5 Dr. Herman Warsaw and The Genius Files

Chapter 5 Dr. Herman Warsaw and The Genius Files Somebody certainly was trying to kill the McDonald twins. And this somebody would prove to be amazingly persistent. We need to rewind the story a bit here. Back to September 11, 2001. A century from now when kids learn about American history in school, it will probably be divided into everything that happened before 9/11 and everything that happened after 9/11. It was on that tragic day that Dr. Herman Warsaw decided to take a cigarette break. This decision would change his life. In fact, this decision would ultimately change a lot of lives. Born in Poland, Dr. Warsaw was a brilliant

man, and one whose brain examined the world differently from the rest of us. As an amateur inventor, he had made a small fortune creating a GPS that people could have implanted under the skin of their dog or cat so that if the pet ran away, it could be tracked down easily. With the royalties he earned from his invention, Dr. Warsaw didn't have to work for the rest of his life. But he offered his services as a consultant for one dollar a year at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. America had been good to him. He wanted to give something back. Dr. Warsaw was an odd-looking sort. He was young at the time—barely thirty—but he had the look of an old man. He wore baggy brown suits and a fedora as if he had stepped out of a 1940s gangster movie. He was rail thin and slightly bent over. He had the squinty-eyed look of a man who spent too much of his short life staring at computer screens instead of interacting with people in the real world.

Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day didn't help any. Oh, Dr. Warsaw had tried to quit. Lots of times. He tried hypnosis and acupuncture and patches and gums and just about every over-the-counter cure-all on the market. But nothing worked. He had to have a cigarette in his hand at all times, even if he wasn't smoking it. Lucky for him. It was the pull of that addiction that made Dr. Warsaw step out of his Pentagon office at 9:38 a.m. on September 11, take the elevator down from the third floor, and walk outside into the parking lot for a quick smoke. He had just flicked his Bic when the horrible roar of jet engines caused him to jerk his head upward. That sound was way too close. Planes weren't permitted to fly anywhere near the airspace above the Pentagon, the Capitol, the White House, or any top-level government building in Washington. But there it was, a plane diving out of the sky and heading toward

him. One second later, American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles Airport—a Boeing 757 —clipped a light pole at 350 miles per hour and slammed into the Pentagon less than fifty yards from where he was standing. He covered his eyes to shield them from the light and heat. It was terrifying. The plane hit the building with such force that it was literally swallowed up by the Pentagon itself. It entered so cleanly that for years afterward conspiracy theorists were claiming that no plane had even struck the building. They said it had to be an inside job: the government must have purposely set off a bomb. But Dr. Warsaw knew what happened, because he saw it with his own eyes. The nose of the plane tore right through his office. If he had been sitting at his desk at that moment, he would have been dead instantly. A huge fireball erupted, and the Pentagon was in flames. One hundred and twenty-six people

in the building died that day, plus sixty-four people on the plane. Less than an hour earlier, two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City. If there were still any doubts that America was under attack, they were gone. In a few short minutes, history would have to be rewritten. Dr. Warsaw sank to his knees involuntarily and looked at the cigarette in his hand. His life had been spared. It was at that moment that he made a firm commitment to devote the rest of it to his country. As the sirens began to wail and the fire trucks pulled up outside the Pentagon, an idea flashed through Dr. Warsaw's brain. It was fleeting, one of those ideas that could have been lost in a moment if he had been distracted. But it was an idea that would change the world. Dr. Warsaw pulled out the little digital recorder he kept in his pocket just for odd moments like this when inspiration struck. As smoke and flame spewed out of the ruins of the

Pentagon, he pushed the RECORD button and started to make some quick, clipped, verbal notes.... "...nation under attack... multiple problems... nation divided... unsolvable... no agreement... society overwhelmed with complexity... cannot see forest for trees... older generation inflexible, stagnant... kids are moldable... figure out solutions... start over... geniuses... standardized test scores... find them..." These ramblings would have sounded like gibberish to anyone who happened to be listening. But later, Dr. Warsaw would sit down and synthesize his shorthand audio notes into a 434-page manifesto titled "The Only Way Out: The Simple Solution to America's Most Pressing Problems of the 21st Century." No, you can't find it at Barnes & Noble. Don't bother looking it up on Amazon.com. "The Only Way Out" was a top secret document that