Chapter 516

Monday morning started off with a bang. The second pot of coffee had just finished percolating when Troy and the President walked in.

Troy was holding a folder that he put on the table while he filled his coffee mug. After he and the President had taken a seat, he slid the folder to me. It contained pictures from the Ambassador’s Ball. There had been flash drives given to everyone as we left.

I looked through them, realizing that I needed to do the same; print them off and write on the back who all the important people were to reminisce about if I lived long enough to get old.

The last dozen or so pictures were of me dancing with my mates, “Beautiful ladies indeed! I’m so lucky they are with me for life. It must drive some men mad that they are so beautiful, so wealthy, have no interest in men and are totally off limits,” I said.

“I was thinking the same thing; I hear they are driven and as determined as you” the President said as he closed the folder.

“All the feedback we have heard has been positive. You said the right words at the right times to people that make a living out of skewing one’s words for political or personal advantage,” Troy said. “Obviously well done.”

The President had only been gone a few minutes when Agent North called, “We have an attorney here from the DC center demanding to see the Muslim detainee to ensure that his religious needs are being properly supplied.”

“No name?” I asked.

“No Ma-am,” North replied.

“Tell him that our detainee is Catholic and the Cardinal is attending to his needs; then tell him to go pack sand up his ass and not to let the door hit him on the way out,” I replied.

“Ma-am, are you sure you want me to tell him that?”

“Do I need to repeat it for you?” I asked.

“No Ma-am!” Agent North replied.

I turned my attention to Gitmo and Agents Croft and Doyle with an MTAC call.

“How is the prisoner doing? Have you learned anything worthwhile?” I asked.

“Yes we have learned a lot of things, it is all written down. We stopped recording the interrogation after your instructions and put all of it on paper. The recordings were destroyed as per your instructions,” Croft replied.

“Good job. You read the meaning I was trying to give,” I replied.

“The C130 from Morton should land in a couple of hours; pack everyone up. Clean up the prisoner, put him in a new jump suit and bag him. All of you will accompany him back to Morton. At Morton you will be met by an intelligence team that will take custody of the prisoner and all documentation you put together. I state again, ALL documentation,” I instructed.

I called the Doc, “You need to do a physical to evaluate the suspect’s condition to make sure he can handle the first session tomorrow night,” I replied. The Doc and I decided we would string this out to make sure there would be ample time to extract every bit of information this time.

It would be after dark when the C130 returned; it was still too risky for me to be out and about. Andy, Vicky and only a select few men would know the Colonel was here; Vicky was going to have to do the honors tonight and monitor things for me and learn from Andy.

I spent the next two hours going through the data that had been filtering in all morning from all the warrants that had been executed Friday and over the weekend. We had another dozen people in custody under terrorism or conspiracy charges.

The whole thing was ballooning out of control. With the arrests over the weekend, since my start as chairperson of the Task Force, over five hundred had been arrested for terrorism or terrorism related charges and were awaiting prosecution or had been convicted.

There were another two thousand persons who were now under surveillance or investigation for various terrorism related activities or suspicion of terrorism.

With all the terrorism things going on the House and Senate had passed the bill authorizing a separate agency independent of the Justice Department; cabinet level to be filled by the President to fight terrorism.

The layout was to be unique compared to the other agencies. The Director was to be appointed by the President. The Senate and the House anti-terrorism committees were each to appoint two assistant directors as well as the FBI, CIA, DHS and the NSA as an advisory group to the Director. The Director was to report directly to the President.