Ari looked very distressed. "Mr. President, how can I craft the appropriate response if I am kept in the dark like this? I have a top secret clearance!"
"Ari, you do have the clearance, and I do trust you. This is a matter of military security. If anybody had said something to anybody, and it had gotten out, lives could have been lost. I will never compromise that for the sake of not looking bad. For weeks now people have been asking you when we are going to do something. You've told me that. What would you have done differently if you had known this?"
"I could at least have said we were working on a response. Instead everybody thinks we're a bunch of idiots who don't know what we're doing.", he replied.
I nodded. "Ari, we have known who did this since the first night I spoke to the nation, that night, 9-11. We had to wait to get everything ready and get men and ships and planes into position. If I had given you more of the details, you might have inadvertently said something and, they would have disappeared. I can afford to look foolish. I can't afford to let them get away."
He stared at me in shock. "You've known all along?!"
"Now you know why I got rid of a bunch of people. All those times they told you that it was Iraq doing evil things?" I shook my head and finished. "Iraq had nothing to do with this, and Cheney and the entire crew around him knew it. They are finished. We need to talk more on this, and it isn't quite as secret, and you can't release it yet, but there is so much more going on. I promise you, talk to me alone some time later this week. Book some serious sit down time, and I promise to fill you in on everything. Today was all about security. I won't keep you in the dark unless I have a damn good reason."
"Yes, sir."
I looked over at Matt. "Ari is going to get me some time on television tonight. I need to tell the public what we have learned and what we have done about it. I am going to get somebody down in the Situation Room up here to give you two some details. My overall thrust is that we knew what happened, but needed to delay our response until it could be massive and overwhelming and a surprise. I want a positive tone to everything, and a warning to anybody else who might get too big for their britches. Getting my drift?"
"Yes, sir."
I picked up the phone and asked for the Watch Officer in the Situation Room to come up. He was there a couple of minutes later, an Air Force colonel this time, as opposed to the Army colonel I met earlier. When he came into the Oval Office he was surprised at the presence of others. Regardless, he came to attention and said, "Colonel Oliver, sir. You asked to see me?"
"At ease, Colonel. Yes, thank you. This is Ari Fleischer, my Press Secretary, and Matt Sculley, one of my speechwriters. Tonight I have to address the nation and let them know what we have done. Before they can do that, they need to know what's been going on. You are going to have to help them with some information."
"Yes, sir. We can figure something out. Uh, sir, you need to know..."
"Yes, Colonel?"
He had a pained look on his face. "We lost a plane, sir."
I sat upright at that. "Where? How?"
"It's not definite yet, but highly probable. One of the second wave B-52s. From everything we can tell, the mission went as planned. They radioed feet dry when they hit the Pakistani coast, sent the signal when they made their bomb run, and sent another signal for feet wet when they hit the Pakistani coastline on the way out. We verified they hit their target from satellite imagery. From the coastline they were to link up with a tanker for a refuel before flying to Diego Garcia. They never made the linkup with the tanker."
"Any idea what happened?", I asked.
"No, sir. They never gave any of the code words for being under attack, either over Afghanistan or Pakistan. In addition, the Navy reports the Pakistanis have stayed at home. They have sent out a number of reconnaissance flights, but nothing was in the area, and the planes involved are not capable of attacking anybody. It just went down."
"Shit!", I swore to myself.
"Sir, I don't mean to make light of this, but this can happen. Those planes are my age or older. Sometimes they just break and stop flying."
"Colonel, please tell me that we are searching for the plane. Actually, I don't care about the plane, but I do care about survivors."
He nodded. "Of course, sir. Both the Navy and the Air Force are flying recon flights and search and rescue."
"That will be a top priority, but we need to make sure the mission is accomplished. What is the status on Afghanistan?", I asked.
The colonel looked at the others and then answered. "The targets were hit repeatedly and early BDA suggests a very high accuracy. We haven't got all the reports in, but reaction out of Kabul is disjointed and confused. Whatever they had for a functioning government is seriously disrupted."
I looked over at the two civilians. "BDA is Bomb Damage Assessment. It tells if we actually hit what we were aiming at. We went for a really massive assault, and it sounds like it worked."
"Did we kill the leader of Al Qaeda?", asked Matt. "He's the one who ordered the 9-11 attack, right?" I looked at him curiously, since we really hadn't been pushing his name. "Hey, I've been listening to people around here."
I shrugged and looked at the colonel. He answered slowly. "Sir, we just don't know at this point. We hammered their training camps and bombed anything the CIA indicated might be a safe house or stopover. Still, trying to kill a single man in a foreign country who is hiding and on the run ... I just don't know."
I sighed at that and nodded. I remembered on the first time through, it took us about ten years to kill Osama bin Laden. We tried numerous times earlier, but never really had his address. We would bomb or Tomahawk some place, and then might not know if he was dead or alive until he made another video and released it from somewhere else. "I understand the difficulty, Colonel. Really, I do. Try to work up some information on that for me, please." I looked at Matt and Ari. "I know it will be difficult, but we can't focus on a single individual. We need to focus on the organization and the radical philosophy they espouse. This is just the start of a new and long war. It's not going to be like World War II, where we can kill Hitler or Tojo and declare victory and go home."
I picked up the phone and asked for one of the Three Amigos to be tracked down and to call me as soon as possible. We were going to have to get into that tonight as well, and Ari and Matt would need that briefing, too. When Basham, the Secret Service guy, called, I asked him to come over. I looked over at Matt and Ari and smiled at them. "I haven't just been fumbling around for the last month guys. Stick with me and maybe we can get some stuff accomplished around this joint!"
Chapter 144: President Buckman
"Good evening.
Almost four weeks ago our nation was attacked by terrorists. Four airplanes were hijacked in a coordinated attack and flown to targets in New York and Washington. Two were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one was targeted at the Pentagon here in Washington, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania when the passengers managed to overpower their attackers, but lost their lives in the process. President Bush and over 3,200 other people died that day, and our nation changed forever.
At that time I promised you that we would determine who had committed these atrocities and that we would respond. Tonight I am able to speak for the first time about what happened that day and what we have done since.
Following the attacks I ordered a joint investigation by members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States Secret Service. I ordered them to find out who attacked us and how it was done, and whether we could have prevented it. The investigation is still continuing, but I can provide some information now. First, there is no indication that this was a planned assassination attempt on President Bush. The evidence all points to a conclusion that the attacks were planned before President Bush even scheduled his trip to New York.