Chapter 153: From the Halls of Montezuma

Wednesday, July 9, 2003

On Saturday, July 5, I was doing my normal Saturday morning routine in the Oval Office, which was basically catching up on some paperwork and reading some briefing papers. It was a Saturday, so I didn’t have anything official planned and was, in fact, working in khakis and a rugby shirt. I was contemplating lunch with Marilyn when I got a call from the Situation Room. I picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Mister President, this is Colonel Withers. I am the duty officer in the Situation Room. We are monitoring a situation in Liberia that you should be aware of.”

So much for lunch. “Can you brief me here, or should I come down there?”

“It will be easier to discuss it here, sir.”

I nodded to myself. “Down in five.” I stood and slipped on my loafers, and then used my bathroom. When I left the Oval Office, I stopped at my secretary’s desk and told the Saturday fill-in. “I’m heading down to the Situation Room. Let the First Lady know I might not be around for lunch, please. Thank you.” She acknowledged the request, and I moved out, followed by an agent. I don’t think they are so worried about any danger inside the building, but they always want somebody who knows exactly where I am every second of the day.

I went down to the Situation Room and looked around it approvingly. Through most of 2002 and into 2003 the room had undergone a massive overhaul, and now actually looked like something from the 21^st century. Josh Bolten, on the other hand, had not been happy at all, since the room is directly under his, and the vibrations had been so bad that coffee cups would move around on his desk. I let him cut the ribbon when they reopened it, and made sure he got a picture, which only slightly mollified him.

I stepped inside and saw the usual staffers peering into computer monitors. One came towards me and straightened up. He had eagles on his Air Force uniform. “Colonel Withers?”

“Thank you for coming, Mister President.”

I reached out to shake his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Colonel. I don’t think I’ve had the privilege until now.”

“Just in passing, sir.”

“You said something about Liberia?”

He led me over to a chair at the head of a conference table facing a wall screen with a map of West Africa on it. “Yes, sir. Uh, Mister President, I am not sure just how much you know about Liberia, but they’ve had a civil war going on for a few years, and it has been heating up lately. Over the last few days things have been getting ugly.”

“You’ll have to give me a bit of a briefing, Colonel. I’ve never been there, but I know the grade school version. Small country, west coast of Africa, we set it up by sending back some freed slaves, the idea never really panned out, and now the place is a basket case like the rest of the continent,” I told him.

“That’s pretty much accurate. Ever since the Eighties the place has been in a constant state of war, as one rebel group after the other tries to overthrow the government and get their hands on the goodies. There is not much on the way of goodies, but if you control the government, you can rifle the piggy bank of any foreign aid money that comes in as well as control exports of illegal commodities like blood diamonds and timber,” he explained.

“Sounds about right. Don’t get me wrong, Colonel, but you just described about three quarters of the shitholes south of the Sahara. What makes Liberia important to me today?” I asked.

He nodded. “Sir, like I said, there has been a constant string of rebellions aimed at overthrowing the government. As a rule, that means taking control of Monrovia, the capital, which is where our embassy is, and everybody else’s embassy. Right now, the rebels are about to take over Monrovia and it is getting ugly. Furthermore, Liberia is considered as being part of the American sphere of influence.”

“Which means we need to send in the Marines,” I finished for him.

“It has happened in the past, sir. We’ve been monitoring the situation there for some time now, but the most recent cables from the embassy are indicating a higher than usual sense of alarm. You need to be briefed on the latest developments. We can do this here and now, or provide a more formal response later,” replied Colonel Withers.

I glanced at the wall clock. Lunch was shot, and probably my afternoon as well. “You’re doing fine so far, Colonel. Who do you have here? State? CIA? Can you give me a briefing?”

“Yes, sir.” He turned to somebody else. “Jerry, let’s go with the map of Liberia and move to the map of Monrovia and the surrounding area.” The map on the screen changed and I put my glasses on to see it better. A few other analysts came over to participate and I was introduced to them.

The long and the short of it was that the current government was under the control of President-For-Life Charles Taylor, a homicidal maniac if ever there was one. There were two separate rebel movements, one in the north and one in the south, both of which wanted to replace Taylor and take all the marbles for themselves. From what I was hearing, they were as equally murderous as he was. America had avoided taking any sides because, aside from the human rights aspects of letting murderous cutthroats run loose, we simply didn’t care. The general rule was to let them kill each other off just so long as they left the embassy people alone. When they started getting rambunctious towards the foreigners, we would send in the Marines and rescue the foreigners, and let the locals simply kill each other. Eventually things would settle down, and we would let the foreigners go back or go home.

I listened to this, and when it started getting too detailed, I closed it out. “What have we been hearing out of State on this? Are they in the loop? They must be.”

“Yes, sir. We simply get their feed as far as it involves possible military action.”

I nodded at that. Just then, somebody else in the room said, “Hold for a moment, he’s right here.” He looked over at the colonel and me and said, “Secretary Powell is on the line and looking for you, Mister President.”

I nodded at Colonel Withers. “Speak of the devil.” I motioned to the other officer and he hit a button on the phone, and it rang to the one in front of me. “Colin?”

“Carl, I am hearing some very disturbing things out of Monrovia,” stated the Secretary of State.

“You caught me in a briefing on that. If you hadn’t called me, I was going to call you.”

“I think we need to discuss some possible emergency measures,” he told me.

I nodded to myself. “I was just getting to that. Let’s get the NSC to meet first thing Monday morning. I will pass the word. In the meantime, you stay on top of it, and I’ll do the same.”

“Agreed. I thought you would be aware of this, but it never hurts to check.”

“Also agreed. Talk soon.” We hung up, and I turned back to Colonel Withers. “Okay, so what do you want me to do about this? Is it time to send in the Marines? Who do we have available, anyway?”

He turned to somebody else. “Jerry, give me the big map.” A large map of Africa and the Southern Atlantic went up on the screen. “We have a few options, Mister President.” Several icons for ships went onto the map. “The nearest is the Tarawa Amphibious Ready Group, here, off the coast of Angola. They were doing some readiness training with the Angolans, but we can pull them out and send them towards Liberia by this evening. They will be in place by tomorrow night.”

“Okay, let’s make that happen. I want a formal presentation for Monday morning, for the entire National Security Council. I want an update and options,” I ordered. “Let the appropriate people know. Also, pass the word to the NSC about the meeting.”

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir, we’ll make that happen.” Around him the others nodded as well.

“Thank you, gentlemen, ladies. With any luck, this will all blow over. Is that it or can I go?”

“That was it, Mister President. Thank you for coming down.”

I left and headed up to the Residence. I didn’t need to let Marilyn know how the world was falling apart, so I watched some television and played with the dog, while she worked on some knitting. I didn’t even think all that much of it on Sunday. Nine times out of ten, these things fade away and blow over, and even though Charlie was with the Tarawa group, the odds that he would get involved were extremely low.

Monday morning at 9:00 the National Security Council met in the Situation Room. Josh was with me, and we grabbed Ari and dragged him along for good measure. Unlike the informal shirtsleeve atmosphere of Saturday morning, today everybody was in their Class A’s. This time the briefer was a Brigadier General Smith, from the Army, although I saw Colonel Withers hanging around in the background. I started by saying, “I assume everybody knows why we’re here. Has everybody had a chance to get some background on this?”

Most of the people just nodded and said yes. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said, “Yes. Nothing much has changed since we talked Saturday morning, but the overall tone I am getting out of Monrovia is that things are deteriorating.”

Vice President McCain said, “Cindy and I were in Phoenix over the weekend. I only learned yesterday about this in the PDB, but I had my NIO give me a follow-up.”

“Good.” You don’t play the game at this level without being prepared. I looked at the general. “Well, is it good news or bad?”

General Smith answered, “If it was good, sir, we would have let you know so that you wouldn’t need to be here. No, it’s bad and getting worse.” He launched into a slicker and smoother briefing than what I got from Withers the other day, but he covered much of the same ground. Eventually he got to the specifics, which were worrisome. “So, we have two rebel factions, each of which is supported by a neighboring country looking to grab some land or influence. In the southeast you have the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, which is funded by Cote D’Ivoire. In the northwest you have the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy or LURD, which is backed by Guinea. Mind you, none of these guys are interested in democracy or reconciliation. It’s more like a pack of hyenas fighting over an old bone.”

I grimaced and nodded.

Smith continued. “The real nasties are the ones in the northwest, the LURD. They’ve been at this longer, and they’ve been committing atrocities just as much as Taylor and his bunch have. Again, nothing unusual there. The problem is that Taylor and what passes for the government is collapsing. Both rebel groups are surrounding Monrovia and beginning to press inward. Nobody is paying much attention to civilian status or noncombatants, but they are just killing everybody they see. LURD is the worst. LURD is beginning to mortar and shell the city, indiscriminately at first, but then they began targeting white owned and foreign sections of the city, including the embassy area.”

“Are we getting any evidence of formal anti-foreigner or genocidal rhetoric out of these groups?” asked Condi Rice.

“Yes, ma’am.” Smith pointed to somebody, and a slide went up on the screen, and some red dots appeared on the map of Monrovia. “We are catching some radio traffic directing rebel units towards foreign residential districts, mortar and artillery attacks have been reported by French journalists - here and here - and a Belgian convent hospital was attacked this morning and the foreign-born nuns were brutalized and killed. I would also point out that only the white nuns and nurses were harmed. African - black African - individuals were simply beaten and sent down the road. Many of the whites killed were also African, but they were labeled as colonialists and foreigners.”

Neither Condi Rice nor Colin Powell made any kind of comment on this. They were the most senior African-Americans in the Cabinet, but the emphasis was on American with both of them.

I looked at Colin and asked, “What are you hearing from the Ambassador?”

“The ambassador is a man named Bismarck Myrick. I’ve checked his background and talked to him a couple of times. He’s been a Foreign Service Officer for years. Before that he was in the Army and saw a lot of action in Viet Nam. He’s got a Purple Heart, four Bronze Stars, and a Silver Star. I simply point that out to show that he knows combat and he doesn’t get nervous easily. He told me the place is as bad as he’s ever seen a situation, and he’s carrying a pistol under his jacket. There is recurring mortar fire in the embassy areas, from which side nobody really knows or cares, and the city is descending into anarchy.”

Tom Ridge whistled and said, “He went through all of that, and he ends up back in a hellhole like this? Oh, brother!”

I muttered, “Shit!” to myself and shook my head in disgust. Then I looked at Smith. “All right, let’s get these guys out of there. Did that amphibious group get into position?”

“Elements are in position now, sir.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

The map of West Africa went back up to the screen. “The Tarawa group consists of the Tarawa, a helicopter carrier carrying Harriers, helicopters, and about 2,000 Marines, the Duluth, an amphibious transport carrying more helicopters and another 900 or so Marines, and the Fort McHenry, a smaller amphibious transport, which carries about 400 Marines. These transports are accompanied by a protective screen of cruisers and destroyers, and always have a dedicated surveillance element of P-3 Orions and, in this case, a Los Angeles class attack sub.” Several bright blue lights showed up on the map. One was off the coast of Liberia, but the other two were still near Angola. “When you gave the order, the Duluth was in port in Luanda, and had to recall her sailors and Marines from training. The Tarawa and the Fort McHenry were ordered to sail ahead of the Duluth, but the Tarawa suffered an engineering casualty and was delayed. The Fort McHenry, accompanied by the Burke class destroyer Cole, went on ahead. The Tarawa managed to transfer a significant helicopter element to the Fort McHenry before she left. She and the Duluth are expected to be on station by this evening.”

“Uh, pardon me for sounding stupid, but what’s an engineering casualty? Was somebody hurt?” I asked.

General Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, answered, “No, sir, it means the Navy broke their boat. It happens, probably in the turbine or drive train assembly. My understanding is that repairs are being made and they are already underway, but at a reduced rate of speed. They will be in place by tonight.”

“And if we need to do something before then?”

“Then the Marines on the Fort McHenry go in. They have air cushion landing craft and helicopters for transport, and some of the helicopters will be rigged for fire support. The Cole also has guns and helicopters. We will also be pursuing very limited results. Unless you say otherwise, our goal will be to protect the embassy and rescue the staff. We have the resources ready to do that, sir.”

I looked around the room. “Is that the goal? Rescue the embassy staff and let the locals kill each other? Or does anybody want us to do more?” I asked.

“What about the other embassies in the city? The French? The Belgians? Anybody else?” asked Condi.

“We need to consider it, Mister President,” added Colin. “If nothing else, it racks up some serious Brownie points with our allies. None of them have any ability to get in there until the middle of the week.”