47

EN ROUTE TO COROLLA, NORTH CAROLINA

Marcus and Annie kept driving.

But they were riveted by the discussion.

The first five questions were about Clarke’s condition. For these, Hernandez deferred to Dr. Lenkowski and his team.

The sixth question was about the timeline of events and why the White House had taken so long to send Clarke to Walter Reed and not informed the public earlier. Hernandez took full responsibility for not being more forthcoming and said it had been necessary to keep the situation quiet until they had more answers.

The seventh question was aimed at the wisdom of invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment when it had never been invoked in this way before. For this, Hernandez turned to the attorney general.

“Congress took up this whole question of the temporary relinquishment of power by the chief executive after the assassination of President Kennedy,” Catherine Blackburn began. “They asked, ‘What if JFK had not died immediately from his wounds but had lingered on indefinitely? Would LBJ have legally been the president of the United States, with all the necessary powers to lead and protect the country?’ At the time, there was no clear-cut constitutional answer. Death provided clarity. But incapacity—temporary or permanent—created a legal gray area. Yet in the coldest years of the Cold War, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the escalations in the Vietnam War, Congress decided that such legal ambiguity was dangerous. So the people’s representatives moved to clarify the situation.”

Blackburn noted that the question was not theoretical. Earlier in the century an assassin’s bullet had severely wounded President James Garfield but had not immediately killed him. Unlike Kennedy, Garfield had lingered for eighty days, enduring unsanitary—and painful—attempts to surgically remove the bullet.

She also recounted the case of President Woodrow Wilson. After a nationwide speaking tour by train, Wilson developed a high fever and severe headaches. Yet he had refused to stop working or even slow down. Wilson’s wife, Edith, found him collapsed on the floor after an address in Colorado, his face twitching uncontrollably. White House aides kept the president’s condition private and got him back to Washington. But in the wee hours of October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed and barely able to function.

“Incredibly, the White House hid these facts from the press for the next several months,” Blackburn said. “The story did not emerge in the papers until the following February. During that time, the president’s health continued to deteriorate, yet Wilson refused to resign, and his VP—Thomas Marshall—refused to assume his powers. Thus, the nation was in limbo for more than a year until Wilson completed his term and left office in March of 1921, and neither the vice president nor Congress nor the American people had any recourse.”

Annie had heard enough and was about to turn the radio off, but before she could, Carolyn Tam of CNN asked Hernandez for his reaction to her report and the NSC audio recordings of the presentation made by CIA agent Marcus Ryker.

“Carolyn, as you can imagine, I’ve had my hands full with far more pressing matters, so I’m afraid I haven’t seen your report.”

“But you were at the NSC meeting,” she countered.

“I was.”

“So you heard Agent Ryker tell the president that Abu Nakba was in that compound, correct?”

“First of all, this was an unconscionable breach of U.S. national security,” Hernandez said. “I believe in the freedom of the press, so I don’t blame you and your colleagues for reporting it. But whoever gave you such classified material is guilty of very serious crimes, and I guarantee you this will not go unnoticed or unpunished.”

“But about Agent Ryker specifically, sir . . . ?” Tam insisted.

“Carolyn, I’m not going to comment on the specifics,” he replied. “All I can tell you at this point is that President Clarke’s last action before he collapsed was to suspend Mr. Ryker from government service, without pay, pending a full investigation.”

Marcus’s grip on the wheel tightened. He’d just been thrown to the wolves by the acting president of the United States, with all of his many enemies watching in delight.