"I'm the Acting President. I wasn't sworn in. President Bush might be found.", I told them. "Who was with him?"
"Huh?"
"Ari! Josh! Come on, snap to! I need some help here!" I had to get them back to reality.
They both focused in on that. "Uh, yes sir.", said Josh.
"Who was with President Bush?", I asked again, as gently as possible.
"Andy and Karl.", he replied.
"Scotty, too, and Blake.", added Ari.
I nodded. I knew all four men. Andrew Card was George Bush's Chief of Staff and Josh's boss, Karl Rove was ranked as a White House Senior Adviser, and Scott McClellan was Deputy Press Secretary and Ari's number two man. Blake was Blake Gottesman, Bush's 'body man', his personal aide like Frank had been for me during the campaign. We had a hole in the heart of the White House that these men would need to fill. It was one thing to eliminate the President, but in doing so I had also killed a number of other good men whose only crime had been to work for George Bush. I was truly a psychopath.
"Ari, I am going to need to go on television tonight and tell the country what is happening. I don't know how to make that happen. Can you set that up?", I asked.
That was the sort of routine task he could focus on. "You mean, like from the Oval Office?"
I shook my head. "It's too soon for that. Can we do it from my office instead? I don't want to seem like I'm jumping the gun. When can we set it up for? Seven? Eight?"
Ari began to act professionally again. "Seven would be best. I'll need to make some calls..."
I gave him a positive smile and pointed him towards the door. "See me when it's set up." I turned to Josh. "The Cabinet named me Acting President until we figure out what is happening to President Bush. I won't be using the Oval Office unless I get sworn in. Can you handle this? Step up to it?"
Tears were streaming down his face, but he wiped them with a hand and nodded. "Yes, sir, it's just ... yes, sir."
"Thank you, Josh. I need you to find out where the First Lady and the girls are, and also where former President Bush and his wife are. I need to talk to them. Go wash your face and settle down some, but then figure out where everybody is and get back to me."
Josh took off and Matt Scully wandered in, along with Mike Gerson. They were the principal speechwriters in the White House. I gave them a quick breakdown on what had happened in the Cabinet meeting, and we went over an outline for the speech I needed to make that night. After they left Ari returned and told me it would be at 7:30 that night, and I sent him off to help Mike and Matt.
And so it went for the next two hours, with people streaming in and out of my office figuring out what was going on and what to do about it. Laura Bush and the girls had been taken to Camp David, and I spoke to Laura on the phone. There wasn't much I could tell her other than rescue operations were underway. I spoke to the first President Bush and offered to send the spare Air Force One to pick him and Barbara up and bring them to Washington, an offer he accepted. I was on the phone with Rudy Giuliani in New York. He had been scheduled to attend the breakfast meeting and had been delayed. He got there just in time to watch the North Tower get hit. I told him that if he needed anything, to let me know and it was his. Scooter Libby showed up from the State Department with a list of foreign dignitaries I was ordered to call, basically every Prime Minister and President on the planet. I sent him back to State with the list and the order to have Cheney pick the ten most important and get that list to me tomorrow. Cheney could speak to the others.
One contentious meeting was with the heads of the FBI and the Secret Service. Louis Freeh was there for the FBI, and a guy named Brian Stafford was there as Director of the Secret Service. I had never met Stafford before, but he was a perfect fit for them. He had the same level of arrogance as the rest of the department! Almost immediately after they got into my office it descended into a turf war.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, I was told, was by law required to investigate all cases of terrorism on American soil. The Secret Service responded that, by law, they were required to investigate all threats and attacks on the President. I listened to them wrangle for a couple of minutes and then reached into my desk and pulled out a steel whistle I kept there. Charlie had given it to me as a gag gift to sort out the twins' wrangling. When I became the Whip I took it to the office, and told him my fellow Congressmen were worse behaved than his sisters. I took a deep breath and then let out a piercing shriek of a whistle, and shocked them into silence. I also attracted some attention to my closed door, and I waved that off.
"Gentlemen, I am extremely disappointed in the both of you.", I started.
Louis Freeh said, "Mister Vice President, if you..."
I blasted the whistle a second time. "Mister Freeh, Mister Stafford, if either one of you says another word I am going to fire you on the spot. Now shut up and let me speak!" They glanced at each other but then they both nodded.
"This is the most disgusting thing I have seen since I first came to Washington. Thousands of your fellow citizens are dead, and you two are playing power politics over their corpses! Now, since you decided to bring this to me, I get to play Solomon." I turned to Stafford and said, "There are only two ways this happened. One, there was a terrorist act and the President just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has nothing to do with him. The FBI investigates that. The second is that this is an elaborate plan to assassinate the President. If that is the case, however, the FBI is ten times the size of the Secret Service! No way, no how, do you have the manpower or resources to solve this! You would have to go to the FBI to figure it out. Are we agreed? Good! Thank you!"
Stafford looked angry and started to respond. I simply held up my whistle and moved to put it between my lips again. He shut up. "I am going to make this very simple." I pointed at Freeh and said, "The FBI is going to be the lead agency.", and then I pointed at Stafford. "You get to name whichever of his deputies you want to run the investigation, and you get to name whichever of your deputies you want as the number two. I am going to make that announcement tonight on national television. If either of you don't like it you can clean out your desk and then you can tell it to the Washington Post in the morning. I don't have the time for this and neither does the country. Clear?"
Stafford looked like he wanted to argue some more, so I put the whistle to my lips and pointed them both to the door.
Assholes!
Paul Wolfowitz of the Central Intelligence Agency came through right after Matt and Mike ran through the first cut on the speech. I gave them a quick read-through and edit, and sent them out, along with a request to have somebody bring me a sandwich. I had missed lunch earlier. Wolfowitz came to the conclusion that it was Al Qaeda which had attacked us, something that Richard Clarke and I had been saying all summer long. He also thought this was an excellent opportunity to link terrorism to Saddam Hussein. I told him flat out to not say anything to anybody until tomorrow, no leaks, no nothing.
I sat at my desk and ate my late lunch while a camera crew tried to arrange my office for a camera. It was just too small. Reluctantly I agreed to give the speech from the Oval Office. Then I called in my secretary. She popped in and I said, "Mrs. Lowenstein, I need you to tell the following people to be in here tomorrow for a meeting. We can use either the Cabinet Room or the Roosevelt Room, whichever works better. I want to call the meeting at 9:00 AM and we'll run however long. We should consider it a meeting of the National Security Council."