I’m not sure why it shocked my conscience. Lord knows, there were many prior examples of indifference to human suffering at unimaginable scale. The release of viruses, bioweapons disguised as vaccines, bombs dropped on ordinary families while they slept.
Maybe because it was never directed at anyone in particular — it was always the “unfortunate masses”, “collateral damage” sadly necessary for the greater good. But this was a person, someone we ourselves had put in that position, a human being who had naively trusted us. There was something especially sad and cruel about this particular operation.
You will understand I must remain anonymous — even publishing this at all entails grave risks not only for me, but also my family and even the families of my compatriots, several of whom also privately expressed pangs of conscience. The Council might not know who, but they would be able to narrow it down — there are only 38 of us, and while English is not my native language, I imagine linguistic patterns, detectable by AI, persist across tongues.
The problem for the Council was that Donald Trump was far ahead in the internal polling, beyond the margin of what we considered “plausible uncertainty” around the election results. We had done a good job of making sure the public facing polls stayed close enough and had seeded the betting markets, an increasingly important public indicator, with a steady stream of untraceable funds to give Kamala Harris even a slight edge. Some argued that would be enough — the widespread belief even among many Trump supporters was the election was a toss-up.
But the actual numbers were dire — Harris, having lost the support of the entire working class, from the Teamsters to the police to the military, could not even rely on previous democratic firewalls like blacks and hispanics who were defecting en masse. Mail-in ballots could be massaged, but after 2020, there were simply too many vigilant Trump operatives watching and auditing the election process like hawks. That is not to say it could not be pulled off — only that there was unacceptable risk he might win. And for many of us, including me, that risk was borderline existential.
We all knew this might happen — Operation S, it was called, and we all had ideas about how it might transpire. We openly discussed launching an attack on Moscow to provoke a wider war, necessitating unity and the postponing of the election, but the Council feared Vladimir Putin might not react the way we hoped, instead calmly gathering evidence and waiting until after the election to demand justice. As a former Council member he knew all too well our inner workings.
A second pandemic, one that made in-person voting impossible, was also discussed, but the Bird Flu variants that were most transmissible were laughably mild, and the deadlier ones simply did not spread. Moreover, even if the lab coats were to succeed at the last minute, too many people would be skeptical after the exaggerated covid response without seeing corpses piled in the street, and there just wasn’t time.
A widespread “cyber pandemic” was also considered, but the results were too unpredictable, as the internet is decentralized, and many feared Trump’s people might be better prepared and more organized for such an event.
Finally, a more serious assassination attempt on Trump was floated — we had not signed off on the prior two, which were appallingly flawed. Impudent operatives from CIA and Homeland Security, likely motivated by personal animus, lacked the necessary discipline, and of course it catastrophically backfired. Many in the Council believe we would not be in this situation but for their rashness. They would surely be punished after the election in ways one would not wish even on his most diabolical enemies.
The problem now was not the assassination — that could be pulled off trivially in any number of ways, but its consequences. Trump would become a martyr, and you would have perhaps an even more dangerous ticket with millions motivated to vote and many far less likely to accept a controversial result. We all agreed taking Trump off the board was no longer an option.
As the Council was debating its best course, maybe a short Cyberpandemic, followed by Joe Biden stepping down and boosting Harris with her historic presidency in late October, one of the Council’s leaders cleared his throat and said something no one had foreseen.
He told us the election was already lost. The fundamentals were simply too poor to overcome. The weak economy, crushing inflation and an anointed, rather than battle-tested candidate who lacked even a modicum of political skill or persuasiveness. We were looking at a landslide, and it was quite likely our life’s work would be destroyed permanently, many of us would go to prison in a best-case scenario. There was only one viable out, as far as he could tell: a false flag assassination of the sitting vice president.
The room was silent as we took in what he had said. Kamala Harris had done everything we had asked of her. It was true she wasn’t a strong candidate — her poor acting skills, anxious demeanor and lack of command over policy details were liabilities — but it was we who had selected her, not the other way around. She was doing the best she could.
The leader argued that if properly blamed on a white supremacist whose social media would reflect Trump talking points, interpreted as dog whistles, the act would necessitate calling off the election entirely. How could the country have an election when Trump’s divisive, hateful and racist rhetoric had caused the murder of the first female (also a person of color) president?
After the attempted insurrection on January 6, the assassination of his political rival would cement in the minds of the public and the world just how dangerous this man really was, that all the predictions prior to 2016 that Trump would usher in a state of authoritarianism never before seen in America had indeed come to pass. The election would be postponed, the Trump brand irredeemably destroyed, and authorities could round up his supporters and enablers who threatened global cooperation on behalf of a higher good.
As I said, I don’t know why this was so shocking to me. She was far from a saint, and I had no personal relationship with her. Of course she was disposable for the larger mission, as were so many misguided and unlucky souls. But the notion of this sad woman, eagerly, naively and anxiously giving her best for it, ill-suited to the task though she was — having endured the humiliation ritual on our behalf, at our behest… I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a foreboding of the betrayal coming to us all even had the mission succeeded.
Accordingly I feel within myself a line has been crossed. I write so that should they carry out this ghoulish mission there will be evidence of their treachery. A treachery in which I had taken part for too long, realizing only too late its true nature.
. . .