The entirety of the Joint Chiefs stood and applauded Captain Banner. “The way you slammed that reporter from MSNBC was fantastic, you could have continued, but you knew where the limits of decorum were. The public will respond well to you as long as you remain under control, and smell traps coming. I stood and applauded you in my office. You handled it professionally, and without hesitation,” said the Chairman.
The Captain stood and shook hands with each one of them in turn.
AP NEWS FLASH: Today the President met with the entirety of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a closed-door meeting. The purpose of this meeting is unknown to the press. There is speculation that a shift in strategy will occur in the war against Iran.
AP ECONOMIC NEWS FLASH: Defense stocks continue to dominate the market. Consumer prices on vegetables and milk have reached all time highs. A gallon of milk is currently approaching the same $5 a gallon as gasoline in most of the country causing calls for further government subsidies for all Americans. The one positive sign is that prices have stopped rising. Any additional controls put in place would, presumably, be to prevent additional increases and are not considered likely unless the war effort should begin to go badly.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Captain Banner sat on the soundstage for the local ABC affiliate in Washington D.C. waiting for another interview that would be carried nationally. He was hoping that he could get through his second round of television without faltering. He felt out of his comfort zone, but it was something that had to be done.
He felt his first foray into television had gone pretty well, but a pressroom with many reporters is one thing. A one-on-one with a single reporter, for a 10-minute segment of television, was another entirely.
Here he faced the very real opportunity for one of these professional trip-up artists to get him in a corner. He was equally concerned that he didn’t embarrass himself in front of Sandy, who was sitting on the couch just to his right.
He looked over at her. She smiled at him and pointed to the camera over the shoulder of the reporter. They were going on the air in just a few seconds. He wondered how she was holding up so well, or perhaps she just didn’t show it outwardly. He would just add her ability to remain calm to the list of things he loved about her.
Suddenly the red light came on. Their faces were going out to anyone who wanted to watch. After the brief moment of on the air introduction the reporter looked directly at him and immediately started with a conversational style which was designed to soften him up for some harder things to come, “Captain, good morning. We all saw your press conference at the White House, and I have to say it was fantastic for your first time getting that level of attention. Thank you for coming out and speaking at all. In your line of work you would have just avoided the attention if you chose, so thank you again for being here with us this morning.”
“Thanks for having us,” Frank said.
“In that press conference you said something interesting. You said that during that mission many things happened much differently than what the Iranians are saying. You continued on to say that you have reviewed the footage and you want us to ‘trust you’ as to what it contains. Pardon me, but as a reporter, I tend to not just trust a single source. Why should we trust you?” he asked.
“Well, after the Press Conference I spoke to the President, who informed me of something I really should have known. The public, and the press, have a way of deciding all their own who they will, and will not, trust. Usually, he said, they decide to not trust people who use that phrase. I suppose it was a rookie mistake, but it was my honest opinion on the subject matter.
“I am known within SOCOM for telling as much as I can without violating any security concerns. I will tell you this much, the President, and his Press Secretary, have told me to just answer questions as honestly, and as fully as I can. That is what I am here to do. If you want to find a phrase you can play with, or twist and turn into something different, that’s fine but at least you will know it is me speaking. It is not a prepared and memorized script.
“We did have a little of preparation for the original press conference, but really not much overall. I just said most things off the cuff, and tried to treat it like a conversation I would have with anyone. The preparation was just for the first question in case I suffered from stage fright. Besides, from what the experts are telling me, it is always easy to see what the first question will be,” Frank said.
“Well, you appear to have gotten over that stage fright, quite handily I might add,” the reporter said.
Frank thought the news anchor smiled as much as any human could.
The man asked, “So let’s start off here. If you could say it again would you say it differently?”
“Probably, but I would like to add something, and this is the first time this information has been put out on the news. After that press conference, which was, what, right around twenty-four hours ago now, the President has authorized me to say that after hostilities cease a very large portion of those videos will be released in a non-degraded form. The only part that won’t be distributed will be anything that shows the faces, or in any other way reveals the identity of any of the men who have absolute need to stay anonymous for security reasons,” he said.
“Well that is interesting. We can all look forward to that. Do you believe there is a way these hostilities can be brought to end rapidly? Do we have plans in place to get out of the conflict fast?” the reporter probed.
“That is up to the Iranians. When they surrender, we will stop. However, they started this by murdering our innocent civilians with weapons of mass destruction. They don’t differentiate between military and civilian personnel the same way we do. We have been targeting their military capacity, and are actively avoiding any civilian casualties,” he answered.
“Speaking of civilians. You and your men captured one while on this recent mission, did you not?” asked the reporter.
“I want to reiterate that our enemies define military and civilian differently than we do. That fact is very important to understand. So to answer your question with specificity, we took a Prisoner of War.
“I am now authorized to say publicly that the man we took as a prisoner is named Dr. Joba. I don’t know his first name. But I do know that he has led the nuclear weapons program in Iran for many years. He has also been deeply involved in their peaceful nuclear power program, so he was on both sides of the issue. That was probably so they could claim everything they did was for peaceful purposes.
“We also believe that Iran, as a country, has lost the capability to field more weapons of the type they used on us anytime in the near future. So have we captured a civilian or a military member out to kill our populace? That is up for people smarter than me to answer, but I can say our Nation and maybe the rest of the world is now a great deal safer as a result of what my men and I did,” Frank said as a matter of factly as he had said anything in his life.
“Well said, Captain. Now I must ask, I have read the news all day, and watched the Op Ed pieces. The press, and the American people have just fallen in love with you two. How does that feel?” asked the man with caked on makeup.
“Kind of surreal. We,” he took Sandy’s hand in his, “are just going to get through this week and answer every question we can. Then we go back to doing our jobs and move on to other things in our lives. My job will now have to change at least a little since I am now so widely photographed, and known, so once I figure out what that is going to entail we can make some more concrete decisions,” Frank said.