Robert Smith - The Planner

“No, that would make a bit of a mess.”

“So what part of the operation do we have here?” Planner asked, looking around.

Bates led Planner around the office. “Operation Rainbow is divided into stages A, B and C. A is before the event, B is the event and C is the after-event clear Up. We have all Stage A and C teams here at the moment before we split them up. We’re flying out tomorrow night to see the Stage B team. But note there are parallel teams working on various sideshows. But we have the tricky bits. You probably know about that already.”

“I know about the Seven Operations.”

“Eight Operations if you include Rainbow.”

“Right. So do we have contact points for them all?”

Bates led Planner to a white board with a seven-side logo. “I have the contact points. There are, at least seven other operations. Let me point them out: Nicholas, Las Vegas, Carrot, Hollywood, Eagle, GI-Joe and, er, of course, Snow White”. Bates pointed to various logos in turn. Only the pictures of Snow White, Carrot and Eagle were immediately obvious. Bates observed, “They haven’t spent too much time on the naming of these ops. Rainbow is in the center, of course.” The Rainbow logo appeared more like a multi-coloured jewel than a rainbow and Planner had not noticed it until it was pointed out.

“So not Snow White and the seven dwarfs?” Planner suggested in an attempt at humour.

Bates made a sarcastic sigh. “No, probably copyright problems with Disney.”

Planner smiled. “I’ve been giving briefs on all the operations but not Snow White. It just has a blank page!”

“Verbal briefing only on that one”, said Bates. “Actually, Snow White is probably the smallest of them all. Only worth a few billion.”

“Billion?”

“Billion!” Bates confirmed firmly but then backtracked. “Hey I’ve said too much. Officially, I don’t know that. Officially, and in most cases, in actuality, I know nothing about the other operations. What I do know is that all operations have an A, B, C stage. All of them. We are talking about a very big, Big Event. So do you know enough to brief the newbies? We have ten new starters today.”

* * * *

Planner was standing at a podium in a darkened meeting room about to talk to a set of powerpoint slides projected onto a screen behind him. His audience, the CIA Rainbow Team, was about 20 people. Some of the Rainbow Team wore military uniforms, some suits but the most just in smart casual dress, but all of them had a large label with a colored square and the color name underneath.

Planner introduced himself, as “Planner” and gave a brief background concerning his involvement in the aviation industry before being “head-hunted” for operations for the CIA several, unspecified, years previously.

When Planner felt he had the audience’s attention, he leaned on the podium with both arms as though he was settling in for a fire-side chat.

“I’m guessing most of you don’t need any context for the work we do. You trust in our leaders and you go out and do whatever is necessary. That is how it should be but I just want to say a few words of the predicament that we are in at the moment. The big picture, so to speak. You might not appreciate this yet, but we’re in danger. The USA is in danger. Something that you probably know in the back of your minds but put to one side most of the time. Our economy, our whole way of life of life is run on one commodity: Oil; Agriculture, Industry, Transport, our military. 99.9 % of it is all run on oil: fuel, plastics, chemicals… And the problem we face today is that we have reached Peak Oil Production. From this day, or maybe this year, next year. From here on in, we will have increasing demand and not enough supply. After Peak Oil, production is expected to drop in the order of 10 % per year. Needless to say this will be impacting our way of life in the USA in way that the economists can’t imagine. What we do know is that it is going to be hard. So what we need to do is protect the country and provide a soft landing for the economy. We need to change. And we’re the people to help make that change happen; a catalysing event. Maybe more than one. Our psychologists tell us we need to shock the public into making change. They won’t be able to do that themselves. That will be our job; to shock the American people.”

The audience was very quiet. Planner needed to feel the audience reception as he went along. He was ready to adapt if the team were not receptive, so unlike most of his presentations, he did not show an agenda. His first slide showed, incongruously, a map of the Gulf of Mexico with a flight plan overlaid.

Planner straightened up and pointed to the slide with his laser pointer. “This was a plan created in 1962 called Operation Northwoods, you may already know about it. It was designed to provide the shock, political climate, to allow the United States to intervene in Cuba; Solve the Soviet Dilemma; Prevent World War 3. You know all those good little things we do.”

Planner received the minor chuckles from the audience that he desired. He continued outlining the flight plan with his red laser light beam. “The plan was to have a remote controlled airliner, supposedly full of American students, blown up over the Caribbean in full view of the world’s media. Radio transmissions supposedly from the airliner would announce the airliner was attacked by Cuban Mig fighters. The wreckage and bodies would be lost at sea. Deception was verified and validated by using a real airliner for take off, all recorded on newsreel, but then switched in mid-air with the pilotless drone. Radar transponders were switched synchronously to fool radar operators. We’d have credible experts, with no association to the agency, endorsing the cover story… This would be the psychological jolt on society required by the politicians to go to war against Cuba. You’ve probably seen many similar type of plans but you could say this is our model for Operation Rainbow: real people enter the plane but the plane that crashes is empty. So the… er… yes?” A team member had raised his hand. Planner could see the hand but not who it was.

The team member, labelled “Indigo”, was in his mid-thirties and probably the scruffiest person in the room, unkempt hair and wearing a dark, three-day-beard. His voice was uncertain. “But this plan was not used. So why? I mean… was there any specific reason? I think what I’m trying to say is… it seems unnecessary to make the mid-air switch.”

Planner struggled with an adequate answer but his response sounded confident, “The mid-air switch being unnecessary… not so, it is a slight of hand trick. A reality needs to be created, without our direct story-telling if possible, in order for it to be believed. This is required for any PsyOp 2. I shouldn’t have to explain that. In terms of Northwoods’ rejection; yes, you’re right. Kennedy did reject the plan. Politicians always worry about blowback, as should we. If I had to go for a single reason for the plan’s rejection, then I’d say, it was the passengers; the credibility of their back-story. They’d planned for fake funerals but there was no feasible plan of generating all the grieving parents and identities of these students back then that could stand up to scrutiny. Certainly not in the time they’d allowed themselves.”

Bates sitting near the front on the sidelines chipped in, “Of course that’s one of the roles Operation Rainbow, generating those identities. And we have many volunteers, joining the Witness Protection Programme 3, creating seemingly real casualties, so we can create solid back-stories and legends nowadays.”

Planner joked. “And with most news editors and TV channels being part of the firm nowadays, being recruited from WITSEC, any investigative journalists or the free press won’t worry us as much anymore.”