The Gun Runner's Daughter

by Neil Gordon

  “So imagine Bob Stein telling a jury that. Imagine Bob Stein asking a jury what the fuck is the government of the United States doing now? It’s a vendetta. Your Walsh put one person in minimum-security prison for a few months. But my father’s going to lose everything he owns. What for? You know, I know, that someone sanctioned Falcon. Fucking Greg Eastbrook sanctioned cocaine traffic into this country to pay for contra arms. But in two months, dimes’ll get you dollars, he goes to the U.S. Senate. You say what you want, but the fact of the matter remains that Greg Eastbrook’s spending the next six years of Sundays in an Episcopalian church while Ronald Aaron Rosenthal is exiled from the country.”

  “Your father’s a criminal, Alley. This isn’t about being Jewish. It’s about a crime.”

  “Oh yeah? You prepared to ask your father that?”

  Dee’s answer to this was silence.

  And in that silence was a reflection that, for Dee, was very hard to make: that Ronald Rosenthal, seen through Alley’s eyes, was not all that different from Dee’s own father. Dee’s father, too, did harsh and duplicitous things in his job; Dee’s father, too, thought these things were in the service of something other than himself. The fundraising, the virtual marketing of access to the president in return for soft, unregulated dollars: it was a necessary evil, given the pioneering work in this field the GOP had done with Reagan and Bush. The cold, harsh calculations on health-care and welfare reform, Dee knew, the petty retreats on everything from Haiti to gay rights in the military, it all went against everything his father believed. “You have to keep your eye on the prize, Deedee,” his father liked to say. “People like us, it’s our job to focus on the greater good.”

  The greater good. Night after night in her bed, staring into the blackness above their faces, Alley made him understand that her father, too, thought that he worked for a greater good. His own father, Alley’s grandfather, had spent five years in Dachau, from the age of thirteen to eighteen. Ronald Rosenthal had been born in a refugee camp in Italy, while his parents, the only two survivors from a little town in Lithuania, had grown up under the shadow of the Holocaust in a neighborhood of Brooklyn that held legions of battered, scarred people, passing their lives without any doubt as to what people were willing, and able, to do to one another. When, at thirteen or fourteen, Rosenthal had met his first Israeli, the experience was, to the street-smart, embattled Brooklyn boy, revolutionary.

  Whispering into the dark of her bedroom, naked beside him, Alley told Dee about it. “You have to understand. My grandfather, he didn’t set foot out of Borough Park for the first ten years he was in the States. Then he ventured as far as downtown Brooklyn, because he opened a store on Jay Street.”

  “But why?” Staring up, trying to imagine this world that he had never even dreamed existed, Dee whispered too. “He was safe here. Christ sake, Alley, it was U.S. soldiers that rescued him.”

  “I know. It’s not that. I mean, it’s not the people. It’s the government. God, Dee, you know that denazification was a farce. Those bastards were putting Nazis right back in power from Bonn to Buenos Aires. They were rearming Germany! People like my granddad, they couldn’t believe it. But it was also other people. This country’s always had a vicious strain of anti-Semitism. My dad got his first broken bone at ten: he and his friends were jumped by an Irish gang on their way out of yeshiva. By thirteen, he was in gang fights every weekend.”

  But Dee still didn’t see it. “Alley, my grandfather used to have lunch with Felix Warburg once a week. There were Jews in every firm on Wall Street, every bank in the country, and every department of the government. I’ve had Jewish friends and girlfriends from Exeter to Cornell to Harvard, and colleagues as long as I’ve been working.”

  “Right. In the schools. And at the jobs. But not in the clubs. Not at the Nisi Prius luncheons. You’ve been around Jews your whole life, right? Forgive me, but can you tell me when Rosh Hashanah is? Not the month even: just the season. Can you? You see, there’s a difference between tolerated and accepted, Dee. Borough Park was a long way from Wall Street. You don’t understand that, then you don’t know a thing about people.”

  But Dee did know a thing about people. Dee knew more than a thing about what people were prepared to do to each other. During the war, his grandfather had worked for John J. McCloy on the internment of Japanese-Americans, one hundred thousand of them, forced into primitive camps for the duration. And lying there, Alley’s quiet voice traveling from her lips to his ear, the air around them not a separation but a conduit, skin to skin, he knew she was right.

  3.

  That he knew made him all the more ready to listen when she asked him, suddenly, the most important question that lay between them:

  “Dee. Why are they after my father?”

  For a time, there was silence. Then Dee:

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  She shook her head against the pillow.

  “No.”

  He licked his lips before he spoke again. “I mean, it’s a valid process, Alley, setting the parameters of a law’s interpretation.”

  Watching him. “Okay, it’s valid. It’s a shame they chose my dad. But that’s not it, is it?”

  He admitted it. “No.”

  Now she raised herself on her elbows to look him in the face. “Dee?”

  He changed his focus to her now, as if unwillingly. “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  Another silence. Then he spoke hesitantly. “Alley, you said it yourself. These guys don’t care that Dymitryck was killed.”

  “So?”

  “So think about it. We’ve got a prosecution of a man who was clearly sanctioned in his crime. I mean, I accept that it’s a valid legal process to try your father, but let’s be honest: if Dymitryck hadn’t brought the Bosnian sales to public attention, your dad would have been doing his business with tacit government approval. Right?”

  Nodding slowly, she agreed. “So what?”

  “Now, not only is that all true, but now the guy responsible for the prosecution even starting has been killed, but they don’t want to admit there’s any connection.”

  Again, she nodded, waiting.

  But Dee was done. “There’s something wrong here, Alley. These guys better be damn smart to be sure it doesn’t blow up in their faces.”

  “They’re smart.”

  “Oh yeah? Have you been reading the papers the past two years?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what the hell makes you think they’re so smart?” His voice was rising now, and Alley recognized that she was hearing something that had been thought out clearly, but never before articulated.

  “There’s something wrong. The prosecution of your father—it’s too vindictive, for one thing. And it’s too aggressive. People who are . . . sure of themselves, they’re not this aggressive. You know? It’s like they’re trying to rush the thing through while they can.”

  “Is it midterm?”

  “The elections? That’s what my father says. They need good press on this before the elections. They’re afraid of losing Congress.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m sure Clinton wants to come off like he’s the Bosnian embargo’s biggest champion, and all that crap. And I’m sure these guys are scared as hell at the prospect of a Republican Congress. But that’s not enough to justify this charade. Can I ask you something?”

  “Um-hmm.” Their faces were inches apart.

  “What do you think that guy from the NAR was looking for?”

  That was not what she had been expecting. She turned away, showing him her neck.

  “I don’t know.”

  But then, as if honesty demanded it, she spoke again. “I took a look at the NAR last week at the NYU library. You know their biggest concern?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Iraq. The arming of Iraq, before the Gulf War. They say there were extensive CIA-supporte
d operations to sell arms and technology to Hussein. They say the Iraqi tilt was coordinated out of the NSC by Greg Eastbrook. You believe that?”

  This interested him, clearly. She watched him think, and then answer in a considered voice. The voice, she thought, of his profession.

  “Yes. I mean, sales to Hussein were commonplace. Everyone was doing it: Germany, Switzerland, Belgium. Dozens of American companies. U.S. v. Teledyne is a big precedent, so I’ve looked at it. But the relevant issues are pretty straightforward.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Well, Teledyne was an American company, indicted on charges of supplying zirconium for the manufacture of cluster bombs to a Chilean company. Carlos Cardoen. He then sold the bombs, as well as a considerable array of armaments—helicopters to chemical warfare components—to Iraq. The U.S. indicted him, too, but he was abroad.”

  Alley watched with considerable interest now. “Sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s a very relevant precedent. Teledyne’s prosecution was a real surprise too. It was a real surprise that Teledyne or Cardoen was targeted. And then, theirs was the first time your father’s defense was attempted.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the defense that an illegal arms sale was part of a covert U.S. government program. Teledyne—and Cardoen—documented CIA and embassy knowledge of the entire operation. And they had valid end-user documents—nearly valid, anyway. So the defense was that they were unprosecutable in that they had received a nod from the administration.”

  “Did it come to trial?”

  Dee shook his head. “No. Teledyne settled. They paid out nearly twenty million on that charge alone. I would have wanted to see it come to trial. Shelby Highsmith was on the bench, and pretrial rulings said pretty clearly that tacit government approval did not excuse illegal activity. There was considerable plausible deniability on the part of Commerce, anyway, who approved the export licenses. It would have gone to the Supreme Court, no question. I would have wanted to see it tried. In fact, I’d go further: if the government had really wanted to see the constitutional issues addressed, it would never have accepted the plea.”

  She was silent for a while. Then she said, carefully, avoiding using Nicky Dymitryck’s name: “If the NAR was interested in Greg Eastbrook, why would they come after my dad?”

  “I don’t know. Think your dad was involved with Iraq?”

  “I don’t know.” She paused. Then: “You ever hear of the Doctrine of the Periphery?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “It was Ben-Gurion’s. It says Israel has to arm a periphery of allies surrounding its enemies. Iran, Turkey. Maybe it includes Iraq.”

  Dee shook his head. “Not after Iran-contra. Don’t forget where I’ve been working the past five years, Alley. I know all about this stuff. Israel was a historic supplier of the Shah, and they went on arming Iran covertly after the revolution, partly to help them in the war against Iraq. Hussein dumped Scuds on Tel Aviv in the Gulf War. He’d have had the nerve to put chemicals in those warheads, he’d have slaughtered thousands of Jews, just like he slaughtered thousands of Kurds—only, someone would have given a damn about Jews getting killed. They say Cardoen was supplying him with FAE technology. Fuel air explosive. Bombs that spread a cloud of gaseous fuel, then ignite. One blast can be miles wide—cover a city like Tel Aviv.”

  “Yeah, and then they have a nuclear response on their hands. No question, Dee.”

  “Right, right. Nonetheless. I don’t see Israel turning a blind eye to sales to Iraq.”

  “Um-hmm. The Doctrine of the Periphery’s always been pretty profitable, though. I wouldn’t think ideology would get in the way of money. I mean, the governing principle of that kind of commerce is arm them, then bomb them before they can use the weapons, but after they’ve paid. It’s win-win: you make money arming them, you make money bombing them, then you make money arming them again. Right?”

  “Uh-huh,” Dee agreed. Then: “You know, there was a journalist killed in that one, too. Jonathan Moyle, a Brit, investigating Cardoen’s helicopter production. Sedated, then hung by the neck in a Chilean hotel.”

  Silence again, as they thought, each alone. When Alley spoke again, it was hesitantly.

  “Dee. If there’s no trial precedent for my dad’s technique, then he might win?”

  He turned away, and when he spoke, it was with a different kind of passion.

  “No. Not if the prosecution’s handled right.”

  She heard doubt in his voice. “Will it be?”

  “But that’s my point. That’s what I’m scared about. It’s that”—he turned away, as if unwilling to go on and unable to stop—”that they’ve screwed up so much. Vince Foster. Whitewater. The health-care bill. It’s as if they’re willing to . . . stick their necks out too damn far. For a principle. Like some kind of damn social activists. And they don’t understand. They aren’t masters of their own party, never mind ready to go out and fight. We’ve just had a twelve-year administration move out. They’re fucking beginners.”

  She was quiet, thinking, for a long time, so long that he asked her what it was. And she answered, hesitantly: “They were beginners, you mean. Two years ago, when they hatched this thing. The problem is, if they really don’t have the will for this prosecution, they’re not going to come out and say that. They’re going to let you say it for them. By losing.”

  Before her eyes, he turned his face to the ceiling, then shook his head.

  “I don’t believe it. They’re still the government of the United States. It’s my own father, Alley.”

  But even as he said it, Alley was hearing something else.

  She was hearing doubt that had come from her, and that was not going away but, to the contrary, was growing with each night of talk.

  It was, she thought guiltily, unfair, what she was doing to Dee.

  To the man she loved.

  Comparisons, Allison knew, should never be made between people.

  Especially between a living person trying to find his best way through real quandaries and a dead one, frozen forever in his idealism.

  Dee was taller, stronger, handsomer, and in every way more successful than the man she had met at the Ritz.

  And still, watching Dee, that fall, trying to find a middle ground through the manifold and, often, contradictory demands of the people around him, Allison could not help wondering what Nicky would have done.

  4.

  The evening after this last conversation with Allison, Dee Dennis had finished work early, at 7:30. Finished his assigned work, at least. But he did not go to Alley. Instead, he left his office in his shirtsleeves, and went down the interior stairs to the library.

  So deeply, in fact, had Dee Dennis come to doubt the government’s case against Ronald Rosenthal that he had decided to ask some questions.

  Tonight, Dee Dennis had decided, he was going to do a little research.

  The U.S. attorney’s library, which also served as a conference room, was about the only room in the office suite that could rival a corporate law firm: lushly carpeted chambers lined with oak shelves and containing a foldout wet bar. A few workstations running Nexis were available here, and one long table filled the center of the main room, while a suite of smaller rooms to the side housed the bulk of the library in metal stacks.

  Dee, at 7:30, found the library deserted. He started by consulting the small card catalog, then made his way to the stacks and emerged with the past five years of the quarterly North American Review in his hands.

  Immediately he saw that the arms trade was one of the foci of the journal: each issue included, in what Dee’s magazine friends called the front-of-book, a column called “Arms Watch,” written by none other than Dymitryck. The hook, he saw quickly, was that much of the column contained material that no major newspaper would cover: innuendo, rumor, unsourced reports. Clearly the NAR was daring one of the column’s subjects to sue; clearly—most of the names mentioned in
the column, in and out of the government, were familiar to Dee—none was going to, for the information, Dee could see, was very good.

  Alley had spoken about Greg Eastbrook, and his name, indeed, was frequently present. Dee knew all about Eastbrook, the one major Iran-contra player Walsh had declined to prosecute: his role was far too murky. Most people didn’t even know about his involvement, very behind-the-scenes support for his boss and fellow marine, Colonel North. But the NAR , clearly, had committed itself to documenting that role: article after article, all Dymitryck’s, were devoted to him.

  Dee considered this for a long time. And then, as if on cue, a recollection of last night’s conversation with Allison came to mind. Turning back to the stack of journals, drink in one hand and cigar in his teeth, he saw immediately that, indeed, by far most of the recent issues were largely devoted to an examination of the U.S. role in arming Hussein prior to the invasion of Kuwait.

  With a sigh, Dee turned away. That explained nothing: no one had ever accused the Israelis of arming Iraq. And Rosenthal’s rise to fame, to the contrary, had been for his role in the arming of Hussein’s mortal enemies in Iran.

  Fine. Dee rose and returned to the window, standing with his drink, staring down at the harbor as if over a puzzle.

  It made no sense. Dymitryck was interested in Greg Eastbrook, particularly in Eastbrook’s role in the U.S. tilt toward Iraq. Rosenthal was involved in exactly the other side of that fight. Yet Dymitryck had come to search for something about Eastbrook in Rosenthal’s house. It made no sense.

  He said as much to Alley, that night, lying in the darkness of her bedroom on Jane Street. He said as much, and she listened, and quietly they talked it over until, after midnight passed, Dee fell into sleep.

  This night, however, Alley stayed awake, listening to her lover breathe, thinking.

  Iraq. Eastbrook. What did this have to do with her father?

  Lying in bed, for a long time she let her mind play over the question. Her father had done business with Greg Eastbrook, she knew that: she had even met him. And his was the name that had so infuriated her father the one time Pauly had used it.