Chapter 11

The next few days were a relief; the prisoners were gone and I had no need to go to Washington. I got to spend time holding little babies and playing with the boys.

All of us girls spent a lot more time in the gym; there was no way I could hold my own against the Mossad ladies in my present condition. It was going to take awhile to get back to where I was.

I spent hours on the shooting range; getting shot at will make you want to be perfect with your return shots.

The gun club had several new assault rifles and handguns they wanted me to look at and try out on the range; newer, faster action, larger clips. No one was saying anything outright but everybody had something they wanted me to look at that would help protect me.

The people who made our bullet resistant vests brought a van full of new designs they wanted us to evaluate. They even brought some of the new advanced body armor. They also asked if they could test and photograph the vest I had been wearing in Portugal.

Photograph and inspect yes ; test no, most testing of that type involved some destruction. It was already hung on the wall in my office with the others as a reminder of just how close I had come to dying; not that I needed a reminder.

The down side was I needed make more trips abroad so the planning began. This time the girls laid down the law; I was going to one country and then returning home so no one would be able to figure out where I was going next. The trips were not going to start until after Harrisburg.

It was Thursday morning as I made my way to Washington; I had a 1000 meeting with Dick James, the Secretary of State. The meeting lasted until noon time as we reviewed the reports that my trip to Portugal and Spain had generated.

As usual - with the bureaucratic bull that accompanied the government - another internal audit and review process was also developed. Just more months wasted and extra time to allow the bosses to cover their collective asses.

Meanwhile the NSA, DHS, and the FBI were to given a list of all those who were given immigration status approval, green cards or asylum to find, interview and do thorough background checks on, if they could find them. Let the fun begin I thought.

Troy and Harry joined me at my table as I was picking over my salad and my thoughts.

“Your media friends are asking if you are going to address them today while you are here,” Harry said.

“I hadn’t planned on it; I have a full schedule,” I replied.

I did have a full schedule so I was not lying and I really did not have much I could say.

At 1300 I was in my new office with the reports from my meeting with Dick and the finalized report from my trip to Portugal. I was waiting on Ambassador Oliver Taylor to arrive.

I had wondered again why I was asked to doing this kind of interview with someone who should have had more rank and privilege than I did.

Digging through the official duties and guidelines for the oversight committee that I was now chairperson of, I found bits and pieces. On page 844, section D, subsection nine, amendment two, line forty four, item three was one paragraph that summed it up.

“On the recommendation of the committee, any employee of any government agency including Congress; involved at any level of national security or international affairs or national defense could face discipline including; criminal charges, immediate termination for failure to carry out reasonable security measures or oversight of any employees assigned to them, breach of security or espionage.”

It gave department heads five days to carry out the committee recommendations.

The scope of the term ‘measures’ was three pages long and covered everything from spying, cyber security by agency, physical security of all government installations, personnel and more. There were three more pages of definitions of measures.

The committee was to be the enforcement arm eliminating departmental and Congressional politics, if that was ever possible. I did not think any of it would hold up in any kind of court challenge.

Reading in-between the lines, high level government officials had finally had enough of the stone-walling of agencies protecting their own, massive bureaucracy processes that never resulted in anything more than news print. If it was connected to national security, the committee was to be the hammer.

My reporting to Congress was a cover for those politicians. The agencies did not know - or maybe they did - the firestorm that I could create with the power they had given the committee.