Teacher spy assassin, p.41
Teacher, Spy, Assassin, page 41
Rome was a small city school district but it was an urban school district. I reviewed my calendar from when I arrived, side by side, with my calendars from the two rural and the two suburban schools where I had served, to find the differences in what I had been asked to do. With hours left, I took up my pen.
This was to be a case study-based approach. The classes would be large, thirty students. They would be team-taught. The 15 to 1 student-professor ratio would justify the team teaching. Students would have urban-based problems to solve in teams. They would have to solve every case study. They would each have to sign off on the team’s resolution and present their conclusions to the class, who would be encouraged to critique it in real-time. They needed to make these presentations using state-of-the-art presentation software.
The case studies would be relevant and based on the urban experience. There would be approximately 60 case studies. Each semester the students would write a paper so that we could assess their ability to apply academic research and assess and improve their writing skills.
The thesis requirement would be a presentation, using media, of their best argument to a public audience including people who might hire them of why they uniquely were worthy to lead a school.
The faculty would all have demonstrated effective leadership in urban schools. The program would meet Friday nights and Saturdays every other week. The students would have a continuous internship for the 18 months of the program while they were students and still teaching. Their study would extend through the summer.
The very structure of the program simulated administrative work. The future administrators had to plan in groups, and achieve consensus. There was too much to do in the time allotted. As administrators, the students would have to present professionally before groups and endure frequent public critiques. They would need to base their decisions on academic research and demonstrate their ability to write under immense pressure. They had to show an ability to present using appropriate media. During the case studies, they were forced to critique a colleague factually, but without malice.
The topics for the case studies reflected important skills for urban administrators. The students had to analyze the performance of a school, and design an improvement plan. They had to present that plan to the principal of the school, for comment. They had to develop a plan to address a racist teacher.
In another case study, the students were told that a group of shop teachers had used the school shop to create an illegal chop shop. In twenty minutes, the students had to formulate a press strategy. Within those 20 minutes, icons of local media arrived to interview the role-playing principals. The reporters then would critique each response.
Dr. Janey selected our proposal. It would start in the fall. I recruited a black urban superintendent to serve as my fellow faculty member and I subsequently wrote the actual case studies, based on my experience.
I created a detailed teaching manual for each course. The student was to be the worker. We were to facilitate, but the students, all issued laptops, connected to huge databases of educational research were to solve the problems with the resources at hand, which could include the faculty if asked.
When the program began, it was a smashing success. There were new cohorts of thirty each semester. We began to accept, in addition to the students whose tuition was paid by the Rochester School District, other students who applied and paid their own tuition. Sometimes there were two new cohorts each semester. We had to hire additional faculty. I was employed part-time while I finished my work in Rome. Katherine asked me to retire from Rome, and come on full time. I was to receive the rank of Associate Professor in a tenure track position. But I had to be there in January of my third year in Rome.
The new high school would not open until the Fall. There were hundreds of decisions yet to be made about the new school, but the board understood that for me, coming to Rome was a big sidestep. They were happy for me that I found a route back to work at my old college, and released me from my contract in time for me to assume my new full-time duties at St John Fisher.
The Rome City School District hired my deputy, Larry Rizzo to replace me. Larry and I had lunch every day during my tenure. I had been grooming him to replace me. He was very talented and a native Roman. He understood the community.
Life was good. For old time's sake, Jim offered to come to the American Association of School Administrators conference that year for an evening of catching up. In charge of operations, he could do as he pleased. No one monitored the expenditures of the Director of Operations of the CIA. His work was after all secret. I had been at the conference in New Orleans for a day when he arrived. We went to lunch. As was his way, he drank heavily. I sipped club soda with lime.
“So,” he said, concluding a longer discussion about our sons, “I guess each of the boys is doing well in his way.” He caught me up on old friends in the CIA and the State Department that we had both known, and talked about Milosevic, who had been arrested and brought to the Hague for trial. Milosevic’s erratic behavior at his trial and in jail was an extended topic. He talked about the unsuccessful search for Karadzic and Jim’s expectation that he, too would be imprisoned.
At length, I asked a question that had bothered me for some time. He was pretty well lit at this point and he would soon be leaving for Washington.
“Jim, if we had been able to foresee the damage that Milosevic would do to Serbia, Yugoslavia, and the world when you and I were much younger in Belgrade, and if you had the power then that you have now, would you have taken him out?”
He took a long thoughtful pull on his beer. “Of course, I would. To me it’s math. One guy versus tens of thousands. This calculation does not even account for the economic and political damage he inflicted on the world which also would have been sufficient reason to take him out.”
“I sort of get the economic damage you are referring to, but the political damage?”
“Well, at one level, a strong western Yugoslavia could have been a great ally to free enterprise, but in another way, he saved that socialist son of a bitch, Bill Clinton. Clinton’s ass was grass when he found a way to get Milosevic out of Bosnia. And the fools in Kosovo have created a Statue of Clinton, with his arm in the air, that they coated in gold. He is a hero there and that simply stinks. I would have taken Milosevic out just to prevent that,” He chuckled.
“Now that you are the director of operations, could you do something like that?” I asked.
“I could fill a churchyard with the bodies of the bad guys I have ordered taken out,” He stated. “These days my duty is to understand the nation’s best interest and ask myself what should be done. The President has to be unaware of what I am doing. Plausible deniability is the watchword. I make the decisions on how to use clandestine power to operationalize the country’s interests. God, I love my job. Can I give you a ride back to the hotel?”
“We drove in silence back to the hotel. Jim got out, gave me a back-slapping hug, and slid back into the back seat of his limo.”
I was glad I was no longer supporting the agency.
Chapter 61: Jim has a plan
I was never fond of the George W. Bush administration, but as a New Yorker, I was appalled by the bombing of the World Trade Center. We had friends in the city from the Scarsdale years who had died in the attack.
Having said that, I was gob-smacked by the decision to go to war in Afghanistan. The bombing of the Trade Towers was not an act of war but a criminal act. We had been partly responsible for Bin Laden’s success because we had armed and trained him and his to oppose the Russians. I knew this because Jim talked about it at the time. Now after training this attack dog, he was attacking us.
You do not go to war with a criminal enterprise. You arrest or kill them. You disrupt them. You force them into hiding. Afghanistan had not done this act. Why were we putting troops there? Had we not seen what asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan had done to Russia? Had we not noticed the commencement of a slow death of the British Empire in Afghanistan’s Khyber Pass? Or, the collapse of Genghis Kahn’s regime after fighting in Afghanistan?
We could have used the CIA and special forces troops to hunt down Bin Laden and either have killed him and his cronies or brought them to justice. We could have done this without striking the beehive, known as Afghanistan, with a stick. The worst part of such a war would be winning it. If we won, we would be responsible for governing the ungovernable.
When Bush was building a coalition to invade Iraq, I was deeply troubled. I knew a bit about Iraq. I had been recruited to be the school head there when I was wrapping up my time in Belgrade.
Because the US was opposed to Iran, we had trained and armed Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Iraq was a chaotic and primitive country. The masses were largely uneducated and undisciplined. The idea that Iraq was building a nuclear weapon was preposterous. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but the world had no shortage of those. If eliminating brutal dictators was our mission, there would also be no end to our wars.
When Collin Powell presented the evidence to the United Nations that Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction to justify a multi-nation attack on Iraq, I knew the world was being lied to. That a nation could legally go to war with another on the suspicion that the invaded nation might do a bad thing someday clearly violated ethics and law. But we were off, and watching it in technicolor, broadcast live on CNN, from a hotel room in Bagdad.
My prediction, had anyone been interested to hear it, was that it would take decades, if not a century, to put that country back together again after any such incursion. I felt that Iran would seize the opportunity, with their close Shiite allies in Syria and Iraq, to try to gain influence and power in that otherwise Sunni-dominated area. This sectarian dispute would gain synergy because of the Shiites in Afghanistan. We would kill Iraq and dine on chaos in the Middle East for the rest of my lifetime. The uncritical support for Israeli territorial ambitions in Palestinian lands, together with the Israelis unwillingness to share Jerusalem, would only fuel the madness.
Jim and Pat stopped for a visit on his way up to the Adirondacks that summer after Bush flew onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, declaring “mission accomplished.” No, this mess had barely begun. Jim’s visit was cordial, as always. Jim had put on quite a bit of weight and looked tired. My professor role had allowed me to begin to reclaim my healthy habits. It also gave me time to think.
When the pleasantries were done, Jim and I sat by the pool where I watched him drink. He told me about his new house and especially the new pool enclosure he was installing.
“Where did the president get all that stuff about WMD that Powell used at the UN?” I was impatient to know. He was pretty drunk and soon would be asleep.
“Most of it, I pulled together,” He replied. “I came up with the ‘yellowcake’ Uranium stuff. I did the high specification aluminum tube story from the stock footage we had. I exaggerated the capability of their rockets, and simply used outdated intelligence about the CX gas, which had been destroyed. But and here is the big but: I got us what we needed. We smashed that motherfucker.”
“Did the president know the intelligence was exaggerated?” I asked as calmly as if I were asking him to pass the butter.
“No. Plausible deniability. That is the key. If he doesn’t know he is lying, he can do it better. We kept Powel in the dark too. Cheney knew. It was his idea. Hell, I didn’t even tell George Tenet. But, we did it and smashed that bastard. People will forget, and I never got tagged.”
We went to bed shortly thereafter. There wasn’t much more to say. I thought it would be a long time before we saw Jim and Pat again.
Obama followed Bush.
To my surprise, I saw Jim at the funeral of an old Belgrade colleague shortly after Obama’s first election. That night we retreated to his hotel room for “an adult beverage or two.”
I asked about his work after he took on a high dose of Irish whiskey. Amazingly, he told me about his biggest project yet.
“You might guess I have issues with a black President,” he said.
Wanting to draw him out, I said,” Who doesn’t?”
“To make matters worse, he is a socialist who will set the nation back 50 years and give black people a piece of our pie, one that my forefathers scrapped to get,” He added. “We have to stop him.”
I raised my club soda in salute.
“What is the plan?” I asked.
“I know I can trust you we’ve been through a lot together, but you are the only person who knows about this.
“What is the plan?”
“I have put together a special team. They have been training at the farm from the day after he was elected. There was physical training, arms training, and special tactics for an assassination. They have no idea who their target is or where or when or how it will happen. I have selected them for fitness, patriotism, and a proven record of following orders without asking questions,” he said.
“So, what is the plan?” I asked again, a little more insistent.
It was evident he did not wish to elaborate.
“I will explain the plot to eliminate Obama to them in July. Until then I am the only person to know this plan. All anyone will know in the end is that Obama died. I have been planning this operation since before Obama was elected. I am not going to blow it by talking about it now. I am going to bed. But when he dies, you will know.”
Jim reveled in that kind of project. He consulted no one. He realized his vision for what he thought the country needed. He had been encouraged to think that way. He was surrounded by people who thought the same way.
I could not know if anybody else was in on the plan. I couldn’t simply tell his boss about it. First, how would I reach him? I couldn’t tell a subordinate. What if they were in on the plan? I could not advise the President. I would be put in a nut-house, besides, how could I reach him? If the message went through other hands, there was a chance Jim would hear first.
Jim was not one to be talked out of something he believed in. Sadly, it was up to me.
I knew what I had to do.
This was late May.
When I got home, I reminded Linda that she had been encouraging me to plan a little weekend get-away. I told her that I bumped into Jim at the funeral and that he had invited us to his house in Washington the next weekend. I said I wasn’t sure Jim would remember it. He had been pretty deep in his cups. Could she call Pat, and get it arranged? I would take a few extra days and we would enjoy the drive there, and back with some romantic stops. She got it done
Chapter 62: The assassination
Their place was actually in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac. The place was huge. The gate sentry required cars to stop and be identified. The big circular driveway that swung by the ostentatious portico was made of red paving bricks. Jim and Pat descended the front steps to greet us.
“Mike, Linda how good of you to come,” Pat said. She had risen so high in the world that she grasped each of us by our arms in a mock embrace and proffered an air kiss to the right and left of our cheeks.
“Some place, huh?” Jim offered in a self-congratulatory buzz.
“Wow, Just Wow!” Linda said.
“Come inside,” Pat offered. “Leave the bags, William will get them.”
She raised her voice. “William!”
An elderly black man arrived in livery. I was instructed to give him my keys. He would remove our belongings and park the car. We were supposed to just focus on being awed by Shultz’s power and wealth.
As we entered Pat said, “this is our formal reception room.”
“We call it the great hall of the people,” Jim interrupted.
We were shown a formal dining room, a library filled with unread, but handsome books, a family breakfast nook, a music room, a den, and a screening/entertainment room.
“Jim Jr. must love this room when he visits,” I commented.
“He does, but we hardly ever see him. You know how kids are today,” Jim commented. “Let me show you the prized space, though,” he commented while walking through the kitchen, where a Latina-looking woman was working hard to prepare our lunch. She remained unintroduced. I suspect because she was an undocumented immigrant. I reflexively looked in the pantry as we passed, to see if there was a wide shelf in it with neatly folded bed linens, like I was supposed to offer to my maid as a room, in Belgrade.
We exited the house into the very private backyard. There was a large lawn with a broad fringe of flowers. There was an ostentatious fountain in the middle and some pea gravel paths.
There was a 10-foot-high opaque hedge of arborvitae. The entrance to the pool was tucked into the hedge, and not only could you not see the pool from the house, but you could not even see the wrought iron gate that was its entrance.
Jim explained that he needed this privacy so he and Pat could, “you know…” The pool was overly large for a home pool. It must have been 50 feet long and 30 feet wide. It was surrounded by a flagstone patio. The furniture that surrounded the pool was made of a wicker look-a-like material that looked authentic but stood up to the weather. On the shallow side of the pool, there was an outdoor kitchen. It had two mammoth grills, a cooler, and an icemaker hidden under a counter. On the grill side of the counter was storage for pots, pans, and table wear.
To the right of this area was a gas-fired pizza oven. It was domed and made of yellow bricks on the inside and covered on the outside by bricks that matched the house. There was one of those wooden shovel-like devices that high-end pizza parlors use to put pies in the oven. It was long with a huge fat spatula-shaped end to get under the pizza. There must have been seating for 40 people.
