Fatal Conceit (36 page)

Almost all of the media accounts were slanted toward the defendants and the D.C. administration. Then two weeks after Lucy returned, Ariadne Stupenagel published a story based on an “exclusive” interview with the “unidentified female hostage” who'd been rescued along with Deputy Chief of Mission David Huff, who was “unavailable” to comment on the story. Her report threw fuel on the already raging rhetorical firestorm, but now some of the flames began to creep in the other direction.

Up to that point, the administration's official response to the rescue had been to take credit for the actions “of a top-secret antiterrorism team whose bravery succeeded in rescuing the hostages while the president personally ordered a drone attack to assist the rescuers. International criminal Amir Al-Sistani was killed in the strike.” Press Secretary Hilb had claimed that the administration had “all along been playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Al-Sistani to buy time for the rescuers to locate our people and carry out their mission.”

However, she wouldn't comment on the identity of the female hostage, because only a very few people, such as Karp, knew who she was. Huff had been escorted to the U.S. embassy in Grozny, but Jaxon had spirited Lucy and his team out of Chechnya and even the former chief of mission only knew her first name and that she worked for some top-secret agency. But the administration wasn't about to admit that it didn't know who she was and was happy to let the media speculate that she might have been a Russian or even just a fake setup by Al-Sistani for propaganda purposes.

Very little jibed between Lucy's story and the official version. Not the timeline of events. Not the identity of the attackers. Not the presence of a drone during the attack. Not the ignored requests for help. Not the story of the hostages' rescue.

Stupenagel wrote in detail about Lucy's account of the attack on the compound. “We could hear the drone—Al-Sistani laughed about it after the attack. . . . Even if the messages didn't get through, and I know at least one did, mine, whoever was monitoring that drone knew what was happening and didn't try to help.”

Yet, Stupenagel noted, when the drone strike on the mosque in Dagestan was ordered, “the administration could not possibly have known that the captives were safe, and in fact they barely escaped the explosions. It calls into question who the real targets were: Amir Al-Sistani and his Al Qaeda jihadists, and/or the American hostages. Was someone in the administration worried that the hostages might tell a different story about the attack on the mission?”

Those allegations alone would have set the administration back on its heels. But Stupenagel wasn't done. She reported the purpose of Huff's mission to clandestinely supply arms to insurgents in Syria through the Chechen separatist Lom Daudov, sending a seismic ripple through the international community.

Like a wounded beast, the administration lashed out savagely at Stupenagel's story as “a cornucopia of fabrications, specious accusations, and events taken out of context.” Hilb told the press that she questioned whether Stupenagel had even talked to the unidentified female hostage and implied that she was taking advantage of the hostage's anonymity to “make up a story out of whole cloth.”

Assistant Secretary of State Helene Vonu went on the Sunday morning talk shows and explained that “our understanding of the chronology of events was based on our best available information at the time. We have only just, upon the return and debriefing of Deputy Chief of Mission David Huff, learned that some minor details may need to be revised. However, the basic facts and timeline of events have not changed.”

Vonu suggested that the account given by the unidentified hostage was “misinformed, misguided, or misconstrued.” She further
intimated that it was possible the former hostage was suffering from “post–traumatic stress syndrome associated with her ordeal” and thus “confused.” She privately confided to certain members of the press that “it's possible she wasn't American . . . though I can't say more than that at this time.”

Going from one show to the next, Vonu danced around the facts like Ginger Rogers dancing around Fred Astaire. The assertion that a drone was present early on during the attack was “inaccurate,” she said, “but it's the policy of this administration not to comment on our unmanned aerial vehicle program for national security reasons.” For the same reason, she said, she could not address certain allegations regarding the strike that killed Al-Sistani “without revealing highly classified surveillance capabilities.

“However, rest assured the president was very aware of events in Dagestan as they transpired in real time. And, I might add, it is highly offensive to suggest that the president would needlessly risk American lives.”

On another show, Vonu said the administration was “not aware” of any requests for assistance at the compound. Furthermore, attempts to identify the attackers as Al Qaeda insurgents were “in error.

“The attackers were Chechen separatists working with Amir Al-Sistani, a freelance criminal, as evidenced by his attack on the New York Stock Exchange, whose only cause was his own quest for wealth and power. In order to lure Islamic extremists to his cause and increase his credibility, Al-Sistani may have claimed to be linked to Al Qaeda, but we do not believe he was actually part of the organization,” she went on, while the journalist host of the program nodded sagely in agreement. “What the president said prior to election day was true then, and is true now. Al Qaeda is no longer a viable threat, thanks in large part to the president's unwavering war on terrorism in cooperation with our friends in the international community, especially Russia.”

Most of the mainstream media spent their efforts attempting to
discount Stupenagel's story rather than check it out. They did so by attacking the reporter personally, labeling her a “muckraker” and “yellow journalist” while challenging her use of an anonymous source, even though most of them did the same thing on a frequent basis.

One of the Sunday-morning talk show hosts even demanded that the hostage, “if she indeed said these things, step forward and confirm these unsubstantiated rumors being presented as a news story.” The host of a Comedy Central show openly derided the story, complete with a laugh track, while childishly pronouncing the reporter's name as “Stupid-nagel.” And the editorial page of the
Washington Post
noted that Stupenagel was “a longtime friend of District Attorney Karp and thus, valid or not, her motives are suspect.”

However, the tide was changing. Slowly at first, beginning with a few of the media outlets traditionally opposed to the administration, and then the more independent-minded journalists, other news outlets began to pick up on Stupenagel's report and write stories of their own.

With the deft timing of a bullfighter, Stupenagel followed up on her first report the next week with the account of her conversation with Sam Allen at the White Horse Tavern. And she backed it up with an anonymous source “in the intelligence community with firsthand knowledge of the facts” who confirmed Allen's concerns, including that an armed drone had been on the scene in Chechnya within the first hour “of a three-hour firefight.”

The source told Stupenagel that Fauhomme and Lindsey had watched the attack “in real time” and the order to stand down and not assist the defenders had come from them. “In fact, after the hostages' capture, an order was given to fire upon the trucks with the hostages,” the source was quoted as saying. “Fortunately, contact with the drone was lost for a few minutes and by the time the Predator was back online, the targets had dispersed. The lost contact may not have been entirely accidental. There were a number
of people unhappy with the situation and with the orders to fire on our own people.”

As corroboration, the source let Stupenagel listen to a recording of what he said was the female hostage's call for help during the firefight. The source of the tape, a man she simply called “Augie,” would not give her a copy. However, she reported, she was able to verify a transcript of the recording with the female hostage, which she then printed.

“This is codename Wallflower. We are at the compound near the town of Zandaq. We've been attacked and overrun. They're trying to get in the room. I don't think it will be much longer. They are not Chechen; they're speaking Arabic, several native Saudi speakers, a Yemeni, not sure of the others, but I repeat, they are not Chechen. I'm with David Huff. . . . They are here.”

With the publication of the second story, even the administration's apologists had a hard time dismissing the allegations. The most ardent defenders still tried, including the majority whip in the Senate, who slammed the stories and the opposition's “obsession” with the events in Chechnya and Dagestan and accused the president's detractors of using the situation to avoid “progress on those issues that are of actual concern to the American public.” But most of the president's former allies lay low.

In the meantime, the White House press office found itself deluged with a type of hard questioning that they weren't used to dealing with; and the talk show hosts were no longer as accommodating or friendly. Hilb began backpedaling while at the same time denying the allegations and accusing Stupenagel and her sources of lying.

However, Vonu, who seemed to be genuinely surprised that the talking points she'd been given were suspect, now said that while it was official policy not to discuss the drone program, she wanted to clarify something “in the interest of making sure the American public gets the whole truth.” She then conceded that an aircraft had been on the scene earlier than originally thought. But she
insisted that the drone “was not armed and was only a surveillance aircraft; by the time the drone operators were aware of what was happening, and asked for assistance from fighter jets based in Turkey, it was too late.”

Asked by a reporter with the BBC News why the aircraft was on the scene at all, the embattled and flustered diplomat said the CIA drone was responding to “garbled messages” received from the compound by the embassy in Grozny.

When the reporter then pointed out that she'd earlier denied the existence of messages, Vonu said the administration had not been aware of any at the time. “We have since learned that these garbled messages were received.”

The reporter pointed out that Wallflower's message “did not seem garbled.” Vonu responded that “the message in question—the source and authenticity of which is still being verified—was not sent through ‘official' channels . . . and arrived too late to affect the outcome at the compound. In trying to get to the bottom of these bits and pieces of information, we have determined that there may have been a breakdown in relaying that information from the agency to the administration, an oversight that is being addressed as we speak.” She blamed the “inconsistencies” of the earlier reports coming out of the White House and State Department on “the fog of war and the exigencies of national security measures that protect all of us.”

As criticism mounted, the administration went into full defensive posture. Hilb complained to her favorite
Los Angeles Times
reporter that Augie—“if he even exists”—was mistaken about Fauhomme and Lindsey watching the attack in real time. “It's my understanding that sometime after the attack, Mr. Lindsey received a recorded version from the CIA that was shown to Mr. Fauhomme so that he would be able to counsel the president in regard to his public response to the incident.”

She also denied that any orders were given to fire upon the trucks bearing the hostages. “The drone operators were told to
track the vehicles so that rescue operations could be initiated but lost them in the mountainous region. It's ludicrous to believe that the president's national security adviser or his campaign manager would order the deaths of American citizens. Just as it's ludicrous to believe that the president would give the order to fire in Dagestan if he didn't believe that the hostages were safe.”

The fissures that had appeared in the administration's cozy relationship with the media after Stupenagel's first story had widened considerably and did not recover. According to public opinion polls, the country was split on who they thought was telling the truth, and in New York the polls indicated a change in what people believed about the charges against Fauhomme and Lindsey: about a third believed that politics were at the root of the charge; a third did not; and another third weren't sure.

Still, it could have been worse for the administration and the defendants. Stupenagel did not write about Allen's affair with Jenna Blair, nor her own run-ins with Ray Baum at the White Horse Tavern and Loon Lake. She left the rumors about the affair to her colleagues to report and told Karp that she supposed that someday she would have to write about the subject, but for now she didn't want to make life more difficult for Allen's wife and sons.

“Besides, it's still just rumors to the rest of the media,” she said. “I'm the only one who knows for sure.”

However, omitting what she knew about the affair and Baum wasn't entirely due to her conscience. It was also part of a deal she had struck in exchange for her interview with Lucy, along with a little arm-twisting by Karp.

When he first talked to her up at Loon Lake after the shootings, he'd asked if she'd consider waiting to write about what happened. He'd been concerned about major evidentiary points appearing in her stories prior to the trial and tainting the jury pool. “I may also be calling you to the stand as a witness,” he explained.

Like any journalist, Stupenagel had balked. “I want to write about the trial, not be in it,” she complained. And she also didn't
like holding back what she knew. “This is my story. If I don't stay on top of it, someone else will take it. I saw Baum in the White Horse Tavern. He tried to kill me, Marlene, and Jenna at Loon Lake, and Jenna says he's the guy she saw kill Sam. That's
my
story!”