CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
2:40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
“Come to order, please,” someone said. “Order, everyone!”
It did no good. The chatter went right on.
The room was packed. Coffee cups, empty food trays, and discarded sandwich wraps littered the conference table. Staffers huddled with decision makers, talking, looking at printouts, pointing at data on BlackBerries.
The seats along the walls—smaller red linen chairs with lower backs—were filled with young aides and even younger assistants, most of them slurping from Styrofoam coffee cups or murmuring into telephones.
Mark Baylor took a seat in a leather chair at the closest end of the oblong table. The seats around the table were all full.
At the head of the room, Richard Stark of
