KBL (10 page)

SECDEF spoke first. “Mr. President, I asked Vince to come with me today because there have been some developments on the Pakistani front.”

The president nodded. “Positive ones, I hope.”

“I would characterize them as promising,” the secretary answered. Richard Hansen was a naturally restrained individual. He had spent most of his professional career as a CIA analyst, rising to become deputy director of intelligence, and finally director of central intelligence in the long wake of the Iran Contra affair of the late 1980s. But he found his true calling in the mid-1990s as the president of the University of Missouri. SECDEF Hansen may have been the consummate Washington insider, but he was an academic at heart: thorough, precise, and judicious. His scholarly persona, however, also contributed to what many thought a tendency toward too much caution. Indeed, at CIA Rich Hansen had always been notoriously risk-averse when it came to operations.

He’d brought that quality back to Washington as secretary of defense, along with a professorial wit and a deep intellect. In this administration, made up largely of youngsters, ideologues, and political neophytes, he, along with D/CIA Vince Mercaldi and Secretary of State Katherine Semerad, were the troika of adults who supplied the president with sage advice, prudent political counsel, and sufficient necessary institutional memory to give presidential decisions context and gravitas.

Rich Hansen wasn’t imposing. He wore nondescript suits, white shirts, and boring ties. But he had one of the sharpest minds of his generation, and he wasn’t shy, despite his restrained appearance, at speaking truth to power.

“We are having great success with the Pakistani high-value target program we’ve been running in partnership with CIA,” Hansen said, swiveling to look at Mercaldi, who nodded in agreement.

The president nodded. “Can you bring me up to speed?”

“Of course.” The secretary spoke for seven or eight minutes, providing the president with a verbal snapshot of the joint program.

When he concluded, the president said, “Thanks, Rich. It’s good to see some positive steps have been taken. I’m only sorry we can’t inform the American people about what’s being done on their behalf.”

Dwayne Daley cleared his throat. “Mr. President,” he said, “I don’t want to be negative, but there’s a downside that could prove perilous to our strategic goals in the region.”

“Really?” The president turned toward his counterterrorism advisor. “Give us your thoughts, Dwayne.”

“We’re in danger of alienating the Pakistanis, Mr. President. These reckless missile attacks are nothing less than provocations. Every attack becomes a recruiting message to al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s own extremist elements.”

“Every attack takes out the enemies of Pakistan as well as the U.S., Dwayne,” Wes Bolin interrupted. “We’re killing the same people who are killing Pakistanis by the scores.”

The admiral turned toward the president. “Sir, I’ve been to Pakistan six times in the past eight months, and I can tell you firsthand”—Bolin looked pointedly at the counterterrorism advisor—“that, one, the program is working, and two, the Pakistanis are grateful.”

“Well,” Daley said reprovingly, “not universally, Admiral. Let’s be accurate.”

“You’re right, Dwayne, not every single Pakistani loves us.” Bolin wasn’t about to take on the counterterrorism advisor in this venue. But he wasn’t going to be stepped on, either.

There was a brief silence. Then the president asked, “What about the other program? The one you’re running in Abbottabad?”

“We are making consistent progress,” Vince Mercaldi said. “The monitoring base is set up. We have identified eighteen individuals so far as occupants of the villa.”

“But,” the president interjected, “not our primary target, right?”

“Not yet, Mr. President.”

“Can you give me a ballpark?”

The CIA director shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir. These things take time. We have eyes and ears on scene. We have good resources on the ground—we even sent one of our assets, a doctor, to the compound as part of an inoculation program in the Abbottabad area.”

The president looked quizzically at the D/CIA. “CIA set up an inoculation program?”

“We did, Mr. President. Through a false-flag front, which is an organization that doesn’t know it’s working for CIA, we covertly funded a Pakistan-based NGO that wanted to offer hepatitis B shots in Abbottabad. Then we slipped in our penetration agent, a physician, as a volunteer inoculator. We figured we could get some bang for the buck by not only getting him inside the compound, but also doing some good for the people of Abbottabad.”

The president smiled. “That’s thinking outside the box, Vince. Great idea.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I wish it had been mine. But it came from one of our Bin Laden Group people.”

“Oh, really. Who?”

“We call him Spike.”

“I’d like to meet Spike someday.”

“Of course, sir.”

“So, what finally happened?”

“Our doctor was admitted to the Khan compound, but not the house itself. Nor was he allowed to vaccinate anyone. So we never obtained any DNA samples.”

“Too bad,” the president said.

“Nor did he see anyone who resembled UBL.”

The president bit his lower lip but said nothing.

Mercaldi continued. “Still, we are confident the Pakistanis have no idea about our presence in Abbottabad.”

The president frowned. “So, we have not yet enjoyed eyes on target.”

“Regrettably correct, Mr. President. For the moment, anyway, that’s where things stand.”

“Mr. President, perhaps it’s time—” Dwayne Daley started to say. But he caught the expression on Vince Mercaldi’s face. It made him stop short. “Sorry, sir. Nothing.”

The president rubbed his chin with his forefinger. “Should we get what you call ‘eyes on’ our target, Vince, how long would it take to mount an operation?”

“It’s so preliminary we hadn’t discussed specifics yet, Mr. President.”

“Not even a ballpark?”

That damn ballpark again. Then the CIA director caught something in the president’s eye, an almost indiscernible glint of negativity and reluctance to act, that made him swivel toward Wesley Bolin. “Wes, any ideas?”

Vince Mercaldi knew that Wes Bolin had ideas because they’d discussed them not two hours before. Bolin had told him that a capture/kill strike by Delta Force or SEALs was the most efficient way to take out Bin Laden. He’d mounted more than a thousand such raids over the past year. The only problem was Pakistan. They’d have to make a stealth approach in order to get in under the Pak radar. Otherwise, it was all very straightforward. As Bolin put it, “Vince, we’ve been doing these sorts of snatch-and-grabs for nigh on thirty years.”

The SEAL admiral thought about the question for a few seconds. He’d noted the tension in the room and decided that specificity wasn’t a good idea right now. “Less time than you might think, Mr. President. We’ve already got a pretty good idea about the venue’s layout. The question is what we’d like the outcome to be. We could use air assets—repeat what we did in the opening hours of the Iraq war, when we bombed the three locations we believed were the most likely places Saddam would be. But as you know, we missed him then. My preference would be boots on the ground, which—”

“Admiral, as Vince just said, perhaps it’s still very early in the process to be discussing specifics,” Hansen interjected, cutting Bolin off. The SECDEF had good sources at this White House. He knew that both Daley and the national security advisor had been telling the president that the CIA base in Abbottabad was a risky operation that could end in disaster, and that a manned assault mission would permanently fracture U.S. relations with Pakistan.

Privately, Rich Hansen shared a rare agreement with the counterterrorism advisor about a special operations raid, but for other reasons. Hansen had been at CIA during the Desert One catastrophe. It was his firm opinion that the mission had been designed to fail by a timid, spineless administration led by a timid, spineless president. Still, that shattering experience colored every decision he had subsequently made. There was no way he would allow American lives to be squandered the way they had been in April 1980.

There was another factor as well:
this
president. Hansen and Mercaldi were Washington veterans who had worked for administrations both Republican and Democrat. They had discussed it and agreed that neither had been a part of any administration so lacking in weltanschauung and strategic sophistication as the one they both now served.

They had also agreed earlier in the day that this particular meeting was neither the time nor the place to debate the tactical—or, for that matter, the strategic—issues surrounding a possible Abbottabad operation.

Bolin swiveled toward the SECDEF. “Sorry, Mr. Secretary. You’re right: we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

Hansen was relieved to see the admiral stand down so readily. Besides, there was one more reason the SECDEF didn’t want to discuss specific tactics. He knew from previous experience that this commander in chief was a man who possessed very little background in military planning. Neither did this particular president possess a sophisticated understanding about the real-life imperatives of special operations missions—or just about any other military mission, for that matter. It was, Hansen thought, partially generational—this president had been nowhere near draft age when the draft was abolished—but also cultural. This president, Hansen had noted with increasing disappointment over the past twenty-four months, was virtually tone-deaf when it came to dealing with the military, military personnel, or military issues.

Which was why, even though Hansen was personally opposed to a direct assault on the Abbottabad compound, there was no way he was going to argue the case in this venue. He had already discussed the matter with Mercaldi, and they were agreed on one critical item: the Abbottabad mission would never be anything but capture/kill. With emphasis on the kill. Precisely how the mission would be executed, and how the president would be presented with their decision—and convinced to approve it—would be worked out at a later date.

Wes Bolin also knew of the secretary’s negative view about a possible assault on the Abbottabad compound. He had spent most of the early afternoon discussing Hansen’s opposition with Mercaldi. That was one of the primary reasons the D/CIA had insisted that Bolin accompany him to the White House. He wanted the SECDEF to see Bolin in action, and also allow the SEAL admiral to get a read on the secretary. The D/CIA’s advice was classic Vince. He’d advised the former Navy linebacker, “Know your adversaries, and prepare for every possibility.”

Which is exactly what Slam Bolin had been doing since before January. At Mercaldi’s invitation, on New Year’s Day he had assigned Captain Larry Bailey, one of his senior JSOC SEALs, as his personal liaison to CIA’s Bin Laden Group and sent him off to Langley. By then he had already replaced the National Security Council’s JSOC special warfare liaison, an Army lieutenant colonel, with a SEAL rear admiral. And he’d had elements of his Tier One units—Delta, DEVGRU, and the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Strike Force—training for an assault on UBL’s Abbottabad compound within days of CIA’s setting up Valhalla Base.

The troops just didn’t know it.

7

Dam Neck, Virginia
January 12, 2011, 0730 Hours Local Time