13 April 2005

Varnish

It is the eve of the Fiesta in San Antonio, and the Ferris Wheel has already been erected on South Santa Rosa Boulevard. It will be four days of lights and excess in commemoration of this city's history and people.

It is cool this morning, and still dark.

The birds are massing to fly north as the winter retreats, and their cries break through the cool air. It will be hot later, or at least it will seem that way to these Virginia bones. It may be the last window of opportunity before the moist baking heat settles in for the Texas summer. Deeper in the year, you can sauté in your car, and melt your brain.

But now it is pleasant. The people at Avis gave me a new Mustang fast-back, a quotation on the muscle car of my youth. It is peppy, and it is a blazing cherry red. But the inside looks cheap, like the shiny chrome finished on a black plastic boom-box you might find at Wal-Mart.

I had contemplated purchasing one of these cars and did not. I am glad. I prefer a classic finish on real materials, like a wooden sailboat of a certain vintage with several coats of varnish, carefully sanded between coats, so that the surface has depth.

Ambassador Negroponte was on stage back home, appearing before the Senate Intelligence committee. The media is reporting the questions that the Democrats asked him, and the outburst of the Central American activist who shouted out that the Ambassador countenanced the death squads when he was in Honduras, in the dirty Contra War.

The spectator was removed, and the Ambassador carefully said that he would fully implement the prohibitions against torture. He also said he would push the envelope to assert his authorities as the new intelligence czar. He said he had been in consultation with a number of people in the two weeks since he had been back from Iraq.

He promised to tell the President the unvarnished truth in his new job. I considered that, and what might have been told before. I had a chance to brief the President once, the other Bush, in the midst of the other war. We had some excellent video of airstrikes on key infrastructure targets in Baghdad, back when we considered the Iraqis a little taller than they actually were.

I had presented the video to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who dropped by our office in the Pentagon before dawn, gave the pre-brief to the Joint Staff Intelligence Officer, and then to the Operations Deputies of the Services, and finally to Chairman Powell and Secretary Cheney and their pilot fish in the special conference room reserved for their use.

The tension had me in a knot, and when the briefing was done, I announced that I was going to the Pentagon Athletic Club and take a jog. I could not remember the last time I had been out of the building in daylight, and thought the fresh air would do me good.

I was rounding one corner of the building and heading for Army-Navy Drive, my legs aching a bit, when the call came from the headquarters that the President had a guest at the White House who ran one of the networks, and the video of the tall transmitting tower crashing down would be fun to see.

They looked for me and could not find me. So they sent someone else to the White House. I'm sure he did a fine job, and told the unvarnished truth just as I would have.

I don't know how to varnish it, anyway. Do you have to hang it up and use a special brush? What if it is not dry to the touch, or needs sanding and another coat to get just the right sheen?

It seems that when they want the truth, they want it right then. It is hard to find the time to get things just right, and no one ever told me what the answer was before the question was asked. Maybe I just worked with people of integrity, who would never consider altering the canvas to fit the frame.

But the elder Bush had been Director of Central Intelligence, and there was a certain amount of the ambiguity of the world that he understood.

Of the younger President, I think I have accepted the varnished view of the media on his capabilities. They have more time to airbrush the picture, whether they are from right or left.

I accepted the common wisdom that the President is a sincere man but a bit of a lightweight. I was surprised to hear the other day that I was wrong. I was talking to a man who is in a position to know personally that is not the case. “The President asks tough questions, and he expects straight answers,” my friend said. “The people that have been providing the briefings are working very hard to answer them all.”

It might be that a blank canvas is harder to fill than one that already has the outlines of the picture upon it, but it seems to me that the President has a determined view of the world, and how the details fit within it is the question. Crafting a vision of the truth that is both consistent and accurate is a challenge.

I think that is going to be hard for Ambassador Negroponte, and he is going to have to rely on someone that understands all the sources and methods that provide the information that is analyzed to create intelligence out of data. I don't know who is going to do that.

He may have to rely on Mike Hayden, the general who most recently commanded the National Security Agency. Mike understands the view of the world from Fort Meade, though I have always found it a bit myopic.

The Ambassador is going to have his hands full pushing the envelope, which will threaten to collapse around him like clinging cellophane. The system has effectively shrink-wrapped its leaders before.

I expect rapid confirmation, despite the cries from the back of the auditorium. Then we will get to those who are going to do the un-varnishing for him.

That will not be apparent for a while. I wish I had extended this Texas trip for a day or two. I would like to spend some time at the Fiesta, or go downtown to the Alamo. There is more than a century of varnish over that story, and it has darkened to the point that it almost obscures what it below it.

But the last report to Col. Travis was probably pretty straightforward, no varnish required.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra