The Global War on Morris (13 page)

THE DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL PROGRAMS

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2004

“A
s if Saturday morning with Cheney isn't creepy enough!” Jon Pruitt sighed when he saw Scooter Libby and Karl Rove rushing toward him in the darkened West Wing corridor fronting the Vice President's office. Since it was Saturday, the White House tempo was relaxed. But those two made up for it with their determined march.

“You see this!” Libby excitedly waved a bunch of newspapers at Pruitt. “They're questioning the President's record in Vietnam! This is the Democrat playbook. To distract the American people from al-Qaeda with smear attacks on the President's military record! His military record! It's over the line!” Libby slapped the newspapers against his palm for emphasis.

“We can't go into the convention with this story!” warned Rove. “We need to change the focus back to our sweet spot.”

Fear
, thought Pruitt.
E pluribus petrified.

“So what's our status with an upgraded threat alert?” Libby asked.

“Again, I'm unaware of any specific intelligence that justifies an increase in the threat alert.”

Libby rolled his eyes then whispered, “Are you going to the Vice President's Special Programs meeting?”

“What ‘Special Programs' meeting? I don't know anything about that.”

“Oh, that's right” Libby cooed. “You're not authorized to attend the ‘Special Programs' meetings. Too bad.”

Pruitt felt a twist in his appendix. “I'm here because the Vice President asked me for a homeland security briefing on the Republican Convention.” And then asked, “What ‘Special Programs'?”

“Really can't say. Evidently you're not authorized to know.”

“I'm Special Counsel to the Secretary of Homeland Security. I should know.”

“If you should know, you would know. Since you don't, you shouldn't.”

Pruitt's momentary confusion was interrupted by a secretary informing them that the Vice President was waiting for them.

Behind his desk, Cheney sat like a statue. Same cool texture. Same frozen expression. Same blue suit and red tie even on a Saturday morning in August. On an opposite wall, three muted television screens showed helicopter footage of a mass of pre-convention protesters in New York. An undulating blue line of cops was attempting to contain them in a fenced-off area, like trying to get thousands of charging bulls into a pen.

“Sit down,” Cheney instructed. Rove and Libby sat together on a couch, and faced the Vice President. Pruitt remained standing.

“What's our status?” Cheney asked.

“Mr. Vice President, we've increased the threat assessment in the vicinity of the convention.”

Libby said, “The whole country should be put on alert. I mean,
look at that!” He pointed to the televisions.

“Half of the protesters are undercover,” Pruitt said. “The other half are exercising their constitutional rights.”

“I'm sorry,” Libby sneered. “I didn't realize you dropped out of the Federalist Society and joined the ACLU.”

“Would you like a free copy of the Bill of Rights?”

“Want to compare my degrees from Yale and Columbia with your degrees from . . . exactly which public college did you go to?” asked Libby.

“Hold it.” Cheney raised his hands to impose order. And let the silence work on Pruitt's nerves. “Do you have anything else?”

“Yes, sir.” Pruitt gulped hard. “What ‘special programs' do you meet about?”

Cheney simply stared, as if the question hadn't been asked.

“Does the White House counsel know about these special programs? Justice Department? Anyone?”

“That's none of your business!” Libby snapped.

“I am bound by my constitutional oath—”

“Here we go again,” muttered Libby. “With the Constitution.”

Cheney raised his hands again. “Mister Pruitt, don't take my lack of response to your question as a confirmation or a denial. As for your constitutional obligations, I am the Vice President. A constitutional officer, elected by the people, just like the President. With certain rights and responsibilities. Invested with certain authorities. Some of which you may be aware of. Some of which you may be unaware of.”

“We don't know what you know. We don't know what you don't know.” Rove snickered.

Cheney continued, folding his hands in front of him. “Now, as to the matter at hand. If DHS is of the opinion that there are no threats justifying an increased alert level, the DHS is entitled to its opinion. But it is only an opinion. We will use every means to assess threat and respond accordingly.”

The words “every means” made Pruitt wince.

“Have a good day,” Cheney said. Which, Pruitt concluded, was Cheney's way of saying, “Have a nice life.” He stood, convinced that he had just submitted his resignation from the Bush Administration. Or his death warrant. He wasn't sure which.

“All right then,” Pruitt said. It wasn't the dramatic exit line that brought down the curtain. It wasn't exactly Nathan Hale, regretting that he had only one life to give for his country. It was just the best he could come up with. “All right then.”

After he left, Libby blew an angry gust of air. “Those guys at DHS just . . . don't . . . get it!”

“It really doesn't matter,” Cheney replied. “We don't need DHS to advise us on threats. We can put other oars in the water.”

NICK
, thought Libby. Cheney's “Special Program.”

Cheney fixed his eyes on the television screens. The NYPD was moving against the demonstrators. But every pressure point created a surge somewhere else. Like squeezing a water balloon.

Those poor, naïve people
, he thought.
Who have no idea how the world works. Who want to read Miranda rights on the battlefield to people plot
ting to blow up more of our buildings. The Blame-America-First crowd. The Bush-haters. The idealists and anarchists. With their bandanas and their bicycles. The ACLU and MoveOn and the Audubon Society. Carrying their signs with one hand and a Starbucks Mint Chocolate Chip Frappuccino with the other. The coddled and the cushy. Who get their news from NPR instead of the CIA. Those frighteningly naïve people. Without the slightest idea just how dark and messy and bloody it is out there. In the caves and mountains and the mosques. Where the enemy watches and waits. Buying, trading, selling the components for the next attack. Or attacks. Killing and beheading and dismembering . . .

Cheney felt his heart thumping.

Go ahead. Protest us. Picket us. Keep whining. Every day you remind America about how unsafe we'll be if you get your way. How the Democrats will take the global War on Terror from the battlefield to a
UN cocktail party. How the biggest army in America will be the Legal Aid lawyers representing enemy noncombatants.

Cheney looked at the morning newspapers that he had read earlier, piled on the far corner of his desk.

In four days I will remind the American people what really counts. Their survival. In four days.

U
ntil that one moment when all hell broke loose, Caryn Feldstein's video camera was documenting a party. They chanted and sang. They clasped hands and waved their arms and hoisted their signs high above their heads. They embraced and laughed in common cause.

She stood near the front of the crowd. She wanted to arrive early to establish a sense of place and find the perfect angles. She left her studio apartment at ten, wearing denim shorts, Nike sneakers, and a red
IMPEACH BUSH
T-shirt. Carrying her Canon High Definition camcorder with 24-105 mm lens (equipment that required a considerable number of overtime hours at the Gap, where she worked as she planned her career as a famous filmmaker). She took the subway to Penn Station, emerging into a circus atmosphere. Thousands of delegates milling around, their convention credentials tangled with camera straps around their necks. Vendors with thick New York accents hawked souvenirs: Bush-Cheney coffee mugs, Bush-Cheney T-shirts, and official Republican National Convention 2004 refrigerator magnets. American flags were everywhere, and in every form, stenciled and silk-screened. The delegates believed that the Constitution of the United States should be amended to protect the flag from desecration. With a waiver for certain undergarments and glow-in-the-dark flyswatters.

Caryn found the protesters in the official protest area, close enough to the convention site to avoid an ACLU lawsuit on First Amendment grounds, but distant enough so that they wouldn't inconvenience the delegates. Because those who attended the convention to support the Administration's fight for freedom around
the world shouldn't have to encounter freedom around the block. There's a place for freedom. Preferably out of the angles of network cameras.

She pushed her way into the crowd, in order to draw her audience into the scene. To capture the moment with close-ups.

Then things got too close.

She felt that first shove from behind. Not too forceful, just enough to bend her knees and loosen her footing. “Whoah!” she complained as she tried to hold her position and her camera at the same time. But the pressure only increased, like a wave gathering in strength.

She felt her grip on the camera loosen. It fell from her hands, swallowed in the crush of people. It bounced off bodies until she heard the sickening sound of metal and glass hitting pavement, and crunching under countless feet.

Her arms and legs were locked with other arms and legs, as she was swept forward. The smell of perspiring bodies, compressed under a warm sun, choked her. The feel of her flesh against other flesh nauseated her. Her ears thundered as helicopters seemed to roar down on them, to the cries of “Stop pushing!” and “Quit shoving!” Then the rogue wave began breaking—toward a distinct blue line of police.

Later, the conspiracy theorists would insist the whole affair was instigated by moles inserted into the crowd to discredit the protests, placed there by a cabal consisting of the police themselves, the CIA and FBI, the International Monetary Fund, and “Corporate America.”

But at that moment, as Caryn Feldstein and her cohorts were in a wave crashing toward the New York Police Department, conspiracy theories were irrelevant. Physics was operating, the physics of mass and velocity and momentum. Caryn tumbled forward, trying to break the momentum by planting her feet, watching through flailing limbs as she hurled toward that blue line.

Caryn Feldstein, proud former candy striper at North Shore–Long Island Jewish Hospital, cofounder and copresident of the Great Neck High School Vegans' Club (incessantly mocked by fellow students as the Great Neck High School Virgins' Club), member of the Brandeis University Environmental Justice Student Organization, and current employee at the Gap would now have a new biographical entry. For the rest of her life, when she filled out an application for employment or credit, where it says, “Have you ever been arrested?” she would have to answer “Yes.” Of course, she could go on to append the form: “But the charges were dropped. And it wasn't really anything bad. I was filming a protest. At the Republican National Convention. Using my lens to uncover the role of government in suppressing dissent in a free society. For a documentary I was going to call ‘Gag Rule.' It's not like I robbed a bank.” But most forms didn't offer space for such explanations.

Later, scuffed and bruised, sniffing back sobs, Caryn hurried across Thirty-Second Street, toward the Hudson River, to get as far away as she could from the sounds of the sirens and helicopters and the indignant chanting of the remaining protesters. The farther she walked, the quieter it became. Until all she could hear, strangely, was the soft voice of her father, whose advice, she now realized, may have some merit after all: “Why make waves?”

H
ungrily, NICK consumed the news. Absorbing the police reports from New York, the names and fingerprints and photographs.

Caryn Feldstein. Twenty-three. Daughter of Morris and Rona. Morris, person of interest for his known association with Victoria D'Amico. Victoria D'Amico, a known associate of medical counterfeiter Ricardo Xavier Montoyez. All believed to be involved in a drug conspiracy to finance terrorist operations against the interests of the government of the United States.

This Morris Feldstein was beginning to piss NICK off.

NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2004

“F
our more years! Four more years! Four more years!”

Vice President Cheney soaked in the deafening roar at Madison Square Garden. He tried to wave as practiced, but his stiff movements made him look as if he were swatting at the audience. A towering graphic of an American flag sparkled behind him.

Seventy-one years after FDR calmed the nation by assuring them there was nothing to fear but fear itself, it was now up to Cheney to make his prime-time national audience shit in their pants with fear.

When the chanting subsided, the Vice President proclaimed, “Mister chairman, delegates, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: I accept your nomination for vice president of the United States!”

“Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!”

Cheney grew impatient, thinking,
Let me get to the point
.

He marched through the early parts of his speech. Ticking-off the obligatory references to domestic issues as if they were irrelevant
distractions.

Then he pronounced “September eleventh, 2001.” He felt the words heavy on his tongue but also deep in his chest.

“On that day we saw the harm that could be done by nineteen men armed with knives and boarding passes. America also awakened to a possibility even more lethal: this enemy, whose hatred of us is limitless, armed with chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. . . .”

The hall was now still and silent.

“The fanatics who killed some three thousand of our fellow Americans may have thought they could attack us with impunity, because terrorists had done so previously. But if the killers of September eleventh thought we had lost the will to defend our freedom, they did not know America, and they did not know George W. Bush.”

He waited for the applause to die down. It seemed like hours.

He pushed through, his impatience growing. Reminding Americans about the hundreds of al-Qaeda members killed or captured, the terrorist camps destroyed, the weapons of mass destruction secured. Kind of.

Now, he was approaching his target. A few more passages. Just around the next rhetorical turn. Right . . . there: John Kerry.

The words tasted sour in Cheney's mouth as he spat them. “Senator Kerry began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed ‘only at the directive of the United Nations.' ”

Angry boos thundered through the hall.

“. . . Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan's major defense initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War.”

“Booo!”

“. . . Senator Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm!”

“Booo!”

Cheney paused. The way the speech coach suggested. To shift gears. To bring the audience to a different place.

“Even in this post–nine-eleven period, Senator Kerry doesn't
appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a ‘more sensitive war on terror.' ”

Derisive laughter echoed in the hall.

“. . . As though al-Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.”

More laughter.

“He declared at the Democratic Convention that he will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked. My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked!”

The audience erupted in applause. Cheney heard a few spontaneous chants, then more, until all of Madison Square Garden was booming, “USA! USA! USA!”

He continued: “. . . Senator Kerry also takes a different view when it comes to supporting our military. Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field!”

“Flip-flop! Flip-flop! Flip-flop!”

Cheney hated giving speeches. But this speech was almost fun. And almost over.

“. . . We all remember that terrible morning when, in the space of just one hundred and two minutes, more Americans were killed than we lost at Pearl Harbor. We remember the president who came to New York City and pledged that the terrorists would soon hear from all of us.”

Applause.

“George W. Bush saw this country through grief and tragedy. He has acted with patience and calm and a moral seriousness that calls evil by its name.”

Applause.

“. . . When this convention concludes tomorrow night, we will go
forth with confidence in our cause and in the man who leads it. By leaving no doubt where we stand and asking all Americans to join us, we will see our cause to victory!”

“Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!”