Executive orders - Tom Clancy [334]
There's more to it, Arnie said quietly.
Oh, yeah. I had to report the operations to the Select Committee, but I didn't want to rip the government apart. So I talked it over with Trent and Fellows, and I came in to see the President. We talked for a while, and then I stepped out of the room, and Sam and Al talked with him for a while. I'm not exactly sure what they agreed on, but-
But he threw the election. He dumped his campaign manager and his campaign was for crap the whole way. Christ, Jack, what did you do? Arnie demanded. His face was pale now, but for political reasons. And all along van Damm had figured that he'd run a brilliant and successful campaign for Bob Fowler, unseating a popular sitting President. And so, a fix had been in? And he'd never found out?
Ryan closed his eyes. He'd just forced himself to relive a dreadful night. I terminated an operation that was technically legal, but teetering right on the edge. I closed it down quietly. The Colombians never found out. I thought I prevented another Watergate, domestically-and a godawful international incident. Sam and Al signed off on it, the records are sealed until long after we're all dead. Whoever leaked that must have picked up on a couple of rumors and made a few good guesses. What did I do? I think I obeyed the law as best I could-no, Arnie, I did not break the law. I followed the rules. It wasn't easy, but I did. The eyes opened. So, Arnie, how will that play in Peoria?
Why couldn't you have just reported to Congress and-
Think back, the President said. It wasn't just the one thing, okay? That's when Eastern Europe was coming unglued, the Soviet Union was still there but teetering, some really big things were happening, and if our government had come apart, right then, with everything else happening, hell, it could have been a mess like nobody's ever seen. America couldn't-we would not have been able to help settle Europe down if we'd been pissing around with a domestic scandal. And I was the guy who had to make the call and take the action, right now, or those soldiers would have been killed. Think about the box I was in, will you?
Arnie, I couldn't go to anybody for guidance on that one, okay? Admiral Greer was dead. Moore and Ritter were compromised. The President was up to his eyeballs in it; at the time I thought he was running the show through Cutter-he wasn't; he got finessed into it by that incompetent political bastard. I didn't know where to go, so I went to the FBI for help. I couldn't trust anybody but Dan Murray and Bill Shaw, and one of our people at Langley on the operational side. Bill-did you know he was a J.D.?-worked me through the law part of it, and Murray helped with the recovery operation. They had an investigation started on Cutter. It was a code-word op, I think they called it ODYSSEY, and they were about to go to a U.S. magistrate for criminal conspiracy, but Cutter killed himself. There was an FBI agent fifty yards behind him when he jumped in front of the bus. You've met him, Pat O'Day. Nobody ever broke the law except for Cutter. The operations themselves were within the Constitution-at least that's what Shaw said.
But politically
Yeah, even I'm not that ignorant. So here I am, Arnie. I didn't break the law. I served my country's interests as best I could under the circumstances, and look what good it's done me.
Damn. How is it that Bob Fowler never was told?
That was Sam and Al. They thought it would have poisoned Fowler's presidency. Besides, I don't really know what the two of them said to the President, do I? I never wanted to know, I never found out,