The Weed Agency (29 page)

“Caleb Lyon’s chairing the commission,” he said, half dazed, half disbelieving.

This time it was Humphrey who stopped, put down the piece of paper, looked at Wilkins, inhaled to say something, and then didn’t.

“Who’s he?” Lisa asked. “I figured Bush would try to sneak Henry Kissinger or … who are the guys he appoints to everything? Um … oh, you know, Chertoff or Khalilzad.”

“Caleb Lyon,” sighed Wilkins, “is like Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, David McCullough, and Jaime Escalante rolled into one. The investigation of the biggest screw-up of our lives is going to be conducted by Captain America. We might as well type up our resignation letters now.”

Humphrey let out a long, long sigh, and his head drooped.
Wilkins had never seen his friend and mentor this close to emotional and physical capitulation.

“Lisa,” Humphrey said quietly. “We’re going to have to organize a very effective, very fast-moving, and very relentless campaign of strategic leaks.”

The commission held its first meeting in office space on K Street rented by the General Services Administration.

Lyon had insisted that the main conference room be cleared of staff; he wanted the commissioners to meet without entourages or an audience. Two commissioners arrived early, and Lyon was not surprised which ones. They stared at each other with no feigned collegiality or warmth; they sized each other up like street fighters.

“Congressman Puga.”

“Congressman Carrington.”

Lyon awaited further conversation, but none came. He was comfortable with silence, and so the three sat for five minutes without saying anything.

Finally, the other appointees to the Cheatgrass Disaster Commission—nicknamed the Four Fogeys by the disreputable whippersnappers of the blogosphere—arrived via wheelchair and walker and cane and settled into the large conference table.

Lyon had gone through some cursory introductions when the youngest member offered the first bone of contention.

“I presume the commission will be providing each of us with an office, secretary, and driver,” Puga interrupted.

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I didn’t think two little letters could be so confusing,” Lyon responded with a raised eyebrow. “We have this rented office
space and a small group of nonpartisan staffers. We have communal office workspace and equipment available. You’ll be in charge of getting yourself here.”

Puga’s face was a fireworks display of disbelief, indignation, disappointment, anger, and pouting.

“I want to be clear from the beginning,” Lyon began the only part of the meeting he had really looked forward to, discussing and/or lecturing the commission members about duty and patriotism. “We are charged with the responsibility of investigating a tragic and all-too-easily overlooked disaster for this country’s farmers and consumers. There are two things that could ruin our efforts instantly. First, any leaks of information before we have completed our investigation. If we’re seen as leaking, that will give everyone an excuse to not cooperate. Second, while partisanship in this town is off the charts, and I have no doubt we will have disagreements among us, we need to work as a unified force, a small strike team for truth, getting to the bottom of why that agency failed to—”

“Objection, Mr. Chairman!” Puga blurted out.

“This is not a court of law, Javier,” Lyon growled. “What is it?

“You described our mission as getting to the bottom of why the
agency
failed, and it is a prejudicial definition, because it presumes that fault properly lies at the feet of that entity.”

“Alright, Javier, how would you prefer we described our mission?”

“Well, I would begin by saying simply we must get to the bottom of
who
failed, not merely why, since my initial examination suggests the preponderance of the evidence indicates that the fault lies not with the agency, but with Bush and Rove and the other nutzos in the White House—.”
³⁵

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Carrington shouted. “He just talked about avoiding partisanship, you left-wing union stooge!”

“Here it comes,” Puga sneered. “The Republican congressman steps up to protect the president.”

Lyon figured it was best to let the pair fight it out for a bit, and so he sat back and let the shout-fest continue. Former lieutenant governor Beane, seated next to the chairman, raised an eyebrow at Lyon with an expectant look, but the chairman just shrugged.

He leaned over to Beane and whispered, “Running these meetings would be easier if I were armed,” triggering giggles in the octogenarian.

JUNE 2007

U.S. National Debt: $8.86 trillion

Months later, the commission’s hearings began, with the requisite television coverage. CNN put away the “Drums of War” introduction music, and instead the accelerating, synthesizer-heavy “Emergency Beat” was the musical theme of choice.

“Into the Lyon’s den,” boomed Wolf Blitzer in a pun used much too frequently this week.

“It is being called the worst mistake in the history of American agricultural policy! Millions of dollars in economic damage as thousands of western farmers battled a herbivorous predator: cheatgrass. With the country’s agriculture sector
just beginning to recover from the invasion, now is the time for hard questions and harder answers,” Blitzer said, making a mental note to vigorously shake whoever had loaded up the in-camera teleprompter that day. “Today on Capitol Hill, the National Cheatgrass Disaster Commission aims its crosshairs at Adam Humphrey—the longtime administrative director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agency of Invasive Species.”

For Adam Humphrey, a man who had carefully avoided the public spotlight, the hearing presented a momentous challenge. Sure, his occasional address to agricultural groups had been used as late-night filler for C-SPAN, and he had testified on Capitol Hill at least once a year, but he had never been expected to work his persuasive charms upon a national television audience.

But he had practiced for weeks … and he knew he had at least one ally on the panel.

Congressman Bader’s staff had told their boss, repeatedly, that attending the commission hearing would be a bad idea. They had noticed that Bader, usually cool, calm, and cerebral as one of the House’s preeminent number-crunching budget hawks, could quickly flip out when discussing the Agency of Invasive Species and particularly Adam Humphrey. The staff figured that Humphrey would spin the facts with the intensity of a wind tunnel, and that the odds of Bader stifling the urge to loudly call out the untruths were nil. Bader’s colleague, Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina, warned him that
if he lost control during an opponent’s comments, it would backfire greatly.

So it was arranged that Bader would watch the hearings’ live television feed from a small overflow room adjacent to the hearing room, and he had his instant message system connected to the laptop in front of Carrington.

Bader would never think of influencing the proceedings of the bipartisan commission; he merely wanted to make sure he could provide any necessary information to the commission in a timely—instant, really—manner.

At noon, the hearings began. Humphrey adjusted the microphone before him.

“To the members of this commission, members of Congress, and to the American public, I apologize,” Humphrey began. “The performance of this agency was not what the American people have come to expect from us.”

He held his fist to his mouth, mugging regret, and he heard the relentless
click-click-click
of the assembled photographers, who had been conditioned to greet any hand gesture by taking a number of photographs appropriate for a UFO landing.

“As we move forward together with the distinguished members of this commission, in unraveling the mysteries of the cheatgrass infestation and the difficulty in harnessing sufficient resources to deal with the menace to our agricultural community, I would urge the distinguished public servants before me to recognize that any thorough review of our actions will reveal that the problem was not a lack of judgment or any individual decision. Instead, I see a serious structural, systemic problem that blocked any of us from taking the necessary action.”

In the overflow room, Bader yelled at the television; his staff hoped he couldn’t be heard outside.

“Here it comes,” Bader said. “Here’s the scapegoat!
It wasn’t me! It was the one-armed man!
”

“As administrative director, it is commonly assumed that my job is to ensure that the agency does everything it needs to do. That assumption is incorrect. To do everything needed would require more staff and more hours in a day than currently exist. Requests for assistance and information come in, by the dozens or hundreds per day, each day, throughout the year. Requests from farmers, gardeners, ranchers, requests from state and local agencies, requests from experts in the field, requests from forestry experts, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”