Afterword: How the Facts Shape Speculation
While the history of the Gore administration is fiction, I have tried as hard as possible to be guided by the star of plausibility—shaping the course of events as much as possible based on the words, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of the actual players. What follows is an explanation of how these fictional events are rooted, on one level or another, in reality. To be clear: This is in no sense an argument that this is how it would have happened. You’re free to imagine a whole different set of events. Perhaps Gore would have lost Florida even without a controversy over Elián González. Perhaps, as many believe, a President Gore, with his understanding of the Al Qaeda threat, might have managed to stir the bureaucracy into action and prevented the September 11 attacks, or minimized the damage they did. In a universe of infinite parallel worlds, all things are possible. For good or ill, this is my parallel world.
The general state of Al Gore’s presidential campaign is drawn from my book on the 2000 election, Oh Waiter, One Order of Crow (2001).
For a thorough, brilliantly researched and reported account of the Elián González case and its profound impact on Miami’s Cuban American community, see Ann Louise Bardach’s Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (2003).
For an account of how the González case cost Gore thousands of votes in Florida, see William Schneider’s “Elián González Defeated Al Gore,” The National Journal, April 28, 2001, and Ed Vulliamy’s “Elián González and the Cuban Crisis,” The Observer (UK), February 21, 2010. The Schneider article has pollster Sergio Bendixen estimating that President Clinton got 35 percent of the Cuban American vote in Florida in 1996. In 2000, Gore drew less than 20 percent. Look at the vote in Hialeah, Fla., a predominantly Cuban American suburb of Miami. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole outpolled Clinton in Hialeah by about 10,000 votes. In 2000, George W. Bush got nearly 25,000 more votes than Gore. Statewide, Bendixen estimates that Bush got 50,000 more Cuban American votes than Dole had received. That’s a hundred times greater than Bush’s certified margin of victory in Florida.
Speculation about Al Gore’s cabinet and White House team is drawn from interviews with, among others, Ron Klain, Elaine Kamarck, Norman Ornstein, and Walter Shapiro.
Al Gore’s “inaugural address” appropriates the lyrics of “Let the Day Begin,” by the Call. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s contrast of black and white marching bands comes from a video of a speech he delivered often.
President Clinton’s “farewell address” at Andrews Air Force Base is recounted as it actually happened. Video of the speech can be found on YouTube.
The January 21, 2001, meeting of prominent Republican defense and foreign policy players—along with Ahmed Chalabi—is drawn from Arrows of the Night (2011), an account of the life and work of Chalabi by 60 Minutes producer Richard Bonin.
For a general description of the work of the Counterterrorism Security Group, see Richard Clarke’s 2004 book Against All Enemies. The details about atmospherics come from a lengthy interview I conducted with Clarke on February 21, 2012, in Washington, D.C, as does the story of Gore’s role in ending feuding among various agencies at the time of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The details about the Predator drone and the Hellfire missile can be found in The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, by Henry A. Crumpton, who was head of operations for that service.
The bureaucratic muddle that afflicted the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies in the months leading up to September 11 is a much-told tale. For the details set down here, see The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright (2006); Against All Enemies, by Richard Clarke (2004); and the 9/11 Commission Report, by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2002).
Neila James and the nearly successful effort to prevent the attacks of September 11 are, of course, figments of my imagination, as is Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article raising questions about the killing of bin Laden. But Hersh’s post-9/11 New Yorker article “What Went Wrong,” published on October 8, 2001, contains a wide range of speculation based on his sources within the intelligence community.
President Gore’s decision to open the military air corridors to commercial aircraft is based on what President George W. Bush in fact did in November 2008.
The specifics of the attacks on September 11 are set down in detail in the 9/11 Commission Report, including a minute-by-minute account of the four hijacked airliners and the government’s response. For a detailed report on United Flight 93, see “Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2001.
The whereabouts of House Speaker Dennis Hastert on 9/11 come from an interview I conducted with him in Washington, D.C., in 2011. Those details can also be found in his memoir Speaker (2004). Senator Tom Daschle described the events of that day, including the visit from the Glenns and his meeting with the Democratic leadership team, in his book Like No Other Time (2003).
While no one can be certain that United Flight 93’s target was the Capitol, there is little doubt that the plane was headed toward Washington. Accounts of the Al Qaeda plot in the 9/11 Commission Report, The Looming Tower, and elsewhere suggest that there is some question as to whether the target was the White House or the Capitol; at least one of the hijackers argued that the White House would be a much more difficult target to hit than the Capitol.
The Judicial Conference was in fact taking place at the U.S. Supreme Court building, across from the Capitol, on September 11, 2001, with Chief Justice Rehnquist in attendance. The presence of Justice Scalia is a matter of counterfactual license; I have found no evidence that he or any justice other than Rehnquist was there at the time.
The anthrax attacks that followed 9/11 were in fact linked to Iraq by—among others—ABC’s Brian Ross; the words in this book are the actual words he spoke on the air.
Similarly, the Democrats who warned of Saddam’s intentions and capabilities said the words ascribed to them in this book. Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s national security advisor, used the “Bay of Pigs” analogy to dismiss the optimistic assurances of Ahmed Chalabi about the ease with which Saddam could be toppled by an internal uprising.
The “high-level defectors” recounting terrorist links to Saddam are real; detailed accounts of their “warnings” can be found in Arrows of the Night, by Richard Bonin.
Vice President Lieberman’s questions to Richard Clarke on Iraqi links to 9/11 are the words President George W. Bush spoke to Clarke on the morning after 9/11, as reported in Clarke’s book Against All Enemies.
And the words written and spoken by Lieberman in his memo to President Gore and in his resignation speech are largely drawn from a speech he made about Iraq at Georgetown University on January 14, 2002.
Acknowledgments
In narrating a “history” that never was, a writer inevitably runs the risk of letting his imagination run riot. As was the case with Then Everything Changed, I was fortunate to have friends, colleagues, and interested observers who guided me toward plausibility. (Whatever errors of fact or fancy occur in this story are mine and mine alone.)
No one was more helpful than Norm Ornstein, longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose guidance was invaluable in matters ranging from the makeup of an Al Gore cabinet to the political fallout from a more grievous 9/11 attack. Ornstein has been a Cassandra, warning of our profound unpreparedness in coping with the consequences of a successful attack on the workings of our government. I devoutly hope we never have cause to regret.
I was also once again blessed with the help of Elaine Kamarck, one of Al Gore’s closest aides and a lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, in imagining a Gore presidency and the response of a President Gore to the events of September 11. Another close Gore aide, Ron Klain, helped me conjure the mood of Washington both before and after that day.
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For political balance, I turned to longtime Republican operative—and one of TV’s wisest “talking heads”—Mike Murphy. I also drew on interviews I had done for my book on the 2000 campaign, Oh Waiter, One Order of Crow, including Ed Gillespie, former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, and a former U.S. senator who wishes to remain unidentified.
I owe a particular debt to Richard Clarke, longtime chair of the Counterterrorism Security Group, who shared with me many details of how his group operated and helped me test my speculations about an even more horrific September 11 attack. I need to underline here that he bears no responsibility for the plotting of this narrative. I want only to thank him for his generosity and his insights. There is also no better dinner companion.
My thanks as well to my agent of forty-plus years, Sterling Lord, and to Michael Solomon, of Byliner, whose enthusiasm for this project was indispensible in bringing it to fruition.
To my daughter, Casey, and my son, Dave, I hope you know the love and affection I have for you—no matter how inadequately I express it. My pride in both of you is limitless.
Finally, my wife, Dena Sklar, endured my obsession from one end of the country (New York) to the other (Santa Barbara) and beyond (Bali). She remains proof that while miracles may or may not have happened in the Middle Ages, they clearly happened in mine.
About the Author
One of America’s most respected political analysts, Jeff Greenfield has spent more than thirty years in network television, including as a commentator on CNN, ABC News, and CBS and currently as an anchor on PBS’s Need to Know. A five-time Emmy Award winner, he is a political columnist for Yahoo! News and the author of more than a dozen books, including the bestseller Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics—JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan. He divides his time between New York and Santa Barbara.
Read more of Jeff Greenfield’s best stories at Byliner.com
Photograph courtesy of Jeff Greenfield
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