Salvatore's Lasagna

123.

Two elements are necessary. One, and in my estimation the most important, is to never take it personally. This is the challenging part, as by the very nature of a successful debrief, it is all about you; your actions, motivation, communication, spatiotemporal awareness, recall of specific fact and processing of available options. Sometimes it means making impossible double-blind choices where people can get killed. How could it NOT be about you? I find it reassuring to periodically remind myself that both the interviewer and interviewee are playing for the same team and seeking accurate and time sensitive fact. Not my version of it. Or what the person on the other side of the table may have heard on TV news.The political opposite of this might be the contemporary press conference, where it is all about spin and damage control, or what the running joke calls alternative truths. We don’t play by those rules. 

The second element is to maintain neutral objectivity. There is not a person in our department that hasn’t heard the stories our teams success and victories sometimes coming at the expense of established protocols or even the safety of our personnel. Candidly stated we are frequently required to take calculated risks in the performance of our assignments. This is something I suspected was understood by everyone.

But evidently not by Jason Godbey, the new hire assigned to take by deposition. To say we got off to rough start would be like saying that pain hurts. I thought I was ready, having self-counseled myself on the importance of the two elements; nothing personal and abject objectivity, but Mr. Godbey seemed to test the premise from the starting gate. 

His opening, “Can you provide me with additional detail about the murder of the two secret service agents assigned to the protection of the Vice President?” stunned me with its banality and non-linear sequencing, coming shockingly before any more traditional introductions. 

With as straight a visage as I can muster I take his tactics and style to be of the no-nonsense, cut to the chase variety. Working chronologically backwards from the eventful evening at Georgetown, less than forty-eight hours ago, we eventually work into a balanced routine of serve and return. I don’t know if this is to his liking or not, but the third element is one of ambivalence. I don’t care what his response is and I don’t care if he considers my actions and choices appropriate or even legal, as long as the exchange of information is factual, truthful and supportive of the primary directive. YOU can entertain all the subjective speculation you like but YOU were not the one on the business end of a terrorist’s armor-piercing, magnum load. Sir. 

This goes on for nine hours. We do cover several salient issues and pivotal inflection points, chief among them:

* Our initial surveillance at the Luxor.

* My tactical response when learning of the MBI plan.

* My ‘losing’ the targets at the airport.

* Our covert communications with the plant.

* The deployment of personnel to the obvious distraction sites of Tucson, Vegas, Omaha and Portland.

* The security assignments in DC.

* The good news/bad news scenario of the final night at Georgetown U. 

* Performance reviews of all participating personnel, including my boss. 

* Post-mission decision to leave the plant inside the MBI. 

Exhausted and numb, we finish the exercise and I am summarily dismissed without the current formalities. I am walking in a light rain towards my hotel. A black Ford Expedition pulls up alongside me, emergency lights flashing. 

“You look like a guy who could use a plate of Salvatore’s lasagna and a glass of chianti,” observes Julie.