KBL (25 page)

At the daily White House press briefing, questions to the new press secretary, Jay Carney, focused on Japan’s nuclear disaster, gun control, gay marriage, the antigovernment demonstrations in Bahrain, and military intervention in Libya. The subjects of Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were never raised.

The focus on those other problems made it a lot easier for D/CIA Vince Mercaldi and a trio of his aides, as well as Vice Admiral Wesley Bolin and Rear Admiral Scott Moore, Slam Bolin’s detailee to the National Security Council—and the other members of the Restricted Interagency Group to enter the West Wing and make their way to the Situation Room on the West Wing’s basement level unnoticed by pesky reporters. By the time the president arrived six minutes late, everyone was seated at the long rectangular table.

As POTUS entered the room, Vince rose. The others joined him, and there was a ragged chorus of “Good afternoon, Mr. President,” which brought a brief smile to the commander in chief’s face.

The president took his usual chair at the door-end of the table, facing Vince, who anchored the opposite end. The national security advisor sat to the president’s right, Dwayne Daley to his immediate left. The secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Admiral Wes Bolin held down the table to the president’s left, and Rear Admiral Moore sat next to the NSC chairman on his right. The president looked down the table at the CIA director, who was flanked by three individuals wearing blue CIA staff badges on chains around their necks. “Vince,” he said, “you asked for this meeting, so why don’t you begin.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” The CIA director adjusted his glasses. “I’d like to introduce my colleagues.” He looked to his right. “Some of you may know Stu Kapos, who is director of the National Clandestine Service. Across from Stu, to my left, is Dick Hallett, who runs our Bin Laden Group. And next to Dick is the BLG’s chief analyst, a former Marine whose staff badge reads George S. Nupkins. I can assure you all that the name is a pseudonym. For those of you unaware, it’s one of CIA’s venerable traditions that all of our covert people receive in-house pseudonyms. And George here—we prefer to call him Spike—selected his own pseudonym from a character in Charles Dickens’s
The Pickwick Papers
.”

Vince peered over his aviator frames at Spike, a tall, rumpled, beer-bellied, double-chinned, curly-haired fiftyish fellow in a rumpled gray suit, white button-down shirt, and striped rep tie. “George Nupkins was the mayor of Ipswich in that book, wasn’t he, Spike?”

“Yes, sir, ’e was,” the CIA analyst answered in a badly bogus Cockney accent. “ ’Appily married, too, just loike me.”

Everyone laughed.

The D/CIA continued. “I brought Spike with me today because he probably knows more about UBL than anyone in the world except UBL himself.” He waited for the murmurs to subside. “And also, Mr. President, because Spike’s the chap who came up with the inoculation program I mentioned in January. You said you’d like to meet him. Well, here he is.”

The president’s eyes lit up. “Congratulations, Spike. Great idea.”

Spike nodded appreciatively. “Thank you, sir. I just wish we’d gotten a positive on the DNA.”

“I do, too,” the president said.

“But I must also add, sir,” Spike continued, “that I am nonetheless convinced that UBL is in residence at the Khan compound.”

“Even without conclusive evidence?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Why are you convinced, Spike?” The president massaged his chin.

Vince frowned. The CIA director had spent enough face time with POTUS to know the chin massage meant he didn’t like what he was hearing. Now the president was tapping the table with his pen, another bad sign. “We have no photographs, Spike. No confirmed sightings. No armed bodyguards. No solid evidence at all. Everything’s circumstantial. Wouldn’t hold up in court.”

Vince was happy to see Spike hold his ground. “That’s not quite true, sir.”

“Not quite true?”

“Yes, Mr. President, not quite true. There’s solid evidence. It may be what you call circumstantial, but it is nevertheless evidence—and it is, to my mind, conclusive when taken as a holographic entirety. The Khan brothers, for example, are known to be UBL’s most trusted couriers. We’ve been tracking them in earnest since 2004. Arshad Khan—his nom de guerre is Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, but his real name may be either Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq or Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, we’re still working on that one—bought the Abbottabad property in 2003 and built the residence in 2004. At that point in time it was on the outskirts of the city. Isolated. Surrounded by big, open plowed fields. The perfect spot for a hideout. And Arshad—I’ll call him that so it won’t be confusing—built it differently from any other house in Abbottabad. It is three stories, so three families can live comfortably. But here’s what: the two Khan families live on the first floor—the ground floor, that is—and in the guest house. The second and third floors are reserved for a VIP occupant and his family. This we know for sure through eyes-on surveillance, as well as thermal imagery from drones.” Spike paused long enough to drink from the bottle of water in front of him.

“The third-floor balcony,” he continued, “has a seven-foot-high privacy wall. Bin Laden is somewhere between six foot four and six foot five. There is Sentinel footage—” The analyst caught the blank look on the president’s face. “Sentinel, sir, is the RQ-170 stealth drone we have dedicated to the Khan compound and overflights of Abbottabad—of a male, six foot four or six foot five, judging from the shadow he threw and the time of day, walking in the courtyard of the compound. We do not have a picture of his face, but he resembles photos we do have of UBL. His gait is much the same, and his shoulders are stooped exactly like UBL’s shoulders. And finally, there’s the food.”

The president looked surprised. “The food?”

“The food,” Spike continued. “Arabs eat lamb and rice, emphasis on rice. Pakistanis eat chicken and lentils. Whoever lives in that compound eats lamb and rice. Regularly.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dwayne Daley said. “How do you know that?”

“We did some dumpster-diving.”

“Oh,
yeah
?” Daley rapped the table triumphantly. “I read reports that they burn all their garbage inside the compound. How could you dumpster-dive that?”

“They do burn the garbage,” Spike said. “We got hold of the ashes. More than once. The forensics are solid. The occupants of that compound eat like Arabs, not Pakistanis.”

SECDEF broke in before Daley could argue any more. “Okay, Spike, let’s say for argument’s sake you’re right. Bin Laden lives in that compound. The question then becomes, how do we get him?”

“That
is
the question,” Spike said. “And I am not a military strategist.” He looked across the table at the SECDEF, the Joint Chiefs chairman, and Wesley Bolin. “I can tell you for a fact that both Khan brothers are in residence. The younger one, Tareq, recently returned from an overseas trip. And according to one of our eyes-on assets in Abbottabad, he will be in residence there for the foreseeable future. It is my opinion that UBL is also currently living in that house on that compound, along with at least one of his wives and some of his children. I am convinced of it. How you get him is for you-all to figure out.”

“Indeed it is.” Vince Mercaldi opened the folder he’d brought with him. “Seems to me we have three alternatives here. One is an air strike: we flatten the compound and kill everyone inside. Two is a boots-on-the-ground mission, which you, Mr. President, have already heard about in general terms from Admiral Bolin. And third would be a joint mission with the Pakistanis.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. “An air strike by B-2 stealth bombers is doable. We could also employ Tomahawk missiles.”

“Alternatives that we should explore, Mr. Secretary,” Vince said. “I’d like to suggest right now, however, that we do not consider a joint mission with the Pakistanis.”

Daley frowned. “And why would that be? They are our allies.”

“Because in some arenas they are not our allies,” Vince said. “Not at all. Last month, we shared with the Pakistanis intelligence about two capture/kill missions we were about to launch in northeast Afghanistan against the Haqqani Network and a Taliban commander who travels back and forth between Afghanistan and Waziristan. I had the Paks’ communications networks monitored, and I can tell you without a doubt that elements of the ISI warned the people we were planning to hit.”

The president’s eyes widened. “They did?”

“Yes, Mr. President, they did. We went through with the raids, of course, so as not to alert the Pakistanis, and we were, quote, ‘surprised’ when we came up dry. But it is conclusive that elements of ISI and segments of the Pakistani military as well are collaborating with our enemies. If you would like, I would be happy to supply you with the relevant CDs and transcripts. We have it all documented.”

“How did you handle the problem?”

“We’ve stopped sharing all but the most innocuous information with Pakistani intelligence and the military,” Vince said. “We help them if we come across something that affects their domestic security. But everything else these days is close-hold. And the Pakistanis have retaliated. In the wake of the Ty Weaver incident, they started holding up diplomatic visas for both military trainers and diplomatic personnel. Ever since the two snatch operations failed, they also have tried to impede our efforts to identify, isolate, and neutralize other threats. The situation is not good.”

Vince took a long pull from his water bottle. “Institutionally, therefore, our position is that any joint operation in Abbottabad would be compromised within hours—perhaps minutes—of discussing it with the Pakistanis and that Bin Laden and his couriers would disappear.”

The room fell silent.

The president rapped the table with the end of his pen. “Then a joint operation with the Pakistanis is a no-go,” the president said tersely. “So let’s drop it from the list right now.”

“Of course, Mr. President.” Vince looked at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Admiral?”

“We should certainly explore all the remaining options,” the chairman said. “At the moment I have no opinion.”

Of course you don’t, Vince thought. Like most of his immediate predecessors, the current chairman had never taken the leadership bit in his mouth. His role on paper was to be chief military advisor to the commander in chief. It was, sadly, a role very much underplayed by this chairman.

That was not the case with the SECDEF. Vince turned to Rich Hansen. “Mr. Secretary?”

“My opinion,” the secretary of defense said, “would be to examine both remaining options. Explore all the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses. Weigh every possibility and then reach a consensus. We would then be making an informed decision.” He removed his glasses and set them on the table. “As we all know, there are strategic consequences.” He nodded toward Dwayne Daley and National Security Advisor Don Sorken. “Our long-term relations with Pakistan. Our long-range strategic goals in the region. And of course our estimation of a successful outcome.” He paused. “Most important, we cannot, in my opinion, tolerate failure here.”

The NSC chairman’s head bobbed in vigorous agreement. Don Sorken was a veteran political operative who had served the previous Democratic administration both as State Department spokesman and as chief of staff to the secretary of state. As the top NSC advisor he felt it was his job to protect the administration’s political requirements while simultaneously working to uphold the nation’s national security interests. It was often a tough balancing act.

From Sorken’s perspective, any strike on the Abbottabad compound was a two-edged sword, with the potential to produce a supersized political disaster or a tectonic positive shift in public opinion. If it succeeded, the president would be more than a hero. He’d be as electable as the man who shot Liberty Valance. If it failed, the U.S. would look weak and the president’s reelection chances would plummet to zero.

Even if the strike succeeded, but there was one iota of nasty collateral damage, the administration would be beaten around the head over its callous insensitivity toward human life, and once again the president’s reelection chances would nose-dive. And if, God forbid, Bin Laden were taken alive, he’d become a bolt of political lightning that would blind everything and everyone on a global level, not for days, weeks, or months, but years—perhaps even decades. And make it much, much tougher to reelect the president.

Politically, Sorken would rather see no raid than commit to anything that might result in political embarrassment for the administration, its eclipse by an iconic terrorist, or the possibility that Bin Laden’s capture would result in retaliatory attacks within the continental United States, attacks that would hurt, perhaps fatally, the president’s chances of a second term.

But of course he couldn’t say any of that. Not publicly.

Instead he turned toward the president, his expression grave. “I think Secretary Hansen is correct, sir. My suggestion would be for the chairman, Admiral Bolin, and Director Mercaldi to war-game all the possibilities with their staffs, and come back to us at some point, perhaps late next month, with a series of suggestions that we could listen to, evaluate, and then debate within the White House.”

With luck, Sorken thought, we can talk this thing to death. And he wasn’t being cynical, either. Don Sorken considered himself a realist. It was simply a matter of priorities. Getting Bin Laden was, to be sure, important. But getting the president reelected in 2012? That was absolutely, critically imperative.