Rule of Law Read online

  Paige made a note to get that information later from Wellington. She should have thought of that herself.

  “I did some research on the president’s Mideast policies,” Paige said, not to be outdone. “What I found lined up with the Patriot’s information.”

  “Wellington did a short memo on that,” Wyatt offered. “At least it was supposed to be short. Turned out to be about fifty pages. Wellington, why don’t you send a copy to Paige?”

  Wellington had his computer on his lap and typed in some notes. He had positioned himself under the lights of the RV so that he could see the keyboard better. “Done,” he said.

  They talked for nearly an hour about the best course of action. Wyatt was on his third beer. Paige explained that she and Bill Harris were prepared to take the information to Congressman Mason. She would be happy for Kristen and Wyatt to join them.

  “You too, Wellington,” Paige quickly added when she realized she had left him out.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Actually, I was thinking about just filing suit.”

  Paige gave him a courtesy chuckle, but he didn’t appear to be kidding. Wellington kept his head down, typing like mad.

  “Wellington here tells me we don’t have much chance of success,” Wyatt said. He snuffed out the stub of his cigar and flicked it in the fire. “Says the president has absolute immunity. Says that soldiers involved in combat activities can’t file suit against government officials. Something called the Feres Doctrine. He’s got all kinds of reasons a lawsuit won’t work.”

  Paige hadn’t even considered a lawsuit. What was the point in that?

  “It doesn’t sound like a lawsuit would stand a chance,” she said.

  “I told Wellington to find some exceptions,” Wyatt said. “I’m not about to turn this over to some congressional committee that we don’t control. If I file a lawsuit, I’m in control of the investigation.”

  “Not if it gets thrown out on a motion to dismiss,” Paige countered. “It will just make the Anderson family look bad.”

  “You don’t have to join us. In fact, it’d probably be better if you didn’t.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Paige said.

  This was exactly the kind of thing she was concerned about. Wyatt Jackson was in it for the publicity. He was going to use this tragedy to get his name out there and claim his fifteen minutes of fame. And Paige couldn’t talk him out of it. Even though Wellington lent some tepid support, all of her arguments fell on deaf ears.

  Wyatt finished his beer and tossed it toward a trash can, missing badly. “You sure I can’t get you one?” he asked Paige.

  She just shook her head. His act was getting old.

  “Sometimes you’ve got to start a fight to figure out how to win the fight,” Wyatt said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Wyatt had his hands burrowed in the pockets of his windbreaker now. He was rubbing Clients’s belly with his foot.

  “I’m not going to some congressman so they can nibble away at this in endless committee meetings. I’m going to sue these clowns for a few hundred million and get their attention. We’ll just punch them in the nose and see what happens. Like I said, sometimes you can’t figure out your strategy for winning a fight until the fight gets started. And this . . . well, this should be a heckuva good fight.”

  The whole thing was nonsense to Paige. She told him as much, thanked him and Wellington for their time, and excused herself.

  On the way home Paige called Kristen and told her about the conversation.

  “I know he wants to file suit,” Kristen said. “I haven’t decided yet whether I will let him.”

  “It’s got no merit. It’ll get dismissed, and Wyatt will get sanctioned,” Paige said.

  “I’m not worried about any of that. I just don’t want the whole SEAL community turning against me.”

  Paige hadn’t even thought about that angle. “You need that community,” she said. “They’ll be your lifeline long after Wyatt Jackson has moved on to the next case.”

  “I get all that. But sometimes I just want to fight back against somebody.”

  28

  On Friday, Bill Harris drove all the way to Virginia Beach so that he and Paige could meet with Congressman Mason, who was spending time in the district. Paige had asked Kristen to join them, but Kristen begged off.

  The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Paige was surprised at the nondescript nature of the storefront space the congressman rented for his district office. Mason was a moderate Republican who had been in Congress for nearly thirty years and knew how to work the system. He was gracious and low-key with a reputation for good constituent service.

  When Paige met him that morning, she was struck by how tired and haggard he looked. She’d only seen him on TV and in campaign flyers. He looked so much older in real life. His hair was thin and dark, the product of a poor coloring job, his eyes were red, and he had tiny goose pimples on his cheeks. Republicans were having a tough time in Washington these days, and the despondency of that fact seemed to be written all over Mason’s face.

  He expressed his condolences to Paige and Bill and offered them coffee. A couple of staffers sat at the table while the congressman filled the air with small talk about how moving the ceremony at Arlington had been and how much Patrick’s sacrifice meant to the nation.

  Bill Harris seemed truly grateful and humbled by the words. “Thank you, Congressman,” he said. “That means a lot to me, sir.”

  Paige wanted to skip the sentimentality. “Congressman, would it be okay if Mr. Harris and I met with you privately?” She fired a quick glance at the staff members, who looked like they had been caught in some horrendous crime. She didn’t mean to embarrass them, but she wasn’t sure about the protocol for something like this.

  “Of course,” Mason said. “But I can assure you that my staff would keep everything very confidential.”

  Once the room was clear and it was just the three of them, Paige pulled out the folder of documents from the Patriot and the research she had compiled and began filling the congressman in. She showed him the picture of the president’s cardboard figure in the Sana’a prison cell and the copies of the president’s speeches. She went through her understanding of how the failed mission had advanced the president’s Mideast policies. She slid the thumb drive across the table with the video of Philip Kilpatrick meeting with John Marcano. She explained how the SEALs had been working for the CIA on the night of the mission and how the president had called off the Quick Response Force. The only thing she didn’t give the congressman was the picture of Admiral Towers sacrificing a sheep.

  Through it all, Congressman Mason took plenty of notes and asked polite clarifying questions. When Paige finished, he studied the documents she had placed in front of him and watched the video while an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room.

  “Where did you get all of this?” Mason asked.

  “I can’t really say,” Paige responded. “An inside source. He seemed credible.”

  “There are some disturbing things here,” Mason said carefully, weighing each word, “but at this point it would be quite a stretch to think that the president authorized a mission knowing it would fail. Or even that she kept relevant intelligence from the men in charge of the mission. I mean, that meeting on the park bench might just be the president’s chief of staff and the CIA director getting their heads together on how best to communicate the CIA’s intelligence to the president. Or maybe the president had some questions and sent her chief of staff to get the answers. Who knows?”

  Paige shrugged as it became obvious that Mason wasn’t impressed by her inside information. He must have read her expression, because he changed his tone into one of political resolve.

  “But I can assure you of this,” he said. “I will look into it. And if there’s anything here, I’ll make sure it gets brought to light. I go to bed every night and wake up every morning thinking about the m
en and women serving this country and families like yours who have lost a loved one. This information here—” and for good measure, the congressman tapped the documents on the table in front of him—“will be my top priority.”

  “I really like that guy,” Bill Harris said as soon as they got outside. “I think he’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Paige kept her misgivings to herself.

  “You cannot sue the president of the United States.” This was the advice Wyatt Jackson received from Wellington Farnsworth after the young associate completed all of his research. “The president has absolute immunity while in office from a suit like this.”

  Then it got worse. Members of the military couldn’t bring any lawsuits against government officials for things incidental to military duty. Otherwise, civilian courts would be interfering with military discipline and affairs.

  Wellington wrote a memo reducing all the bad news to a mere eight pages, barely a tweet for a guy like him. Part of the memo was dedicated to United States v. Stanley, a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case that was, in the view of Wyatt Jackson, one of the most ridiculous decisions he had ever read.

  In Stanley, some soldiers sued the Army for using them as human guinea pigs in an experimental chemical warfare program where they had secretly been administered LSD. But the Supreme Court threw the suit out. Servicemen could not sue, the Court said, because it might undermine “the unique disciplinary structure of the military establishment.” The dissenting justices criticized the majority opinion, claiming that the government had “treated thousands of its citizens as though they were laboratory animals, dosing them with this dangerous drug without their consent.”

  Wyatt wasn’t all that concerned about the Stanley case. The Supreme Court had changed a lot since 1987. If he could get his case reviewed, he was pretty sure he could carve out an exception for cases when service members were sent on a doomed mission solely for political purposes. And even if he couldn’t, he would make a good name for himself trying.

  But Wellington’s memo didn’t end there. The state secrets doctrine would prevent any lawsuit that might reveal confidential information vital to the security and defense of the country. Anything having to do with the CIA was generally covered. Plus, they didn’t really have enough information to file suit yet. At most, they had a few pieces of intriguing evidence and a lot of speculation from an anonymous source.

  Wyatt reviewed the memo carefully while sitting on the pullout couch in his RV, chewing on an unlit cigar. He pulled up the cases cited by Wellington and read every one of them. He popped a beer and paced back and forth in the RV, walking in tiny circles as he played out the scenario in his mind.

  He took Clients outside and played a game of fetch using an old, grungy tennis ball while he enjoyed a smoke. Then he picked up his cell phone and called his young associate.

  “I want you to draft a lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Troy Anderson against Philip Kilpatrick and that CIA guy, Marcano. Refer to the president as an unnamed coconspirator.”

  Wellington began to sputter out reasons why such a suit could never succeed. But Wyatt had made up his mind.

  “I want you to allege, on information and belief, that the president knew the mission would fail but authorized it anyway so she could blame Iran. Attach those draft speeches as exhibits and a still photograph of the Marcano and Kilpatrick meeting. Put in that stuff about the president not authorizing a Quick Response Force and anything else to make her look bad. I want to file it Monday afternoon.

  “And I’ll need you to come out and take care of Clients on Monday night. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be in New York City.”

  29

  Wellington Farnsworth put in a superhuman effort over the weekend, staying up nearly all night on Sunday to finish the complaint. Wyatt made a note to give the young man a raise. The lawsuit spanned 102 pages and asked for $30 million in damages. Wyatt wanted to ask for more, but Kristen had put her foot down.

  The complaint contained lots of speculation and paragraphs that began with the magical words “Upon information and belief,” a lawyer’s way of saying that he didn’t know whether the information was necessarily true but he had to allege it for a good lawsuit.

  Wyatt carried the thick document to the federal court building in downtown Norfolk himself. Because the case accused the president of wrongdoing and involved the greatest disaster for American Special Forces in modern history, he knew there would be plenty of media interest. He had alerted the local press that he was filing the case and would have a few comments on the courthouse steps. When you don’t have a traditional office, you have to improvise.

  He wore his best gray pin-striped suit and red power tie. He had stuffed his briefcase full of extra copies so he could hand them out to the local reporters. He filed the suit early in the afternoon so they would have plenty of time to get their stories together for the evening news.

  He emerged from the courthouse to a bank of microphones and at least a dozen reporters. He began by talking about Kristen and Troy Anderson and the brave men from SEAL Team Six. It pained him to file this lawsuit, he explained, but he had learned disturbing information from reliable sources that the SEAL team’s mission had been compromised before it began. Worse yet, he had learned—upon information and belief—that the president’s chief of staff knew the mission had been compromised and had conveyed that information to the president herself. Troy Anderson’s family deserved answers, and Wyatt Jackson was going to get them some.

  He took questions for a few minutes, but he wanted to save the good stuff for the national news. He had included a picture of the meeting between Marcano and Kilpatrick in the lawsuit but had held back the video. Wellington was on the phone with the big networks in New York at that very moment. The young associate promised to send them electronic copies of the complaint and, if they agreed to interview Wyatt Jackson the next morning, a video of the park-bench meeting. They could get their own experts to read the lips of Philip Kilpatrick.

  The plan worked to perfection, and the next morning Wyatt Jackson was making the rounds on the cable networks and morning shows in New York City. Predictably, the news had exploded the prior night, and legal experts were already predicting the lawsuit would be quickly tossed. But when the morning hosts confronted Wyatt with those predictions, he had a surprise for them. The Feres Doctrine didn’t apply, according to Wyatt, because the SEAL team actually hadn’t been working for the Navy at the time of the mission. That’s right, they had been “sheep-dipped” by the CIA. They were civilians, not members of the military.

  And once the networks started showing the video, the merits of the suit were no longer the center of public debate. Everybody had an opinion on what Philip Kilpatrick said or didn’t say. Everybody also had an opinion on why the wily Marcano kept his hand over his mouth. Soon the press corps was descending on the White House, demanding a comment.

  Wyatt Jackson took an early-evening flight back to Norfolk with a smug half smile on his face. He was sixty-five years old. He would probably never have another case like this. He might not win, but he was sure going to have fun trying.

  Philip Kilpatrick learned about the case on Air Force One. He printed two copies of the entire complaint and huddled with the president at thirty thousand feet to review it. It contained mostly conjecture and speculation and paragraphs that began, “Upon information and belief.” Kilpatrick had been around the block a time or two, and the president had seen her fair share of lawsuits, but neither of them had heard of Wyatt Jackson. The whole thing had the stench of an ambulance chaser trying to get lucky.

  “What do we know about this lawyer?” the president asked. Pointedly, she had not used his name. He had not yet earned that much respect.

  “Basically a solo practitioner. Criminal defense. Virginia Beach. Unorthodox trial lawyer who will say and do anything.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Amanda said. Kilpatrick knew what she meant. The big D.C. firms were predictable. But
guys like Wyatt Jackson could be the legal equivalent of suicide bombers.

  “Do you think one of those conservative crusader groups is behind him?” the president asked.

  “Don’t know. I’ll do some research.”

  The president set her copy of the lawsuit on the table in front of her with a sigh. She took off her reading glasses and placed them next to it. She never wore them in public, preferring contacts so that the good people of the United States would always remember she was the youngest president since JFK.

  Kilpatrick could see the weariness in her eyes. This was day one of a four-day international excursion—first to Europe, then the Mideast. Allies had to be cajoled. Giant egos had to be massaged. Promises had to be made and explanations given for those that had not been kept. The president hated trips like this.

  “You’ll have to take care of this, Philip,” she said. “We won’t be able to talk about it. If the case ever makes it to trial, which is highly unlikely, they’d be able to ask about any of our conversations. We don’t have attorney-client privilege, you know.”

  “I can handle it,” Philip assured her.

  The president looked out the window for a second and then blew out a breath. This lawsuit was not in the plans. “Do you think this story has legs?”

  “I’ll call Dylan Pierce. He’ll file a motion to dismiss. It’ll be gone at the first hearing. You’ve got immunity, and we’ve got the Feres Doctrine to fall back on. Plus, we’ll plead national security and say the courts shouldn’t pry into these matters.”

  “I know all that. But we need this thing to die quickly. We can’t wait two months for a court ruling. The timing couldn’t be worse.”