The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“Shoot.”

“Let’s suppose that the CIA, which really is not nearly as incompetent as you and people like Senator Johns think it is—or for that matter as incompetent as the CIA wants people like you and Johns and our enemies to think it is—”

“Run that past me again, Harry,” McClarren said.

“They call that ‘disinformation,’ Andy. The less competent our enemies think the CIA is, the less they worry about it. Can I get back to my hypothetical?”

“Why not?” McClarren said, visibly miffed.

“Let’s say the CIA heard that the bad guys, say the Russians, were operating a secret biological weapons factory in some remote corner of the world—”

“You’re talking about that alleged biological weapons factory in the Congo,” McClarren challenged.

Whelan ignored the interruption.

He went on: “—and they looked into it and found that there was indeed a secret factory in that remote corner of the world.”

“Making what?” McClarren challenged, more than a little nastily.

“They didn’t know. So what they did was go to this remote corner of the world—”

“Why don’t you just say the Congo, Harry?”

“If that makes you happy, Andy. Let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the incompetent CIA went to the Congo and, violating the laws of the sovereign state of the Republic of the Congo, broke into this factory and came out with samples of what the factory was producing—”

“Ha!” McClarren snorted.

“—and took it to Fort Detrick, where it was examined by the medical corps scientists. And that these scientists concluded that what the CIA had brought to them was really bad stuff. And let’s say that the CIA took this intelligence to the President. Not this one, his predecessor.

“And let’s say the President believed what the CIA was telling him. What he should have done was call in the secretary of State and tell her to go to the UN and demand an emergency meeting of the Security Council to deal with the problem.

“Now, let’s say, for the purpose of this hypothetical for-example, that the President realized he—the country—was facing what they call a ‘real and present danger.’ And also that the minute he brought to the attention of the United Nations what the CIA had learned, the bad guys would learn we knew what they were up to.

“By the time the blue-helmet Keystone Kops of the UN went to the Congo to investigate these outrageous allegations—and this is presuming the Russians and/or the Chinese didn’t use their veto against using the blue helmets—the factory would either have disappeared, or been converted to a fish farm.”

“So he acted unilaterally?”

“And thank God he had the cojones to do so.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, Harry, that he had no right to do anything like that? We could have found ourselves in a war, a nuclear war! That takes an act of Congress!”

“You’re dead wrong about that, too, Andy,” Whelan said patronizingly, rather than argumentatively. Whether he did so without thinking about it, or with the intention of annoying—even angering—McClarren, it caused the latter reaction.

The one thing Andy McClarren could not stand, would not tolerate, was being patronized.

His face whitened and his lips grew thin.

“How so?” he asked very softly.

“Under the War Powers Act—I’m really surprised you don’t know this, Andy; I thought everybody did—the President, as commander in chief, has the authority to use military force for up to thirty days whenever he feels it’s necessary. He has to tell Congress he’s done so and if they don’t vote to support him within those thirty days, the President has to recall the troops. But for thirty days he can do whatever he wants. ...”

Damn it! Andy McClarren thought as his face turned red. The President does have that authority under the War Powers Act.

Either this condescending smart-ass just set me up to make an ass of myself, or—worse—without any assistance from him, I just revealed my ignorance before three point five million viewers.

The only thing that can make this worse is for me to lose my temper.