28 February 2003

Movement

The North Koreans have started up their bomb factory, says Bob Edwards on the radio, and the number of US troops in the Gulf topped 200,000 yesterday, and Saddam's folks have sent a letter to the UN saying they might consider destroying the Al Samoud rockets. The Security Council is agog.

Here in Washington we are worried about movement on several fronts. The snow is expected to continue through the morning, regrettably a desultory accumulation over which the in-close suburbs have managed to maintain mastery, at least on the main roads. Movement continues. The County schools are closed again, total and abject surrender to the elements. There really was no reason for them to have closed yesterday, since the flakes did not begin to fall in earnest until well after the end of classes. The School Board is mimicking the French response to the Germans in 1940, which is to roll over and hope that someone comes to the rescue. Spring will come, after all, it is just a question of waiting it out.

I have been delivered into just about the worst option. I must rely on my conscience. God, I miss the whimsy of the penguin icon on the Office of Personnel Management Homepage. I did not get to double-click on the little arctic bird this morning, and instead just brought up the OPM homepage with the staid little button marked "operating status."

The page loaded quickly, and was dated 4:35AM. The Government is open today, under "unscheduled leave" policy. Which is to say, the elves at OPM say that if you can't make it, that's fine, they will just charge you a day's leave. There is no allowance for late arrival, and emergency workers are expected to report on time. That isn't me, and I have a meeting with an important bureaucrat downtown at 1100 about the new job, and then a meeting at one o'clock at Clarendon to talk about some issues regarding a new activity we are trying to start to defeat global terrorism. Or something. I think that is the meeting. Both are on the Orange Line of the Metro, so I think I see a plan emerging from the heavy white stuff out there.

But guilt says: get in the shower, throw on a uniform and plow out to the campus in order to turn around and head downtown. Common sense say: "make another pot of coffee and just walk to the Metro and meet the two requirements." Make the movement easy. I am pondering that, listening to news of an attack on the heavily fortified American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. Two police officers are reported killed and at least one of the attackers may have been captured. The clouds of war have not impacted me this week nearly as much as the clouds which dump the snow. It is a matter of how hard it is to move around.

People are growing weary of this extended winter. I spoke to a smoker in the courtyard, yesterday, the grass still buried in a crusty ice blanket. She said she was from Chicago, and was tempted to move back there where there is less snow. Normally, as we finish the month of February there have been a couple teaser days when the temperature soars up into the sixties. Even with the branches of the trees still bare and the earth naked there is the promise of the spring to come. The crocuses begin to poke up through the soil, and the fecund smell of last year's leaves fueling the process of new growth.

But not this year. We have had to make our movements around the weather. We are losing our timidity about the snow, and forcing the workforce to new heights of boldness. We had a series of meetings at the Old Executive Office Building this week. The ringleader was an earnest young man from the National Security Council who wears a crisply pressed white shirt and conservative tie. He has his marching orders from other crisply-pressed white shirts. He is to produce a document for the signature of the President, and that is precisely what he will do. He will do it whether I participate or not, but there are consequences to Presidential documents and it is a pay-me-now, or pay-me-later. So down we troop to the OEOB.

If I had ever thought that being summoned to the grounds of the White House would simply present a pain in the ass, I wouldn't have believed it.

I still love the OEOB, but getting there is a trek even when the weather is good. There is no parking there, and even if there was security would make it an obstacle, ID check, mirrors under the car, please open your trunk, thank-you-sir-or-ma'am. Another security check in the big white tent they have erected in the forecourt of the grand old pillared building that rises six stories above the White House next door. I adore the marble parquet checkerboard floors, the soaring staircases and the imposingly tall ceilings. But the computers at the guard desk are slow, and the security is inconvenient. yesterday there was one guard working the desk, and the line stretched from his podium back across the lobby to the front door.

Our meetings were held in the Cordell Hull Conference Room on the second floor. Until 1947, room 208 was the office of the Secretary of State, and rooms 212 and 214 next door were once joined as the diplomatic reception room, known as the most elegant salon on the Continent, Persian rugs and Victorian elegance. Many things of note happened in these rooms, but pressure of the War made them clear out the furniture and through up temporary walls to create more offices. The only thing left of the elegance are two ornate fireplaces, incongruously placed off-center in the offices which had once formed the ends of the grand room with the vaulted ceiling. The Secretary's Office retains some grandeur. The walls are painted in intricate Victorian patterns and the wood, though a little threadbare, still conjures the image of another age. There are two massive doors through which you pass to enter the area where the long conference table sits.

The doors are so massive that when the outer one clicks closed, heavy brass fittings gleaming, the mightiest and most vigorous pounding cannot penetrate to those deliberating within. I know. I pounded, off and on, for nearly ten minutes. Until my fist hurt, and my face flushed and felt thoroughly ridiculous. They knew we had been through security in the lobby, too. Staffers from the offices along the passageway passed periodically and did not seem to think this untoward or out of the ordinary. A buzzer might be useful, but there is none. Just a brass doorknob that does not work.

Inside, should you get there, is seating for twenty or so at the long table, and more seats deployed around the perimeter of the room for horse-holders and subject matter experts. Timing is everything, and these meetings were scheduled for when the room was available. Starting at 3:00PM, our bold young leader was prepared to discuss the draft document until it was just right. All the rest of us, particularly those whose cars were still located in suburban Virginia, began to become glassy-eyed as the four glowing red clocks on the wall marched onward. Miraculously, consensus was reached at 5:30. At least until morning, when reason would return.

We fled the room, marching vigorously down the dramatic hallways and down to the lobby and out the front door. Return the visitor's badge in the turnstile, then a five-minute walk to the Metro, the Blue Line train out of the District to Rosslyn and then south to the Pentagon, the walk to the car and then into the traffic snarl of Virginia. Done for the day.

But not that day. I walked to the wrought-iron fence outside the white security tent on the plaza in front of the building and saw a knot of people. I joined it, my movement blocked. "Sorry," said the police officer. "We have a Movement." I knew what he meant. We were locked in place pending the deployment of a motorcade which would roar out of the White House security area, heading for a function, or dinner, or some affair of state. So we awaited The Movement, the term conjuring an image.

I looked out across Pennsylvania Avenue to the Blair House complex. There was a cop car, lights flashing, and a long Cadillac limousine, a black Suburban SUV, another limo, another chase car, and more cops. I listened to the radio that crackled on the policeman's belt and the snow came down, melting on my face and hair. The "Protectee" was in motion somewhere, but not to his vehicle. We waited in the snow for around twenty minutes, light fading, snow accumulating on our hair. Looking up at the snipers on the roof of the red brick New Executive Office Building. They looked cold up there. Then something happened, the Movement began, flashers coming on and engines roaring to life. The Motorcade swept out past the concrete barriers to inconvenience someone else. When they were gone, the policeman set us free to slog up snowy 17th street in the rush-hour traffic snarled by the passage of the vehicles of state.

Somebody said the Protectee was the President, but they have another radio name for him. I think it was the VIP who was staying Blair House that day, the Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Mohammed Karzi. Heading out to dinner on the town after important deliberations.But who knows. Sometimes it is just a pain in the ass to go downtown.

It will be much better when it gets warm, and the walk to the Metro is a pleasure. But now , in the snow, I have to get it in gear and find a way to make my movement to the office.