United States | The Business Plot

[Odinson]

Private

WASHINGTON D.C.
The White House
December 31, 1998
11:00 PM EST

The Situation Room​

The members of the President's National Security Council, as well as some additional visitors who were there to support the upcoming discussion, were seated at the long wooden table in the Situation Room. The mood of the room was certainly split in two as half were almost dead silent while the other half were engaging in small talk. Vice President Sinclair, who would have preferred to be presiding over the Senate at the Capitol, was seated to the right of the one empty chair in the room which was reserved for President Gore. To the right of Sinclair was Jackson Fitzgerald, the Secretary of State. These two men, who had survived the attack on the Capitol for different reasons, especially knew how impatient President Gore was becoming with the investigation. Today, December 31st 1998, marked the one-year anniversary since the attempted attack on Walt Disney World in Florida (which the government still didn't have satisfying answers on) and by February of 1999 it would be the two-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol. No one thought that getting answers would take this long, especially the President. The national media and Republicans were starting to question whether or not Gore would be able to bring the nation out of the crisis it had been simmering in for almost two years now.

The doors to the Situation Room opened and Duncan Nicholas, the President's Chief of Staff, walked in. He took a seat to the left of the head of the table, directly across from Vice President Sinclair.
"Mister Vice President, Mister Secretary," Duncan said. Fitzgerald gave a silent nod back to Duncan while Sinclair leaned forward and said, "I hope we make some progress this time."

The doors to the Situation Room flung open with more purpose this time, meaning that the Marine Sentries guarding the door were at attention. President Gore entered into the room wielding a crimson-colored Harvard coffee mug which he took a sip from as he approached the head of the table. Everyone in the room stood up, while the military personnel stood at attention. Al took his seat and took another sip of his coffee, and didn't say anything. It looked like he was contemplating something as everyone else in the room stared at him.

"Mister President-" Duncan said, before being abruptly cut off by Al.
"No," the President interjected.
"...Sir?" Duncan replied.
"We're not doing this again. We're not going to go around the table and everyone tells me that they're working on something secret and that they're close to the truth. It's New Year's Eve of 1998 - no more pussyfooting... I've tried this your way," Al said to everyone collectively. "Now we're going to do it my way," he said.

Al turned to the newest members of the National Security Council, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence. "I want every detail we have on the attack on the Capitol," he said. Almost everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably in their chairs as they weren't exactly prepared for this kind of discussion.

"Mister President," the Secretary of Homeland Security said. "We... we are still finalizing a report that we'd like to give to you at a later date-" he said before the President cut him off again.
"No. Your report is due now - you will give it to me verbally. I'm done with plausible deniability, I'm done with permanently waiting, I'm now holding you all accountable. You have had the full resources of the most powerful military and intelligence apparatus in human history - you better have some damn results," Al retorted.

The President looked at the Attorney General who had been sitting in on all of the NSC meetings and was well-versed on things the President wasn't even entirely aware of yet. "Silas, if anyone lies to me or omits the truth, arrest them before they leave the building." The Attorney General nodded and then started taking hand-written minutes of the private meeting.

"You may proceed," Al said to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
The man cleared his throat and began, "Yes sir... In the beginning of January 1997, several dozen naval mines were slowly and meticulously brought into the Capitol Building piece by piece by a variety of people. Most of these people worked at the Capitol and were either blackmailed or bribed into bringing the pieces inside. Because the mines were brought in as individual parts, no one understood that they were helping bring bombs into the building. The more sensitive pieces to the explosives were brought in by three people who had fake security credentials from the Capitol Police. These naval mines were carefully positioned in subterranean areas below the House Chamber to guarantee that everyone in attendance would be killed. As we all know, they were extremely effective. Most of the people I mentioned earlier who helped bring in the pieces were actually killed on the night of the attack. From the intelligence that we've been able to gather about the blackmail and bribes, most of them either thought that they were helping bring in elaborate monitoring equipment for the NSA or FBI. The mines were interlinked and hardwired - they were not remotely detonated," he said as he looked over to the Director of National Intelligence. She took over and started talking.

"Someone from inside the building activated the bombs. They could have done it remotely, but considering the careful planning this must have taken, we imagine that they didn't want to risk a premature detonation from a cell phone or radio signal. Unless the suspect was killed in the blast we knew that we now had someone we could hopefully find on the security cameras throughout the Capitol. The FBI spent weeks logging through thousands of hours of recordings from across the entire building. A man who entered the Capitol dressed as an electrician and under the alias 'James Arnold' went to the private subway station for the House chamber and accessed an electrical panel. He installed a timer set for ten minutes, boarded the subway and produced identification to the driver, and went to the Longworth House Office Building - a building that has offices for staff of the House of Representatives. Once there, he slipped into a janitorial closet and removed his uniform. He walked out in a suit and with falsified identification to be in the building. He simply walked through the building and out onto the street where he caught a cab just as the mines under the House Chamber detonated. While we did get several good images of his face on security cameras in the Capitol and the Longworth building, we were not able to identify him," she said.

"What about the uniform he left on the closet? Did it have any hair or DNA on it?" the President asked.

"We found it, or what was left of it. He used some paint remover and a lighter in the room to catch it on fire. There was no DNA left on it," she said.

"I'll get back to the mystery janitor in a second... I'm sure you all remember the attempt on President, then-Vice President, Gore's life the night of the attack," she continued. "A dozen heavily-armed men attempted to kill Vice President Gore while he was mourning the death of his father at his family's home in Tennessee. The handful of Secret Service agents that were there were able to hold off the attackers long enough for an Army Delta Force unit to arrive via helicopter from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The Delta Force unit killed nine of the twelve suspects. The three remaining suspects had been shot but were not mortally wounded. You," she said, speaking directly to President Gore, "were taken aboard one of the helicopters and flown back to Washington. Meanwhile, the Secret Service took custody of the three remaining men. They were given medical treatment and arrested for attempting to murder the Vice President. They were transported to the Secret Service's field office in Nashville for interrogation. Two of the three men ended up cooperating and delivering a substantial amount of leads to us. We treated it all with a grain of salt as we weren't sure what was true or a lie - not to mention they may have been lied to as well. While the attack on the Capitol went according to plan for the attackers, the attempt on Vice President Gore's life did not. We found this... very sloppy for a person or organization who had so carefully planned everything else. The two cooperating men admitted to us that their original orders were to kill the Secretary of State that night," she said as everyone briefly looked over to Jackson Fitzgerald who was the only living cabinet-level official left over from the Clinton Administration.

"But the plans had to change once it was discovered that Vice President Gore wasn't going to be at the State of the Union. A snap decision was made to allow the designated survivor to live and to take aim at President Gore - we're still not sure why this decision was made, but it's probably because you had a more legitimate claim to the Presidency as the Vice President. Anyway, our first lead from the men who tried to kill you was to a man named Matias Gomez. He is... was a low-level banker in Washington D.C. He is also a dual citizen of the United States and Argentina. We found out that he was the man who was going to issue payment to the men who attempted to kill you. U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest him in Washington, but he managed to make it to the Argentinian Embassy. Argentina refused to hand him over or extradite him. The White House and State Department decided that it was not worth spooking whomever was left in the conspiracy in order to obtain custody of Gomez, so he has been put on the back burner for now. However, the CIA still has him on... a list. Being unable to peruse this lead was exceptionally frustrating to the FBI. Their white-collar crime unit had combed through a lot of bank records and went through a lot of trouble to get evidence on Gomez. The money he was going to wire was there, and was seized, however it had been routed through at least two, and probably ten, offshore banks so we aren't sure of the origin. So, the Gomez lead was also a dead end," she said.

"We were starting to run out solid leads to work on, so we started focusing on the more obscure. But then, two weeks ago, someone made the mistake of trying to access the account that Gomez had control over. The FBI had security footage of a man in New Jersey attempting to access the account, which he thought still had about $200,000,000 in it. A warrant was produced to the bank for their security footage about two hours after the access-attempt was made. The man in the footage looked identical to the man who initiated the explosion at the Capitol. The FBI sent a forensics team to the bank and brushed everything he touched for finger prints. An interesting detail that a profiler had noted about the suspect was that he was a germaphobe. Any time he touched a door handle, he would grab it in an unusual way. For example, he opened one of the glass doors at the bank by grabbing one of the elongated handles from the bottom instead of the top or middle like most people. Remarkably, even after a thousand or so people entered and left the bank since he had been there, we were able to pick up a full thumb-print and partial index finger print since he grabbed the handle in an unusual place. We ran him through the national database - his name is Tobias Santorini. He's a 41 year-old from Lincoln, Nebraska. Several surveillance teams followed him for the past two weeks. He has no job from what we've been able to find, but someone is paying him cash. He visited his mother who lives in New York City now. He didn't do too much that was noteworthy... We gather that he was waiting for orders of some kind. We are unsure if he actually had permission to access the account from his superiors, or if he was just trying to access the money for himself. Yesterday, however, there was a serious development," she said.

The Director of National Intelligence leaned forward. President Gore, who was enthralled in the story now, stared into her grey eyes. "Santorini made an unscheduled visit to One World Trade Center in Manhattan. He signed in at the desk under a false name - Josh Finkle. He was given a visitors ID badge for the World Trade Forum which leases the 105th floor of the tower. An undercover agent was issued a visitor's pass to the WTF as well - she was posing as a delivery-girl for a florist. The agent had flowers, which contained a discrete listening and surveillance device at the base, for a desk-employee who had an upcoming anniversary. She made it past the front desk and delivered the flowers. We didn't get that much good audio, but the camera recorded Mister Santorini entering the office of Jay Stevens, the Executive Director of the World Trade Forum.

"On a side-note," she said, "the World Trade Forum is currently under secret investigation by the FBI, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Commerce for embezzlement, fraud, and bad-faith business practices. They've failed to deliver their promises of establishing international commerce between any country. The British threatened legal action a while back, but the WTF quickly refunded them $1.5-billion to sweep the trouble under the rug. While the WTF is a private company, we were able to obtain financial information about the company through a number of warrants. We estimate that they have over $3-billion in their primary account. The meeting between Stevens and Santorini lasted about thirty minutes - it ended in some kind of confrontation, as security escorted Santorini from Stevens's office and to the elevator. Whatever this incident was, it was not reported to the Port Authority who is in charge of policing the World Trade Center. After Santorini left the World Trade Center, federal agents followed him to a café in Jersey City. He was initially arrested for falsifying government documents - the ID badge that he used to go from the Capitol to the Longworth Building. Once he was taken to an FBI office in New York City additional charges were put against him including trespassing, many counts of murder, and treason. On his person we found $10,000 in cash. The envelope and the money had Stevens's finger prints on it. Santorini denied his right for an attorney and instead demanded his phone call. The phones in New York's FBI Field Office were experiencing... some kind of technical difficulty at that time, at least that's what I was told. The agents interrogating Santorini told him that they were trying to find him a working line in the building. When asked about the money, he said that Stevens gave it to him 'as payment'.

The Director continued, "The agents pressured Santorini, and said that they could have his parents deported back to Greece if he didn't cooperate. Santorini gave the agents a web address along with seventeen different passwords. They found a list of seventeen people with numbers associated to each one. On the list included executives from several Fortune 500 Companies and old-money wealthy elites from around the country. We've confirmed the identity and location of each person on the list and are currently mobilizing teams of federal agents and U.S. Marshals around the country. The mission is to apprehend all of them within the same twenty minutes at 1AM tomorrow."

"I'll stay up for it... see if the FBI can set me up some kind of live feed or put me on a phone call with your command team so some of us can listen in from here," the President said.

The Director of National Intelligence nodded, "I think I'll leave the Disney World Matter to the Department of Energy... They've taken the formal lead on that investigation," she said.

President Gore looked over at the Secretary of Energy who took off his reading glasses and stared back at the President. "We're still working on our report, sir."

"Give me what you have," Al responded.
The Secretary of Energy set down his glasses and looked at the President, "This is above 'Top Secret', Mister President."

President Gore asked everyone except the Secretary of Energy, Vice President Sinclair, and Secretary of State Fitzgerald to leave. The Secretary of Energy seemed displeased that there were more people in the room besides just him and the President, but he figured this would have to do.

"Two nuclear weapons, each powerful enough to make a 20 ton explosion, were stolen from a Department of Energy facility in Idaho. One of them was destroyed around this time last year when there was the attempted attack on Walt Disney World in Florida. One of them is still missing... We have no idea where it is."