Mission Compromised (14 page)

3. (TS) The United Nations executive shall communicate specific requests for action by the ISEG directly to the heads of state of the Enforcement Powers or to their mutually agreed-upon designees.

4. (TS) The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has designated Sir Reginald Bomphrey, secretary of the cabinet, as the UK designated Point of Contact for all ISEG activities.

5. (TS) The President of the United States has designated the assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Mr. Simon Harrod, as the U.S. Designated Point of Contact for all ISEG activities.

6. (TS) By mutual agreement of the United Nations executive and the International Enforcement Powers, the existence and activities of the ISEG shall be held at the highest levels of classification and nondisclosure. Accordingly, all communications pertaining to the ISEG shall bear the following legends:

U.S.: TOP SECRET. CODE WORD ACCESS REQUIRED, NO DIS.

UK: MOST SECRET. LIMDIS BY ORDER OF THE PM.

UN: SEC GEN RESTRICTED. SPECIAL HANDLING REQUIRED.

7. (TS) the secretaries of state and defense, the director of central intelligence, and the director of the FBI shall provide such support to the ISEG as requested by the National Security Advisor to carry out the terms of this directive.

8. (S) This directive is exempted from routine downgrading and declassification and shall not be reproduced except by order of the President.

 

The document bore the President's signature. There was silence while all four men read the directive through a second time, each trying to figure out how he fit into the words in front of them. Newman finished first and asked the question on everyone's mind. “Dr. Harrod, how is all this going to work?”

Harrod glanced at his watch. It was approaching 6:00 P.M. and it was already dark outside. He shrugged and started to describe what it is they would do and how they would do it.

 

 

By the time Harrod finished describing how these four officers would coordinate requests from the UN Secretary General for sanctions enforcement, and answering their questions, it was almost 7:30.

As they concluded, Harrod swept up the classified documents that he had shown them and replaced them in the file folder. “Tomorrow morning I've made arrangements for you to meet the ISEG. All thirty-eight members of the group are being housed in a secure facility at Andrews Air Force Base for this phase of their training.

“You should arrive at the main gate between 6:00 and 6:15 A.M. That way you won't have to fight the traffic on the Beltway. Tell the security people that you need to be escorted to Area 35. Show them your White House pass. All four of you, spend the day over there with the team; get to know them. They are scheduled to fly back to Fort
Bragg tomorrow night at 6:00 P.M. You should all be back here tomorrow night at 7:00 P.M.

“Bring some jeans and casual clothes to change into when you get back here. Why?” he asked, reading their questioning eyes. “First, you'll fit in better around here. Second, the team from WHCA will be here at 7:30 to install your communications equipment, secure phones, and the rest of the stuff you're going to need in here. I want to get that done after the rest of the crowd is gone. I don't want people asking too many questions about what you're up to here.” As he said this, Harrod gestured around the office. “Any questions?” he asked.

“Many, but only two for now.” It was Newman again. “How do we get funding for these activities? There must be some kind of congressional oversight.”

Harrod looked at Newman with new regard. “Very sharp, Newman. Of course you four continue to draw your normal military pay. As far as your services are concerned, you're on detail to the NSC staff. The U.S. personnel in the ISEG are all carried as ‘detached duty' with their parent departments and agencies. I suppose the Brits do it the same way, since all their people come from the SAS where they've been doing it this way for years.

“As for funding the training and operational activities of the ISEG and the ISETs, that's all handled by a special allocation from the British prime minister and the UN Secretary General. Unlike us, the PM and SG both have discretionary accounts that don't have to be reported to anybody. They both have contributed cash to fund the accounts that you'll be handling from here. Any expenditure of more than $100,000 has to be approved by me. I expect the books to balance. And I will periodically conduct an audit of how you are managing the funds.

“As of right now”—at this point Harrod consulted a piece of paper
from his pocket—“we have a total of
$7.47
million in three overseas bank accounts to last us until the end of the year. The secretary general has assured the President that on January 1, the accounts will have an additional $240 million placed in them for ISEG activities.”

Newman and his staff looked at each other. Did Harrod just say 240 million?

“Now, as for congressional oversight, we won't be going up to Capitol Hill to describe any of what the ISEG does. In fact, as far as the foreign relations committees, the armed services committees, and the intelligence committees—and all their staffs—are concerned, the ISEG doesn't exist.” Harrod stopped to see how the men reacted to that statement. He could see the wheels turning in their minds, but no one spoke.

“And, if push comes to shove, we still have some friends up there on the Hill, in both parties and in both houses of Congress. These friends share the President's vision for a well-ordered new world. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

“Meanwhile,” Harrod said, turning to McDade, Coombs, and Robertson, “have you taken care of all the paperwork?” All three nodded. “And you have your White House badges and parking passes for the Ellipse?” They nodded again.

“Good. Newman, make sure they know the combinations to all the silly locks on the door so that somebody can get in if you get run over by a truck tonight. I'll see you all here tomorrow at 7:00 P.M. when you've finished at Andrews.”

 

 

After the National Security Advisor trundled out, the four officers sat back down at the round table to exchange phone numbers and addresses, explaining as they did so what they had been doing the
previous Friday when they were abruptly jerked out of their assignments and ordered to duty at the NSC.

Lieutenant Tom McDade had been an instructor in Coronado, California, at the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs School—known throughout the Navy as BUD/S. Harrod had said that all of the officers were veterans of the Gulf War, and they were. But McDade had also been in the Panama dustup back in December '89. His SEAL team had been hastily dispatched to Rodman Naval Station in Balboa Harbor, and given the mission of making sure that Manuel Noriega didn't manage to slip away from Panama on something that flew or floated. McDade and his fellow SEALs had managed to disable all the escape crafts of the former dictator. But the drill had cost the lives of four SEALs. McDade said somewhat wistfully, “I've been hoping for orders to join SEAL Team 6. Instead, it looks like I'm gonna be pushing papers at the White Palace.”

Until the previous Friday, Captain Bart Coombs had been limping around on a crutch, the result of a parachute mishap during a Delta training operation at Camp Dawson in West Virginia. Until his knee fully healed, Coombs had been temporarily assigned to the Delta headquarters staff at “Wally World,” the nickname the Delta operators gave to their flashy new Special Operations Training facility at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Coombs had been a “Scud Buster,” dropped deep into Iraq to pinpoint mobile SCUD launchers for air strikes before the Russian-built missiles could be launched against Allied troops or Israel. His Delta squadron had deployed for six weeks to Somalia after the shoot-out in October '93 in which Jim Newman had been killed. Now he was also anguishing over the prospect of being shackled to a desk at the White House for two years. “I'd rather be in Mogadishu or some other cesspool,” he groaned.

Captain Dan Robertson was the only one who wasn't going to grouse about the assignment. He had been an MH-53 Pave Low Special Operations helicopter pilot since graduating from the Air Force Academy and follow-on flight schools. During Desert Storm, he had taken his “Big Bird” deep into occupied Kuwait and Iraq to insert and extract Delta operators, rescue downed Navy and Air Force pilots, and, on one occasion, pull out a Marine recon patrol amidst heavy enemy fire.

He would have kept doing that kind of flying for the rest of his life, but Special Ops in the Air Force was a dead-end street. The most he could hope to command would be a squadron—and then what? He had two Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Purple Heart, and a broken marriage. He hadn't told anyone up the chain of command, but he had been planning to put in an application with U.S. Air when the orders for the White House landed on his desk.

Although none of the three young officers knew it, all of them, like Newman, had been “profiled” and then selected by name for the NSC. The WHDB computers had picked them out of more than a million men and women in the military based on criteria established by Harrod with the help of Admiral Wilburn Robbins, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the only current or former member of the top brass to back the President's candidacy in 1992.

The President had rewarded Robbins for his political fealty by naming him the ambassador to London. From there, Robbins stayed in touch with Simon Harrod on a near-daily basis. The portly old admiral had negotiated the deal for the British to participate with the U.S. in the formation of the ISEG and had told Harrod what qualities he should seek in those who would be coordinating the ISEG's activities.

Harrod had taken the admiral's criteria, including the requirements that the people selected be single or divorced and have served in combat, to Arnold Granish and his data dinks in the WHDB facility. Less than forty-eight hours later, Harrod had the names of nine officers, three each from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, who met the selection criteria. After reviewing them, Harrod had chosen these three because they simply looked better than the others from their respective services. His only regret was that none of them had turned out to be a woman or a minority. He knew that an all-white, all-male Special Projects Office didn't meet the President's diversity goals, but he had to work with what he was given.

After the round of introductions, Newman began to think that this assignment might not be so intolerable after all. At least he would be working with kindred spirits. If nothing else, this little office in the southeast corner of the OEOB would be a place where the military was respected. He contemplated inviting his three new colleagues to walk across Lafayette Park and join him at the Army & Navy Club for a drink and the telling of a few lies and war stories—but then he checked his watch. It was nearly 9:00 P.M.

“Let's make a break for it,” he said. “We have an early day of it at Andrews and probably a late night tomorrow night. Does anyone need a lift in the morning?”

No one did, so they all lined up silently at the door while Newman punched in the code to rearm the security system. Then they all piled out the door and waited while he spun the combination lock on the door and reset the lock on the wall panel.

As they headed down the silent corridor and the elevator, they joked quietly with each other about what the penalty might be for forgetting
any of the combinations to the various locks. The ribald speculation continued all the way out onto West Executive Avenue.

It had gotten cold enough that each breath produced a billow of vapor that shone in the bright lights illuminating the white mansion just a few yards away. Newman headed for the Situation Room to run the “credit cards” with the lock and security system combinations through the microshredder. The other three waved good-night and walked toward the South West Gate and their cars on the Ellipse.

After a few minutes, Newman came back out and went to his car. As he headed slowly up West Executive Avenue toward the North West Gate, it occurred to him that he was glad his wife wouldn't be home for two more days. That would give him time to concoct an appropriate answer to Rachel's inevitable questions: “What's your new job at the White House like, Peter? What do you do there?”