Petrossian’s polls showed an alarming trend. The President was down six to eight points in his strongholds—the urban Northeast, the upper Midwest, the industrial mid-Atlantic states—but he was up an astonishing fifteen percent in the South.
Hump Scruggs, our Southern strategist, called in. “Gawdamnawmighty,” he said, “the Klan is fixin’ to endorse him!”
I didn’t even pause to get details. I called Manganelli. “Drop whatever you’re doing and get cranking on a vicious attack on the Ku Klux Klan,” I said.
“The Klan? Everyone knows our position on—”
“They’re fixin’ to endorse him!”
There was a pause on the other end. “Herb,” he said, “why are you talking with a Southern accent?”
I explained the situation, and told him to drop a one-page insert into the noon speech before the Asian-American society, a business group.
“It’s a foreign-policy speech, Herb. It doesn’t make any sense to attack the Klan in the middle of a discussion of our Pacific Rim.”
“Charlie,” I said, “I don’t care if it doesn’t flow. Use a lot of conjunctions. Now let’s have one page of insert. And don’t hold any punches.”
I told Feeley about it. He slumped in a chair. “At this point,” he said, “any endorsement would help.”
The Asian businessmen were somewhat mystified to find themselves being treated to an unusually virulent denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan, but the Klan did not go ahead with its endorsement, and afterward the President thanked me for avoiding a potential disaster.
Three days after Sandman, BUPI announced the first “deaths.”
The sealed coffins of the six “martyrs” were buried amidst full BUPI pomp on the fifteenth hole of what had formerly been the exclusive Mid-Ocean Club golf course. M-and-M gave the eulogy, denouncing the “American genocide” and calling the President “The Great Pestilence.” Ironically, the Mid-Ocean Club was situated in a part of Bermuda known as Tucker’s Town. It was now renamed Uhuruville.
We had been warned by Clanahan that they might try something like this.
As soon as BUPI announced that their people had been “poisoned” by GB-322, we asked the International Red Cross to investigate. The Red Cross agreed, but of course BUPI quickly refused, on the grounds that we had infiltrated the Red Cross with CIA agents. The Soviet Union, which steadfastly refuses to allow the Red Cross into any of the countries it invades, seized on this and echoed the denunciation. Indeed, the ties between the Soviet Union and Bermuda were improving daily. This was a valuable lesson. President Tucker confessed to me he was surprised by the developments and was “learning a lot” about the Soviet Union.
This nonsense over empty coffins should have been dismissed as propaganda, but the charismatic M-and-M had been so successful in portraying this as a David-versus-Goliath showdown that a lot of the world believed it.
George Bush was busy saying it was a time for “America to pull together behind the President,” a shrewd tactic. The fact was he had broken a Senate tie back in 1983 and voted for the production of nerve gas. He wasn’t about to start throwing canisters.
At the next EST meeting the discussion centered on neutralizing the “martyr maneuver.” Secretary of State Holt—who seemed to regard the Bermuda crisis as a nuisance distracting him from the Middle East—said we had to discredit the tactic. No one disagreed. Clanahan and Edelstein concurred. There was consensus. The President then made the bold and extraordinary proposal that he be gassed on live television with GB-322.
For the first time since the morning of Sandman, Feeley displayed enthusiasm. He said it might “reverse everything.” I opined that it would certainly be dramatic, if un-presidential.
There was passionate and heated discussion. Admiral Boyd opposed the idea in the strongest language I had ever heard him use. His Brooklyn accent became more and more pronounced. At one point he called it a “lunatic” idea, which in my view was improper, but the President did not take exception.
Boyd’s arguments weighed on the President. But he was intrigued by his idea. Someone proposed gassing the Vice President instead. This idea had broad support, but after discussion the President vetoed it on the grounds that the press knew he didn’t like the Vice President. “They wouldn’t consider it a sacrifice,” he said. “It has to be someone close to me.”
Two days later I found myself in the NBC studios with Bryant Gumbel. Feeley had insisted on Gumbel, in part because he is black and Feels thought he would appeal to Bermudians, but also because he projects an affability that Feeley felt would offset the “chemical warfare” aspect of the show.
My gassing on the Today Show received a Nielsen rating of 13.2, with an audience share of 33, meaning that 27 million television sets were tuned in. In addition, Vision of America broadcast the event live around the world. When I woke up—feeling quite refreshed, I might add—Gumbel said, “Thank you, Herb, from all of us.”
My celebrity was a mixed blessing. There were those who chose not to believe I had volunteered for the demonstration. In some cases I have to conclude the motivation was jealousy. Lleland said in his book that I “had to be dragged, whimpering, to the NBC studio … like a child being taken to the dentist.” It is hardly necessary to dignify that vile canard by saying there is not a mote of truth to it.
The press scoffed. Patrick Buchanan of The New York Times said in his column, “If President Tucker wanted to rectify the catastrophe he has brought about in the North Atlantic, he should have used more potent vapors—on Mr. Wadlough and his other advisers.” I thought it was mean-spirited of him to say such a thing.
The splenetic Michael Kramer of New York magazine attacked me personally, writing, “With this feat of derring-doze, Wadlough is striving to expand his portfolio. No longer content with the role of presidential baggage handler, he has now staked his claim to a more exalted post: administration guinea pig.”
Despite this sort of carping, my Today Show appearance had a significant impact. GB-322 was seen for the harmless substance it was, the Uhuruville burials came under suspicion, and for the first time since the crisis began, M-and-M and BUPI were on the defensive.
Great Britain introduced a resolution in the U.N. calling for exhuming the Uhuruville coffins under internationally supervised auspices. When M-and-M announced that the former U.S. Consulate would be turned into the People’s Museum of American War Atrocities, our foreign-policy people took it as a sign that his offensive had “gone theatrical.” BUPI snipers continued to take occasional potshots at our P-3Cs, but the mob remained on the other side of the causeway, content with its bonfires and nocturnal chanting against the Great Pestilence.
Back home, the Republicans were doing their own chanting, accusing President Tucker of impotence and of not defending America’s interests “the old-fashioned way.”
Marvin, meanwhile, kept pressing the President to reactivate the plan to send him down to Bermuda to hold talks with M-and-M; Marvin’s mission kept getting postponed at Clanahan’s urging, due to the volatility of the situation.
On October 12, the sixth day of the crisis, the President finally instructed Marvin Edelstein to send a communiqué to M-and-M indicating our willingness to talk, but added, “No funny business, Marvin.”
After our meeting Feeley followed the President back to the Oval and tried to talk him out of sending Marvin to Bermuda. “Anyone,” he said, “send anyone except him.” But the President said that Marvin was his NSC director and that it was decided.
Walking out, Feeley muttered, “No good will come of this.”
Marvin devoted the last third of Power, Principle, and Pitfall to the Bermuda crisis. I found it as interesting as some other novels I have read.
At the next meeting Marvin reported that M-and-M was anxious for a meeting. “He sounds like a reasonable man,” he said. The Admiral, Gilhooley, Feeley, Clanahan, and I looked at each other.
“He’d better be,” said the President.
Tucker
wanted the meeting to be private and on board a ship. Marvin wanted it to be a media event. He maintained that the public pressure would be a “salubrious influence” on M-and-M. And he wanted to walk across the causeway separating the naval base from the BUPI encampment “as a symbol of U.S. willingness to reach out.”
Admiral Boyd murmured that he’d like to reach out to M-and-M with a “wing of F-20s.” An argument erupted between Marvin and Boyd which the President had to quell.
Lleland offered the use of the Compassion for the meeting. A shouting match erupted between Feeley and Lleland which the President had to quell.
These arguments probably played a fateful role. The President was so weary of the divisions among his staff and so anxious to solve the Bermuda affair, which had seriously affected his re-election campaign, that he approved Marvin’s plan. In a calmer atmosphere he might have made a more judicious decision.
Watching the start of Marvin’s “Long Walk”—as the networks dubbed it—across the causeway, even one as skeptical as I was filled with a sense of history and optimism.
Trailing him, sufficiently behind so as to be out of camera range, were his two deputies, Cromattie and Baum. (I later learned that Marvin had told them to walk thirty paces behind him; clearly, this was to be his walk.)
M-and-M and his cohort met him at the other end. Following the greeting ceremony, Marvin and M-and-M climbed into his Jeep and, with M-and-M at the wheel and half the world’s press following, drove off. But not, as planned, to his headquarters at People’s House. “The Long Walk” turned out to be a long gangplank.
30
ESTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
Things sticky.
—JOURNAL, OCT. 13, 1992
If you look closely at the TV footage of M-and-M roaring back across the causeway in the direction of the naval base, you can tell by Marvin’s expression that he was stunned by what was happening. (I never disputed that much.) There was also that tense, memorable moment when it appeared that M-and-M was going to charge the front gate: the Marines cocking their weapons, their confused looks as they wondered whether they should also shoot the director of the National Security Council. When M-and-M started giving Marvin a tour of the site of the “massacre” instead of charging the base, the soldiers were greatly relieved.
The only ones relieved.
As M-and-M, with a mute Marvin in tow, began pointing out spots along Kindley Field Road where the “martyrs” had fallen during Operation Sandman, my phone rang. It was the President. His voice was a croak. “Better get everyone in here,” he said.
I canceled the President’s appointments for that afternoon. Together with Feeley and Lleland—Clanahan arrived shortly—we watched the events of that stressful day unfold on television.
There was not much talking during the wreath-laying ceremony at the Uhuruville cemetery. By this time Marvin clearly realized that he’d been had. Unfortunately, that did not project on TV. During the playing of the revolutionary anthems and the nineteen-gun salute, the President leaned forward and shouted at the screen, “Frown, god-dammit—frown!”
The next stop on the itinerary was the April 17 Re-education Facility, formerly the Ocean View Golf and Country Club. I remember well the President’s expression as M-and-M ushered Marvin into that room where dozens of former sweater magnates now spent their days sewing uniforms for the BUPI Revolutionary Guards. He looked like a man on the verge of a stroke. The spectacle was a distressing one, and sure to inflame Republican voters. The incident involving Mr. Brown—one of the imprisoned magnates—spitting on Marvin and being rifle-butted by the guards was especially unfortunate. Feeley made low groaning sounds.
The President said quietly, “Get him on the phone.”
This turned out not to be immediately feasible. The White House advance team had not installed phones at these places since they were hardly on the itinerary, and the kind of talk the President desired to have with his NSC director would have been imprudent to conduct on a line supplied by BUPI.
Urgent messages were dispatched to the naval base. I found myself in unproductive—and extremely vexing—conversation with a BUPI “communications officer.” By the time the messenger from the base arrived at the Re-education camp, the Jeepcade had departed for the next stop. Clanahan and the President discussed the possibility of “complicating” the itinerary—CIA talk, I presume, for sabotaging this ridiculous dog-and-pony show. Though my views on the use of force are a matter of record, at this point I would have favored “complicating” M-and-M’s little tour with a low-yield nuclear device.
The next stop, of course, was the former American consulate on former Par-La-Ville Road. Here the leitmotif was Iranian, with M-and-M leading a now-zombielike Marvin through the rooms of the former “spy nest,” pointing out various telex machines and descanting upon their counterrevolutionary functions. At one point he held up a calculating machine and began denouncing it as a “spy tool.” Clanahan burst out laughing. The President did not join in.
By now his anger and frustration had spent themselves. He merely rubbed the bridge of his nose as he watched the TV. He did show some evidence of renewed interest when M-and-M announced that the consulate would henceforward become the October 7 Political Consciousness and Physical Fitness Center.
The President took a call from Sig Beller, our campaign manager. I did not listen in, but the gist of it was clear enough from the number of times the President had to ask Sig not to resign.
The President finally reached Marvin as they were leaving the consulate. The Navy had dispatched a portable KYX-2 field-unit scrambler. M-and-M, on learning that Marvin was about to have a conversation with the President, insisted on being permitted to send the President his “warm personal regards.” This was relayed to the President. The suggestion was quickly vetoed.
The first several minutes he was on the phone with Marvin, the President expressed himself freely. My notes of the conversation show that the word “idiot” occurred twice. When that phase of the discussion had ended, the President told Marvin to get back to Washington “on the double.”
But Marvin was not eager to be recalled with his portfolio between his legs, so to speak. He went to work on the President, telling him that to retreat now would be to accept humiliating defeat. The President replied that defeat would be a “relief” compared to this.
At this point Marvin told him that he was “on the verge of a breakthrough.”
The President expressed mirth of a sardonic variety.
Marvin said that M-and-M was putting on the show for domestic consumption, and that once they sat down at the bargaining table, “the concessions [would] flow like honey.”
I wondered at the metaphor, since honey does not flow easily. As the President listened to this tommyrot, Feeley and I made frantic hand gestures. Clanahan, also listening in, tapped his foot. Lleland, on another phone, merely nodded as if listening to Pericles.
“Now’s our chance,” said Marvin in his best Alliance-for-Progress tone, “to prove we meant what we said in our inaugural.”
Feeley grunted, “ ‘Our’?” Marvin was always doing this, trying to make the President feel he was breaking promises by not following his advice.
He told the President that M-and-M wasn’t anti-American, that he was just trying to keep his constituency happy. “He knows whole chunks of the Bill of Rights by heart,” he said. “He’s been quoting them to me in the Jeep.”
Feeley, working on an embolism the size of a golf ball, broke into the conversation and started screaming at Marvin. The President had to order him off the line. Marvin concluded his plea by telling the President that M-and-M was a “vibrant personality.”
The President scowled. “Then you better pray,” he said, “he does a lot of vibrating soon. And no more sightseeing, you got that?”
Marvin said there were no further stops on the schedule, and with that the conversation ended. Feeley would later tell me this was the moment he finally knew the Tucker Presi
dency was “cooked.”
In his own memoir, The Sorrow and the Power, President Tucker writes that once Marvin arrived in Bermuda, the die was cast, and that to recall him, as his “closest” advisers urged him to do, would only have “ratified a disaster.” While I always admired the President’s capacity for not giving up, perhaps a diplomatic “disaster” would have been preferable to what ensued.
After he had hung up, the President sat without speaking for a moment or two. He smiled wanly, buzzed for his steward, Aquinas, and asked if anyone would like anything.
“Barbiturates,” said Feeley.
The “concessions” Marvin had been so confident of did not materialize over the next three days. The international press, meanwhile, spoke of the negotiations at People’s House in Versailles Conferencelike language, building a supercharged atmosphere that had the world thinking its future depended on what Marvin and M-and-M had for lunch.
The President was denounced in the British Parliament for “condoning” the “inhumane” treatment of former British subjects. The Soviet and East Bloc countries found the President’s handling of the matter “statesmanlike,” causing great worry in the West Wing.
Tucker and Marvin spoke three, four times a day. The President would press for something tangible, and Marvin would tell him that the atmosphere was “encouraging” and so forth. The Joint Chiefs looked gloomier every day. The afternoon of the second day, the President called Marvin from Chicago after an especially disagreeable demonstration outside the hotel. His patience was ebbing.
“Why,” he said after listening to Marvin’s report, “can’t you get some of the sweater people released or something?” Marvin replied that M’duku considered them an “internal matter” and that he hesitated to inject it into the negotiations over the bases.
He then told the President that M-and-M was willing to renew the base’s lease for one billion dollars.
The President winced.
“I think we should take it,” said Marvin. “And he’s willing to let us claim we bargained him down from four.”
The White House Mess Page 21
