The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her

by Joe Rothstein

  “Señora was quite interested. She was scheduled to visit Buenos Aires, but said she would try to change the schedule. Señora Tennyson met me in Cusco three days later. We spent four days, seeing Cusco together, traveling to Machu Picchu, and enjoying one another’s company.”

  “And it was then and there that your affair began?”

  “Sí. It was quite romantic. Golden sunsets. Candlelight. Incredible vistas of a world that doesn’t exist outside that valley. Everyone should experience it sometime with someone they love.”

  The audience and many of the members on the dais could not suppress laughter. Gabe was telling a love story and the listeners were enthralled.

  “Christ,” blurted Ben, out loud, to no one. He was not feeling the love, but rather a creeping sense of dread. These people were on stage with a very good show.

  “Mr. Chairman!” Congressman Anderson thundered, “Are we conducting a daytime talk show here? Is this a soap opera? Oprah? Sex, sex, sex. So an unattached woman and this witness had an affair long ago. So what? What does this line of questioning have to do with anything related to this committee’s inquiry?”

  “Mr. Chairman,” responded counsel Polaski, “the relevance of the questions will be apparent if you allow me to proceed.”

  “Proceed,” nodded chairman Bowman.

  A cutaway of Congressman Anderson showed him shaking his head in apparent disgust.

  “Now, Mr. Montes, you say this was not the only occasion you met with President Tennyson romantically.”

  “No, no, no,” said Gabe emphatically.

  “She had to resume her business travels with that trip to Buenos Aires. I met her there, where we spent three very exciting days together. Two weeks later we met again in Mexico City where she introduced me to certain members of her family, including Don Miguel, her famous grandfather. A month later I was required to be in Los Angeles.”

  “Señor Montes, I want to remind you that you are under oath and that to not tell the truth is perjury punishable by a severe prison sentence and personal fine. What you have just described aligns with what President Tennyson has told our committee in her deposition. And in fairness to the president, I will point out we are talking about a period in which she was a private citizen, held no public office, and was a single, divorced woman. Your testimony to our staff diverges from hers after the Los Angeles meeting. I want you to fully understand you are questioning the veracity of the president of the United States, who also was under oath.”

  “Sí, I understand señora counselor. I can only say what I know to be true. I wish the lady no harm. I feel only fondness for her. In fact, I’m not embarrassed to say I love her.”

  The audience tittered with nervous laughter. Chairman Bowman rapped his gavel twice. Gently.

  “Please go on and tell the committee of your contacts with President Tennyson since that time in Los Angeles.”

  “Well, as I told your staff. There have been so many. In the years since, we have spoken often, and corresponded. “

  “What did you speak and correspond about?”

  “After we stopped seeing each other romantically there were a few times where our travels took us to the same cities. There were a few evenings together. Not like before, but very pleasant. The tone changed from the excitement and freshness of a new romance to more of a businesslike relationship.”

  “Businesslike?”

  “Yes. At first when we were romantically connected, she asked many questions about the bank that employed me, the Premier Group de las Americas. She wanted to talk about clients, prospects, much of it confidential. I am a guarded person but in situations where you give your heart, it’s not easy to resist giving more. Like what’s in your head. I regret that in the heat of passion I disclosed some trade information—clients, prospects, fees. Those kinds of things.

  “And so you had a sense she was using you to gain a business advantage”

  “I would not say such a thing. But I believe that was the result. Yes.”

  “And then when the relationship changed, the conversation changed?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know why. But she was more guarded than when we first met, and so was I. But once she went into your Congress, it was like before.”

  “Romantically?”

  “No. I would not say romantically. Sexually sometimes, but not romantically.”

  “And what did you discuss, when you were talking?”

  “She was on the committee that had an interest in the Americas and money. You know, how money passed around. Those kinds of things. Sometimes she would appear in Peru and would call, and we would get together. She asked many questions. She asked about accounts we had of what you might say were not quite usual.”

  “Illegal?”

  “I don’t know from illegal, madam counselor. Let’s say different. Accounts that called some extra review to themselves. Especially she wanted what I knew about her own family company, Groupo Aragon. That surprised me. I didn’t realize until much later that she had no contact with them for many years.”

  “No contact? With her own family company?”

  “Sí. She told me during our time together that she had been forced out of the company and that it was her intention to get even with them.”

  “Let me understand this, Señor Montes. The allegation has been made that the president has done illegal things in office to benefit Groupo Aragon, a company her grandfather began and which employed the president and her father and other family members for many years. And is it your testimony that rather than trying to help Groupo Aragon she actually was trying to hurt the company, to get revenge?”

  “Sí.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she had wanted to run the company. The board didn’t believe she was qualified and they dismissed her.”

  Only a few people knew the inside story of the dismissal of Isabel Aragon Tennyson. Few had thought to ask. The assumption was that she willingly had taken her large inheritance and moved on to other things.

  “She told you this?”

  “Sí. Pillow talk works from both sides of the pillow.”

  “And do you have other reasons to believe what she told you?”

  “Sí, señora. It was confirmed to me by others in Aragon management when I asked. I gave your staff names to contact.”

  “So how did she intend to get revenge?”

  “She was very successful. She told me and others of accounts held at Aragon, the amounts and the names. And she advised us how to take those accounts away and make them ours at Premier.”

  “And did you?”

  “Quite successfully.”

  “So, to clarify, President Tennyson, then a United States senator, knew about specific Groupo Aragon accounts— for laundered money, for gangs in the illegal drug trade, for the illegal gun trade—run by people who murder and terrorize whole communities, and instead of reporting them to the authorities, she reported them to you so you could grab those accounts. And she did that as revenge for being fired by her own company. Is that your testimony?

  “The story is perhaps more complicated, señora counselor. But it would appear so.”

  “And are those accounts still with the Premier Group?”

  No, drug enforcement people in Mexico, working with yours, found those accounts, many of them belonging to Escuadrón de la Paz.”

  “The drug cartel?”

  “Sí. They were disclosed after the arrest of Rafael Pecheco, who ran the organization. Premier paid suitable fines of course.”

  “And you, as the account manager?”

  “After my arrest in Mexicali I paid fines as well.”

  “Do you still live in Peru?”

  “Señora, I finally got the message. I was in a dangerous place and had to get out. I left the bank and moved to New York where I began my own private investment firm.”

  Committee counsel Katherine Polaski paused to sip from a water glass, moved a few papers on the table and let the damning weigh
t of Gabe’s testimony settle in. Live television took that time to get in quick station breaks and comments from their news staffs. Comments like “Blockbuster!” “Revealing!” “Sensational!” As Gabe’s testimony wore on, the live television audience increased. Images of this gorgeous man and their president together flashed on the screen. What they did together strolled through the minds and fantasies of not an insignificant number of those on the viewing side of the tubes.

  “Once again, Señor Montes,” Polaski resumed, “I want to remind you that President Tennyson denies much of what you just told us. Under oath. At risk of being removed from office if it is proven she did not tell the truth. Why should this committee believe you?”

  “Señora Counselor, I’m just a humble man, caught in the middle, trying to do the correct thing. You might say I romanced the wrong lady and it is more difficult than if I had to confront a jealous husband. As a gentleman, I destroyed the letters she sent me over the years, destroyed the emails after reading them, and when we signed into hotels I used names other than our own. I have given your staff the names and contacts of some people who I believe will agree with my story.”

  “We have spoken with them and some will appear in following days of hearings.”

  “One more thing that I didn’t tell your staff because I wasn’t certain I could find it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My diary. It’s not complete, but señora was an important part of my life for many years, and after our meetings I was inspired to write about them.”

  “You’ve found that diary?”

  “Sí, señora Counselor. Here it is.”

  The commotion in the House committee room was audible. Her word against his would pit two even hands against one another. Credible written evidence, if confirmed, would add a heavy thumb to the balance—against her.

  Committee Chairman Bowman rapped for order, and when he gained a semblance of it, he adjourned the hearing for lunch.

  Ben’s strategy group sat transfixed in the White House conference room. Gabe’s testimony was stark, direct, with enough naive honesty to seem believable, enough sex to hold and build the audience, and enough questions about the president to raise anyone’s doubt level.

  Deacon, obviously flustered by what he just heard about his boss, the president, grabbed Ben by the arm.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m just in awe at how good these guys are.”

  You don’t think the diary is authentic?”

  “Of course not. It’s great theater and perfect timing. And it’s going to be a bitch to disprove.”

  “And this guy Gabriel?”

  “Tenny sure knew how to pick them. I hope there aren’t a bunch more like him.”

  31

  He was about ten years old, alone at home. Home was a three-story townhouse. Sitting in the first-floor living room. Doing something. Listening to the radio? Reading? Playing a game? Didn't matter.

  He heard a noise from the floor above. Steps it sounded like. But he was alone. There couldn’t be steps. Unless. But there were. Now he heard them on the stairs. Coming down the stairs.

  Terrified, he forced himself to the stairwell and looked up. To this day, decades later, the image remains vivid. A woman. A strange woman. In a military uniform. Descending ever so slowly. One step at a time. Staring straight ahead. Zombie-like. Eyes wide. And what he could not forget, what he never forgot, were her eyeglasses. They were floating in front of her eyes, unattached to her head.

  What did she want? Where did she come from? What should he do?

  Until the universal antidote to unwanted dreams, escape to wakefulness, saved him from having to answer any of those questions. Why the floating eyeglasses? Why had that night of terror stayed with him through life?

  For a while, in those pre-adolescent years, Ben had many nightmares. They all began with the same nocturnal brand. Like watching MGM’s lion in the first frames of a movie, his nightmares introduced themselves with a whirling vortex. He was inside the eye of a multicolored tornado, spiraling down the funnel until he reached its tip. Then a nightmare would begin.

  Tonight the vortex again appeared to him in dream, decades removed from his youth, introducing another threatening storyline that he quickly forgot once the light of wakening vaporized it in his mind. Ben jumped from his pillow, sweaty, heart pumping. Moments of undefined terror and the wonder that childhood fears had returned, packaged as before.

  Ben sat on the edge of his bed. Alone, straining to untangle his thoughts and body from the last few moments. His room was dark as his dream. He reached for a light switch and struggled to unwrap himself from the tug of the sheets twisted around his legs.

  Even though his bedside clock informed him it was barely 5:00 a.m., returning to the uneasy peace of sleep did not feel like an option. Better to face the nightmare of this day’s waking hours.

  32

  Ben was no stranger to campaign attacks, and tough ones, and last minute ones, and well-financed ones. The longer Ben stayed in the business, the more attack ads there were, until it seemed that’s all there were. Longer campaigns. More negative campaigns. More money and more avenues to spread bad news.

  The campaign against Tenny was different from any of those. Here, it had become clear to him he was up against more than a single campaign or political party. This was taking on the smell of a legalized coup, managed and bankrolled by opponents who preferred not to be identified, working through their friends in the media and Congress, with some assistance by their allies within the government itself. Who designed this strategy? Who was running it? It’s not easy to run a conspiracy. The more people involved, the more potential there is for leaks. People with secrets usually burst at the lips to treat their knowledge of a secret like valued currency. So far, in this conspiracy, they could find no one with loose lips. To Ben that said fright. Those involved were too frightened to drop clues about their involvement. What did Gabe say? He left Peru because he was in danger? From whom?

  Until Gabriel Montes’ testimony at the committee’s first day of hearings, Ben felt his campaign was holding its own, keeping the president’s poll numbers strong enough to prevent a collapse of support among fellow Democrats. President Tennyson’s defense team had its own deep research effort in place and so far they had found nothing to contradict her own version of events. That version aligned with much of what Gabriel Montes had just testified to, including their time together in Peru and other meetings over nearly the next two months and the abrupt breakup, which, she testified, came after she had more background on Montes and was warned off by friends and others who knew him as a shady operator in the darkest corners of money laundering.

  President Tennyson’s research team found no contradictions, but on all the occasions Montes claimed they met, and which she denied, records showed both Montes and Tenny were in the same cities. Was he stalking her? Did they meet, or didn’t they? Or had someone gone to a lot of work to rig hotel registers and other documents that aligned his supposed travels with hers? The witnesses Montes named to verify his story were a motley bunch. It didn’t take much detective work to come to that conclusion. Ben and the legal team all felt they could raise enough questions about their veracity to at least win a draw with that round.

  So far, so good. But what about this new element, the diary? If it proved to be authentic, and included names and dates and places that conform to Montes’ testimony, and if the diary seems to have been kept at those times, not quickly prepared now for show time, it would be hard evidence, and hard to counter. It could tip the balance. And what did Montes write about their amorous encounters? Whether fact or fiction, it would make hot reading—like the book the Starr commission published about the blue dress and Clinton. That was downright pornographic. And did it sell!

  Just as worrisome was all the talk about narcos and possible corruption of the DEA, prodded by higher ups in the U.S. government, a trail Republicans were trying to have end at the Whit
e House door. A few fired agents and other discontents would testify to such allegations, but a hard scrub of data could find nothing in the records to suggest any impropriety. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were pressing to have these authorities called as witnesses to counter the charges.

  Mercifully, there was a two-day break in the hearings to allow members of the committee staff to review the diary and authenticate it, or not, for the committee. Ben and the staff took the break time to revise their public campaign messages to fit the dialog as it was unfolding and to develop options based on what might be coming. He was at work on this with staff members in midafternoon when Father Bob Reynolds called. Bob Reynolds was a Jesuit priest and professor of theology at Georgetown University, the Catholic Church’s flagship academic center in the Washington, D.C., area.

  “Ben,” said Reynolds. “I’m so glad I caught you. I was afraid that with the mess you have on your hands you’d be as cloistered as a monk, with your head in a prayer book and hoping for divine intervention.”

  Ben enjoyed Reverend Reynolds, or Bob, as he insisted on being called. Years ago, Reynolds had persuaded the diocese to hire Sage and Searer to develop a public relations and advertising campaign. As Reynolds explained it at the time, they had no intention of glossing over pedophilia or any of the other sins so visible in the Church’s immediate history. Their goal was to restore confidence among the faithful—and just as important, restore the flow of the donations being squeezed ever tighter with each new ugly revelation. This was the first contact Ben could remember having with Bob Reynolds since then.

  “Bob, good to hear your voice. I hope you’ve saved many souls since last time we spoke.”

  “Well that couldn’t have been too many souls, after all it was only last month.”

  Before Ben could respond Bob Reynolds rushed on.

  “You remember, well apparently you don’t, that we’re getting together tonight to work on the next steps in our campaign. Can’t blame you for forgetting with all else on your plate. Anyway, I just got authority to move ahead with it. It’s sure overdue. And it occurred to me I should remind you about it rather than trust your appointment book. By the way, Hank is in from Philadelphia and will join us.”