The Goldwater-Nichols reform law had gone a long way in correcting those problems, but the new administration went even farther. The old Joint Chiefs structure was scrapped, and in its place a General Staff system was imposed. Under the Secretary of Defense was a Chief of the General Staff who was now the uniformed military "czar." Under him were ten major unified commands whose commanders, or mini-czars, reported directly to him — such as the European Theater, Pacific Theater, Strategic Air Command, and Whittenberg's SPACECOM. The separate Navy, Air Force, and Army departments still existed, but they were pretty much for training and administrative purposes. The Chief of the General Staff now had total control over all promotions and budgeting for all branches of the service, and weapons procurement was managed directly out of the White House by a staff of professional purchasing executives.
The political hue and cry against this restructuring was unlike anything the Defense Department had ever seen. The President and Vice President, however, had wisely put the issue on their election platform, and upon winning by a landslide they enjoyed a clear mandate to carry it off. Several assistant secretaries of defense and a dozen four-star generals had to be fired before the Pentagon finally got the message a new era had dawned. And the man chosen as the inaugural Chief of the General Staff was Admiral Bergstrom.
Whittenberg extended a hand, "Hello, Admiral."
Bergstrom took it. "Hello, General." Whittenberg noticed the old salt didn't call him Rodg as he often did.
Acknowledgments were made all around.
The admiral looked at his watch. "The Executive Committee of the National Security Council will be convening in the Cabinet Room in about fifteen minutes. You got everything you need?"
Whittenberg nodded. "I would like Colonel Lamborghini to set up his slides prior to the meeting, and I would like to check back with my chief of staff on a secure line to see if anything has changed at SPACECOM since I left."
"All right. Captain, show the colonel and the good doctors into the Cabinet Room. We'll join you shortly." He turned to Whittenberg. "We'll use the White House Chief of Staff's office to make your call." The two men walked past the appointments secretary and down the hall to the corner office, which housed the third most powerful man in the United States. "He's in with the President right now, so go ahead." Whittenberg walked into the office that had belonged to Alexander Meigs Haig and James A. Baker III, as well as unfortunates like H. R. Haldeman and Sherman Adams. He picked up the phone and punched in the numbers. His conversation with the Bull was brief. Nothing had changed. Whittenberg hung up.
"My chief of staff says the situation is still the same."
The admiral grunted.
"May I ask, sir," queried Whittenberg, "what has the President been told?"
The old salt grunted again. "This happened at a god-awful time, you know. We're in the middle of a state visit by the new French President. He's talking seriously about bringing France back into NATO's military command structure, and even participating in a Euro-American SDI program. This Intrepid thing could blow the whole deal to shit. Anyway, the President has been hard to pigeonhole today. We told the Vice President everything and he said hold off telling the main man until you got here. The President knows something is wrong with Intrepid, but he doesn't know what."
Whittenberg nodded. "So he gets all his bad news at once."
"That's about the size of it." The admiral jerked his head. "Come on." They walked back down the hall and into the Cabinet Room. Lamborghini was just finishing his preparations.
Whittenberg turned to Havelichek and Sharp. "Has Pete told you what this is all about?" The two men nodded like zombies.
The Cabinet Room was a brilliant white with a dark ebony table. At one end of the room there was a fireplace with a model of Old Ironsides resting on the mantel, and above it was a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Whittenberg, the scientists, and the admiral took their places at one end of the table, while two Presidential aides fretted up and down the room restraightening pads, pencils, and ashtrays for the umpteenth time. The President had a penchant for cigars — Cuban cigars, before he was elected — and therefore smoking was allowed during Cabinet meetings.
The door opened and in filed the secretaries of Defense, State, and Treasury; the National Security Adviser; the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the FBI; the White House Chief of Staff; and the Undersecretary of Defense for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Lamborghini looked at the group and swallowed discreetly. This, he thought, is definitely the heavy artillery. A rivulet of sweat trickled down his armpit.
For the most part, the individuals who comprised the NSC Executive Committee (EXECCOM) possessed Ivy League pedigrees, with a couple of Rhodes scholars thrown in. There were several attorneys who, as a matter of course, shuttled back and forth between government service on the Potomac and their law practices on the Hudson. Between tours of duty in Washington, the lawyers would return to Manhattan to serve on the Council of Foreign Relations, read The New York Times, lunch at the Century Club, bill outrageous legal fees to their blue-chip clients, and embrace the illusion that the conduct of American foreign policy fell within their personal domain. Lamborghini looked down at his boss, who was the son of a hired hand on a Kentucky stud farm. He was the only black face in the group, and unlike the other men present, he hadn't been born with a trust fund. Whittenbeig's net worth wasn't in seven figures — or even six. But Lamborghini knew his CinC to be a fine man, so the SPACECOM intelligence chief resolved that despite the heavy artillery aura and the economic disparities, he was not going to let his general down in any way, shape, or form, no matter how intense it got.
There was no idle conversation as there usually was before an NSC EXECCOM meeting. Everyone knew the score except the President, and no one felt comfortable making chitchat about the Intrepid debacle. The door opened and the President entered, followed by the Vice President. Everyone rose in somber formality.
The men who have held the office of the President of the United States came to the office through a career in politics or, in a few cases, the military. The two men who had just walked into the Cabinet Room had shattered that historical axiom by scoring the most startling upset in American political history.
The President was the son of Italian immigrants and had skyrocketed to fame by taking over a bankrupt car manufacturer and turning it into a financial juggernaut, earning him the nickname "Patton in Pinstripes." His face resembled a cross between a boxer's and a Marine drill sergeant's, and he was known for kicking ass harder than any CEO in American industry-except, maybe, the Vice President.
The son of a Kansas farmer, the Vice President had attended West Point and founded an electronics company with $3,000 in borrowed capital. Twenty years later he sold his company to Boeing for $1 billion. He had served several Presidents as a private envoy. Once he mounted a private rescue mission and sprang two American POWs from North Vietnam, years after the war ended. He won their freedom when the United States government was powerless to do so; and as a result, his name became a household word. Ordinarily, being the Vice President is much like being a professional speechmaker and partygoer— all style and no substance. A former VP, John Nance Garner, once remarked, "The Vice Presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit." This administration, however, had a different idea about that, too. This Veep became the Executive Vice President of the United States; or, in another way of speaking, he became the country's chief operating officer. The White House Chief of Staff reported to him, not directly to the President. He controlled access to the chief executive, and he gave certain projects his personal supervision, one of which was SPACECOM.