Will Hurd - American Reboot: An Idealists Guide to Getting Big Things Done

American Reboot

An Idealists Guide to Getting Big Things Done

Will Hurd

Former US Congressman and CIA Officer

Simon & Schuster

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New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2022 by William Hurd

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2022

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Interior design by Kathryn A. Kenney-Peterson

Jacket design by Pete Garceau

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951377

ISBN 978-1-9821-6070-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-6081-4 (ebook)

To Mary Alice and Bob for always believing in me and teaching me to be honest and do the right thing.

I magine you are behind the steering wheel of a car parked in a narrow alley of a foreign city, with a mob of people shaking and banging on your vehicle as you bake inside from the oppressive heat and humidity. Angry faces peer in the windows. The situation is spiraling out of control.

That was what I faced in a South Asian city as I neared the completion of the first year of my inaugural overseas assignment in the National Clandestine Service, the division of the CIA responsible for recruiting spies and stealing secrets oftentimes while having to live and work undercover. I was there to conduct an operation to meet my asset, a person risking their life and the lives of their family to give secrets to the U.S. government. To determine whether I was being followed, I was performing a surveillance detection route, or SDR. I had inspected parts of my route the day before and had found an alley that would force surveillanceif I had itto follow me closely, making them easier to spot.

This alley happened to be in a neighborhood that polite society considered dangerous. It was home to the lower strata of society who had been laboring in a social order that had been dividing citizens of this country into rigid hierarchical groups for more than three thousand years.

My problem was that I had committed a rookie mistake. I had cased the alley in the morning when it was empty of people. But when I maneuvered my two-door Toyota Tercel into the alley that afternoon, I found myself on the busiest street I had ever seen. Hundreds of people were walking in all directions. Pack animals clogged the street, and vendors were hawking their wares.

I was inching my car along when a woman walked in front of my vehicle. I mashed on my brakes, but my tire came to a stop on the back of her flip-flop, dragging her foot across the road. Her big toe busted wide open. Suddenly blood was everywhere.

The woman looked at me, and realizing I was a foreigner, she screamed. The scene changed instantly. I braced myself inside the car, as the roar of the angry mob pushing and pulling at the vehicle became deafening.

The CIA had taught me about situations like this. The first thing you are supposed to do is get off the X. The X is where something is going downan ambush, a riot, or general chaos erupting or about to erupt. Staying on the X is the last place you want to be. But my little Tercel wouldnt get me through this mass of people. I had a firearm, but it wasnt going to help me out of this situation. So I got out of the car.

When I unfolded my six-foot-three-inch frame, I shocked the crowd. They didnt expect me to get out, and I was much larger than most of the congregation. Since I only knew a little of the local language, I yelled, Does anyone speak English?

A teenager pushed through the enraged crowd, parting it with his arms like he was doing the breaststroke. He proclaimed triumphantly, I speak the English.

I asked, Where is the closest hospital?

He consulted with the crowd, then turned back to me, pointing to the east and said, Four blocks that way.

I handed some money to the woman, and helped her into a rickshawa three-wheeled passenger cart used primarily in Asiaand I told the driver to take her to the hospital, immediately.

Then something entirely unexpected happened. The mob calmed. People started clapping and patting me on my back. Some guy opened my car door and helped stuff me back inside. I drove away to my meeting, and when I looked in the rear-view mirror the crowd was waving and smiling behind me.

Ive had years to reflect on why an incensed mob went from rage to happiness within minutes. I have concluded that the mob appreciated a show of warmheartedness from someone they did not expect to show kindness. They had seen me, a foreigner, as a representation of an apparatus of oppression perpetuated on them by members of the upper classes of society. Their rage was checked when they saw an act of compassionme getting out of the car, trying to do something about the situation I had put the woman in.

On its surface, what I experienced in that crowded alley seems to have little in common with the United States today. But the incident is reflective of where we are as a nation and how we must move past divisions and hostility preventing us from solving our problems.

In the U.S., both political parties are crammed into separate little cars, stuck in the same place, with millions of Americans shaking and banging on them. Anger and resentment are threatening to upend the cars. Unfortunately, most of the elected officials in the cars are oblivious to the chaos around them. Others are turning away and choosing to ignore it, and some are screaming, trying to further incite drama.

This unattended chaos will prevent the United States from doing for the next 245 years what it has done for the last 245 yearsimprove the quality of life for all Americans, while uplifting humanity. Its time for elected officials to get off the X. They need to step outside their bubbles and listen to what is happening to all Americans, not just the ones in their own political party. If this were to happen, I think we would see the same reaction from the American electorate that I experienced the day my car was almost flipped over, and political contempt could be transformed into something positive.

Getting off the X will be like a Ctrl+Alt+Delete for our country. I started my career in technology, working in a college computer lab, and I learned a simple lesson. When you are troubleshooting a computer problem and you cant figure out why the computer is acting weirdly, the best thing you can do is reboot. This is what our country needs now, an American Reboot.

Im not talking about starting from the beginning. An American Reboot doesnt mean re-forming our more perfect Union in a radically different way. And it doesnt involve tearing up our Constitution and starting over. Instead, its an opportunity to refresh our operating system so that its operating on our core values that have sustained us as a nation for close to 250 years.