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Mclean, Virginia
The large conference table in the middle of the stadium styled Situation Room of the National Counterterrorism Center was sitting amid a growing landfill covered in trash. The only things missing were the birds who inhabit landfills in search of food and the smell of a landfill. However, the smell was rising.
The Director insisted the top of the large conference room table be clean always. The rule was calculated: No cleaning staff permitted to police the floor until his team broke the case.
Forcing his senior staff to sit in a rising tide of trash and meeting detritus was the price paid to work at the National Counterterrorism Center, and toiling for the biggest son-of-a-bitch in the world of the “good guys” working in counterterrorism.
The screaming, yelling, and profanity—hardly the stuff of leaders in the leadership literature—just wasn’t sufficient. Those behaviors only constituted an opening act in a longer play. Sitting in the middle of your trash, the team’s trash, was a not too subtle means of making one very important point: There was a growing sense of concern, the current case remained unsolved.
It was difficult to ignore the trash accumulating at their feet. The longer the case remained open, the more trash on the floor. Get enough trash on the floor, and those sitting at the conference table rested their feet on it. The carpet was covered in discarded matter. Beyond that point it becomes impossible to move chairs as the casters could no longer roll unimpeded. And, if the rising landfill didn’t serve as sufficient incentive, the Director increased the room temperature in the summer, lowered it in the winter.
Those sitting around the conference table worked their whole federal careers to get there to work for this person. Their discomfort was palpable to the others, but a badge of honor as well. They had each arrived in their respective fields. The lower graded, less senior staff working in the elevated periphery of the room, looked down into the trash strewn pit and asked themselves if this is what they wanted in the way of a career.
None of the less senior staff dared to leave the room while the Director was present. Anyone who ordered more food or drink had to toss the trash into the pit at the feet of his supervisor and the Director. Not wanting to add to the misery, some folk in the elevated seating started to fast. That was short-lived, at best. Sooner or later they had to eat, which meant they had to have food delivered, and eventually, they discarded their trash in the pit. The expectations were crystal clear.
In short, everything worked exactly as the Director intended. While a case was open, everyone was miserable. When they were miserable enough—which was his viewpoint—then they would get serious and find that important break needed to bring matters to a resolution.
HR Directors came and went. They all complained up their respective HR chains to the Director of National Intelligence, but all to no avail. So, the Center went through HR staff like shit through a goose. The Center Director minimized the chain of command for complaints by keeping the HR position vacant, as long as he could. That was his preference as well.
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Progress in the case just wasn’t happening. This was the Center’s first dirty bomb event in the homeland. Successful techniques and best practices employed in the past for other disasters failed this time around. Airline passenger lists were scanned for anomalies. Filtering criteria were broadly cast. They were looking for passengers with Middle Eastern names and surnames, surnames from the Caucasus in Europe and Asia, known persons of interest, and the aliases employed by foreign intelligence operatives traveling undercover in the U.S. The resulting list was huge. It seemed everyone of possible interest wanted to travel to Las Vegas.
The Director stood from his chair, bending over the table with his eyes downcast for dramatic effect. It succeeded. All talking slowly came to a halt. Writing instruments were laid on the table. When the quiet reached a crescendo he spoke. First in atypical hushed tones which escalated to a primal scream. People may have started to listen by leaning in. By the end of the tirade their spines fastened to their seat backs.
“This simply isn’t working. We have half the world’s known, or suspected, troublemakers traveling to, or through, Las Vegas. Do any of you smart people have a better idea?”
The quiet was punctuated by the sounds of feet and chair casters pushing around the trash on the floor. In the elevated seating, one of the junior analysts whispered to an adjacent analyst. In the acoustics of that room, the whisper might as well have been a scream.
“I’m sorry,” the Director bellowed, “Do you have something important to add?”
The junior analyst was terrified. He stood, somewhat uncertainly, “Um, I think—“
The Director slid over the trash to the railing separating the pit from the elevated seating.
“’Um’? What is ‘Um’? You can speak, can you not?”
Clearly, being singled out as the subject of the Director’s tirade was a new experience for the junior. His Adam’s apple vibrated prominently. Everyone present expected him to lose control of his bladder.
“Did they leave?” his voice breaking mid-sentence.
“’Leave?’ What do you mean ‘Leave’”?
“Did those arriving also leave? Did they fly in and then fly out?”
All the senior staff seated at the table got it.
The Director smiled, “Finally, someone asks an intelligent question.” Looking over at his PA, “Order in more pizza.”
More trash in the pit.
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All three recognized they’d taken the investigation as far as they could. Eddy believed she had enough to merit calling her former controller still working for the CIA.
The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, along with six other centers, reported to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. In theory, so did the Director of the CIA. In practice, the CIA was a world unto itself and honored this reporting structure to keep the peace in Congress and the White House.
The CIA Director attended the weekly meetings of the DNI. So, she knew what all her colleagues knew about the incident in the Mojave Desert, but it wasn’t on her beat. This was in the wheel house of the Counterterrorism folk.
Chuckling to herself, she couldn’t imagine the misery the Director was inflicting on his staff over at Counterterrorism.
She also chuckled at the way fate could intervene.
The CIA had no charter to conduct its operations in the homeland. Yet, the agency kept its collective ear to the ground for matters outside of its jurisdiction. Information, after all, was power. Invaluable information was real power.
Zelda, one of her secretaries, had a grandson matriculating as a freshman at UNLV. Zelda knew this grandchild better than his siblings and cousins, and she feared living away from home he’d be distracted to the detriment of his academic endeavors.
When her daughter boasted Jimmy was rushing a fraternity, Zelda kept her mouth shut. Her daughter was way too permissive with her sons—Zelda’s grandsons. And that would be fine if her damn son-in-law had a career and a job that could pay the tuition. He didn’t. So, she did. In her mind, that gave her a vote in what Jimmy did, or did not, do.
When she heard the story about Jimmy’s role in the stolen Christmas decoration and the frat house explosion, she laid down the law. Jimmy could attend George Mason University and live at home next semester, or her daughter and son-in-law could foot the bill going forward.
The Director chuckled as her secretary told her the story.
Then she remembered what she heard at that week’s meeting with the DNI.
Picking up the phone she called one of her minions. “Jack, does our bird tracking radiological signatures have any free time?”
“Director, we’re booked for the next month on most matters, and our ongoing surveillance over Iran never ends. At this rate, we’ll need that next satellite sooner than we planned.”
“Jack, what about time over the U.S.? Specifically, the greater Las Vegas metro area?”
“Director, you know—“
“Yes, Jack, I know the homeland is not on our beat. Nevertheless, can you check the logs on the bird to see if anything unusual took place recently?”
He did as he was asked.
He reported two events. One in the Mojave Desert northeast of Las Vegas, and another on the campus of UNLV.
Smiling, she picked up the phone and paused. Do I call the DNI or the ogre at the Counterterrorism Center?