“Burned out in what way?”
“They work long hours, they take their cases home with them, and when they are not involved in a crisis, I’m told they are busy looking for the next one.”
“Told by whom?”
“Liz Gordon, the staff psychologist,” Carrie said. “That last factor is the one that’s killing them. There is no downtime.”
“What’s going on there? The Napoleon syndrome?” Carew asked.
“I do not get the sense they are trying to compete with the big boys of intelligence,” Carrie told him. “At least, that’s not their primary motivation. It is more like a bunker mentality. They see themselves as a key line of defense — which they are. But according to Liz, Paul Hood made them feel as if they are the only line of defense. His personal line of defense.”
“Against what?”
“Mediocrity,” she replied. “Liz thinks that Paul Hood used the NCMC to fix the world in ways that he couldn’t fix his life.”
“General Carrie.” Carew sighed. “Are you going to sit there and give me a lot of psychobullshit?”
“Mr. Chairman, I was not the one who brought up the Napoleon syndrome,” Carrie remarked.
Carew was silent for a moment. “Touché,” he replied. “Go on.”
“Liz says that the big problem is the way Hood integrated everyone into the crisis management process on every level. Military planning was plugged into tech, intelligence gathering was hot-wired into the political liaison office, legal worked with psychological, everyone handson everywhere. I saw that happening myself around two this morning. I was talking to Herbert and McCaskey, and they were overanalyzing everything they had picked up that day instead of acting on it. The guiding principle is that the team takes risks but not chances.”
“Everything comes from the brain, not the gut,” Carew said.
“Exactly,” Carrie said. “Whereas we encourage our intel people to explore from within, these people investigate from without. They started a unit of field agents under Mike Rodgers, but it never worked out. Liz says that Hood couldn’t let go. I discovered that Hood is also one reason that Liz back-doored a recommendation to then-Senator Debenport that Mike Rodgers be the first one downsized. Hood’s number two was burning out big time.”
“That’s because he’s a soldier, not a bureaucrat. He took the full frontal hits for Op-Center, all of them in the field.”
“Liz doesn’t think Hood realized the damage he was doing to General Rodgers or to the rest of the staff,” Carrie continued. “If he thought about it at all, he would blame it on being understaffed.”
“Where was the CIOC in all this?”
“The Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee didn’t seem to care how Hood ran the organization as long as he got results,” Carrie said. “And he did. Hood was one reason the CIOC felt they could cut his budget. Debenport knew that Hood would make it work. What I don’t understand, though, is if he was so important to the mix, why did President Debenport pull him away?”
“So Hood could do the same thing for the West Wing that he was doing at the NCMC, pulling together an intelligence community under the direct control of the president,” Carew said. “Debenport knows we want to create a greater structure allied with G2. Hood is his countermove.”
“And his spy.”
“What do you mean?” Carew asked.
“Hood is using personnel from Op-Center on the situation in China.”
“Of course. The president had to realize Hood would do that,” Carew said. “He would use long-standing relationships to tap Op-Center’s resources and confuse their loyalty.”
“Liz feels the danger to Op-Center goes deeper than that,” Carrie said. “She says that Hood’s command style not only connected people professionally but emotionally — in a common, often open dislike of Hood. Rodgers, Bob Herbert, attorney Lowell Coffey, and FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey all manifested extreme resentment from time to time. But she thinks that instead of being relieved by his absence they’re feeling lost. These people don’t have a familiar commander — or a place to put their frustration. In the absence of that, Hood can cherrypick the personnel he needs in his new position. Whether intentionally or not, that will divide their loyalty.”
“Keep us from solidifying the unit.”
“Right.”
“Whether or not that’s true, and whether or not this was all Hood’s fault, how long will it take to fix?” Carew asked.
“I’m going to work on that with Liz today,” Carrie said. “We’re going to see who we can retain and retrain.”
“Are you sure Liz Gordon was not affected by all this?” Carew asked.
“Very sure,” Carrie replied. “Hood did not trust profiling or psychology very much. He says as much in his own reports. Liz stayed aloof and apart from much of what went on at Op-Center.”
“Sounds promising,” Carew said. “Don’t hesitate too long to do whatever is necessary to get the NCMC healthy.”
“Of course not. China should be a good shakedown cruise for us.”
“Speaking of which, what’s the latest? G2 has nothing new on the Taiwan front.”
“I’ll be following up on that when I get to the office,” Carrie said. “If something had happened, the night staff would have let me know.”
General Carew said he would speak with her later. Carrie hung up and looked out the tinted window. She believed what she was doing was right for Op-Center, for the intelligence community, and for the nation. When Carrie first took over G2, it was an efficient collection of groups that tended to act unilaterally. The overall mission was to collect and disseminate military intelligence and counterintelligence, and to oversee military security and military intelligence training. After the Iraq War, Carrie had been charged with improving the organization on the tactical level. She planned and supervised a restructuring from battalion through division to allow G2 to effectively execute its mission in war and peace. During peacetime, she arranged it so that operations were centrally consolidated with outflow controlled by her office under the daily control of her number two, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Denny, the assistant chief of staff. In support of war, the intelligence assets were jumped directly to the tactical command post, the main command post, and the rear command post. This dissemination was executed by units Carrie had hand-picked: the 640th Military Intelligence Battalion, the 210th Weather Flight, Air National Guard, the 1004th/1302nd Engineer Detachment, which specialized in terrain analysis, and the Quickfix Platoon C/1-140AV.
Of course, at G2 Carrie had the entire United States military at her disposal to accomplish that goal. The challenge of Op-Center was to do the same thing with a mostly civilian group and a relatively small budget.
It was a challenge she was looking forward to. There would probably be some casualties, though she hoped to minimize those with Liz’s help. Burned out was not the same as passed away. This team had done some remarkable work, and she wanted to try to keep them intact.
The big challenge was not Bob Herbert or Darrell McCaskey or any of their teammates. The big challenge was the goal.
General Patton had once decried the short-sighted decisions of those “temporary residents of the White House.” International policy and national security were too important to be left to upgraded senators and former governors. The objective of General Carrie was to help strengthen the United States by making military intelligence a bigger and more integral part of America’s defense structure.
On the way to that goal, however, another challenge suddenly presented itself. One that was smaller but tactically and morally important. According to Liz Gordon, Paul Hood was not burned out. Why would he be? Whatever his flaws, Hood had built and used a strong, hardworking support structure.