Some of the other solutions available were pricier, such as military grade anti-missile technology in case somebody decided to launch a Stinger or something similar at a plane. That was more in the million dollar range. My plan, at least until Congress got into it, was to offer some form of indemnification and monetary assistance with the conversions needed, provided the airlines accepted the security requirements demanded by the FAA. In other words, if you installed what the Feds told you to install, and somebody still managed to break into the cockpit or shoot down a plane with a Stinger, the airline was off the hook. Congress was going to water it down, or decide to give them money, or pay too much, but if I could get the FAA in control of security it would be a major step forward.
I wasn’t in the mood to give them too much money. Most airlines were run by money grubbing twits, along with equally rapacious unions. They could damn well raise their prices if the price of gas went up, just like everybody else in America. If they lost money, tough luck. Maybe they needed to change how they did business. Again, I knew the lobbyists would be out in force, but if I rammed some of this down their throats while they were still in shock and needy, I might get lucky.
I knew we were going to get involved in insurance to the surviving family members, which we had done on my first go. It was a shitty and horrendous job, and necessary. We would appoint a Special Master to handle it. Likewise there would be some loan guarantees for reconstruction, etc. Just add a few more billion to the deficit.
The one thing I absolutely did not want to do was start up any more major government bureaucracies! Homeland Security proved to be a disaster. The Transportation Safety Administration was even more disastrous. There were already calls for the government to do something, in this case make a single agency devoted to protecting the Homeland. It sounded to me an awful lot like the Russian Motherland or the German Fatherland, both of which sounded fascist. We got sloppy and the bad guys got lucky, but there was no reason to get stupid. We just needed to not be sloppy!
On the other hand, I was definitely in favor of a major overhaul of national intelligence. I was looking for a national counter-terrorism agency which could coordinate anti-terrorist stuff. That way if the DIA Able Danger team finds out about a sleeper cell, they send it to the new agency, which can get anything the CIA has on it, and then tell the FBI to track the assholes down. This could work, whereas Homeland Security very quickly became a bloated monstrosity overly impressed with its own importance.
By the end of October I began putting together a wish list of things to do. I talked these over with the Cabinet heads and Vice President Select McCain. He was also going through a confirmation process, and I told everyone we needed a new VP by November 1. I needed to do a foreign trip, and couldn’t leave without a backup. Otherwise my wish list would hold until January, when I dumped it on America in a State of the Union Address. I wanted something consistent and coherent by then, with a limited number of major points, addressing security, national defense, the budget, and a few very select projects. If I was all over the board on this stuff, nothing would get done. If I could focus on a limited menu, I might accomplish something. We’d just have to see.
Cheney had been thundering against me from the sidelines since the day I had fired him. Exactly what he expected to accomplish wasn’t clear, since he couldn’t get me thrown out of office. From some of what he was saying, he wanted all of my Cabinet selections thrown out, and hard core conservatives and chickenhawks put in place. I really think he was positioning himself for a run in the Republican primary in 2004. If so, it backfired on him. By November the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to look into intelligence failures was announced, as was the fact that the investigation was focusing on malfeasance by some of those involved. Fitzgerald was planning on taking depositions, and the White House Counsel’s office was figuring out the official position on ‘executive privilege’ as it applied to individuals no longer in the employ of the government. One of my problems was that the White House Counsel was Alberto Gonzalez, a former Federal judge who was a very close friend to George Bush. There was no doubt in my mind that anything I told the Counsel’s office would be reported directly to Dick Cheney. Gonzalez had zero loyalty to me, and I wanted to get rid of him as soon as practical. Our public position was that we looked forward to cooperating with the Special Prosecutor, and simply needed to determine the best way to do that. I figured this was an excellent way to get Cheney out of my hair. Even if he didn’t go to jail, he would probably go back to Wyoming, which was almost the same thing as far as I was concerned.
The only question we had inside the White House was how long it would take for Cheney’s political career to begin swirling around the bowl. The odds were running 3–1 it wouldn’t last past mid-November. By then I wouldn’t care. Mid-November would see Marilyn and me overseas, on our first official visit anywhere.
Chapter 145: Foreign Relations
Foreign trips are a mix of smoke and mirrors and public relations. What they usually aren’t is anything substantive. Nobody flies halfway around the planet to meet with the high and mighty without everybody knowing what is going to happen ahead of time. So why do them at all? For one reason, just like in any other form of business, it’s usually helpful to actually meet the guy you’re doing business with and look him in the eye. At the minimum you can start to get a sense of the other person.
We were scheduled for eight days in mid-November, visiting London, Paris, Moscow, and Tel-Aviv. Figure two days in each spot, and travel at night. I was not expecting miracles, but this could be interesting. I was the new kid, untested and untried, the billionaire playboy who had somehow managed to be in the right place at the right time when the real President died. Expectations were low. I think the State Department would be happy if I simply managed to use the right spoon and fork at the various state dinners we would be attending.
I was traveling with the Secretary of State, and he was a fairly well known commodity on the world stage. He had become very high profile back during the Gulf War, and had managed to avoid stepping on his dick in the ten years since then. In most foreign capitals he was much better known than I was. Marilyn and I were both going, and the kids were staying home. Colin’s wife, Alma, was also traveling with us.
I was fairly current on what our history was with each country, including what had been planned under President Bush. That didn’t mean I agreed with his plans. In particular, I was less than thrilled with his antagonistic view and tone concerning Russia. There were a bunch of people who longed for the good old days of the Cold War, when we only had one enemy, the dirty Commies. They were evil people you could point to and say were bad. Since a lot of the more hard core neo-conservatives dated back to the Reagan and Bush 41 years, when the ‘Evil Empire’ was given its nickname, they still thought that way. It was easy to point at Russia; it wasn’t so easy to point at radical Islamic terrorists.