
For example, GREEN ONE-1 included only the two active-duty brigades of the 16th Armored Division. GREEN ONE-2 required three brigades, with the third brigade being the 173rd Infantry Brigade from Fort Benning, Georgia. GREEN ONE-3, also calling for three brigades, required the mobilization and deployment of the 16th Armored Division's National Guard round-out brigade from Mississippi.
While it was the responsibility of the G3 plans section to draft all the plans and their various permutations, based on the division commander's general concept of operations and Dixon's specific instructions, Dixon had to ensure that the plans were complete, made sense, and had been coordinated with the other staff sections. This was not easy, especially when Dixon often found the intelligence estimates upon which the plans were based wanting. Unable to gather their own information, the G2 intelligence section of the division depended on the intelligence estimates provided by the XIX Corps G2 section. These estimates, in turn, were based upon those produced by national-level agencies, namely the CIA and the DIA, whose products Dixon had good reason to suspect. Using those estimates for the creation of operational war plans was, as Dixon pointed out on numerous occasions, like building a house on a dung heap.