Blind sided, p.2
Blind Sided, page 2
Clark stood, smiling broadly. “We’ll get a State Department official to come on who can back you up on how the US has been repeatedly asking for access to that lab. NewsFirst will get a WHO spokesman to come on to play the public pressure game to get China to allow a full investigation. As you probably know, Richards doesn’t have the best relationship with the WHO right now.” Dinsley was well aware of Richards having threatened to cut off funding to the WHO and calling the WHO “China lovers” and “American haters.” Those acts and other public statements caused the chilliness Clark had been referring to.
Clark used a side table to push his portly frame up off the couch. He went to shake Dinsley’s hand, who also stood. “If it’s going well and the ratings are high, hell, Richards might even call in.” Dinsley’s face lit up. The big time. The limelight that he richly deserved but had evaded despite his high-level positions. Before exiting through the large mahogany doors, Clark swiveled his head and thick neck half-way over his left shoulder and barked, “Gotta go. Farraday. My office. 6 pm.”
Clark had part 1 of his re-election offensive in place - a full frontal attack on China.
Chapter 2: Janson-Selene For America
While Clark’s meeting was underway, Theresa Janson sat with her running mate, Linda Selene, in a large law firm’s huge corner office on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan. They had walked over from their junior suite on the 52nd floor of the nearby Marriott Hotel, flanked by Secret Service agents and a handful of reporters who had gotten wind of this unscheduled, or “off book,” trip to the Big Apple. Janson had lived in Westchester County, NY for several years. She despised the nickname Big Apple, but wore t-shirts and buttons with that logo many times while working her way up through the rough and tumble political ladder of New York City politics. She had accomplished many firsts in her career, long before becoming the first woman ever to secure the Presidential nomination of a major political party. Theresa had been the first female to graduate from NYU Law School with the honor of being chosen for Order of the Coif and Editor of the Law Review, which she achieved at the age of 23; she became the first 28 year old to make partner at the prestigious Park Avenue law firm of Mills, Blanche & Penzer, in whose offices she now sat; the first female NYC Comptroller, elected in 1992 and serving under then Mayor David Dinkins. She also happened to serve as the third female Secretary of State, after Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice, but the first former Secretary of State to lead a Presidential ticket. Now, she would be only the eighth Presidential candidate ever nominated by a major US political party after losing the Presidential election. She told her supporters many times, “eight major-party presidential candidates have come back from losing to later win the presidential nomination a second time—and half of them won the White House. Let the odds be in our favor!” Behind her back, a few junior staffers started calling her Hunger Games Janson; they were quickly fired.
In late 2019 and early 2020 these historical odds – along with the unenviable task of running against a highly popular, pre-pandemic Richards – allowed Janson to raise enough money to make a strong run and then build a huge lead in the primaries as Covid-19 began to take a serious hold on life in America. She and Richards also had historically high unfavorables, meaning that almost as many people liked them as disliked them. While many politicians may have 55% approval and 30% unfavorable, they would count on the ability to turn the 15% no opinion in their favor. But in June of 2020, these two had almost identical 51% approve, 46% disapprove in most major tracking data, meaning the margin of voters up for grabs was very small.
Theresa did think a change of running mates was in order, so she selected Linda Selene several weeks before the convention. Linda possessed many attributes that Theresa’s first VP running mate had not: female; ethnic; magnetic personality; immigrant parents; political newcomer; funny; likeable to many, and even loveable to some. In 2016, Theresa thought she needed an old white guy with years of Washington experience to balance out what her husband too often called “the chick thing.” By that he meant the number of votes she would lose just because of being a she. Theresa was also self-aware enough that many in the media had built this image of her as the robotic if not emotionless career politician, who would rather talk about GPD and CPI than the PTA and your local PD. One nickname that stuck and chapped her every time she saw it on line or in print, was when a New York Times opinion writer, Robin Gollins, called her C-3-POL, a play on the name of a C-3PO, a popular but not always loveable character from Star Wars. This reporter had written in 2015 that “Theresa Janson, aka C-3-POL, is a lot like the droid from Star Wars; a machine like, unhumorous know-it-all who revels in sharing her in-depth knowledge of just about everything you don’t care about, before she gets around to telling you what you need to know.” Robin Gollins had been forced out of the Times in 2017 – Robin assumed by Janson - and was now, ironically enough, a politics reporter for News.First.online.
As with so many races, turn-out would likely be the deciding factor in 2020. Linda was generating the strong support in the Latino community that she was expected to bring. The possibility of the first Hispanic Vice President stirred up a great deal of excitement among Hispanics, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, but not among Cubans, who were still pretty heavily in Richards’ camp. Not even Linda Selene could break through to the voters who considered themselves as cast out of Cuba and remembered vividly Janson’s seemingly anti-Cuba stances while she was the US top diplomat. Her refusal to advocate an end to or overthrow of Fidel Castro’s regime branded her anti-Cuba in many of their eyes, especially those living in South Florida. And, of course, swing state Florida with its 29 out of 538 electoral votes would be huge again in 2020.
Janson and her inside team at Janson-Selene for America (JSFA) were shocked in June that, three months into the public fight against Covid, Richards still had such strong numbers, and that his numbers barely moved over the first three months as the pandemic spread across the US and the world. Her closest advisers told her on several occasions that he would have to “f—k the response up big time” to make him beatable. They saw his months of pushing bizarre cures like ultraviolet lights and the chemicals used to Ph balance fish tanks as crazy; politicizing mask wearing as uncaring; but his full court press on the DeeLu vaccine as a reckless play.
Over the late summer of 2020, many of Richards’ supporters had started peeling off as they realized three major things that Richards’ team somehow completely overlooked: one - being color blinded was a severe side effect, even for millions of gullible souls who swallowed all kinds of Richards BS; two - the lead scientist who developed the vaccine was Chinese; and three, Richards let Gyeong, an Asian country ruled by dictator Deng Xu-Pei, conduct the only large scale tests of DeeLu vaccine. How could Richards blame China for the Wuhan flu but let a Chinese scientist develop the vaccine and as Asian country run the testing for it?
Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other platforms were flooded by images like this one, calling Richards, Ricky and Deng #Three Blinding Mice.
Some former Richards supporters, amplified by suspected Russian bots, had even gone on social media loudly questioning “can we trust china men to cure the china flu?” Many anti-vaxxers, also overwhelmingly Richards supporters among those in that group who voted, jumped all over this vaccine as the “next step towards a new world order.” Some protested it as “splicing your genes and letting Microsoft insert a chip that records your every thought and movement.” Others called Richards a “sell out” and a “deserter.”
By Labor Day 2020, a strange euphoria had taken hold amongst the Janson-Selene campaign inner team, with mixed emotions, as Richards had, indeed, “completely f—ked up the Covid response.” His polling numbers agreed; he had dropped from 51% approve to 44%, and his disapprove had gone up about the same margin, from 46% to 53%. Richards had to watch his political fate continue to crumble. By September 30th he had fallen 10 percentage points behind in the national polls. The major election predictors had him losing the electoral college by at least 100 delegates, a shocking margin in a country as divided as the United States had become. Even NewsFirst, Richards’ most ardent cable media cheerleader, had internal numbers predicting Janson would pass the 270 delegate mark by 10 pm Eastern time on Election night. Being projected to lose on Election Day was an incredible prospect given that many states had adopted widespread use of mail-in voting due to the pandemic, and would not even be counting all ballots on November 3.
The Janson-Selene for America campaign team had scheduled this October 5 meeting because they knew Richards would not go quietly; he would be up to something, and Clark was as cut throat as any political operative of the last 50 years. Theresa and Linda stood looking out the ceiling to floor window, silently enjoying the breathtaking view, wearing their masks as they did in almost every public setting and private meeting. They had each sprayed their glasses with their favorite anti-fogging sprays before leaving their hotel suites. Theresa’s was a simple, commercially available spray that Olympic and amateur swimmers used in the pool. Linda had found a small business owner in the Bronx who made a home brewed anti-fogger that somehow had a citrus fruit scent made of lemons, limes and kumquats, a constant reminder during Covid of her parents’ home country of Spain. Upon catching an aromatic whiff of her coated glasses, Theresa had once joked, privately, “Jesus, Linda, is there anything not Hispanic about you?”
They both turned as the partially smoked, heavy double glass doors to the conference room opened. In walked partners Yvette Penzer, granddaughter of a founding law firm partner, and Jason Blanche, grandson of a different founding law firm partner. They were followed by Bray Hall, chair of the JSFA campaign, and a handful of underlings, all wearing JSFA masks, with the letters half-encircling an American flag. Campaign swag, Bray called it. Yvette pointed to the cherry wood conference room table, with chairs spread out eight feet apart. “Shall we be seated? We have some intel on what Richards may be up to.”
Chapter 3: Dinsley knows it all
The JSFA meeting ran until 4 pm. Each attendee would be tuned in to Joe O’Day’s program that night, with varying assignments. Theresa and Bray had grown fond of calling it a cable TV clown car, often saying there was no telling how many jokers and buffoons would come flying out during any given show. But they were too savvy to underestimate the audience sway held by O’Day, despite the otherwise comical nature of some of the theories he would push. Tonight’s show, though, would be different. Abel Dinsley had serious national security chops. A native of Greenville, South Carolina, he had graduated third in his class at the Citadel, having been a leader of the Corps of Cadets. His parents had been friends with President George H W Bush, who secured Dinsley a job at the CIA in 1976, Bush 41’s first year as director, in the emerging field of counter intelligence. Dinsley considered himself to be a dedicated analyst and a devout patriot. He worked his way up at the CIA and moved to the White House when 41 became President in 1989. Dinsley had developed a keen sense for national security issues and was widely viewed as non-partisan. He was a key author of the 1991 plan approved by Bush 41’s Secretary of Defense for the Restructuring Defense Intelligence Initiative (RDII) and testified to Congress about it. The RDII emphasized the centralization of management within the DoD for “more effectively dealing with the changing world situation.”
Dinsley’s deep body of knowledge and attributes of fierce loyalty and patriotism led him to staying on in Bill Clinton’s administration first at the State Department as an undersecretary for Southeast Asia, and later as a division head at the National Security Agency (NSA). He continued on at various high level posts, two of which required Senate confirmation, first with Clinton then with George W. Bush aka Bush 43, aka just W, usually pronounced Dub-ya. Joe O’Day spent the opening couple of minutes of his program extolling these incredible years of public service, heroism, patriotism, and in-depth knowledge of national and international security issues. O’Day omitted, however, how Dinsley would have risen to higher heights within Bush 43’s administration, perhaps even Secretary of State, if not for one serious error in judgment.
Dinsley consulted with Bush 43’s senior State Department and national security officials in late 2002 and early 2003, concerning whether Saddam Hussein had developed the capacity to build and deploy weapons of mass destruction. Although Dinsley’s core expertise was really in Southeast Asia, not Africa, he believed that his years of international experience qualified him to comment on a highly classified, internal, interagency report that then Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered be completed before the 2003 State of the Union address.
Dinsley had a very loud shouting match in 2002 with then former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had just returned from Niger. While many people would later vehemently disagree about the circumstances under which Ambassador Wilson made his trip, since he was by then a private citizen, internal documents confirmed that he was asked by the CIA to visit his former posting in Niger to try to verify reports that Niger had sold substantial quantities of yellowcake uranium to Iraq in the 1990’s. Cheney and others were attempting to craft a narrative that Hussein was in possession of weapons-grade uranium that could be processed into nuclear fuel and used to attack the United States and its allies, such as Israel.
Dinsley and Wilson knew each other from their years in diplomatic circles, and did not get along. On several occasions, Dinsley called Wilson a “pussy” for not getting in adversaries’ faces. Wilson, in turn, referred to Dinsley as a “punk” and “warmonger.” At the end of their late 2002 shouting match, Wilson, who knew that Dinsley had been poking around on the uranium issue, loudly and clearly told him to “stay the fuck out of Africa and the mess in Iraq. You’re a danger there and that makes you a danger here.”
On January 3, 2003, Cheney, his top adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr., and a handful of other senior officials met with Dinsley in Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the Vice President of the United States, located on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Cheney ordered no notes be taken of this meeting, and all present complied. Cheney put the question directly to Dinsley – is it possible that Hussein has uranium that could be converted to use in a dirty bomb or other weapons. Cheney left no doubt what answer he wanted, and Dinsley said he would make some calls. Gruffly, Cheney stated “No, no calls. Get over there now and find out. Fast!”
Dinsley made a three day trip to Yemen and Kuwait, two countries full of people who had no love for Hussein. Dinsley knew he was out of his element in the Middle East, but went ahead and met with the intelligence sources handpicked by Cheney’s team. Each confirmed what Cheney and others wanted to be the case; not only did Iraq have tons of yellowcake, but it also had underground labs working 24/7 to process it into weapons-grade uranium. Upon his return, Dinsley signed off on a Top Secret / Eyes Only portion of President Bush’s daily briefing book that described his findings. Other portions of the report attributed the purchases of uranium to British intelligence sources; while true, those sources did not confirm any weapons-grade enabled uranium, which was a huge distinction.
On January 6, 2003, Dinsley attended an Oval Office meeting with Bush 43, Cheney and a Deputy Secretary of State to Colin Powell; there is no record of Secretary Powell being present. The upshot of that meeting was that President Bush could go forward at the upcoming State of the Union address and declare that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” With these 16 words still vibrating around the world, Bush 43 ordered an invasion of Iraq seven weeks later.
In later months and years, the entire campaign to create a credible basis to invade Iraq in 2003 blew up. The Bush Administration faced intense pressure after Wilson published an Op-Ed article in the New York Times in July 2003, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” in which he argued that the American people had been misled and intelligence had most likely been twisted to create a rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Ambassador Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was publicly outed as a CIA operative, putting her life and the lives of many operatives she had worked with in danger. After a long, painfully public investigation and trial, in 2007, Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with Plame’s outing. In 2018, perhaps as a middle finger to those who might cross him or as an inducement to those who might defend him, Richards granted Libby a presidential pardon.
O’Day made no mention of this Iraq affair. He simply stated at the end of Dinsley’s lengthy introduction that he had concluded his outstanding years of public service in 2003 but has continued “to this day” to speak out on issues that affect our safety as Americans and the security of our country. “When it comes to what’s been going on in China, Abel Dinsley knows it all.”
Chapter 4: Go ahead caller
Theresa had settled onto her navy blue sectional couch in her “no one is coming by this late” pair of sweat pants – she insisted on calling them yoga pants, even though she had not done yoga in 10+ years and they were made of baggy poly-cotton not skin tight lycra-spandex. Many of her female 20-something staffers sported their spandex yoga pants for casual Saturday meetings, but with less than 15% body fat they could pull off that look. At 62 and at least 30 pounds above what her doctor called her optimal weight, Theresa could not. She wore her purple oversized NYU long sleeve tee, pulled her hair back in a loose pony tail, and slid on her oversized glasses, allowing her eyes to rest from another 14 hour day of wearing contact lenses. Her husband, James aka Jimbo, handed her a mostly full glass of white wine, before he sat down with his freshly decapped Fat Tire. Jimbo Janson had made his money first in tech, luckily getting out before the bubble burst in 2000, then as a hedge fund manager between 2009 and 2016, deciding to jump in after the global financial recession of 2007-2008. Even Jimbo could not remember who first gave him that nickname, a disarming tag that made people assume he was from Texas and underestimate his intelligence and business acumen.
