by Larry Bond
CHAPTER 7
Reports
SEPTEMBER 19 — WASHINGTON, D.C.
Cigarette smoke fogged the small, wood-paneled conference room, and Blake Fowler, his eyes watering, wondered why so many people in the intelligence community still smoked. Was it nerves or just the desire to look tough?
He could barely make out the wall clock through the haze. It was just after five in the evening. Outside the Old Executive Office Building’s Victorian walls and gables, Washington’s streets were filling up as tens of thousands of career government workers headed home — fighting their way through traffic that seemed to get worse with every passing day. Fowler laughed inwardly. At least this job kept him from sitting behind the wheel of an immobile car.
He looked around the crowded conference table. Almost everyone in the Korean Interagency Working Group had arrived. First, Mike Dolan from the CIA, a middling-tall, pug-nosed Boston Irishman with hair as black as night and an infectious devil-may-care grin. Fowler had always thought Dolan looked more like a middleweight boxer than a spy, and he had the feeling that was how the CIA agent wanted it. In contrast, plump, smooth-featured, pipe-smoking Alan Voorhees looked exactly like what he was, an academic turned Department of Commerce bureaucrat — complete with stylish Adam Smith tie and expensive leather briefcase.
Voorhees was deep in conversation with a tall, ramrod-straight black man who would never be mistaken for a mere bureaucrat. Even in a pin-striped, double-breasted suit, Brigadier General Dennis Scott looked as though he belonged in uniform. Fowler knew the Defense Intelligence Agency representative was nearing fifty, but only the gray speckled through his hair provided the slightest clue to his age. Scott still left younger opponents gasping for air on the squash courts near his Falls Church home.
Waspish little Carleton Pickering of the National Security Agency was barely visible beyond the general. Pickering’s keen eyes, thick, bushy eyebrows, and fussy, precise voice had been a Washington intelligence community fixture for years. The tiny, fox-faced analyst had an uncanny ability to turn the tiniest fragments of raw intelligence into a polished and plausible picture of enemy intentions, activities, and capabilities.
The door suddenly slammed shut behind the Pentagon’s representative, a bluff, hearty Navy captain named Ted Carlson. He swaggered to the corner coat rack, shrugged off his damp overcoat, and then whipped off his plastic-covered uniform cap. Water droplets cascaded from the cap onto the carpet. Carlson grinned at his startled colleagues and took an empty chair near Fowler.
One man wasn’t there. Tolliver, the prep school kid from the State Department, was late again — as usual. Fowler had called State to find out where he was, only to be told by Tolliver’s secretary that he was in another meeting and that she wasn’t sure when, or even if, he could get there. Well, Tolliver could play catch-up on his own time.
Fowler rapped gently on the table, breaking through a hum of quiet shoptalk. “We’ve got a fair amount of material to cover this evening, gentlemen. So let’s get the show on the road. I, for one, would like to get home before midnight.”
General Scott smiled. “Not going to wait for our little friend from Foggy Bottom?” He didn’t seem too upset by the prospect.
Pickering leaned forward, a slight smile on his narrow face. “I don’t think Tolliver is likely to get here anytime soon. I hear the Secretary’s given him a new job — he’s working on the American desk these days.”
Fowler and the others chuckled softly. It was an old joke but just true enough to stay funny. State Department “desks” were charged with keeping track of the issues and interests of particular countries. And the other agencies and departments with foreign policy responsibilities often wished that State had a similar organization to protect American interests — interests they sometimes felt were overlooked by the striped-pants diplomats in Foggy Bottom.
As the laughter died down, Fowler looked over at the CIA’s representative on the Working Group. “Mike, why don’t you kick things off tonight.” When they’d first assembled the group, he’d asked Dolan to keep them up to speed on current events behind the scenes in Seoul. It had been a natural assignment. All the men sitting around the table had some measure of expertise in Asian political and military affairs, but the CIA had the best collection of sources in the region.
Dolan stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray. “Yeah, okay.” He pushed the ashtray away. “I got a telex from our people just before I came here tonight.”
“Things are still fairly quiet in the streets. But that won’t last long. NSP says the students are planning more demonstrations. And our people over there confirm that. The government’s tried making police sweeps of Seoul National University, but the leaders they need to grab have all gone underground.” Dolan handed the multipage telex he’d summarized over to Fowler.
“What about the official report they promised on the massacre?” Voorhees looked as though he really believed it might solve their Korean problem.
Dolan snorted. “Our sources say it’s going to be released tomorrow. But it sure as hell isn’t going to improve the situation.”
He waved a hand toward Fowler. “You called that one right, Blake. It looks like they’re going to try to blame some lowly police officer for the order to fire. And he very conveniently got himself killed in the riot.”
Grim laughter from the other members of the Working Group interrupted him.
“And just in case no one buys that, they’re going to announce the simultaneous resignation of the Home Affairs minister. Apparently, he’s been chosen to play the part of the sacrificial lamb.”
General Scott cleared his throat. “Goddamnit, that’s not going to settle anything. I’ve met the man’s deputy and he’s even more of a hard case than his boss. The bastard’s probably the one who really gave the police orders to meet that demonstration with force.”
Dolan nodded. “You’ve got it right, Denny. What’s more, the students and opposition leaders know that as well as we do — probably better. The trouble is, nothing short of a complete government surrender will satisfy them now. And the government isn’t going to hang out the white flags anytime soon.”
Fowler and the others around the table knew what that meant. More demonstrations, more riots, and probably, more blood in South Korea’s streets.
Fowler sighed. “Okay, all of that makes our analysis of the Barnes bill even more important. Legislative Affairs still says the bill won’t make it to the floor, but it’s already getting more press attention than they’d predicted.”
He looked down at his notes. “Plus, I just got word this afternoon that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is planning to mark it up tomorrow morning.”
The others sat up a little more sharply. A bill markup was the action stage for a congressional committee. Hearings weren’t really important — markups were where the real work got done.
“Jesus, they’re moving pretty damned fast, aren’t they?” Captain Carlson sounded worried.
“C’mon, Ted. You know what the Foreign Affairs Committee’s like. If those guys bent any more to the left, they’d fall right over on their asses.”
Scott’s contemptuous assessment won agreeing murmurs from around the table.
The general continued, “And everybody knows that Barnes and that son-of-a-bitch Dugan are like that.” He held up two crossed fingers to represent the Trade subcommittee chairman and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Fowler and the others nodded. Barnes and Dugan were both from the same wing of their political party, and they’d been allies for years. They could be expected to trade favors. And the same could be expected from their counterparts in the Senate. Fortunately, though, the bill still had to run the gauntlet of the Armed Services committees on both sides of the Hill — and those committees, though less conservative than in past years, still leaned more to the right than the left.
Which was nice to know, but it didn’t move them any closer to putting out a singl
e, consistent administration policy paper on the legislation.
Fowler tapped his typed agenda. “Okay, next item. The trade sanctions provisions our friend Mr. Barnes has in his bill. We’ve already agreed on language spelling out just what they would do to importers and exporters in this country. The key question is, will the sanctions work?” He glanced around the table.
Voorhees took the pipe out of his mouth. “You mean, will they force the South Korean government to reform?” The Commerce Department representative sat back further in his chair. “No. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I just don’t see it. The Koreans are too proud. Giving in to Barnes would seem as bad to them as surrendering in a war.”
Dolan backed him up — something that was probably a first. “Hell, the South Koreans are even more stubborn than the fucking South Africans. They aren’t going to do diddly damned all just because the U.S. Congress threatens them.”
Fowler stared down at his notes as the discussion rose and fell around him. Everything he’d seen during his year of postgraduate work in Seoul and everything the other Working Group members said tended to confirm Dolan’s offhanded assessment. And that raised an ugly scenario. If the Barnes bill somehow made it through the congressional gauntlet, the South Koreans wouldn’t meekly buckle under before its threatened sanctions went into place. They’d try to tough it out — at a potentially catastrophic cost to their own economy.
Over the last several years the South Koreans had run up a forty-plus billion dollar foreign debt to modernize their country. They’d produced an economic miracle with the money — building superhighways, ultramodern factories, universities, all the infrastructure of a powerful industrial state. But it was an economic miracle that rested on a single, somewhat shaky base: exports. Back in 1984 fully a third of South Korea’s gross national product had come from its sales overseas. To pay its foreign debts, South Korea had to run large trade surpluses with the rest of the world in each and every year.
If the Barnes trade sanctions went into effect, South Korea would lose most, if not all, of its single largest market almost overnight. And Fowler knew that the Europeans and Japanese would probably be close behind the United States in imposing protectionist tariffs on Korean products. They faced the same kinds of domestic political pressure groups as the U.S. Congress, and they’d already shown an even greater willingness to surrender to them.
And unlike South Africa, Iran, or Libya, where trade sanctions had failed miserably, South Korea didn’t produce any irreplaceable products. Its companies had prospered by being able to manufacture cars, computers, and ships more cheaply than their competitors. But nobody’s economy would collapse without access to Samsung TVs or Hyundai cars.
Fowler frowned. The economic risks for South Korea were clear. What would happen to a country whose whole economy rested on exports if the rest of the world suddenly turned off the cash flow? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be anything good.
He flipped to the next page of his notes, taking a discreet look at his watch while he did it. These meetings went pretty smoothly without having to listen to interminable speeches from the State Department’s Tolliver. Maybe he could have Katie “forget” to notify Tolliver about the next session. It was a tempting thought and he knew he’d have to work hard to resist it.
He studied the other men around the table. “We’ve all seen Ted’s paper analyzing the provisions in the Barnes bill that would force us to withdraw American troops from South Korea. He argues that the timetables for withdrawal would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet. Anyone have any questions or comments?”
The others shook their heads, but Carlson wanted to supplement his earlier written report. “Don’t forget that it’d be godawful expensive, too. You’re talking about shipping three squadrons of fighters, six artillery battalions, SAM batteries, helicopters, and a whole damned infantry division all the way across the Pacific.”
Scott whistled. “Son of a bitch. That’d tie up a pretty big percentage of our strategic sea- and airlift assets.”
Carlson nodded. “I’ve got my staff running studies now. We should have some hard numbers in a couple of days or so.”
Fowler scribbled a reminder to himself to follow up on that. “Okay. So we’d have trouble implementing the withdrawal provisions on time and they’d cost an arm and a leg. Plus, providing the ships and planes to move our troops would eat into our ability to respond quickly to crises in other parts of the world.”
He looked up. “Is that a fair summary?”
Mike Dolan answered for everyone. “Heap big white man from NSC speakum truth.” The others around the conference table laughed.
Fowler grinned. Trust Dolan to keep him from getting too comfortable in the chairman’s chair. He put his pen down. “That’s settled then. But do my Indian brothers have anything to say about the military effects of pulling the Great White Father’s soldiers out of Korea?”
That sobered them up.
General Scott spoke up first. “It’d be a damned big mistake — no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
“I don’t see it, Denny.” Voorhees shook his head. “We’ve got, what, maybe forty thousand men over there. Okay, that sounds like a lot. But the South Koreans have more than six hundred thousand troops. They don’t need us to keep the peace anymore.”
“Bullshit.” Scott obviously didn’t believe in mincing his words. “Sure the South Korean military is tough. Hell, they’re very tough. But those bastards on the other side of the DMZ are just as tough and they stay put for one damned good reason.” Scott held up a single finger. “Because the last time they tried invading, we kicked their butts all the way back across the thirty-eighth parallel.”
Blake agreed with the general, but knew that he’d skipped over a few things — like the fact that it had taken three years of hard fighting and more than fifty thousand American dead to win the uneasy truce along the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Voorhees looked unconvinced.
Dolan broke in. “Look, Alan, the trouble is that the military threat South Korea faces has been growing dramatically over the last few years. There’s a lot going on up there in Pyongyang that we need to be worried about.”
“Like what? And don’t give me some kind of ‘need to know’ runaround. I’ve got Code Word clearance just like the rest of you.”
Dolan eyed Voorhees calmly. “Okay. Like the fact that the Soviets have been supplying the North Koreans with first-line combat aircraft. Like the fact that Kim Il-Sung and his boys are getting advanced tanks, artillery, and surface-to-surface rockets for the first time ever. Like the fact that North Korea’s resident chief lunatic Kim has given the Soviets overflight rights and access to his naval bases — something that he’s refused to do for more than thirty years.”
“Oh, come on, guys.” Voorhees laughed, a bit nervously. “You can’t tell me you’re going to try feeding everyone the old ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming’ bullshit. No one’s going to buy it. What kind of confirmation do you have? I mean, couldn’t this stuff just be rumors spread around by the NSP to keep us backing the South Korean government?”
Fowler decided it was time to intervene. “Some of it may be. But not all of it. Our satellites have caught glimpses of new equipment being fed into the North, and we’ve spotted increasing numbers of Soviet warships and planes in and around North Korea.”
He paused for a moment. “So we know for sure that North Korea’s engaged in a sizable military buildup. What we can’t get is solid data on what they plan to do with all that hardware. And in a way, that makes the situation we face worse. We can estimate the North’s capabilities but we can’t guess their intentions. That means we’ve got to plan for the worst case.”
He looked over at Dolan. “Your people haven’t been able to get anyone inside North Korea, have they?”
Dolan shook his head. “No. We don’t have a single agent on the ground up there. The damned place is too regimented, too paranoid to infiltrate. We’ve work
ed with the NSP for decades to try to plant somebody. It never works. They go in … and they don’t ever, ever come out.”
Scott agreed. “Yeah. The only human intel we can get from inside Pyongyang comes from some of the Japanese companies that do business there. And we can’t confirm much of that.”
Time to bring it home. Fowler looked straight into Voorhees’s eyes. “So what we’ve got, Alan, is a country that’s already militarized beyond all reason. A country that’s certainly acquiring even more weaponry. And a country that has a forty-year-old track record of aggression, assassination, and terrorism. Just how do you suggest we should interpret those facts?”
Fowler studied Voorhees’s face carefully. He looked less sure of himself than he’d been before. Good. They had to convince him that there could be an increased military threat if the Barnes troop withdrawal provisions went into effect. If they didn’t, Voorhees might talk his boss, the Secretary of Commerce, into disapproving the Working Group’s report. That wouldn’t please George Putnam one little bit. More importantly, it would set the stage for still another disjointed administration response to half-baked congressional legislation.
Fowler caught Dolan’s eye. “Maybe you could let Alan take a look at your latest assessment of North Korea’s military capabilities.”
Dolan nodded back slowly, a barely perceptible smile on his face. “Sure thing.” He turned to Voorhees. “I’d be happy to messenger over the file anytime you want to see it.”
Voorhees looked around the table. He obviously knew he was outnumbered, and Fowler had offered him a face-saving way out. He nodded. “Okay. I’ll take a look at it. If what you say about the Soviets’ boosting North Korea’s military capabilities is true …” Voorhees paused. “Well, I’d have to say that would show that an American troop withdrawal could cause some problems.”
