by Flynn Vince
“Your point?”
“I’m that watertight door between you and the president.”
Rapp thought about it for a moment and then said, “So in other words you expect me to put my neck on the line, but if things start going bad… water starts flooding the compartment, to use your analogy, and I try to get out, you’re going to slam that door in my face and let me drown.”
Now it was Dickerson’s turn to put a frown on. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
Rapp’s version of the sinking-ship analogy was more accurate than Dickerson would allow himself to see. The only problem was, the political operative, mostly due to his station in life, viewed the scenario from the top down. Not an unusual thing for a wealthy, successful person. Dickerson naturally saw himself on the bridge of the ship with the captain. To save the ship others would have to die. Conveniently, however, they would also be saving themselves. Rapp understood the draconian necessity in the military application, but in the political arena it was tinged with selfishness and arrogance. Especially when bracketed in the context of national security. The number of politicians in
Washington who were willing to stand on principle and put the security of the country before their beloved party was quickly becoming a pathetically small group. They’d all spent too much time on the bridge and not enough time in the engine room.
Rapp leaned back and crossed his legs. “I think that’s pretty much exactly what you’re saying.”
“No.” Dickerson shook his head vehemently. “And trust me on this, the president is a big supporter of yours. I have advised him, however, that due to the way things work in this town it would be best if he kept a few people between himself and you. Especially in light of what he wanted to talk to you about today.”
Here it is, Rapp thought to himself. He bet a guy like Dickerson billed between five hundred and seven hundred dollars an hour, and while it was unlikely that he would be charging the president for this slice of time, he was nonetheless an extremely busy man who wouldn’t bother coming out to Langley unless it was something serious.
“As I already stated, the president is not happy about the FBI’s lack of progress.”
“I know some of those guys, and to be fair to them, the Justice Department isn’t doing them any favors.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with you, but we are a nation of laws.”
Rapp leaned forward and put out his hand, giving Dickerson the stop sign. “You know you’re the second person today who has used that line on me and I gotta tell you I think it’s a copout.”
Dickerson was not used to people speaking to him so bluntly. “Really?”
“A throwaway line that means everything and nothing at the same time.”
“You don’t think we’re a nation of laws?” Dickerson asked.
“No… I agree we’re a nation of laws, but there are a lot of people running around parroting that statement without any sense of history.”
“I think I have a very good sense of history.”
“Then help me with this… when did we get so hell bent on affording our legal protections to our enemies?”
Dickerson paused a beat and then said, “That’s a complicated answer, Mr. Rapp.”
“No, it isn’t,” Rapp replied bluntly. “You don’t want to answer it because you’re going to ask me in a very coded way to put my neck on the line and break these very laws you and the president pretend to hold so dear, and if I’m right about that, I’d appreciate a little honesty from you on this issue.” Rapp paused for a beat and then added, “And don’t worry, I won’t be running to the press. Not my style. The only people I dislike more than politicians are reporters. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page, before you send me down to the engine room to plug the leak.”
Dickerson nodded as if to say, fair enough.
Kennedy held up a finger, looked at Rapp, and said, “If I may?”
Rapp said, “Go right ahead.”
“This country of laws,” Kennedy said in a slightly sarcastic tone, “has a long history of curtailing its citizens’ rights during times of war and national emergency. The Civil War is the most obvious example. Lincoln suspended what many would argue is the most sacred law of all… habeas corpus. During World War II, the FBI opened any piece of mail they wanted. They listened in on phone calls, intercepted cable traffic, and they did it all without a single warrant. And anyone who is naïve enough to think we treated every POW to the exact standards of the Geneva Conventions has never spoken to a Marine who served in the Pacific. Not every Japanese POW was treated as well as we’d like to believe. FDR, a man who is considered by many to be one of our greatest presidents, interned thousands of Japanese Americans as well as German and Italian Americans. We simply rounded these people up based solely on their ethnicity and stuck them in prisoner of war camps until the war was over.
“Then the Cold War came along, and despite all the people who have tried to rewrite history, the Soviet Union had a massive intelligence operation here in the United States. Joe McCarthy may have been a drunk and an ass, but that didn’t make him wrong on the big issue. It is an undeniable fact that the Soviet Union was engaged in espionage on a colossal scale. They were recruiting agents, stealing our vital national secrets, and attempting to undermine our political process by funding communist and socialist political parties in this country. This little chapter in our nation’s history was not simply cooked up by the alcohol-soaked brain of the junior senator from Wisconsin. So while there are a lot of people in America who would love to embrace compassion and tolerance, and they have correctly labeled Joe McCarthy a bully, they do so by conveniently ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union was doing everything that Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and JFK and a whole host of political figures accused them of doing.”
Dickerson’s expression soured. “I think on this point we will have to agree to disagree.”
“No… I don’t think so,” Kennedy said firmly.
Even Rapp was surprised by how forcefully his boss had responded to Dickerson.
“I don’t want to sound disrespectful, Gabe, but I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here, so I think you might want to hear our concerns before you ask us to risk our careers and possibly our freedom.”
“Fair enough.”
“Fifteen years ago, do you know what we used to do when we’d close in on a suspected Soviet spy? And I’m talking about the ones who had U.S. citizenship.”
“I’m sure you would refer the matter to the FBI,” Dickerson said, showing the hint of a grin.
“No,” Kennedy answered seriously. “We’d grab them… usually in the middle of the night, and we’d take them to any number of undisclosed locations, and we’d use every form of interrogation you could imagine.”
“And you weren’t always right, were you?”
“Of the nearly one hundred cases I’m familiar with, there was only one instance where the individual turned out to be innocent.”
Dickerson scoffed at Kennedy’s claim. “How could you be sure?”
“Those groups you referred to earlier. The ones you represent.”
“Yes.”
“You know how they like to say torture doesn’t work?”
“Yes.”
Kennedy tapped her leg with her reading glasses and said, “Well… trust me, it does.”
CHAPTER 23
RAPP looked at his watch. He had a mental list two pages long of stuff he needed to get to, and sitting in his boss’s office trying to persuade one of the president’s closest advisors that torture worked seemed like it might be a waste of time. Rapp had found in his various appearances before the intelligence committees that you were wasting your breath if you tried to convince people in thousand-dollar suits who had Ivy League law degrees that torture was an effective and necessary tool against an enemy who refused to put on a uniform and intentionally targeted civilians. Given the right team and enough time to work on the individual, there wasn’t a pe
rson out there who didn’t break, but Rapp had learned the hard way that most politicians preferred an issue and a ready-made talking point to reality.
Rapp had tired of trying to convince people that it worked. He’d come to the conclusion it would be like a major league slugger arguing with fans over why he swung or didn’t swing at a certain pitch. If you’ve never been in that batter’s box, with some freak of nature perched a little more than sixty feet away on an elevated mound of dirt, who was about to whip a hard white ball at you in excess of ninety miles an hour that might or might not hit you in the head, you really couldn’t understand what it was like to decide in a split second to swing or not swing. It’s easy to sit in the stands with a hot dog and cold beer and criticize, and it’s every bit as easy to sit in a federal office building in Washington, D.C., and do the same thing.
In response to Kennedy’s admission that they not only used torture but it worked nearly 100 percent of the time, Dickerson said, “There are certain things I don’t need to know.” He smiled uncomfortably and added, “This is why I advised the president not to attend this meeting. This type of discussion is way off the reservation. Having said that, I sympathize with your position. Does it bother me that I am surrounded by people who want so badly to be liked… want so desperately to be thought of as enlightened that they are willing to tear this country apart? Yes, it bothers me. Does it drive me to the brink of madness that there are people in this town who think the way to peace is to afford tolerance to an intolerant group of bigoted Muslim men? People who should know better, by the way… Yes, it drives me mad.”
Rapp felt a glimmer of hope. He couldn’t recall the last time he had heard someone this well connected speak so frankly.
“It is utter insanity,” Dickerson said, “that the Justice Department has four men in their custody who we know for a fact helped plan and prepare for attacks that killed nearly two hundred of our fellow citizens. All four of those men were born in Saudi Arabia. Two of them have dual citizenship. Those men know things that could help us find the three men who are at large and possibly information that could help us prevent further attacks. And what are we doing?”
“Nothing,” Kennedy said.
“They all have lawyers,” Dickerson said while making a hopeless gesture with his hands.
“And,” Kennedy said, “I was told the ACLU will be filing a brief this morning fighting any extradition to Saudi Arabia.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Dickerson answered.
“They think that we will hand them over to the Saudis so they can torture them for us.”
Dickerson thought about it for a second and said, “Not a bad idea.
” Rapp shook his head. “Actually, it’s not such a good idea. The Saudis like to say they’ll share information with us, but they rarely give us the whole story. They suck them dry, and then they kill them, and we only get what they want us to know, which never includes anything that might connect them to certain wealthy subjects as well as highplaced government officials.”
“So what do we do?”
“With the four men in custody?” Rapp asked.
“Yes.”
“Nothing,” Kennedy answered for him, “unless the president wants to sign an executive order that authorizes us to use extreme measures.”
“And a blanket pardon would be nice,” Rapp added with a smile.
Dickerson suddenly looked less than enthusiastic about the new direction of the discussion. “The president was hoping you would take a more active role in the search for the three men who are still at large. This Lion of al Qaeda character has really got under the president’s skin.”
He was under Rapp’s skin as well. “So, I’m not going to get the blanket pardon?”
“I don’t think so, but there is something else I think I can help you with. I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but there are certain elements on the Hill who are already maneuvering to make this Agency and you, Director Kennedy, the scapegoat for what happened last week.”
Kennedy said, “I was not aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Well… you have a PR battle that you have been losing for some time.”
Both Rapp and Kennedy nodded. It was universally agreed that when the CIA did something well, it was never discussed, but when they screwed up, it was plastered across every media outlet for weeks, if not months.
“I think I can help you more effectively defend yourselves. Get out in front of these other groups before they strike. I can help shape your message. Get it told in the right way over the best outlets.”
“And just how are you going to do that?” Rapp asked in a skeptical tone. “The media elite in this country don’t exactly like us.”
“I’ve got something they won’t be able to resist.”
“What’s that?” Rapp asked.
“You, Mr. Rapp.”
“Come again?” Rapp asked, looking more pissed off than confused.
“You’re a hero. What you and Mike Nash did last week is the type of thing legends are made of, and I don’t even have to exaggerate your accomplishments. The media will eat it up and you and Mr. Nash will become untouchable. There won’t be a politician in this town dumb enough to try and take you on. You will become this generation’s Audie Murphy.”
“You’re nuts!”
“Mitch,” Kennedy cautioned.
“No way in hell am I-”
“Mitch,” Kennedy cut him off, “just calm down for a minute. I want to hear what else he has to say.”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t.”
Kennedy gave him the look of a mother about to cuff her teenager across the head, and after he’d backed down a bit, she looked at Dickerson and asked, “In exchange for what?”
“He…” Dickerson said, referring to the president but not wanting to use his name, “thinks it would be best if you found these three men first.”
“Why?” Rapp asked.
Dickerson took a long moment to answer. “Let’s just say that he thinks you might be able to cut through some of the red tape.”
“So you mean he wants me to put the screws to them before the FBI reads them their rights and they hire a lawyer?”
Dickerson shrugged. He didn’t dare open his mouth, for fear that his words might be recorded.
“Boy,” Rapp said in near disgust, “you guys are a real profile in courage.”
“You know darn well the president can’t endorse something like this.”
“It sounds like he wanted to, but you got in front of him and convinced him it was a bad idea. You somehow persuaded him that you could barter a trade with us. A couple hundred billable hours of PR from your firm in exchange for me putting my nuts on the chopping block.”
Dickerson had a pained look on his face. “I know it doesn’t seem like a fair trade, but I think you’re minimizing the potential upside. This PR offensive could get a lot of these politicians to back down. Some of them might even turn into supporters of yours.”
Rapp placed his face in his hands and shook his head. After a long moment, he looked up at Dickerson and said, “Somewhere in this building there’s a safe filled with a bunch of medals and commendations for guys just like me who’ve put their asses on the line over the years. We don’t do this job for public recognition. We don’t want public recognition, and we can’t effectively do our job if people know who we are. So I will not be participating in your PR offensive, and if my name somehow ends up leaked to the press, I will find out who did it and I will hurt them.”
Dickerson looked at Kennedy to see if she would overrule Rapp.
Rapp didn’t give her the chance. “I call my own shots on something like this. Going over my head won’t work. So… sorry to disappoint, but I won’t be going on Oprah to talk about my top five favorite movies.”
“So, I should tell the president your answer is no.”
Rapp thought about it for a second and with a deep frown said,
“I’m goin
g to keep doing what I’ve always done. You can tell the president that I’m going to find these three guys. I don’t know if it’s going to take a week or a year, but I’m going to find them and when I do, I don’t give a shit what the ACLU or the Justice Department or anybody else thinks about how they should be treated. I’m going to find out everything there is to know about their organization… who supported them… where they got their money… where they got the explosives… how they got into this country, and if they got out who helped them. And then I’m going to track all of these people down, and I’m going to kill them.”
Dickerson was more than a little surprised by the frank admission. “The president will be very, ah… happy to hear that you will be taking an active role in the case.”
Rapp stood. He’d already wasted enough time. “Yeah… well, tell him if the shit hits the fan, I’ll scream from the rooftops that we had this little powwow and you asked me on his behalf to disregard the law and do whatever it takes to bring these men to justice.”
Dickerson looked as if he might vomit. In a deliberate, cautious tone he said, “I would… advise… against…”
“Don’t worry,” Rapp said casually. Pointing at Kennedy, he added, “I think she and I are the only two people left in this town who know how to keep their mouths shut.”
CHAPTER 24
WHILE Kennedy said good-bye to Dickerson, Rapp grabbed his BlackBerry, walked to the far end of the office, and began listening to the nine messages that had been left during the meeting. Rapp saw no sense in thanking Dickerson for a meeting at which, at least from his perspective, nothing had been gained. As usual, Rapp and his people were going to shoulder the risk, while the political elites inoculated themselves against any fallout. Rapp took a bit of joy in the fact that Dickerson left looking none too pleased. Rapp figured he made the man nervous.
