Regrets

[Note - sorry, I was out of town for a few days and my internet connection went inconveniently missing! Produced an utterly unintentional (but hopefully tantalising) break]

When Kirk worked counter-terrorism he was a captain - a quite low ranked officer. Further, he was an Air Force captain at a navy unit, and worse he was working in Virginia where you can't spit without hitting a senior officer. So he had access to information that only a handful of people even knew existed, and was given enormous responsibility, but actually had very little real clout. Rank matters, and it matters to civilians as well as military.

So if Kirk had stayed in, and if he had managed to piece together what was going to happen on 9/11, there's a chance that even then no one would have listened.

But then... they did listen over Y2K. And if he had been there for those few months, already thinking along the lines of a hijacking, maybe he could have made the connections and seen the signs that could have stopped it.

If.

Kirk wasn't someone to spend endless time agonizing about the if's of life, but he also wasn't able to forget it. He did regret, he did wonder, and he did feel terrible grief and pain, and yes anger over what happened. But his response was to try and find something to do now. What happened can't be changed, and all the guilt in the world won't reset things. So figure out what needs to happen next.

And that was the question. He was approached about going back - not into the military, but as a civilian. There were a couple of offers, and he did seriously think about it. It would mean uprooting again, returning to the East Coast and taking the kids out of school yet again. And it would mean accepting the counter-terrorism world as his world for the rest of his career; there would be no going back from this one.

It was a long, and drawn out decision. We talked endlessly, he called friends for advice, talked to people still in the world, tried to get a feel for what was happening. There was chaos of course. This hit the intel world hard, and people were still trying to sort out the aftermath. Much of it sounded good though - many of the people who were most blind, most hidebound and obstructionist were gone. Change was happening, change that had been needed for years. What sort of useful role Kirk could play, however, wasn't clear. In the end he was afraid that once again he would be drawn into a dark and horrible world and still be unable to make a difference.

And then a chance came up to play a small part right where he was. His company made software that could, with a little tweaking, be incredibly useful if applied to intel work. Homeland security was a brand new phrase, but it was obvious that some major needs were recognized, and Kirk's company could fill some of them. They quickly set up a unit to make a pitch for a government contract, and Kirk was unofficially approached to advise these guys on the marketing plan they had in mind - PowerPoint, naturally.

He came home late the day they showed him their presentation.

'Well?'

He looked at me.

'I don't think they liked what I had to say.'

'Why not?'

'Because I told them the truth.'

'Which was...'

'They gave a ten minute presentation, with a couple of scenarios laid out demonstrating how the product could be used.'

'And?'

'What wasn't laughable, was illegal.'

'Ah. And you said this?'

'Yes.'

'So I suppose they don't want you on their team.'

'Not really. Then I told them that they missed the main point.'

'....'

'The military is there to break things and kill people. I don't think they see themselves in that sort of business.'

'But they still want to sell to the government?'

'Oh yeah. They just want it to be giving the rest of the world a stern lecture and sending everyone home with a cookie. That and doing a whole lot of things that are completely unconstitutional'

The company hired an outside consultant for a huge fee. They spent several months on their pitch, and devoted a group of highly paid people to put the whole thing together. The basic structure and message, however didn't change.

They did not get the contract.

Dies Irae

Morning routine was well established. Kirk always got up first so I could get that most blissful kind of sleep - the few minutes snatched after the alarm goes off. He would start the three-stage process of actually prying the children out of bed by thumping on doors and giving fair warning before he started his shower. By the time I got up the thumping had been followed by open doors and overly cheery greetings (because he was evil that way in the mornings). The rest of us eventually staggered out into the kitchen to start breakfast and pack lunches to the constant background noise of the news.

Kirk never lost the need to check the news - it was the first thing on in the morning, the last thing at night. At work he always had a news site ticking away somewhere on his computer, and throughout the day I could expect IM's updating me if anything happened that he felt was important.

That day almost all shoes had been found and put on, nearly all lunches finished and dumped to the bottom of backpacks to be squashed by notebooks. Kirk was a couple of minutes from going out the door to work. And the first plane flew into the World Trade Center.

I was the one who saw it - everyone else was bustling around getting ready to go. I called to Kirk and he ran in and froze.

'Is it...?' I asked, but he didn't answer. I could see the color drain from his face, literally washing down and leaving him totally grey. He was utterly still.

'Kirk, do you think...?'

And the second plane hit.

I know the kids were asking questions, I know the television commentor was talking, but my memory is of total silence. His silence.

Then the Pentagon - and Kirk knew people who worked there, had gone there himself for briefings I believe. Black smoke. And our phone began to ring.

'Hello? Yes. I saw. Yes. No - no, absolutely not. Of course I'm sure. You'll be fine, he'll be fine. No. Okay, I'll see you there.'

It rang again, and again - five or six times and always the same conversation. Did you see what happened? Should we go out? Can we drive on the Bridge?

He turned to me.

'It's happened.'

'I know Kaj, I know, I'm sorry. Do you... '

But I didn't even know what to ask.

He reassured the kids then - don't worry, you'll be fine. These guys, their religion forbids killing children, it's one of the worst things they can do. They believed him, trusted him, went off to school.

'I'll try and call J, see what's happening.' J was his close friend and partner from the counter-terrorism unit. 'I need to know... I'd better go.'

And he drove to work.

I don't remember most of the rest of that day. In the afternoon I took the kids to Half Moon Bay to soccer practice, and remember having a parent ask in a totally normal way 'so, how are you?' and I couldn't think what to answer. Kirk met us there at the middle school field, and we sat together on a worn wooden porch outside one of the barracks.

'You okay?'

He hunched over in his black suit and studied the ground. Silence again.

He had written it. He had suggested that a terrorist could use a commercial plane, one loaded wtih fuel, as an effective bomb. What if, he had written, what would we do if... and they had laughed. No one would do that. No one had ever done that. It has never happened before.

There are buildings that will be targeted, he said. Bin Laden failed once with the Trade Center - he's going to try again. And there are others, and he listed them. The Pentagon. The White House.

He wasn't the only one of course, and it wasn't that he sat as a Cassandra spouting true prophecy and ignored by the Powers that Be. It might have made no difference even if someone had listened. After all, the terrorists have the advantage - they only need to succeed once. But maybe, maybe this time like Y2K, things could have been averted.

Across the field the boys' team scrimmaged in the fading light; the evening fog began to roll over the grass. Parents were gathering in small groups, talking quietly. I felt removed from them and from Kirk. I knew too much to feel quite a part of their reaction, too little to be part of Kirk's private pain. He stood up, held out his hand.

'I'll have to see if there's anything I can do.'

'I know.'

'There probably isn't, but I have to see.'

'I know.'

'Okay. Let's go home.'

Torn

The problem was that Kirk was doing good work. He was doing vital, essential work - work that was literally saving lives and changing the world. Not many people get to do that sort of thing, make that sort of difference. He loved the challenge and the pressure, loved the chance to put his theories about information operations to work.

But there were other problems. The intelligence world is a strange place, a place where sources and information are impossibly valuable and are fiercely guarded - not just from the enemy without, but from other intelligence branches. CIA, DIA - all of those 'men in black' view eachother with deep suspicion. They do not, to put it mildly, play well with others.

And then there was the entrenched mindset, the very conservative status quo above Kirk. The people at that level had come into the intel world during the cold war, and their focus had never really changed. They were used to a particular kind of enemy - one that was established, codified, predictable; a known quantity with a home to protect. They were extremely good at dealing with this enemy, they knew it cold. But the new world, the world of Bin Laden was not like that, and they were slow to change. So Kirk was endlessly fighting against people who did not want to listen, people who firmly believed they knew everything.

I don't know how much of it was like that. I just know he hit wall after wall. Worse, I think he probably got a reputation for being a bit wild - for having crazy ideas. I'm just guessing, but from his frustration I think it's likely that certain people simply stopped listening to what he had to say.

So there he was, doing excellent work but in a way that made life nearly impossible. Because he was so successful he was being read into increasingly higher clearances - need-to-know only stuff, things only a handful of people would have access to. He was being drawn deeper and deeper into the counter-terrorism world, but wasn't being allowed to do what he felt he had to do. Eventually he realized he was completely caught. If he stayed in the Air Force he would be doing counter-terrorism for the rest of his career.

And we were at the decision point. Everyone in the military reaches that moment. If you sign up for one more tour you might as well stay in and collect your retirement; if you get out now you have time to make a new career for yourself. Kirk had his time in the army as an enlisted linguist, he had half-time credit for being in the ROTC, and he had his tours in Alaska and Virginia. If he stayed now, he was going to do this for the next ten years.

He loved the Air Force. He loved everything about it. And now he felt that he had no choice. He had to leave.

dual lives

Kirk was still working insane hours. We didn't even pretend he got enough sleep - he just grabbed what he could. He didn't want to miss time with the family during the week, dinner was pretty important time at our house, but it meant he sometimes got by with only four or five hours of sleep a day.

When he was with us, he gave everything. He did his best to be wholly there for us when we went biking or fishing; he tried not to let the other life, the counter-terrorism life, intrude. It became harder and harder.

I realized it gradually, realized how much this work was taking over. It didn't happen when we were in the woods - when we were catching frogs down at George Washington's Retreat in Yorktown, or biking the three trails at Harwood Mills - but when we were driving around town there would be moments when he was distracted, different.

Like the time he glanced over as we passed a local bank, stiffened and muttered something about 'so they use that one...' I think he had recognized someone going into the bank, and now part of him was concerned with working out how to use this unexpected windfall of information.

One afternoon we were driving up the highway outside of Langley. I was reading a magazine - the Smithsonian I think - and I was chatting to Kirk about an article discussing the greatest achievement of modern medicine: the successful campaign against smallpox. Wasn't it amazing, I said, the way the WHO had managed it, wasn't it wonderful that the world was safe now from a disease that had been a deadly threat for thousands of years. Very quietly, his hands stiff on the wheel, he said 'it's not gone.'

Just that. But I knew - I knew that not only did he know that more than one country had kept live samples of the virus, he knew intimately the infection rate, the symptoms, the horrific scarring that those lucky enough to survive would suffer. He knew how it could be weaponized, had thought about delivery systems, had worked through countless scenarios in which various populations were targeted and infected.

And gradually I realized that he was living like that constantly. Everywhere we went, there was part of him looking around and evaluating targets, thinking about blast zones, considering mortality rates, political value, public reaction.

In order to stop a terrorist, you have to think like one. To be successful, you have to inhabit his mind. Kirk was very good at what he did, and it was beginning to take over everything. He was staring into Nietzsche's abyss.

ethnic profiling

From the comment below:

Anonymous said...

What did Kirk think about ethnic profiling?

9:25 AM

Good question. Kirk was a pragmatist. He also knew his stuff very, very well. So here's the pragmatic approach:

The majority of people who are acting in this particular terror war are of certain ethnic groups. Not only one group, mind. To ignore this fact would be stupid. To think that only people from a sub-set of ethnic groups would be involved is equally stupid. So ethnic profiling is a short-cut, but one of only limited use.

Kirk knew that really good intelligence work is much more important. You have to know your enemy to know who they are likely to use, who they will surround themselves with, and who will be most drawn to their cause.

These are people who use other people's children to kill and maim. They thrive on death, on power, on destruction. They have a particular background and a specific code of their own. Without understanding that you don't understand them.

He felt very strongly that using ethnic profiling for anything other than the very limited application it was suited for was not only wrong, it was dangerous. There is a tendency to think that doing something - anything - is useful, and worse that doing something means something else doesn't need to be done. It gives a false sense of security; it does both passive and active harm.

It is, however, a starting point. When the FBI wants to catch a particularly dangerous criminal they might use a profiler - someone who can narrow down the most likely characteristics of the perpetrator. These characteristics often include ethnicity, but are certainly not limited to it. The intel world does the same thing - they look at ethnicity and religious affiliation because they'd be stupid not to. But to stop there would be useless.

In fact, the intel community doesn't use ethnic profiling in the way it's perceived commonly. They do not look blindly at only one demographic. They are looking at far more complex things than just ethnicity.

The public however, the great mass of humanity, can and does do so. And that's where the real problem lies.

When 9-11 happened many of our friends called Kirk. They wanted reassurance, they wanted to know if the Bay Bridge would be safe that day, if their children should go to school, if they should go to work. They wanted to know, over and over again, what they should do.

Go to a mosque, Kirk said. If you want to know what to do, go to a mosque. Talk to the people there. Talk to them as Americans, as people, as humans with a common grief and a common concern. Reach out and make friends and find their humanity because that is how you defeat this terrorism. Look beyond their racial background. Help them look beyond yours.

ADDED: I'm speaking for me now, not Kirk.

I was talking to someone about the security issues with flying now, the new restrictions the added searches and banned items because of the latest terrorist arrests. This person said that the terrorists had 'won' because our actions had changed as a result of their behaviour.

I disagree. First, there is nothing in the way we board planes that is sacred. We do not use our security screenings as part of our religious ritual. Our ability to take sports drinks on a flight does not change our moral code or alter our ethical belief system. Being more careful, being more stringent is not a sign of victory for the terrorists because they've forced a reaction. Actually, it's made their lives a little harder because one more possibility has been recognized and limited. This is a failure for them

We change our habits constantly - change is part of life. It's called adaptation, and if we can't do it we can't survive. So showing up a bit earlier for a flight, planning ahead as far as hydration goes? We'll get used to it; life will go on.

However, bringing things to a screeching halt because someone is 'behaving strangely' if that strange behavior is mostly having a long beard or carrying a Koran or something is a victory for terrorism.

I do think, though, that it is an extreme reaction from initial fear. Things will calm down again, we will become used to the new world just as we have done before, and once more we will, most of us anyway, be able to look at eachother as individuals of great variety rather than large masses of stereotyped genres. Maybe in stress it's easier to lump people into broad and general categories, to do a quick and harsh sort into 'safe' and 'not safe.' But it's not a practical thing, or a realistic thing.

Hopefully we all know that humans in general have a great capacity for violence, and a great capacity for empathy and acceptance, regardless of race or creed, arbitrary geographic boundary, religion, tribe, or division real or imagined. The destroyers are loud and horrible and impossible to ignore - but they are a tiny minority; a tiny minority in every culture.

Writing Reality

Kirk was still doing work creating excercise scenarios. He was very good at it in Alaska, and he was good at it here; still coming up with creative ideas to test people in new ways.

The trouble is, sometimes people don't want to be tested in new ways. It's much nicer to be tested in old ways, so you're ready and you have all the answers set to go. Notice, this isn't something unique to the military! Don't we all want to have the questions before hand? Don't we wish we could take the test we did last time, because now we know exactly what to say.

So in the Spring or Summer of 2000 Kirk wrote up a little scenario that involved a large navy ship. The idea was that a few terrorists would load up a small zodiac - an inflatable boat with a great little engine and no draft - with explosives, then float it up right next to the ship and detonate it.

The navy was not amused. Their ships, their nice, big, powerful ships, were not vulnerable to things like this. Terrorists would never attack a heavily armed and armored vessel - it just didn't make sense. The scenario was disgarded, never seriously looked at.

The USS Cole was bombed on October 12th, 2000. 17 sailors were killed.

Kirk was deeply troubled. He knew it had just been an idea, just one of several concepts he had come up with. But there was such a large 'if only' there. If only they had run the excercise. If only someone had noticed that this was a possibility. If only...

There had been so many people saved at Y2K, such an amazing day of success. Was this the inevitable flip side? And how do you cope with something that was, however improbably, preventable.

I know he thought about it. I don't think he ever found any real answers.

A Little (off-white, clunky) Security

'They're going to put a secure line in the house,' Kirk announced one day. It was well after Y2K, and no naturally I don't know why. I also didn't ask.

Hmmm... a secure line. Like in 'get the president on the line' - the secure line.

It would go in our bedroom. My. A top-secret secure line in our bedroom!

This would probably mean a bit of redecorating. I mean, we didn't have really swish black furniture or anything, and our mossy green duvet cover would definitely not go with subdued blue lighting and lots of plexiglass panels for Kirk to scribble meaningful things all over. The banks of flashing LED displays could probably go up against the East wall next to the attic door. There was just enough room there for a couple of low-ranking flunkies to look intense while wearing headphones. Also my wardrobe would need to be updated to include a lot of very streamlined suits with exceptionally short skirts. Wow. A secure telephone line.

I don't remember seeing it installed. I would like to say there was a small army of coveralled burly people with suspicious bulges around their persons and paranoid twitches. But so far as I know it simply appeared one day. And actually, it turned out to be an enormous, clunky off-white thing that sat glumly by Kirk's side of the bed and got in the way of the alarm clock.

And when he was away I was always just a little worried... what if ...

... but it never rang.

New Year, New World

We prized our weekends. We did more than that, we seized them from the first moment and squeezed every possible bit of time and happiness out we could. Because weekends were all we had, and we knew we were lucky to get those.

There was a silent battle going on, one most people still know nothing about. It had nothing to do with computers or millennium viruses. It was the fight for the next millennium, and it was deadly.

I don't know how many plots there were. I have a strong sense of the most vulnerable places in the world simply from reading the signs around me; I know where, almost certainly, things were stopped. But in the weeks leading up to Y2K there were dozens certainly - probably hundreds - of people who spent every waking moment thinking about the end of the world. They ticked off the things they knew, the things they stopped and worried constantly that they hadn't found it all.

At first Kirk left the house before 5 in the morning, generally didn't get home until after 7. Christmas day he didn't get home until 3 a.m. He slept a little, woke up to watch the kids open stockings and exult over presents, then by 9 he had gone back to work again. After that he was often gone by 3 or 4 a.m., not home until 8 at night.

New Years came. Kirk of course was at work. It's funny I just realized I have no idea where he actually was; I assume it was the ops room at Norfolk, but it could have been anywhere. I was home with the kids.

We piled up cushions and blankets on the couch and settled in; big plans for the new millennium - we were going to watch the Crocodile Hunter marathon. We must have started watching at 7 (crikey! There's a little beauty!), then as each hour ticked by I would flip quickly over to the news channel and we would watch 2000 roll across the world. The kids couldn't have been less interested; they didn't want to miss Steve but I insisted.

Asia changed over. Jerusalem celebrated and Turkey. Then Eastern Europe slowly ticked across, and Paris. And London. Each time there was a sick, horrified tension and then miraculous release: nothing. Thousands of happy, shouting people and... that was all.

Now, with the horror of 9/11 a constant reminder, with arrests in London, and kidnappings and bombs across the Middle East maybe we forget something. The new millennium, our time, was begun in peace.

That was the victory. There are thousands of people alive right now who owe their lives to the folks in Kirk's unit and others like them. And they don't know it - and that's how it should be.

Maybe it's good now and then to remember that.

A New Approach to The Pamper Problem

So we were in Virginia... yes, sorry I couldn't come up with a neater, tidier segue than that.

Kirk was quickly absorbed into the counter-terrorist world. I was used to secrecy, used to not knowing details about what he did, but this was a step beyond that. There was more pressure, and far greater stakes. Before Kirk had protected 'assets' with secrecy, now it was clear those assets were lives.

He was also having to learn an enormous amount in an incredibly short time. There was no easing into this world - things were happening right now, and mistakes were simply not acceptable. Being Kirk he just stayed quiet for a few days and listened hard. He said he overheard one man being asked for an opinion on the new air force guy. 'Nice enough, but not the sharpest tool in the shed' was the verdict. That man ended up being Kirk's best friend in the unit - and he did revise his opinion. Kirk started making a few suggestions, throwing out a carefully casual comment. He was the outsider after all, and intelligence people can be clannish. It didn't take very long, he was allowed inside.

They had a pretty major coup within weeks of Kirk's arrival. As always I don't know details. I think it might be the incident that got a little publicity - the one that was to come through Canada. I do remember Kirk saying there were some Mounties somewhere that he really wanted to buy a drink. And I remember the quote from the unit commander when they gave the briefing after it was all over.

The terrorist was trying to smuggle something over the border apparently, and it must have been something pretty large, and fairly strange. But he was prepared, he was ready for questions this guy. This thing? This contraption I'm bringing into the country? Why... it's a diaper cleaning machine.

Right, the commander said. It'll blow the sh*t out of them.

How to Defeat Y2K Without Really Trying

Call me cynical, but I think it's just possible the navy wasn't taking the whole Y2K computer security threat very seriously. Waiting until November, and then assigning the brand new guy, the guy from a different branch of the service, the guy who is supposed to come in and set up something that will likely make you change the way you're doing things - well, it just seems a bit superficial as efforts go.

I can image one of two things happened:

1. Senior officer type calls up Navy guy. 'I hear there's a new millenium coming our way. And some guy buying thirty cases of toilet paper informs me that we should be concerned about our computer situation. Have we got this handled?' Navy guy answers: 'Sir, I assure you we're putting our top man on this. Nothing to worry about.'

2. Navy guy ups and realizes that in two weeks there's going to be a huge briefing involving all sorts of senior types who will likely ask slightly uneducated and ridiculous questions about a situation they have read of in the popular media, but do not understand. Navy guy senses at once that this is not a good career situation. Either nothing will happen, and some poor other Navy guy will be needlessly sacrificed on the great altar of Briefings That Cause Pain and Agony, or something will happen and some poor other Navy guy will be thoroughly barbequed on the even greater altar of Save the Higher-Ups! That's What Lower Grade Officers Are For!

Anyway, Kirk became the Y2K goat. There was already a counter-terrorism unit so he was sort of cobbled onto that, and had to suddenly come up to speed on the counter-terrorism world in a matter of weeks. His initial focus was supposed to be on the rollover situation. He did his research, looked into the whole thing thoroughly, and when the briefing came around, he was ready.

Room filled with officers so highly ranked their noses bled. Much discussion of various security issues. Finally, senior official leans forward and asks about Y2K, computers, security, and the rollover.

'So, should we be worried?'

Kirk leans forward to his mike: 'No.'

Pause.

'Son, could you expand on that a bit?'

Kirk leans forward again: 'Hell no.'

Well, they remembered his name after that.

November, 1999. Welcome to Virginia.

I would use the term culture shock to describe the transition if it weren’t that Virginia was too much of a lady to do such a thing to a stranger. It was more the opposite of culture shock. It was like swimming through a clear, crisp mountain lake to pull up on the shore of a giant squashy marshmallow. Terrible analogy, but true nonetheless. Virginia was civilized and soft and safe (although that didn’t break Kirk of the habit of calling out ‘come on, victims’ to bring straggling kids running to his heels when we went hiking). It was, at least at first, a bit boring.

There were gentle rolling green hills and great tall green trees. There were enormous, unbelievable herds of deer – a sight that completely baffled the kids who couldn’t imagine what those dog-sized edible creatures could possibly be, standing around simply waiting to be devoured. Stupid animals. And there were people, many, many people.

We did all the usual settling in things – going to the housing office to get the list of possible places to rent, scouting out the local base, the schools, the recreation areas. As usual as well we only looked at two houses before we settled down; always anxious to lose the uncertainty of TLF. We rejected the ranch house in Norfolk (even though the commute would be fairly easy) after a neighbor confidentially told us about the major fire the house had suffered the year before. They had fixed it up beautiful, she insisted, and it only smelled a little bit when it rained.

Home would be a large colonial. It was the biggest house we ever lived in. There were only three bedrooms, but (mirabile dictu) a real, genuine playroom for the kids where the mess of toys could be confined to one area. There was a huge family room, a breakfast room, a formal dining room, and even a livingroom that frankly was too much for us as with no budget and three growing children we didn’t have anything upholstered that could be remotely considered formal – comfortable would be true, and kind, shabby would be closer.

Within a week Kirk reported to the Naval base for work. He went through the rigmarole of getting a pass and signing in, and walked onto the floor. Ah, they said, the Air Force guy. Right. Well, actually we’ve decided we don’t really want an info ops unit. Instead, you’re going to join the counter terrorism group. We’re putting you in charge of Y2K.

No One Left Behind

It was interesting Googling for this next bit. I was suprised how much there still is out there about it, articles from major news sources are still live, still linked and readable. Internet time travel.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9903/27/nato.attack.07/index.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june99/f117a_3-27.html

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9903/28/nato.strike.02/index.html

It's this last one I find most interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/kosovo2/307218.stm
"The Pentagon did not provide details of the rescue, but it is believed to have been a well-rehearsed operation involving a significant array of firepower and specially trained personnel."

Kirk was on the ops floor when the pilot made contact.

"Mayday call

The pilot is reported to have made a mayday call with his radio beacon.

It would have been sent using an emergency code to other Allied aircraft in the area.

Once the signal had been picked up voice contact would be established.

The pilot would then pass on his position - usually in relation to a pre-arranged fixed grid reference so that anyone else listening would not know where he was - and a rendezvous arranged."

He only had one shot at giving his location. His signal could be tracked, so he needed to tell them as quickly as possible, then get quiet. They knew there were enemy forces in the area, and there wasn't really anywhere to hide. The rescue mission had to go immediately, and it had to be absolutely accurate. Once they went out there the pilot's location would be blown, and the rescuers themselves in serious danger.

Kirk watched and listened as they planned the mission. They had readings from various instruments, and they had the pilot's statement. They pulled up the map and pinpointed where they thought he was. The problem was they were wrong.

Kirk said it was pretty tense. He was one of the lowest ranking people on the floor. He also was an intel guy - not a pilot or navigator, not a Para Jumper or a special forces guy with practical experience. But he stuck it out. They were wrong, he told them, off by over a mile. If they went to the spot on the map they would miss the pilot completely and blow their only chance to bring him home. Here, he said, was the right spot.

There was a bit of shouting, but Kirk stuck to his point and finally the commander jabbed at him with a finger.

'Son, we got maybe five minutes to get this thing off the ground. We miss this kid and that's it. How sure are you?'

'Sir, I went hunting in the arctic circle, I based my life on a GPS reading. I was right then sir, and I'm right now. He's here.'

They sent the rescue mission out, and picked up the pilot within yards of where Kirk had located him.

Kirk never found out the guy's name; it's certain the guy never knew about Kirk. That wasn't the point. Like the people who put their lives on the line to go pick the man up, the pilots, the jumpers, the support crews, Kirk knew the way things are supposed to work in the military.

You don't leave anyone behind.

Two Worlds

I was in Alaska, Kirk in Vicenza. I feel obliged to Google really fast to see just how far apart that is, but I have this strange lassitude about the whole thing. I don't want to know how far apart we were - I know how far it felt.

Once the bombing war started Kirk couldn't talk as long, although he still called whenever he could. His hours were strange as well, so he was calling when he had a few minutes and that could be almost any time of night. I didn't mind; I liked him calling late and pulling me out of sleep because it felt so much more intimate and immediate. Coming out of a half-sleep to hear his voice made it easier to ignore the distance.

We were having the coldest winter we experienced those three years. For a month the temperature didn't seem to get above 5 farenheit; for a couple of weeks it didn't get over 0. That meant the kids had indoor recess for a full month - no outside time at all; it was simply too cold. I would dress them up in the full school regalia (snow pants, coat, face warmer, gloves, boots), drop them off in the car (too cold to walk the short distance), they would scurry in and strip all the gear off only to don it again for the brief run to the car in the afternoon. When I went to pick them up I had to leave the car running - something I hated to do because just sitting there for a few minutes I would start to freeze. It was too cold to ski, too cold to snowmobile, too cold to do anything.

Kirk commiserated. He knew I had finally taken my courage in both hands and gone up to the base ski slope (two runs, a bunny slope and a sledding hill) and learned to ski all by myself. He had encouraged me, cheered for me, practically run the darn thing with me in the retelling, and now recognized how frustrating it was to not be able to get out and ski again and again and again.

And he told me what stories he could.

He was sent to shut down an anti-aircraft unit. Like always I only know half the story so I don't know why; I don't even know whose.

It must have been emergency, last minute; one of those 'get the Russian speaking American officer' emergencies. They gave him a side arm and threw him on a plane with two Gurka soldiers. He laughed and said the plane ride was the scariest part with the Spanish pilots chain smoking under the warning sign that said 'no open flame, no smoking' in seven languages. They came down hard somewhere in Kosovo, and I remember thinking I should ask him about flying on a damn plane to get to a place where you're shutting down an anti-aircraft unit.

He had to walk up to the soldiers and ask to see their commander. He said he just talked, just walked up to them and kept talking and talking while they pointed their weapons at his chest. He talked about who he was, and he talked about how stupid it was to send some crazy American in with just a side arm (that I'm not touching you see) and a couple of Gurka soldiers who haven't done anything to anyone to shut down this unit. He talked about his family, and did they have any family, and did the commanding officer have a family? And they relaxed, and they took him in to see the officer.

The guy was a General or something I think, and Kirk had to basically give him orders, inform him that his unit was going to stop operations. But he talked again; talked and talked. It turned out the General did have a family - he had two kids and several grandkids. He thought the whole war was a bit crazy, and he worried about his mother who was getting old and lived in the city. He had seen some stuff he thought he'd never see, and his wife's best friend was married to a guy fighting on the other side, but they still thought they'd be friends when the whole thing was over.

And you, you crazy American, you got some balls coming in here to shut me down. We could have killed you boy, and by the time NATO came to figure it out who would care really in this war? But I like you. So for you, we'll shut it down.

And Kirk flew back.

It took him three years to tell me he thought he was going to die that night. He saw those soldiers fingering their triggers and thinking how easy it would be to just kill this American stranger and his two silent friends.

Bridge

Kirk and the other NATO guys had their hands full. Kosovo was an air campaign - the sort that Americans seem to love. It's all so high-tech and removed, so quick and easy, so very painless. Did that sound bitter? Sorry.

They pored over intel as it came in, sorting out what was happening, what needed to be done, whether it was done, what to do next. They had to anticipate the moves of people whose goals were undecipherable by normal means. They had to figure out what people do when all they want to do is hurt someone else.

They made lists of targets - things that were top priority to remove the 'means for waging war.' They sent waves of bombers out with fighter escorts, charged with destroying weapons and infrastructure.

At one point one of the NATO partners started kicking up a fuss. It wasn't fair, they shouted, the Americans and the Brits were hogging all the glory. They were doing all the raids, not letting anyone else have a look-in. Country X had good planes and pilots, didn't they? Didn't they have top equipment? Didn't they train hard? Weren't they trusted, vital members of the NATO force?

Sounds ridiculous when you put it like that, but it happened.

So country X was given a bridge to blow up. It was a vital assignment, not some 'oh, well if you're going to stamp your little feet we'll send you off to vent your anger on some single-lane cart track used only by goat herders in the lambing season' thing but something that had to go down, had to be taken out at once.

Country X sent its bombers out. Several hours later they were back. The bridge? Still up. The bomb had missed. But Country X wouldn't hear of sending someone else to do the mission - this was their bridge. Second wave was sent in, again they came back with the bridge intact. More hours passed. A third flight went out and... jubilation! Country X representatives proudly displayed their video - and see! The bomb, the bridge, the large explosion! Victory, glory, all that is good. The intel guys coughed a bit. The bridge, they pointed out, was still standing actually. In fact, it was still clearly usable. Ah well, said Country X, details.

A set of planes was quietly sent out - British? Italian? American? I don't know - who levelled the bridge in a single pass.

I think the official position was that the bridge collapsed because of the original bomb damage. There was much solemn agreement on the ops floor.

It's not the enemy that gives you the most grief, they all said over cigars that night, it's your damn allies.

The Coin

Unit coins - sometimes called commander coins - are part of the military tradition of reward and recognition. They're clunky things with the unit insignia on them, handed out as a sort of pat on the back whenever someone does something good. It's less official than a medal (it's not going to show up on your record), but more personal as well. The lower level coins are handed out like candy, and Kirk must have had eight or ten. Upper level coins - above company grade - are much rarer and far more difficult to come by.

Naturally there's a further tradition associated with them. The idea is that in a bar one person will pull out a coin in challenge. Everyone else has to pull out theirs; the one without a coin buys the round. If everyone has a coin, the challenger buys. Of course, a company coin will get you out of buying the round, but it's not going to impress anyone.

I wish I could tell you the story about how Kirk got his Coin, but I don't know it. I know it happened in August 1991, I know it had to do with the attempted coup against Gorbachov. Kirk used to laugh and say when we were old he would be able to tell me all the stories, once the 50 year limitation had run out.

What I do know is that in a bar in Alaska, Kirk's coin trumped three full colonels and a two star general.

Getting to Iraq part three: 9/11

9/11. The third key really. I've tried to write this succinctly and clearly twice now, and as I was procrastinating by reading another page on the web I saw an ad for some site claiming that 9/11 was not terrorists with planes, but a staged event with explosives. I admit I didn't follow the link so I don't know whether our own government is supposedly involved or some other bizarre consipiracy. I have no interest in grassy-knoll-type theories.

The thing is that when 9/11 happened everyone around us reacted as normal, civilians would - shock, horror, fear... but Kirk, isolated from the intelligence and military community of people who knew what he knew, felt what he felt, was essentially alone. For a year he had spent his days imagining just this sort of scenario. He had come up with countless plans, evaluated targets, totalled up casualties and estimated political value. He had thought like a terrorist so he could stop them. Now he had to watch it made horribly real - the nightmare he had worked so hard to avoid.

Again, I think it's vital to point out the difference between guilt and responsibility. Kirk had tried to make the warning, he had worked endless hours to stop this very thing happening. He knew he had no guilt that he had been ignored. But he retained an enormous sense of responsibility - not only for what happened, but for dealing with the new world that 9/11 ushered in.

The company he worked for did try at first to get into the Homeland Security business. They put together a proposal and asked Kirk to take a look at it. He told me later that what wasn't laughable in their pitch was illegal. They weren't terribly pleased with his assessment, and hired an outside consultant. They didn't get the contract.

When Kirk left the military he told me he felt he nothing else to prove - he had done more than enough. In his career he had helped stop a coup, saved countless lives, briefed the White House... the list goes on. Leaving when he did wasn't easy, but he could say he had made a difference. But 9/11 changed all of that. There was a great deal more to be done, things that he was uniquely suited to do. He began looking for opportunities to become meaningfully involved.

Getting to Iraq part two: Counter Terrorism

When we left Alaska it was to head to a joint-service job in Virginia. Kirk was going to continue the innovative work he had done in information operations, and set up an info-ops joint forces unit with the Navy. When he showed up in November, 1999 he was told that the plan had changed and instead he would be in charge of Y2K. I think it was basically a job no one wanted and the Powers That Be figured the new guy (and the Air Force guy at that) would be the best person to tag.

Kirk had never done counter-terrorism; the learning curve was enormous. He began the work pattern that would hold for the next full year. He would often get to work by 5 am, sometimes earlier, and not get home until sometimes after 7 at night. If it wasn't too late he would sleep for an hour, then spend time with the family, getting to bed around 10. On Christmas day he watched the kids open their presents at around seven, then headed in to work, not getting home until well in the afternoon that day.

But it was New Years' day that really sticks in my mind. Of course we knew he couldn't spend it with us, and he couldn't talk about what he knew, or what had been going on. The kids and I turned on the Crocodile Hunter marathon and watched home alone; Kirk watched the news at work. I remember flipping to CNN every hour to watch the New Year roll around the world. There was a sort of sick apprehension each time, and a nervous relief as Asia, the Middle East, then Europe, safely celebrated the new Millenium. Kirk said the tension at the unit was unbelievable; they knew how much they had stopped - they were terrified they hadn't gotten everything.

After Y2K, Kirk became more and more consumed by the counter-terrorism world. He was read into higher and higher clearances, learned more and more about the largest threats to the US and her allies. Specifically he became deeply aware of Osama Bin Ladin and his organization.

Kirk was involved with designing readiness excercises - scenarios to be used by various units as they tested their skills. He proposed that a small boat filled with explosives be used as a weapon against a large warship - and was told it was an unrealistic idea. This was, of course, well prior to the USS Cole attack.

He also, along with his team, not only suggested that a commercial jet could be used as a terrorist weapon, but predicted the most likely targets that would be chosen. Again, he was ignored, and sometimes laughed at.

Perhaps if the frustration hadn't been so high Kirk might have stayed with the military. He loved the Air Force - the work, the people, the culture. But counter-terrorism is a consuming job. To do it well you have to think like a terrorist - something Kirk found, in his words, 'profoundly discouraging.' With the clearances he held, it seemed likely he would be doing counter-terrorism for the forseeable future. He made the difficult choice to leave the Air Force.

Ugh - terrible prose! It's not easy to write all this... maybe at some point I'll edit it into better shape.

Background - getting to Iraq part one

It's going to be impossible to maintain organization on this thing - bear with me as we move back and forth through time and subject.

So why go to Iraq at all? There was a lot behind the decision. Here's part of it.

In winter of 1998 Kirk was tagged for a 4 month deployment. At the time he was an Air Force intelligence officer stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. The military was well drawn down by this time, but overseas commitments had risen drastically and every military member knew that extended deployments were going to be a frequent part of life. Kirk was lucky, he was given a great assignment. He was sent to Vicenza, Italy to join a nato group watching the situation in the Balkans.

Of course the timing was lousy. His four months would mean he missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and three family birthdays, but on the other hand, he got four months in northern Italy. Naturally we were aware of tensions in the Balkans, but we didn't know the situation in Kosovo would erupt as it did while Kirk was there. He used to say that the war in Kosovo ruined his Italian vacation.

Kirk's unit was responsible (probably among other things - there was always much he couldn't tell me) for choosing strategic targets. They analysed the intelligence they got in, then figured out what was most vital to destroy. Part of that, of course, was looking over photographs and video after a mission was run to assess whether the target had really been knocked out.

In real terms what that meant was Kirk, and the people he worked with, chose daily where violence would visit. They always did their best to minimize collateral damage, but it was impossible to be sure. There were times when the timing of a mission had to be adjusted and so there was more traffic on a bridge than they hoped and people died. There was another time when because something wasn't successfully eliminated several dozen people were killed.

I think it's important to be clear that Kirk was an extremely intelligent and empathetic man. He did not take on a universal guilt that he did not deserve - he knew he had not made this war, and he was well aware of what needed to be done and why. But he did take on an enormous sense of responsibility. He made his choices based on what he honestly felt to be best, but was always aware of what those choices entailed.

There is so much to tell about Kosovo - even with the little that I know - and maybe eventually I'll write that as well, but the relevent point is that more and more after the war Kirk talked about wanting to be part of rebuilding since he had been part of destroying. When the job in Iraq came up, it seemed to be the opportunity he had wanted.