Robert Smith - The Planner

“We wouldn’t do that. It’s not our way,” Katherine replied through tight lips.

“The Maine?”

“That’s a hundred years ago,” she retorted.

“Gulf of Tokin?” Planner suggested.

“40 years ago,” she said screwing up her mouth to one side.

“Iran-Contra?”

“That wasn’t a war,” she said flatly.

“No, that was more subtle, we got Saddam to fight the Iranians instead,” sighed Planner. “Why do you think that the US has the world’s largest defense budget, not 50 % larger, not twice the size, but four times the size of China’s? China has Russia, Japan, Korea, India and the whole of south-east asia as neighbours, while the US has er… Canada and Mexico.”

“And Cuba?” stated Katherine tartly.

“Ok, And Cuba,” said Planner faking a smile.

“It doesn’t explain why you were in it. Up to your neck. You were frigging well attempting to kill me!” said Katherine with venom.

“You’re right. You’re right. It doesn’t. I tell you that when you’re in the middle of these things, you feel like you just doing your crappy, patriotic duty. I was working for the President. I met one or two of them. I did not plan to kill you or anyone. I didn’t even start thinking about what I was doing until really late on. If I hadn’t met you I may not have had any qualms about the job at all. You worry about collateral damage as if it is just a figure on a scorecard, but real people are not considered. The military do it all the time. The CIA does it all the time. Plans are invented and debated; no one really thinks of the consequences. It’s like playing a game.”

“A game?” raged Katherine. “Yes, you didn’t take any of it too seriously. Your story was crap: a giant conspiracy theory based on supposition and coincidence. Can you really believe that in America, the most sophisticated technologically advanced nation in the world, was taken by surprise and brought to its knees, by 19 light weight Muslims armed with box cutters and the will of Allah? Managing to easily outfox the planet’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies, they decided that the best way to achieve their aims, which they didn’t bother to tell anyone about… or give a clue about what they hoped to achieve, was an impossible attack that, oh, and while we’re at it, also involved collective suicide?”

Planner looked uncomfortable.

“I guess they were motivated by their leader, Mohammed Atta; who drank alcohol, snorted cocaine, gambled, frequented strip bars… with a pink-haired, stripper, girlfriend and was cruel to her kittens. These are well-known characteristics for a leader for a religion-based kamikaze mission!” Katherine sneered sarcastically. “But guess what? Through the joys of computer gaming, they were able hit their two targets at the World Trade Center, flying beyond the capabilities of their aircraft and in the process, destroying their indestructible black boxes and flight data recorders? But not of course, their passports which emerged from the rubble!”

Katherine was not finished. She held up a finger to stop Planner interrupting. “Little did these hijackers suspect that their air crashes were nothing but a prelude to the real shock and awe: the world’s tallest buildings, built to be hurricane proof, proven to be bomb proof, crumpled to the ground in ten seconds, an hour or so after impact, with a TV-audience-attention-seeking fifteen minute interval between them. And then, later, another skyscraper decided to crash down at freefall, in sympathy, I suspect… half a day later.”

“Now that was not their plan…” protested Planner meekly.

“But no, no, no. Wait, there’s more; A third plane then manages to fly for 45 minutes across US airspace from Cleveland to Washington, before hitting the most secure, CCTV-covered building on earth completely unchallenged by the US Air Force. And completely unrecorded by photo or video, it crashes into where? Only the newly refurbished, and largely empty part of the pentagon, devoid of important people… other than the accountants investigating illegal securities that were due the next day and the DoD’s missing $2.3 trillion that Rumsfeld announced the day before! This is the most ridiculous, stupid conspiracy theory of all time.”

Planner said, “You’re right again. It is ridiculous.”

“You say you were the planner?” said Katherine curtly.

“Yes, but in truth, most of the big ideas had already been put in place: the story, such as it was; the organisation; contingency plans running along side. Wheels within wheels.”

“So who had the original idea? Someone must have been behind that? A political guy? Wolfowitz? Zelikow?”

“Wolfowitz? Quite possibly 237. Zelikow, no, he was too junior at the time. Actually all the dual-national US-Israeli types including Wolfowitz, Zelikow, Chertoff, Doc Zakhiem; they may all have agenda to work towards the benefit of their Zionist ideals. I don’t know. I thought it was for Oil. The problem of peak Oil… It could have been for Israel too.”

“Or Rove?”

“Sure. Maybe him. He’s credited by Bush as being the Architect. There’s evidence that Rove gets his hands dirty too; 238He’s not just a backroom weasel, rigging elections.”

“What about Cheney, Rumsfeld? They run the COG, right?”

“Cheney and Rumsfeld are JFDI guys. They are in for the money, I think. It could have been them. The big idea had been brewing for years and they have been around for a long time. But the puppet master keeps away, even from the puppeteers, let alone the puppets and patsies.”

“But you were the Planner. Weren’t you? And if not, then what, then?”

“I was really just a field officer, commanding soldiers on the battlefield. I was fed an imposing title to make me feel more important than I actually was. Just another puppet being played.”

“So what’s next?” said Katherine.

“We live our lives,” said Planner.

“What for?” said Katherine with a shrug, exhausted from her diatribe. “The country’s changed. The first action of a dictator is to change the laws. You helped them changed the law. The constitution is dead. We’ve lost our freedom. We’ve lost our hope. What’s the point?”

“We get them to change the laws back,” said Planner grimly.

“How?” she said.

“I’ll write a book.”

Katherine looked at him through narrowed eyes, unconvinced.

* * * *

For the enlightened 80 % that have reviewed the alternative media, they know the official story is fiction. The real villains are more dastardly than any TV bad guy and good people follow them because they are the ones in Authority. 239That’s how they have been conditioned, from education, from religion, from TV and the government-controlled mass media, by peer pressure. We are all expected to follow the voice of Authority. Even when it conflicts with Physics: Newton’s Laws of Motion and Momentum. People could do the calculations themselves. But they don’t. Planner found that perhaps Psychology is the stronger science.

* * * *

Outside a mountain cabin, somewhere in the Rockies with a beautiful view of a tree-lined valley, Katherine was beating a rug over a line. Inside, Planner finished off a manuscript called “The Planner” on his Apple Macbook. He knew it was a simplification of the real story. A simplification of even what he knew. But he felt it told the story. He typed “The End”, even though he knew it was not.

– -------------------------------------------------.

1 The anonymous stars in the CIA’s Book of Honor memorialize covert operatives lost in the field. http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/ray.washingtonpost.cia91897.html

2 PsyOp is short for Psychological Operations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare