Chapter 2
High Noon for the Long Knives
Jimbo Rainwater was a full-blooded Sioux and a senior intelligence analyst assigned to DS’s Threat Intelligence Division. Despite being from the most litigious Indian tribe in American history, he was also a first-rate research analyst who invariably got things right.
Listening to the department drums was a favorite pastime for him and he could pick up on their rhythms and cadences like no one else. He had the ear to discern the most subtle nuances of the drum beats and decipher their meanings. We had worked together off-and-on for years and had become friends; at least as much as possible in the department. "What do you mean ‘we’ white man?"
Sometimes friendship was only skin-deep for those who served and protected.
I joked a bit with Jimbo and then got down to business.
“Jimbo, what are the drums saying about the Delhi kidnapping?”
He smirked and immediately shot back that it wasn’t kosher. I thanked him for his slice of Hebrew baloney. He had a wry sense of humor for a Gentile Indian and I tried asking again.
“Okay, what do you hear, wiseass?”
Jimbo immediately fell into his standard routine for such occasions by doing his Soaring Eagle shtick, as he liked to call it. He dropped to his knees and then put his ear to the floor, listening intently for the linoleum to reveal its wisdom.
“I hear buffalo, kemosabe, many angry buffalo. It sounds like a large herd thundering through the hallways of Main State. Do not stand in its path or you will surely perish,” he spoke in flawless, Native American English. “I hear more, my pale-faced friend. I hear the Big Chiefs are extremely upset; on the warpath as my red brethren might have said without reservations. However, no one can figure out why. They’ve gotten past last week’s diplomatic snafu over the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, so go figure. The ambassador’s daughter is not a big deal in the overall scheme of things, but the seventh floor is really uptight and nervous over the incident. The reaction’s way out of proportion to the incident in my humble, Injun opinion.”
He then stood up, raised his right arm, and loudly said “How.”
As a Washingtonian, I enjoyed the Redskin’s home games so I asked, “How what, you frigging moron?”
“How do you think I learned that bit of gossip?” he responded.
“I have no clue so tell me O Wise One of the Endless Prairie," I plainly asked.
“It was easy, my friend. I spoke with Andy Grafton, the shift-leader of the Secretary’s Detail earlier this morning. He filled me in on what was happening under the big-top teepee. The take away message is that the clowns and natives are restless.”
Jimbo’s opinions and sources were always good enough for me. What had the building so damn riled up? I wondered. I had no clue and neither did Jimbo. He said that a number of senior DS powers came into the building in the wee hours to powwow about the problem. I played his game of cowboys and Indians and asked how he knew that bit of trivia.
“Ugh, I checked the keycard access records when I arrived to see who else was in the building. I was curious and, as an anal retentive intelligence officer, I ran a report of the entry logs. That’s how. It’s an old Injun trick like hobbling our horses so they don’t run off at night. Keep that bit of folklore under your war bonnet, white man. May the spirits of the soaring eagles peck-out both of my eyes if I'm lying to you, my friend.”
I told him not to worry since he was already a bona fide pecker-head in my book.
“Okay, who done it, my brave chief? What are your counterparts in the intelligence community saying about the likely culprits?”
“They have already rounded up the usual suspects on paper; al-Qaida, the Tamil Tigers, Sikh separatists, common criminals, the Pope, who knows? They certainly don’t. The list is endless, meaning they don’t have a clue. It’s a sad comment, but the community lost its edge years ago when they went for the high-tech, flash-bang, intelligence acquisition crap rather than employing the old-fashioned HUMINT techniques: the human spies."
“With the Soviets becoming good capitalists, the justification and interest for human intelligence sources dried up. Nobody cared about such outdated, antiquated methods of intelligence collection since it was much too low-brow for the TECHNO-MENSA crowd in the community.”
Jimbo had gotten serious and I could tell he was on a personal vision quest because his eyes rolled up and he spoke in the disembodied voices of his ancestors. The sun-catcher hanging from his desk lamp looked like it was about to vibrate. This was going to be important stuff and I listened closely to what he had to say.
“It’s now about plucking data from the ether, even though we have trouble digesting what we’ve collected. The trained linguists and analysts deciphering what we learn through these fancy methodologies either don’t exist or are in short supply. However, accurate interpretation is the tough part."
“All the data collected is largely worthless if you can’t determine the intentions of the bad guys. And you can’t discern those things without having a real, live person inside a terrorist organization to give the stuff context and perspective—a reality check. We’re now paying the price for ignoring tried-and-true intelligence collection methods and sources and shame on us! Thank God we retained our half-vast counterintelligence skills,” he snickered while still entranced.
“Avery, spying has been called the world’s second-oldest profession for good reason. We didn’t have satellite imagery and communications intercepts for much of our history. We can thank the technocrats for leading us astray and leaving us vulnerable. Why? Because human spies don’t make for high-dollar procurement awards to the private sector contractors; what President Dwight Eisenhower called the Military-Industrial Complex."
“The President was right as far as he went, but now the private intelligence and security service providers should be added to the mix to make the term more accurate. We should have renamed the thing as the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Security Complex. Christ, the Pentagon wonks would love to come up with an acronym for that one.”
"Avery, here's another point you need to know about these terrorists, especially the fundamentalists and extremists. They can't be easily bribed. You know that's how much of the human intelligence was gained in the past, especially during the Cold War. 'Money talked and bullshit walked' as we said then. By and large, that simply doesn't work today since we're dealing with religious idealists, zealots and not greedy apparatchiks".
Jimbo was now profusely sweating and breathing heavily. I worried that he might have a heart attack if he pushed his out-of-body experience too far, but I didn’t interrupt him.
“We have a complex all right, but it’s not a good one in my opinion. The government has outsourced many intelligence and security functions to the private sector. The jury’s still out whether that’s a good or bad thing for our nation.”
I acknowledged that much of what Jimbo said rang true. We had been asleep at the switch for years when it came to accurately predicting, disrupting, and thwarting terrorist events around the world with 9/11 just one example. We sometimes picked the low-hanging fruit, but often missed the forest for the trees. I wasn’t sure we were now much safer as a nation without matches aboard our aircraft and having a color chart of terrorist threat alerts to remind us we had a serious problem. Why did it seem that our leaders were colorblind and in the dark about such things? Were they afraid the American public might question our nation’s foreign affairs policies around the world? What led us to this point in our country’s history? How did we alienate much of the moderate Muslim population around the world?
Oh my God, I was on a vision quest too!
In my mind, secrecy cut both ways by hiding failures and screw-ups. I’d rather rely on a sleeping pill and a glass of Zinfandel for a good night’s rest. That was just me and I tended to wax cynically and sarcastically. I readily acknowledged that my sage insights into the world’s problems grew after each glass of wine.
Jimbo awakened from his dreamlike state and changed horses in the middle of the stream. That wasn’t a safe thing to do unless you were a confident Native American. “The department touts and wags are already betting that a board of inquiry will be convened over this one. Of course, they’re once again putting their carts before their horses. I guess that’s an old White-man trick, my brother, so their horses don’t run off in the middle of the night. Regardless, that’s pretty much the SOP around here. By the way, what’s new with you Avery? I haven’t seen you around the reservation in quite a while. From what I hear, you’ve been taking double-doses of Viagra for Mr. ED. The rumor mill has it you’ve now got a big hard-on for money these days and that’s the reason you’re returning to the DS clan with your tail tucked between your legs.”
“I was in Afghanistan for a few months and I’ve been nursing my psychic wounds at home since. Just the usual stuff,” I replied. I was actually being sincere for a change.
It was the same old, same old, routine since I returned to the States. I was bored out of my mind and welcomed the assignment for a change of pace and some sanity. I knew it was probably a no-win situation for me, but I didn’t care since I needed the money. You couldn’t spend job satisfaction or ego rewards these days because there were no company stores left to accept your chits.
I bade Jimbo a fond farewell and moved on to other parts of DS headquarters. We didn’t say goodbye when something more pompous or frivolous would suffice. It was simply the Foreign Service way of saying and doing things in a silly and pretentious manner.
Jimbo told me to leave a little wampum in the bowl by the door on my way out. I replied I would say howdy partner to his distant relatives in Delhi. In turn, he warned me not to get scalped by the natives when buying the god-awful airport art. The banal banter never ended among friends since it was always about one-upping the other. Amerindian humor really was universally funny, I thought, especially so for foreigners like the Sioux.
Sometimes those who served and protected swallowed their Redskins with a grain of salt; the peanut and potato varieties, certainly not the Native American intelligence types.
I caught Sherry Dumas in her office. That was unusual since she was often hanging out at the building’s front entrance smoking and joking with her coworkers. She was a longtime smoker whose voice reflected her favorite vice. Husky was a nice word for her condition. No, she didn’t resemble a participant in Alaska’s Iditarod sled race. She just had a low, raspy voice from the many years of puffing and sucking on unfiltered cigarettes. If she bummed a filtered one, she’d tear its head off before lighting it. She showed no mercy whatsoever.
I had known Sherry well, becoming smoking buddies over the many long years we worked for the Diplomatic Security Service.
We had dragged on many a cigarette, joke, and piece of gossip during that time. She vowed to retire every other week out of sheer frustration with the organization, but never made good on her threats. Although she just might, if she couldn’t control her chronic emphysema. Like me, she was a diehard, dyed-in-the-wool smoker and the habit didn’t get any worse than that while you were still breathing.
“Big bangs are to be welcomed and enjoyed. In counterpoint, the Foreign Service whimpers are merely impotent celestial implosions of no measurable magnitude or consequence.”
This inane and childish nonsense brought us together in addition to the smoking. I invited Sherry to the front entrance for a smoke. Of course, she readily agreed. Sherry was the ultimate DS insider. She was, or had been, the secretary (now called administrative assistant in our PC word-speak) to the current DS director, along with his five predecessors. She not only knew where the bodies were buried, but knew who buried them and when. She even shoveled some dirt over a couple of the corpses herself.
Sherry also had another special insight into the workings of the department. Her sister Liz worked for many years in the Executive Secretariat on the seventh floor of Main State. (Ok, it was more properly called the Harry S. Truman Building, but that happened in 2000 after I retired, so it didn’t matter.) Between the two of them, they knew more about what was going on in the place than a dozen senior executives combined. They also had great memories and twisted senses of humor.
I lit her cigarette and then mine. I was first, and foremost, a gentleman when I tried to scam information. I inhaled deeply and enjoyed the flavor and I suspected she did the same. With the formalities over, I asked her the big question.
“Sherry, what the hell is going on with the seventh floor? The players all seem to be bouncing more than usual over the Delhi kidnapping. I can’t make any sense of it. It seems way over the top considering such things. I even heard the Secretary is jumpy.”
“Dick, it’s strange. Liz and I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s certainly a serious situation, but it’s preoccupying the seniors much more than it should. Ambassador Thurman is a respected career ambassador who has a lot of admirers and clout on the Hill. Maybe that’s why everyone is running around like Chicken Little with his head cut off."
“I’m not certain what is up because I’ve never seen this sort of reaction before. The seventh floor is almost in a full-warp speed, panic mode. I do know the Secretary and his direct reports are putting a lot of effort into resolving the matter. They seem to be pulling out all of the diplomatic stops to find the ambassador’s daughter. In fact, it’s the number one priority in the building at the moment.”
“Have you heard anything about the Secretary convening an inquisition, I mean an ARB?” I asked.
I had a selfish motive for this question. If a formal ARB were called, I would definitely get sucked into it at some point. Anyone and everyone who had any involvement, no matter how tangentially, was fair game to testify as to what they knew and when they knew it.
“Nothing firm,” she answered, “but the speculation suggests he’ll convene one. There isn’t much choice or wiggle room given the circumstances. There was a serious failure, a screw-up if you like, and someone or more than one has to pay the price. Heads must roll as decreed by the emperor of the seventh floor, but you can bet it won’t be his. In any case, it’s not going to be a pretty sight. Keep your head lowered and bowed, Avery, to avoid the axe-man that cometh.”
I wasn’t particularly worried about that happening since I kept mine firmly up my ass most of the time. It was the best way for someone to maintain peace of mind in the department. My guess was the Secretary would eventually call for an ARB to be convened to look into the circumstances of the kidnapping since he really had little choice these days. The law that underpinned the ARB would force his hand when there was serious personal injury or loss of life or substantial destruction of U.S. government property resulting from a security-related incident abroad. As usual, the law excluded U.S. military personnel and facilities located abroad under the authority of a U.S. commander.
The ARB had some teeth and accountability features. In several ways, it functioned much like a military tribunal and a formal administrative hearing—combined. It could compel witnesses to testify under oath and issue subpoenas under narrow circumstances. The building was betting the Secretary would act affirmatively and soon in order to deflect any criticism of the department and White House. Regardless, the Secretary could call an inquiry anything he wanted so long as it didn’t draw unfavorable attention to the administration’s credibility. That was a golden rule in Washington because you didn’t kill the goose that laid your golden eggs or signed your biweekly paychecks.
There certainly were a lot of smoke signals, as Jimbo might say, but little fire. I needed to get a clearer picture of what was going on, but it seemed that I would have to wait to get the true skinny when I got to Delhi.
Sometimes those who served and protected couldn’t make sense of things with all the smoke being blown up their asses.