Takedown

Driehaus was about to respond, when the secretary of state, Jennifer Staley, piped up and said, “As someone who deals with America’s image abroad on an around-the-clock basis, I want to put my two cents in here. Have the press leaks about our interrogations of detainees abroad hurt our image overseas? Yes, they definitely have. But the bottom line is that right or wrong, the United States is safer because of what we’re doing.”

“So we shouldn’t be concerned with what happens to these people once they’ve been handed over to another government?”

“When we render a suspect, that suspect is often being rendered to his or her country of origin or a country where that individual already has outstanding warrants. Despite how the press warps our involvement, we actually have very little control over what happens from that point forward.”

“So there’s a slice of absolution in it for us-a washing of the hands, as it were,” replied the DHS secretary.

Staley was much too intelligent to walk into that one. Instead she offered, “What I’ll say is that even our beloved President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. I think the intelligence we’ve gathered through extraordinary rendition speaks for itself.”

Driehaus looked around the table. “So I’m the only one? Nobody else has any concern about adding yet another name to the secret prisoner rolls of this policy?”

“Actually,” said a voice from the other end of the table, “I do.”

Stunned, all heads in the room turned to stare at the FBI director, Martin Sorce. Once he was sure he had everyone’s attention, the director continued, “This will be one of the highest-ranking al-Qaeda members we’ve ever taken down. But because of the wide coverage of extraordinary rendition, some of the more cooperative governments we’ve been working with have said they won’t take any more of our prisoners. We’ve also had a couple of so-called escapes, which we know al-Qaeda facilitated through bribes, payoffs, or intimidation of some of the people involved with these same governments.

“So, this isn’t as easy as throwing a dart at a map and asking the locals to warm up the coffee and jumper cables because we’ve got a new stepchild. For a prisoner this big and this dangerous, security has to be our number one issue. I want to know that whomever we park this cupcake with, they’re not going to lose him.”

“That’s a good point,” said the DCI. “Mohammed bin Mohammed’s capture will create a lot of special problems, and security will be the biggest. Al-Qaeda would do anything to get this guy back. If we let the Egyptians or Jordanians host him, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to hang on to him. Look at what happened to the USS Cole planners in Yemen. On the flip side, if we transport him to Gitmo, our hands are going to be tied in terms of how hard we can press him for details, and we are going to need that WMD transaction intelligence as soon as possible.”

“So where’s that leave us?” asked Attorney General Finley.

“Between a rock and a public relations hard place,” said the secretary of state. “While we can’t change the bad press we’ve already received, Secretary Driehaus does have a valid point. Whatever we do going forward, we’d better not screw it up.”

Three

After twenty more minutes of discussion, the president adjourned the meeting, informing the participants he would take their suggestions under advisement.

Quietly, Rutledge questioned why winning the war on terror and winning the war with the media seemed to be mutually exclusive. How many more September 11ths had to happen before the American people realized what a savage enemy they were facing? It was one of the most trying challenges of his administration, but the president knew that however unpopular his choices might be, he had to put the welfare of the country and its citizens first-even if many of them couldn’t stomach what had to be done.

As he was readying to leave the room, Secretary of Defense Robert Hilliman-a graying, heavyset man in his mid-sixties with wire-rimmed glasses and wearing a neatly pressed Brooks Brothers suit-asked, “Mr. President, may we have a moment of your time?” General Waddell stood next to him with a folder in his hand.

Once the rest of the cabinet members had left the situation room, Waddell handed the folder to Hilliman, who opened it and said, “Mr. President, immediately after 9/11 you asked me to task certain agencies within the Defense Department to develop a plan to handle the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants of significant intelligence value.”

“Which along with the CIA’s efforts is how we came up with extraordinary rendition,” replied the president.

“Yes, sir, but we at the Defense Department also foresaw a situation wherein operatives at the very top of al-Qaeda’s organizational pyramid, men like Mohammed bin Mohammed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or even bin Laden himself might pose a special set of challenges incongruent with our rendition policies.”