Secrets of State (21 page)

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

APRIL 15

S
pears had little respect for the Department of Homeland Security. The agency had been cobbled together like some kind of Frankenstein's monster from various cast-off pieces of the federal government in the frantic and panic-stricken atmosphere following the 9/11 attacks. When the Bush administration ran the proverbial twenty thousand volts through the hybrid beast, however, it did not come to life. Quite the opposite. There was no plan in place to merge the cultures of such disparate agencies as the Secret Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Bodyguards and botanists, it turned out, had very different corporate cultures. DHS was a misshapen mishmash of goals and missions typically presided over by a second-tier, swing-state politician who had just lost an election. Little wonder it routinely came in dead last in every federal government survey on the quality of life and work.

The physical plant of the DHS's sprawling Nebraska Avenue Complex reflected its organizational entropy. The NAC had begun its life as a World War II–era U.S. Navy facility where mathematicians had worked on cracking Nazi codes. It had all been downhill from there. Since then, the NAC had been—among other things—a seminary and an all-girls school. Now it was in a sorry state of disrepair, with peeling paint, moldy carpets, and exposed asbestos insulation. The government did not want to put any money into the place because it was planning to build DHS a shiny new headquarters facility in southeast D.C., fittingly on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital.

Building 19 was a tired-looking, five-story brick structure that was as ugly as it was dysfunctional. But it had a SCIF and it was Homeland Security's turn to host the meeting of the Governing Council. The Stoics had to keep moving. Routine risked exposure and exposure would ruin them. The country was not yet ready for the kind of higher thinking that the group represented. Someday, maybe. But not today.

The SCIF on the second floor had mustard-colored drapes covering a window that had been bricked in. The conference table was vintage seventies Formica.

God,
Spears thought with some distaste,
DHS really is the bottom feeder in the national security establishment.

He was early. He had made a point of it.

One by one, the other members of the Governing Council arrived for what was nominally a routine review of the intelligence collection priorities for the next calendar year. It was the kind of agenda that would explain a senior-level interagency gathering while simultaneously eliciting exactly zero curiosity or interest in the proceedings. In D.C., there were hundreds of meetings a day that looked like this.

Weeder arrived separately from Spears and took his customary seat in a chair alongside the wall rather than at the table. Ordinarily, the outer ring in a Washington meeting was for staffers and less important participants in the conversation. Weeder, Spears knew, was neither of these.

Spears looked around the room and marveled at what this group could do. These were largely anonymous men and women whose names would be all but unknown to ordinary people in outside-the-Beltway America. But from within the bureaucracy, the people on the Council could move mountains . . . or crush them into gravel if that was more convenient.

The current Vice Chair commanded no more than a desk and a phone, but with a single call, she could deploy aircraft carriers across oceans on the far side of the globe. Finance could make you rich or break you as a single carefully worded statement sent stock prices climbing or wheat futures crashing. Cross him and Legal could turn your life inside out with a federal investigation so overwhelming in its intensity that it hardly mattered whether you were ultimately found guilty.

This was real power, the power to change the world. Change it for the better, Spears was confident, even if that meant that some had to be sacrificed for the greater good.

The Chairman brought the meeting to order.

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” he began. “This is an extraordinary session of the Governing Council, which itself is a rare event. It will be so noted in the records. We are approaching the culmination of one of the most ambitious and complex operations in the history of our organization, and it may behoove us to scale back the meeting schedule once our plans have come to fruition. For now, however, there are decisions to be made. Operations requested this session and I turn the floor over to him for his report.”

Spears took a sip from the glass of water in front of him. He was uncharacteristically nervous. The Council, he knew, would not be pleased with what he had to say. He would have to shape his message with care.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to begin by emphasizing that Cold Harbor remains very much on track. There is no change in the timeline, and the operation on the ground has been making better-than-expected progress.”

“It sure sounds like there's a sizeable ‘but' attached to the end of that sentence,” Reports interjected.

“There have been some challenges,” Spears said, “and some setbacks requiring . . . creative solutions.”

“Like murder?” Plans asked icily.

“Yes,” Spears replied with equanimity. “Something very much like that. The greatest good and all . . .”

“So what . . . setbacks . . . haven't you told us about, yet?”

“You are all aware of the Krittenbrink situation.” Heads around the room nodded. “We had to act urgently and before obtaining the full authorization of the Council. Krittenbrink had drafted a paper describing in remarkable detail the outlines of the Panoptes program. Even if he did not yet understand the purpose of the program, a document like that in the hands of our opponents in the Lord administration would almost certainly have forced the cancellation of Cold Harbor. That outcome was not acceptable. We needed to move quickly. I authorized the Commander to eliminate the threat.”

This was not entirely accurate. Weeder did not really take orders from Spears. He took his cues directly from the Chairman, and it had been the Commander who had recommended taking Krittenbrink out before he could share the document more widely.

“In addition to dealing directly with Krittenbrink, we eliminated any trace of the Panoptes material from the databases. The DTG numbers linked to the products produced as part of the Panoptes program now link to innocuous material unrelated to Cold Harbor. That program had largely run its course in any event, and we would soon have moved to strip those products from the system, so it is no real loss.”

“I assume, though, that your efforts to contain the threat were not successful,” Reports said. “Otherwise, why summon the Council to an extraordinary session? What is the current complication?”

“Krittenbrink was not operating alone. I now have reason to believe that he had a partner, Samuel Trainor. He is an Argus employee hired to head up the South Asia unit and he previously worked with Krittenbrink at State/INR. Trainor has somehow obtained a copy of some of the material that our operations team has been preparing for Phase II of Cold Harbor. It is not on the face of it incriminating material, and we are prepared to dismiss it as war-gaming activity. But Trainor has been shopping some theories to at least one senior official that are distressingly accurate. This is not as urgent as the Krittenbrink situation since Trainor does not seem to have a copy of the Panoptes file, but it is important and I am bringing this issue to you to seek guidance from the Council.”

There was silence. It was not the silence of assent. It was the silence of mounting anger.

“Jesus Christ.” The Vice Chairman was the first to speak in response. “How do you know that Krittenbrink and Trainor were a duo? How do you know that there aren't three or four or a hundred and fifty more who know about Panoptes and Cold Harbor, or at least enough about the programs to make them dangerous? How can you assume anything at all at this point?”

“Yes,” Plans added. “You haven't given us enough information to formulate an effective response.”

“I appreciate the difficulties of the position we are in,” Spears said. “That is why I asked for this session. We are on the cusp of something great. We have options. And we must not lose heart. We must not give in to our fears.”

“That is easy to say,” Plans replied. “But that does not absolve you from the responsibility for the security breach. How did a junior analyst like Krittenbrink get access to the Panoptes messages to begin with?”

“Panoptes was integrated into the mainstream intelligence reporting. That was a decision we made to reinforce the credibility of the product. It was the only way we could ensure that Panoptes material would be included as part of the regular intelligence-sharing program with Islamabad and New Delhi. Krittenbrink had access to all of this information as a matter of course. So did Sam Trainor. One of them must have identified a pattern in the Panoptes material that triggered concerns. We are looking into this.”

“You are assuming again that it was either Trainor or Krittenbrink who realized something was out of place. Couldn't it just as easily have been a third party? Someone you have yet to identify.”

“It is possible, yes,” Spears acknowledged reluctantly.

“The level of incompetence demonstrated here is frankly stunning,” Plans said. “I think that merits further review. We need to understand what the hell happened.”

“There will be time enough for a postmortem later,” the Chairman interjected. “There is no percentage in seeking to assign blame at this point. That can wait. For now, our task is to identify a way forward that protects the operation.”

“How many people do we know Trainor's talked to?” Finance asked.

“Just one,” Spears said. “A DAS at State who dismissed him as a loon. As I said, Trainor doesn't have any evidence, and without that, the story he has to tell is quite literally incredible.”

“If he doesn't have anything solid to offer, maybe we should just leave it alone. That may be the least risky course of action.” Unsurprisingly, this was Legal. Washington lawyers, in Spears's experience, were all alike. They never wanted to do anything. In contrast, Spears himself had always believed in the credo embodied in the slogan of the SEALs' British counterparts, the SAS: Who Dares Wins.

“I don't think we can afford to take the chance,” Vice said. “If the subject is aggressively pushing a story line that, in fact, comes to pass, it would add ex post facto credibility to the allegations that the outcome in the Indo-Pak conflict was manipulated. No, I think we need to engage.”

Spears noted the way the Vice Chairman used “subject” instead of Sam's name. It was clinical. Dehumanizing. The prelude to what in the SEALs they used to refer to as “direct action.” Spears knew which column he could put her in.

“I'm inclined to agree,” Reports said. Others around the table nodded their heads.

“Commander,” the Chairman asked. “Could you take care of Mr. Trainor in such a way that it would not arouse suspicions? An accident or even a suicide. A second random homicide of a friend of Krittenbrink's would be an extraordinary coincidence. It would attract too much attention and perhaps raise some awkward questions.”

There was a pause while Weeder considered the answer.

“It can be done. But it will take some time to arrange.”

“Weeks?”

“Days.”

“Wait a moment,” Plans interjected. “Shouldn't we be thinking about interrogating him first? We don't know if there are any others. I would suggest that we need an opportunity to discuss this with Mr. Trainor in a manner conducive to complete honesty.”

Torture,
Spears thought.
That was the word you didn't want to use, you prig
.
Language was the last refuge of the moral coward.

Like all SEALs, Spears had been through SERE training: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. As part of the training, the young SEALs had been waterboarded until they revealed a secret that they had been instructed to keep. They all broke. Torture was effective as long as the subject had the information you were after. If not, he or she would make up anything you might desire if it promised to stop the pain.

“Commander?” the Chairman asked.

“That will take a little more time. But it can be done.”

“Very well. Make the necessary preparations.”

“Is there anything else we should be doing?” Vice asked. “Are there other sources of leverage against the subject that we could potentially employ as part of a backup or contingency plan?”

“He has a daughter,” Weeder replied.

“Here in Washington?”

“No. In India. In Mumbai, in fact.”

A few eyebrows were raised at that.

“That's not of much help then,” Finance commented.

“We have a team on the ground in India that could potentially pick her up. She would be leverage against him.”