Chapter 510

Tuesday morning the White House looked like a dealership dedicated to Suburbans, there were so many there. I laughed at the thought that most of them were owned by JBG. I wondered what the watchdogs in Congress would have to say about that, not that anyone cared at the moment.

The Task Force spent the morning looking at evidence from the attack on my convoy. A few cell phones and personal papers had been collected from the bodies. There was enough evidence collected off of two individuals to order another raid in Richmond Virginia for this afternoon.

At 1100 Troy called and asked me to come to the Oval Office. Senators Miller, Johnston, Wakefield and Haden were sitting at the big desk. There was one empty chair for me. I hated meetings when the last chair was for me.

I handed the President and Troy each a mug of coffee before I settled in the chair, “Black and one with cream and sugar, I believe.”

“You were invited to give a classified briefing to the DHS oversight committee but we withdrew the subpoena, given the events last week. There a couple of questions we would like to ask you, if you are up to answering them,” Senator Miller said.

“Go ahead, ask away,” I replied.

“It has come to our attention that you may have worked outside the scope of the Task Force and Judiciary on some terrorist issues, what is your response to that statement?” Senator Johnston asked.

“I will follow every lead to find the terrorists, their financiers, informants and sympathizers within the rules and outside the rules or military rules of engagement. They obey no rules in their quest to kill us. To even hold our own against them, we are going to have to do some distasteful things from time to time,” I replied.

“They have tried to kill me several times and now they threaten the committee members. The gloves are off and when I find them, no rules are going to apply while I extract revenge. Revenge is best served cold.”

“I will pursue them to the ends of the earth. With my last dying breath I will stab at their heart and with my last burst of energy I will shove the knife deep; I will kill them. I have made that quite clear in the past and it is even truer today,” I said.

“How would you feel if you had been a repeated target and now had a bounty on you? That bounty puts anyone and everyone, friends, family, associates and anyone you meet on the street in jeopardy,” I asked.

“Probably about the same as you do,” Senator Wakefield replied.

“The Senate is considering a proposal behind the scenes to make the Task Force a permanent fixture of the Justice Department. What are your thoughts on that?” Senator Miller asked.

“By being under the Justice Department, over time it will become a servant of the department and other needs of the department will be distracting from the war on terrorism,” I said.

“A terrorist task force needs to be independent and made up of members from within the enforcement agencies. It must be able to act on intelligence immediately. They must have the authority to pool all agents together when necessary. You have had various forms of a task force within agencies that were only marginally effective, let’s not go back there,” I added.

“How you do that, I have no idea. A cabinet position, another agency reporting to the President or both?” I asked.

“I agree the Justice Department is already a huge department and at times seems to be unresponsive to immediate needs. Making it bigger with more power is not the answer. Many Senators think a new agency dedicated to terrorism is appropriate,” Senator Miller replied.

He followed up that statement, “We would like to form a working committee with the current Task Force as a model to develop the new agency. The President has suggested that he is open to letting Ben Smith and you participate in those early planning sessions, if you have no objections,” he said.

“I will assist as much as I possibly can and I am sure Ben will also. I haven’t told the President yet so this will be his notice but I am going to be out of the country in about three weeks for a few days. When the dates firm up, I will let you know so we can plan around them,” I said.

I left early again today as did all the committee members at 1400 and was in the command center at 1530. Vicky, Ching Lee, Jake and Jason were waiting to fill me in on the Korean trip.

I listened to an enthusiastic recap of the Korea adventure and shopping spree in Japan. We girls had plenty of souvenir traditional Korean and Japanese clothes to try on tonight.

After all the stories, we started our normal meeting. I found out that Lorrie, Marcy and the lawyers had finally made it through the maze of the former Hartford Aggregate company to place an option on Pig Iron Point.

It was named Pig Iron Point because in the early days settlers collected iron nodules from the mud banks in the area and sold them to the local blacksmiths.

Pig Iron Point was made into small shipping terminal in the 1700s because of its deep water. When steam ships came to the bay, it was converted into a barge landing terminal.

Cambridge, Salisbury, Betterton and Baltimore became the major passenger steam ship stops.

In the thirties and forties cheap coal and lumber from the Carolinas and Virginia was off loaded from Norfolk, decades before the bridge tunnel was built. In the fifties, sixties and seventies Hartford started unloading crushed rock there for its aggregate business.