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I thought this little excerpt I just rewrote was worth posting on it's own. This is 3 chapters from the end of my novel, when the "dirty war" is really kicking into gear, shortly after a list of all of the federal agents including their addresses has been posted all over the internet. This is the dirty war as seen from the POTUS POV.

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The President had a late lunch in the White House with his CSO Wednesday afternoon; he was grim faced as he stabbed at his crab salad. “Harvey, I just heard from Sheridan. [FBI Director] Two more agents were killed today; one of them was shot down at Quantico, right in the middle of the God damn Marine base!”

“Shit! On Quantico? Did they catch the shooter?”

“Are you kidding? They don’t even know where it came from. And you want to hear something bizarre? The guy who was shot was the FBI’s chief sniping instructor! How’s that for ironic?”

“Damn! How many’s that make so far?” asked the CSO.

“Counting Reston, or just since the fed list came out?”

“Reston? That was different, that was a raid. How many from after the list?"

“Twelve new ones, but there’s no way to tell if they were already targeted, or if they were only killed because of the list,” said the President. “Harvey, it’s getting bad, real bad. The more we go after these militia types, the more the gun nuts are going crazy! And now with this list…”

“But they’ve stopped the list, haven’t they? I mean, people can’t get it on the internet anymore can they?”

“That’s what they tell me; they say the NSA’s got a handle on it. But the genie’s already out of the bottle! We have to assume that every lunatic with a rifle’s got a copy of the list already, or that they can find it somewhere.”

“Any luck tracing it?”

“Not yet,” replied the president. “New England they think, maybe. But at least we’ve managed to keep the fed list story out of the media, we’ve had nearly 100% compliance with our, uh, ‘request’ not to report it. That’s been just about the only bright spot in all this whole fiasco: those media controls, or, uh, I should say ‘guidelines’, they seem to be working. Thank God for the Patriot Act! The media, the networks, they all understand how important it is not to endanger federal agents by spreading this story around… and of course they don’t want to get their FCC licenses yanked.”

“But the story’s already on the internet; didn’t the Sledge Report run it?”

“He did, but he pulled it after the AG talked to him. Anyway, as long as it’s just on the internet it doesn’t matter, it can’t get any real traction.”

“What about talk radio?”

“So far so good. The shootings are still just being handled as local stories, that’s what I’m being told.”

Crandall said, “But we’ve got to plan for the story to break sooner or later. Patriot Act or not, the whole fed list story’s bound to get out.” He speared another chilled jumbo shrimp from his sterling silver bowl, dunked it into the special White House cocktail sauce and gobbled it down in one bite. “Did you ever think it would get this far?”

“What? No. Honestly, I never even considered the possibility that it would…spin out of control like this. But hey, they started it! They started it right at that God damn football game! It all started there, so everything since the stadium massacre is on them! Everything!”

“But who are they? Who’s ‘them’? The people behind the stadium massacre, or all of the maniacs that are taking pot shots at our agents now?”

“The gun nuts, the militias, the right wingers, the Constitution fanatics, all of them!” exclaimed President Gilmore.

The CSO shook his head wearily. “That’s a lot of people. That’s millions of people.”

“Well they started it! I didn’t ask for this crap! They started it, God damn it!” President Gilmore threw down his silver salad fork; it clattered off of his china plate and bounced onto the parquet floor. An unsmiling Navy petty officer in a starched white uniform swooped in, picked it up and replaced it with a new fork in one fluid movement. The President waited until the sailor was back at his station by the galley service pass-through, and then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, regaining his composure. “Look, Harvey, I’ve got a lot of confidence in Sheridan, he’s good at his job, but let’s face it the FBI just can’t… I mean, it just isn’t set up, institutionally I mean, to handle this kind of situation. They can’t move fast enough, they don’t have the right mind set. They just can’t do the kind of…dirty work that’s needed to stamp this fire out. You follow me?”

“I think so.”

“The only ones I’ve seen who know how to fight this kind of war are in that ATF group. What’s that guy’s name? Malone?”

“Yes sir, Walter Malone.”

“That’s the man! Burning out that militia nest in Virginia, that was terrific! That was great television, pulling those assault rifles and bazookas out of the ashes. That was fantastic! I mean, face it, this is just as much a media and PR war as anything else, so we need lots more TV like that! We need to send a strong message to the whole country! We need to shift the whole debate…” The president sipped his tall iced tea and continued.

“Harvey, the way I see it, it’s not enough just to crack down on these gun nuts, we need to do it on TV. We need to discredit them; we need to disgrace them even while we’re wiping them out. We need to make the rest of the country hate their stinking guts, so they’ll call that 888-GUN STOP number and inform on their own fathers and brothers if that’s what it takes! I swear to God, I think this Malone is the only one who really understands just what kind of media war we’re in!”

“Yes sir, I agree, but there’s an element risk as well.”

“Harvey, harsh times call for harsh measures! We’ll never get a handle on this thing fighting by the Marquis de Queensbury rules; we have to fight fire with fire. I’ve gone over Malone’s paper again. I want you to pass the word to him that he’s got the green light directly from me. Give him a free hand in Maryland and North Carolina as well as Virginia as of today. Give him whatever he needs: budget, personnel, everything. I mean, it’s a small group; the whole thing can’t cost more than one F-22, right? And those gold-plated pieces of shit crash every week, and we’re still buying them! So keep it black, keep it off budget, keep it deniable, but get Malone whatever he needs.”

“Yes sir, it’s already set up for deniability at every stage. No matter how far anybody digs, it can’t reach here.”

“Good, good. That’s essential, obviously. So tell Malone to put it into high gear and start kicking some more ass like he did down in Virginia! Tell him I think he’s doing a great job, and tell him I want to see more of it on TV right away. Tell him I want ‘gun collector’ to be a dirty word, a national obscenity!”