The Right Way

 326.

"They are basically split down the middle, 50/50," Julie says in reference to the House Committee attempting a power play to direct the course of action that will, to a great extent, direct our counter-terrorism efforts. "Along party lines as you would imagine. Those on one side applaud our recent success, and those on the other deplore it. Let's not forget that we exposed a layer of corruption that had become normalized as a standard operating procedure."

Harlan gives us an overview of the legal issues involved with the designation of domestic terrorism and the current motions on the table in both houses to give the appearance of progress. "The single biggest challenge in fighting the cells - as their level of sophistication in their organizational structure ultimately provides an autonomous and independent soldier acting alone - not like the armies gathered to do battle in the past - is the numbers involved. For every one we preemptively take down, there are a hundred others in training camps prepping for American jihad. The homegrown terrorist of today doesn't arrive by landing craft but by ransom-ware, not as a platoon or brigade, but acting alone, armed to the gills with military grade weaponry, a radical political bias and a religious, racial or social agenda to fulfill. Examples include McVeigh, Kaczynski, Rittenhouse, Paddock, and a dozen other white, middle class, males," he outlines.

"And it doesn't help us much when these soft-minded bullies get rewarded for violent behavior by some of the highest ranking and most prolific politicians at every level of government," Julie adds. "Never before have we seen such overt support for subversive behavior, actually legitimizing their violence and radical right-wing agendas of white supremacy, nationalism, misogyny and their cult of ignorance."

Harlan caps the dramatic presentation with a solemn, "We have what our political allies consider to be an impossible assignment. Look around the room," he asks with a sweeping arm gesture to encompass all eight of us, "this is it. It is us against, what intel suggests is approaching a thousand individual attacks on US soil since 1994. A thousand attacks divided by eight people, and don't get me wrong, these are eight high-performance individuals, is 125 stops per agent. To give you an idea of what that means, it took us three months to bring down Cyrus' cell of three - and we had an inside asset!"

The room is silent as we absorb and process this information. It is nothing new, we have known about the ridiculous odds against us for some time, but this new exchange, to my mind, is the precursor for the next phase of our action. Julie continues, "We have lobbied hard and long for additional resources; people, tools, equipment, mostly to no avail. We are lucky to have survived the trauma and political turnover that flooded us downstream after the success of Operation Firecracker/Mongoose TOM. And please, regardless of what they spew on that right-wing propaganda quasi-news channel, it was a great day for democracy, you are all to be congratulated for your fine efforts and courage under fire," At this Julie pauses to allow the earnestness of her message to be appreciated by all, "But the time is at hand to make a bold new statement in our counter-terrorism effort."

"At 1000 tomorrow, right here, we will outline the new direction that we intend to steer this battleship - and launch the next phase of our operation. Until then I would like to leave you with an oldie but goodie, a meme I am quite sure many of you have heard a thousand times, but maybe for others it will be the first time." She moves to the far end of the conference table and pulls the string on a sheet covering a hanging new wall poster.

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO DO THINGS:
1) THE RIGHT WAY, and
2) AGAIN.

"See you all tomorrow morning."