Free The Unknown Knowns by Jeffrey Rotter Page A

Why precisely were you acquisitioned by WATERT? And why was an agent with your skill set, security clearance, and years of government service assigned to pool inspection?
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    Diaz: First of all, it wasn’t just pools. Our sphere isn’t single-faceted. It’s more like what you’d call multifaceted. The Rec Division, for which I was tasked with leadership, protects a whole spectrum of water features. With WATERT we incubated teams in each of the significant bands of activity, and each team was then populated by operators. My proprietary band of activity is recreational. And, let’s get one thing straight, it’s as critical a set of assets as you get in the water-treatment or fire-prevention bands.
    But why me? I assume it’s because of my lab training and background—my dad owned a pool cleaning business. So the match was serendipitous to a large degree. While the rest of WATERT was tasked with hardening our pump stations and reservoirs against terrorist porosity, my mandate was the more family-orientated water resources. Your waterslides, wave pools, Jacuzzis, et al. Which is nothing to sneeze at. Those are the assets that come closest to our kids. That’s where Islamofascists could inflict the most collateral damage in the fun department. My credo is bring justice to the enemy so you don’t have to dick around bringing the enemy to justice—and that includes the enemies of our swimming pools.
    But hell, I don’t think I have to justify our activities to you, Congressman. There are a lot of creeps out there, and recreational waters have too long been a potential point of entry for extremists. This isn’t some fantasy. It’s the real deal. And it’s some scary stuff. We’re out there taking the pulse and scripting Die Hard scenarios to test the emergency response plan. And, Congressman, if the ERP doesn’t float, buddy, you dry-dock it and start over. Same as you would in Karachi or at JFK.
    We’re dealing with percentages and micropercentages of probabilities. Somebody so much as reads the Koran in a hot tub, we’ve got clearance to act.
    Vulnerability begins and ends with the private-sector mind-set. Most swimming pool areas, and even your waterslide facilities, you understand, still operate on the old Cold War model, with an architecture wide open to threats. But this ain’t Harry Truman’s water park anymore, Congressman. There’s a certain amount of ingrained trust of the private sector, or what we used to call the public, that we don’t have the luxury of indulging anymore.
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    Rep. Frost: You’ll have to pardon my rudeness, but aren’t you blaming the victim to a degree here? It can’t be the kid on the water-flume who’s guilty when some jihadist blows a fuse.
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    Diaz: No. Allow me to calibrate you on that point, Congressman, because it’s darn important. There’s a sense—as you suggest—among your radical containment types, that we as a nation have invited this threat. That we said, “Come on in, Muslim extremists, the water’s fine!” We never said that. The struggle we’re in, the consequences are too severe to return to that old mentality of “Blame America First.” We start blaming ourselves, who do we throw in jail? Who do we rendition? Us. And where we rendition ourselves, I have no goddamn idea.
    So, no. I don’t blame America first. Or even second. On the list of culpability, America’s way down near the bottom. But do we put the burden on the people to understand what they’re facing? Should we punish our own population by strapping them down with the onus of national security? Heck, no.
    This is a set of challenges that are way different than our public understands. Sure, we’re a democracy. And, sure, our decision making needs to be rooted in the public. But rooted in and answerable to? Totally different. We’re dealing with enemies