Chapter 44

As soon as I walked into the meeting room Senator Williams said, ‘‘It took you long enough to come talk to us.’’

‘‘After the EPA fiasco Saturday morning, the B21 bomber fiasco Friday night and the Navy fiasco in the East China Sea, my weekend has been spent on the phone and meetings, so, I ended up with no weekend,’’ I said.

‘‘My morning has been filled with emergency meetings that were scheduled because of the weekend messes and there are still more scheduled for today. This is an unscheduled meeting that I really don’t have time for. I am here for now, so let’s get started,’’ I said.

‘‘We want to know what you are going to do about the EPA mess. Lots of people are raising hell - as I am sure you know - and the media is screaming to the moon, fueling the fire,’’ Senator Williams said, I took it that he was the spokesperson for the group.

‘‘It is still a work in progress, but I can assure you the actions I take will be decisive and dramatic. I fully expect there will be plenty of anger and screaming at me from all directions afterwards,’’ I said.

‘‘I will tell you now the EPA is not the only agency to feel the ‘Wrath of Khan’ coming their way. To put it bluntly I am pissed, these kinds of tactics and actions by agencies have been addressed by Congressional hearings, along with communications from the executive branch,’’ I said.

‘‘I know for a fact that President Thomas had multiple meetings with agency directors while I was chairperson of the terrorism task force oversite committee because I sat in on those meetings,’’ I said.

‘‘As I said, the plans have not been finalized so I will make no comments about them today. I will address the nation at 1400 tomorrow and lay it all out. Between now and then multiple things are going to be happening to multiple federal agencies that report to the executive branch,’’ I said.

‘‘Hopefully before the day is out, I will have enough information from the Kentucky investigation to make educated decisions. I ordered the preliminary investigation to be completed yesterday and to be on my desk this morning. As of yet it has not arrived. Obviously, I am not happy,’’ I added.

An aid knocked on the door and handed me a note. I had asked that the security clearance level of all in the room be checked. They all had classified level clearance. I wanted to be sure before I said anything that would cause me more trouble.

‘‘What the latest on the B21 crash? We are getting nothing from the Pentagon except a canned response,’’ Senator Adams said.

Senator Adams was the chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee.

‘‘Any discussion about the crash is classified at this time. This meeting is over. Will the members of the two armed services committees stay, and I will give you a quick update,’’ I said.

There was plenty of grumbling, but they left. I had six members still in the room after the others left.

Connie passed out another confidentially statement and a classified materials statement for all to sign.

‘‘What you are about to hear is currently classified to the highest levels. There were four B21s flying in a tight formation. It was a nuclear weapons sortie. Two of the planes were carrying 4 type 10 multiple warhead nuclear cruise missiles,’’ I said.

‘‘The warheads on the other two planes that crashed had a depleted uranium ball instead of the actual active plutonium ball. That squadron with those two planes was the decoy flight,’’ I said. ‘‘There was a second four plane squadron fifty miles west that all four had the real deal for missiles and warheads. The two groups were to fly to Guam and return,’’ I said.

‘‘There are six four plane groups of B21’s flying every day. The groups are in the air around the clock. Two planes have dummy missiles and two have live missiles,’’ I said.

‘‘One of those two planes that crashed was hit with multiple rounds of small arms as it crossed over the northern edge of Carlisle. The crew said it was over a hundred rounds while in communications before they crashed,’’ I said.

‘‘Some of the rounds apparently hit control computers or wiring, resulting in loss of control and the collision. The crews stayed with the crashing planes while trying to direct them from residential areas. They did so successfully, but at the cost of their lives. That is why the entire crews were lost - they didn’t eject,’’ I said.

‘‘The FBI and CIA are investigating, we do have the GPS location where they began taking the small arms fire to narrow the search field down,’’ I said.

‘‘The next part of the weekend’s fiasco; the USS Nevada collided with an underwater object at depth of 700 feet in the East China Sea. We believe it was a North Korean submarine that they had been looking for,’’ I said.

‘‘North Korea lost contact with it five days ago, two days before the collision. We believe it was a dead submarine adrift in the current. At this time that is all I can say, the investigation continues,’’ I said.

‘‘You know the political climate with them. Until this works through the process, we are taking no chances with them. That is why the B21 flights,’’ I said.

‘‘This information will be released to the public at the 1400 news conference tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a lot more information by then,’’ I said.

‘‘I would stay and talk longer but I have other very critical meetings all day as you can imagine,’’ I said. I then added, ‘‘Remember, this has been a classified briefing.’’ Carl handed me a handful of notes, the first was to call General Ingram.

‘‘The Nevada arrived at the Sasebo Naval Base in Japan thirty minutes ago. It is going in the dry dock today to assess the damage. The injured are going to the base hospital,’’ that was from the Chief of Naval Operations That was one more call I needed to make sometime today. As soon as the damage assessment was done, I was sure the sub would be loaded on a barge and returned to the states for repairs that could take years. I wanted the entire crew brought to Washington for interviews away from the Navy I went looking for Eric, Marty and Fritzpatrick, hoping they were still in the cafeteria. They weren’t, they were in the lobby talking with General Ingram who had a hand full of papers for a meeting that was going to be delayed a little while.