Its nearly 1am, and the revelers have finally begun to leave the National Mall. Mike Campbell joins me at the Memorial that drew so many people to the capital of the United States. The Park Police have closed the adjoining museum, we are still free to walk the memorial grounds. Our path is flanked by rows of marble, inscribed with the names of those killed in action. With his well quaffed white hair, rolex watch, and fitted business suit, Mr. Campbell looks more like an executive than a retired intelligence office.

I’d been with the Company for about 20 years, both officially and unofficially as part of one of the semi-legitimate fronts we set up to ‘liaise and induce’ by which I mean bride the heads of petrostates. That had been the job I’d held for most of my life before the war.

How can a front be semi-legitimate?

There were a lot of legitimate means for the Company to provide investment in businesses, going all the way back to our founding. One of our first missions was a propaganda program designed to foster modern art in West Berlin. Per the 30 year rule, I still can’t say much about my department, but the money was mostly legitimate. I was paid to interface with suppliers and distributors in the oil industry, and negotiate on behalf of American businesses to ensure the flow of oil out of the Gulf would remain at an acceptable price.

Did your family know?

That I was CIA? Oh they suspected for sure. Anytime I talked about a work trip they often joked about me being a spy.

[He chuckles.]

You’re probably picturing a very cloak and dagger lifestyle, but for the most part my life wasn’t any different from that of white collar civilians. I worked out of my office in La Jolla, and, for the most part, I hardly ever spoke to my handlers at the Company. No need for any tradecraft, certainly nothing as elaborate as the kind of crap Hollywood came up with about life in the clandestine services. I didn’t live under any more layers of confidentiality than your average executive. If someone needed to talk to me, they’d just set up a meeting with a false name. Easy.

Well, it was easy. After Lafayette Park the administration started to see daggers in every shadow, and the intelligence community came under fire, same as the military. A lot of good people were being laid off over anything that looked like an act of disloyalty. After Iraq, we lost a lot of good people to the private sector, and spent more than a decade trying to recover, now a whole new generation was being shown the door. Leaving behind a bunch of young brownnosers and a few old timers like me.

I didn’t have first hand knowledge of this. The purges, like everything else from that administration, was sloppy and broke protocol at every opportunity. Nobody I knew who’d gotten forced out could say anything because they didn’t know if they were being burned, furloughed, or just fired. All I saw was that my travel schedule was drying up, and my handlers were ghosting me. Had I known the extent of what was happening at Langley, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job they offered.

Well, maybe I would have anyway. My portfolio took a big hit during the Crash and with inflation being what it was I didn’t think the Company pension would have been enough to see me through my retirement years. So when the new Deputy Director offered me a position as a liaison between my department and the White House, and showed me the pay bump and benefits that came with it, I figured why not? A year or two’s work, and me and the wife would be set for the rest of our lives.

Were you a member of the party?

Lifelong Republican. I didn’t consider myself MAGA, but I didn’t buy into any of the alarmist crap the left was always squawking about. I’d seen more of the world than any unemployed art history major, had friends of every religion and race, and worked in a job that, by its nature, made me look at the world for what it was.

I didn’t have any love for the President, especially after the market tanked, but after 20 years of watching the last few rounds of idiots send in our people to piles of sand thinking they could build a democracy overnight,  putting “America First” for a change didn’t sound too bad. Besides, the other side was talking about nationalizing the banks and outlawing billionaires. After they got that kid elected in New York, I figured a businessman in the White House was at least the lesser of two evils.

[He scoffs and shakes his head.]

Truth is, I wasn’t really plugged in. I’d been an oil industry consultant for too long, “the world” that I thought I knew were offices, conference centers, and airports from Abu Dhabi to Riyad. I hadn’t been a real field man in… well I can’t say, at least not for another couple decades. I knew everything there was to know about my field, my job, and nothing more. Hell, I actually thought that the White House would be a more professional environment after how sloppy things had gotten with my handlers over the previous few months.

Boy did I call that wrong! My first day at the White House, I must have seen more people popping pills and doing blow than on Saturday night in a Bangkok night club. The place was a gaudy dump, piled with papers, old pizza boxes and cans of energy drinks, all framed by tacky gilded decor. There was no sense of professionalism. Four years in, and the place was still understaffed, and the people they had were constantly yelling at each other or at screens. 

At first, I told myself these had to be interns, or people stuck interfacing with a bunch of unruly Zoomers. Then I had my first meeting with senior staff. I was just there to introduce myself, hand over some documents, and answer what my boss assured me would be pretty basic questions from the Chief of Staff and his Deputy.

What happened?

The Deputy, two guys I’d never heard of, and some kid who was apparently the acting Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs, were all crammed into the same small office in the West Wing. The Deputy welcomed me to the team, took my folder and threw it on the table without even skimming its contents. Before I could warn him about classification levels, they’re making me put my hand on one of those gaudy bibles the White House was selling online. They asked me to swear an oath of loyalty to the President personally. Then, they made me sign another oath, this time requiring me to never speak or post anything disparaging about the President, the party, or anyone with the party unless the President does it first.

Then the actual meeting starts. Do they look at the folder of relevant materials? No. Do they ask me any questions relevant to my office? Of course not. Instead, they spend the next 45 minutes obsessing over nonsense. Conspiracy theories and just the most vile things I’ve ever heard said about, well, people who didn’t look like me.

And that was my life for the next 5 months. Go to the White House, try to avoid looking at anything incriminating, take a meeting with the wrong people, stand there and occasionally answer questions barely relevant to my department while the people who have the ear of the President proceed to bicker about nothing of consequence.

Did you ever see the President during your time at the White House?

Not once. They kept him up in the Residence, still under guard anytime the House Sergeant at Arms tried to get in and serve him papers. Occasionally you’d see members of the inner circle head over to the Mansion, along with his doctors, and some of the staff. I knew the rumors about his health, and I figured he was sicker than the rest of the White House would let on. Only took a week working there before I was fully convinced the Libs were right, and the man was probably a vegetable.

But what could I do? I didn’t have any proof, and if I tried to leave at that point they would have probably would have denied me my pension. So, every day I tried to just do the bare minimum and not ruffle any feathers. Which was probably the reason why they started including me in more high level meetings. I felt like a stooge.

Just after New Year’s I was invited by the new new Acting Director—they went through people like copy paper—to sit in on a meeting about our trade balance with OPEC. When I arrived, I was surprised to find two uniformed men from DHS joining us. They were both immigration officers, really high up. The CoS introduced them both by military rank. I thought they must have been part of that rash of transfers and rehires over the last couple of years.

As expected, the meeting quickly became about the Election, but the two new guys, General Hoffman and Col. Weber, were quick to chime in. Not about their personal politics, but troop strength.

For the military?

Yes, but also for DHS. They were discussing things like vehicle maintenance requirements, amount of fuel needed for a 3 year campaign, and how big of a gap in production they’d need to fill. The whole conversation was about FOLs.

FOLs?

Fuel, Oil, and Lubricants. The three things you need to run a war, to keep vehicles moving, guns firing, and generators humming.

That’s when the CoS turned to me and asked, “So Mike, can we rely on the Saudis to stay in our corner when its time to go?”

I was in stunned silence. It just hit me all at once what they were talking about. I think it was shock that someone in this White House was actually competent as much as terror over what was being discussed.

All I could think to say was, “They’ll back whoever they think’s in charge and can pay.”

Did you think about leaving then?

Think nothing. I packed that night, and planned to head to Reagan the next morning. The next morning was J3. Nobody was getting out of town without an armed escort. And the only people in a position to do that was the newly formed National Defense Force. Christ, I still can’t believe they just ripped off the Nazis.

They’d been struggling for years with the military, but paramilitaries like border and immigration agents were loyal to the President and the party first. That level of fanaticism was something they could always rely on, but after the Midterms they couldn’t really fund it. All they could do was drain the military with endless “National Emergencies” that got them money, light vehicles, guns and ammo, but the military still had air and naval power. When most of Congress escaped to Philadelphia, they got a free hand to build a REAL army.

The next few weeks were the most chaotic of my life. I was responsible for securing reliable supplies of FOLs for the NDF. In practice I was also a diplomat, reaching out to my contacts in KSA, the Emirates, and Kuwait to keep the oil flowing to “our side.”

Was their indication that they would recognize the pretender government?

Yes, especially since we weren’t really pretenders yet. The Dems in Philadelphia were still getting organized, the vote on the 25th Amendment was still a week away. Remember when Junior was sworn in as VP and then Acting President, even then most governments were unwilling to take an official position.

When states started turning over their arsenals to the NDF, transferring National Guard units over, and all those cops became draftees, for a minute it looked like the regime would hold. At least for the layman it did.

Inside DC, the situation was far less certain. The kids at GW and Georgetown had staged an uprising, even got their ROTC units to join in. The NDF spent their earliest deployments just trying to keep riots from getting out of control, and every day they had to pull back closer and closer to the Mall. The Pentagon and Andrews weren’t talking to us anymore, and after the attempted mutiny at Anacostia-Bolling the NDF had to pull back over the Anacostia River. 

The White House, for all its fanaticism, knew they were surrounded. The Supreme Commander of the NDF was the former head of the DIA, and far more competent than his civilian counterparts. Worse, since they’d been active members of the MAGA movement, the civilians actually listened to him and his subordinates. So when Philadelphia declared Martial Law, and the Army retook Langly, the SC’s recommendation to evacuate was taken seriously.

[We complete our walk through the eastward path of memorial stones. The marble path terminates at steps leading to what was once the basement of the building. On the walls are bronze carved murals depicting its history, beginning with its construction at the hands of slaves.]

My job changed overnight. I was now responsible for coordinating security and transport for VIPs. I thought at first it was just for the White House and the Republican Congress, but they also wanted me to arrange transport for the members of the party that had lost their congressional races in the election.

That was around when my contacts overseas stopped talking to me. I put together a package for the Acting Director, he’d been working out of the White House since before Langley was captured. It outlined critical shortages of petroleum imports, and was the only time I ever actually made direct reference to a potential conflict between the military and the NDF in an official report. I submitted it, fully expecting for it to be ignored, probably not even read. 

“What’s this,” he asked me.

“My last report before I transition out of my old role, sir. It outlines expected shortfalls in imports from the Gulf.” I could have just left it at that. Walked away knowing at least I tried to show them that this was all folly. But he just had this blank look on his face. The Acting Director had no prior experience in intelligence, import-exports, or anything even remotely relevant to his job. He was some two-bit English professor who’d published a book about the, “feminization of the Armed Forces under Obama.”

That idiot-ass look on his face, after months of all the bullshit I’d suffered through in the most shameful posting of my career; made a crack in my professional veneer.

“It means the Gulf states won’t be supplying us with the oil needed to run this war,” then I really stepped in it, “You need to tell the Acting President this or…”

He threw a tantrum. Recounted his joke of a career, his “credentials,” he even came at me with how long he’d been in the party. How he actually met the President. I tried to keep from smiling. Then he told me to shut up and do my job, “if you care about your wife.” That changed everything.

Anh was born in Vietnam, came to this country when she was a teenager with her parents. She’d been a citizen for 40 years, but that didn’t mean much to this administration. I never considered… I thought they were just going after illegals, and that anyone they were deporting who was a citizen…

[He takes a deep breath, and exhales before continuing.]

I didn’t think it could happen to us. Anh was still in San Diego, and that was firmly in Philadelphia's hands. I didn’t think they could get to her, but if they could… I knew what I had to do.

I finished my work without complaint. The Director even thanked me and said he appreciated that I understood the situation. After work I went for a drink at one of the few places still open in our little Green Zone. Civilian trucks were still able to get into town. I guess they other side didn’t want anyone to starve. On the way home I stopped by an A&P for a pack of smokes… and a prepaid phone. I paid in cash.

I didn’t call at the bar. I grabbed a cab, pretended to pass out and got out of town. I even made a stink to the driver after I “woke up” before paying him. I called a friend from the office on my work phone, and asked him to give me a ride. I didn’t have long, but I was outside of the range of the Stingray’s, these fake cell towers DHS used to monitor calls in the city.

I called an old friend, Darnell Coleman. We came up together at Langley. Right after I took the job that would become my career, he left the agency early to start a political consulting firm. I always gave him a hard time about working for the “Enemy” in the 2000s. We hadn’t spoken in years, but I knew he was in Philadelphia.

How?

I saw him on the cover of the Post. He was standing behind the Speaker when she was sworn in as their Acting President.

The call started out pretty terse. “What do you want Mike?”

I kept it short, “Darnell, they’re moving a bunch of VIPs to Palm Beach.”

I gave him their flight plans, the tail numbers of the planes we scheduled, everything.

There was a long pause before he asked, “So what now?”

I told him to get someone he trusted to my wife. And if they were going to do anything about DC, they needed to do it now. He told me to sit tight, continue acting like everything was normal, and that they’d come get me when it was time.

The next day at work, it looked like I’d given them the slip. Nobody was any more or less friendly to me than usual, meetings continued as planned. The only thing that was odd was all the people loading boxes.

Boxes of what?

Paintings, busts, china and silverware. Hell I’m pretty sure one had towels. I actually saw them boxing up the portrait of Washington that Dolley Madison saved when the Canadians burned the city in 1814.  They were robbing the White House of anything that wasn’t nailed down. And guess who was put in charge of organizing the getaway flight?

[He points to himself.]

I knew at that point, there was no getting out. If they had me on that job, I was already being closely monitored. So I did the job, as requested. Worked with the exfil team, organized the route the V-22s would take. Even chewed out one of the Marine pilots when he started to question the mission. Ya know the Corps had probably the highest percentage of troops turn traitor? It was still less than a third of their strength. 

The day they bugged out, I came down with a nasty case of stomach flu…

[He shudders.]

Drinking that much ipecac had the desired effect for when the WH sent over their people, people I used to consider friends, to help me get out of the city.

“Let’s go Mike!” they tried to tell me, “The fucking Army’s moving into the city, we gotta bounce!”

I could barely hear them between my self-induced agony and the chaos on the street. I told them just to leave me, and tried to sound like I was on death's door. Lord knows I felt like it.

We were starting to hear gunshots in the distance.

“Don’t you get it?” they shouted, “The commies in Philly are gonna kill us if we don’t get out of here!”

I shoved them to the floor and yelled, “get out of here, just save yourselves!”

I even threw in a, “It’ll be ok. I’ll lay low and slip out of town after the heat dies down.”

Then I puked on the guy’s shirt. I guess that was enough, because they finally ditched me.

[We arrive at the heart of the memorial. At its center stands marble statues depicting two squads of troops embracing in the middle. From our vantage we can easily see Executive Apartments near the top of the Presidential Office Building to the West.]

I don’t know when they started to talk about a scorched-earth campaign. I figured it was to cover the retreat, they didn’t have the troops to hold back the regular military. Funny, their ranks were swelling everywhere except the one place they really needed it. 

I only ever heard the Director talking about it once with the Chief of Staff. The little weasel told my boss that the point  wasn’t really to slow the military’s advance into the city, but to discredit the liberation of the city itself. To undermine the Democrats from the outset. He said, “they’ll probably do it anyway, everyone knows how much they hate our improvements to the place, so why not make sure we control the story?”

I didn’t know what he meant by “improvements.” I thought they might blow one of the bridges over the Potomac or the Anascostia. They didn’t have enough C4 at Ft. McNair to do more than that.

[He shakes his head]

They didn’t care about the bridges, or the lives they were throwing away. When they blew this building, THIS building, the People’s House, it was to muddy the waters. To paint their side as victims, and the other side as aggressors.

Everything they did was for show. None of it was real to them. They were just a bunch of kids who found their dad’s gun.

[Mike Campbell would be arrested following the Battle of Washington, and interrogated on suspicion of treason. He was exonerated shortly after the Battle of Scott AFB, by which point the war had spread across the country.]