Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  Thibaudeaux smiled and said, "Have a good day."

  "I have other plans." Burnham turned away and made his way toward the White House, as guilty and crazed-looking a figure as had ever pranced up the path—glancing furtively from side to side, clutching the seat of his pants, trying to walk without moving anything above his knees.

  At the end of the path, Burnham turned not into the West Wing of the White House but to the right, across West Executive Avenue and into the Executive Office Building, the heap of gray granite blocks that housed the Office of Management and Budget, the staff of the National Security Council, the White House switchboard (in the cellar, staffed by dogged operators who boasted that they could find anybody, at any time, anywhere in the world, and who liked to tell reporters about the time they rousted an errant advance man from the bed of some broad in Canberra, Australia), a cafeteria that specialized in ciguatera, scores of members of the White House staff (including the speechwriters), and the offices and staff of the Vice-President of the United States, a man picked to run with the President for three reasons: He was so rich (oil) as to be incorruptible, so stupid as to be incapable of devious back-room maneuverings on behalf of his friends, and from a state and region (Houma, Louisiana) that the President could never have carried on his own. (The only liability the President's men saw in the Vice-President was that he was so popular at home that some of his chums talked openly of shooting the President just so good of Leroy LeDoux could have a crack at the top job.) When the President had announced his selection of LeDoux for the ticket, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate had protested, albeit privately, "But he's a bigoted, bullheaded ignoramus!"

  "Maybe," the President had replied, "but don't they deserve to be represented, too?"

  To many members of the White House staff, assignment to the E.O.B. was exile. It did not correspond to their vision of their own importance. They were not working in the White House; they were not working at the President's side. Through the corridors of the West Wing of the White House there coursed a constant current of excitement, of drama, of historical moment. Through the corridors of the E.O.B. there coursed an occasional messenger with a supermarket cart full of routine mail and, now and then on slow summer days, a rubber ball thrown back and forth between two of the President's writers who had nothing to do but didn't dare go home.

  Burnham loved the E.O.B. He had an enormous office, twenty by thirty feet, on a ground-floor comer of the building, with a pleasant view of the South Lawn and the Ellipse. The windows were tall and the ceilings were high, and there were easy chairs and a great conference table (for gin rummy) and a massive oak desk and a typing table and a word-processor that he hated and an electric typewriter that he loved and a phone console with sixteen buttons and three television sets (one of his early assignments had been to monitor the evening news on all three networks and to analyze each for anti-Administration bias) and a huge leather couch which came in very handy when the quest for le mot juste became exhausting.

  Burnham's boss did work in the White House. His name was Warner Cobb, and he was a conduit and coordinator of the President's spoken and written words: Speeches, letters, proclamations, messages to Congress, personal mail, congratulatory blather, political nonsense—it all passed over Cobb's desk. The President's Appointments Secretary gave Cobb a list of the upcoming week's speeches; legislative assistants outlined the needs for messages and statements; the correspondence office sent batches of mail. Cobb then assigned the work to the six White House writers, read the results of their efforts before forwarding them to the President for signature or delivery, and passed back to the writers the President's response to their work (when and if the President chose to respond), which was the writers' only measure of their worth as craftsmen.

  Cobb's office was in the basement of the West Wing. The

  President had personally insisted (the highest of all flatteries) that Cobb work in the business end of the White House itself, so that he would be available instantly on summons. There had been no office space available.

  Then make him an office, the President had said.

  And because he was the President, it was done.

  And though Cobb had nothing to do with the construction of his office, he became the object of loathing of the women who worked in the White House, for his office was built by removing two stalls from the four-stall ladies' room in the basement of the building.

  The office was furnished with one small metal desk, one small metal swivel chair and, facing the desk, one small straight-back chair where a secretary could sit to take dictation. Dictating took longer in that office than in most, for it was usually punctuated by the sound of rushing water. There was no window, so Cobb never knew what the weather was doing outside, and because he chain-smoked Gauloises in his airless cubicle, when he emerged into the world he was surrounded by a miasmic reek that led cosmopolites to wonder if he was an attendant on leave from a Parisian W.C.

  Burnham's resistance to working in the White House itself was not only hedonistic; it was also practical. There was no need for speechwriters to reside close to the President, and with a White House staff of 314 in a building that could accommodate 50 or, at most, 75 workers, office space had to be assigned on a need basis.

  Burnham further disagreed with those of his colleagues who believed that each writer should have a POTUS phone in his office. Another status symbol. Those who had the special phones had been deemed vital enough to the welfare of the Republic to be kept on the shortest leash possible: When the President of the United States (P.O.T. U.S.) wanted to reach you, he wanted to reach you now, without having to diddle around with busy signals and secretaries and switching delays, so he picked up the phone and punched your number, and in your office your POTUS phone buzzed with a nasty, urgent noise like when something goes wrong with your convection oven or when you want to push your English muffin down for a bit more browning but the toaster's too hot and rebels. Whatever you were doing you stopped, and you snatched up the POTUS phone and said, "Yes, Sir!"

  The second most important man in the federal government had two POTUS phones in his suite of offices. He also had a phone in the government car assigned to him, a phone in his own car, and, at his home in Cleveland Park, sky-blue phones with locks on them in his bedroom, his study and the kitchen.

  Mario Epstein's title was, simply, Special Assistant to the President. His real job slot was, not so simply. Deputy President of the United States for the Economy, for Keeping Malcontents from Burning Down the Cities, for Convincing All Minorities that the Administration Cherished Them, for Mollifying Women, for Convincing Old Folks that Social Security Checks Could Be Stretched Beyond Cat Food, for Delivering the Jewish and Italian Votes, and for Counseling the President as to Which of His Foreign Policy Advisors Were Trying to Blow Smoke Up His Ass.

  The President didn't like Epstein very much, but he needed him. "He's so mean he wouldn't give you the clap," he told a Cabinet meeting one day, with Epstein sitting in the background against the wall. "But I'll tell you this: That man can spit miracles."

  Epstein did not want to be liked. He wanted to be feared, for he believed, quite rightly, that fear was the only engine that could galvanize a bureaucracy as huge and obdurate as the federal government. He knew every man, every position, every salary, over which the President had control, and he used that knowledge as a whip. He also knew how to deal with those over whom the President did not have control, those with Civil Service tenure. There were all manner of intricate weapons that could be used to make a man's life miserable if he would not cooperate—shrinking his office, reducing his staff and finding fault with everything he did being among the more innocuous options.

  The President had barely known Epstein prior to hiring him. The President had embarked upon his first term with a coterie of cronies that the press had immediately dubbed "the B Men," because every one of them was a banker, a broker, a businessman or a booster. They had a lot of splendid ideas, a
nd no idea whatsoever about how to implement them.

  What these guys know about government, went a favorite line of the time, you could stick up a gnat's ass and still have room for the Vice-President.

  The B Men had nothing but contempt for Washington, and

  Washington returned the sentiment. So, naturally, they accomplished nothing but the alienation of everyone with whom they came in contact. .

  The President stood by his friends with admirable loyalty until one day when the assistant in charge of the President's reading matter made a slip and let him see an editorial in The Washington Post, which said, in part, "In terms of leadership, decisiveness and accomplishment, this President makes Jimmy Carter look like F.D.R."

  Even then, the President did not march through his staff with a scythe. He hired one young man, whose name he had forgotten but whom Evelyn Witt, his personal secretary and one of his oldest friends (she had been with him for thirty years), helped him recall: Mario Epstein.

  Epstein had applied for a staff job when the President was still in the Senate, and he had impressed the senator mightily, but on hearing that a run for the presidency was not only possible but imminent, he withdrew his application. A run for the presidency meant a long campaign, extensive public exposure and daily contact with people of various opinions, abilities and personalities.

  "I'm a perfect staff man," Epstein had told the senator, "but I'm a perfectly terrible politician. I'll do you more harm than good. For you, success is being loved and admired; for me, it's being hated and feared. After you win, think of me again."

  Evelyn Witt discovered that Epstein had since worked for two senators, one liberal and one conservative, and had been fired by both because of his inability to deal with the constant demands for compromise. He had gotten a job as the untitled deputy to the chief executive officer and sole owner of a company that supplied tungsten elements to Defense Department contractors, weapons manufacturers and a handful of unnamed foreign governments.

  The President admired many things about Mario Epstein. He had graduated from Harvard College, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, which was good because it gave him first-strike credibility on the Hill and with the press. (You have to prove a Harvard man wrong; somebody from, say, Bucknell, has to prove himself right.) He was married (good, because he wouldn't be a flagrant tail-chaser) to a woman who taught endocrinology at Johns Hopkins (good, because she had a life of her own and wouldn't lie around the house watching General Hospital and bitching about the hours he worked). She looked like the love-child of a bulldog and a ten-speed bike—all wrinkles and bones and teeth and nails (good, because nobody in his right mind would try to get at the President through Epstein through her). He coveted power for its own sake, for what it could accomplish. He loved to watch the ripple effect of a presidential command, and sometimes he issued presidential commands solely for the pleasure of watching them work. He had no personal ambitions. At forty-one years old, he was in day-to-day control of the largest, most complex, most powerful machine the world had ever known.

  There were valid knocks about Epstein, and the President was aware of them. The man was completely, unashamedly amoral. He could not be consulted about what was right, or just, or compassionate, but only about whether a certain program could be made to work. He had respect for decisions, but not for the process, the give-and-take, that led to decisions. He had no patience with discussions, only with conclusions. It had taken him longer than most to assemble a functioning staff because of what he and the President referred to as "the Epstein paradox": He had to employ, to implement his orders, people who could deal with other people, but such people were often constitutionally incapable of working for a person who could not deal with other people—namely, Epstein.

  Eventually, though, he did build a staff, and his operation, which consisted of about two dozen men and women, some in the White House, some in the E.O.B., became known informally and with no affection whatever as Attila & Co.

  Epstein removed—quietly, one by one—all the B Men. First, he cut their access to the President. Second, he replaced their assistants with his own people and made sure that every decision they made was cleared with his office. Third, those who were not impelled by boredom and frustration to quit were assigned as ambassadors to backwater countries. Ronald Reagan had raised to new heights the art of dumping incompetent political hacks into the ambassadorial ranks, and his administration had taken so much criticism that Epstein could pump at least two dozen yahoos into foreign embassies without risking unfavorable comparison in the media. He defused objections by the appointees by having the President announce the appointments—with fulsome- praise and outrageous promise—before informing the appointees. Any man who declined an appointment would seem churlish, ungrateful, un-American.

  The one person to whom Epstein deferred without hesitation was the President—in part because the President was his employer and provider and could deprive him of his cherished power with a single word, but also because Epstein did respect the office of the presidency, and when the weight of that office was broadcast through the anger of a man who stood six foot four and weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, the man suddenly became twenty feet tall and weighed a ton and was awesome and truly frightening.

  When Epstein's POTUS phone rang, he always grabbed it immediately, because he knew that, to the President, the speed with which you responded to his summons was an absolute indicator of your loyalty to him.

  And so it was with bewilderment that Epstein's senior secretary, a condor named Esther Tagliaferro, who had been at the White House since Eisenhower's second term, one day heard the POTUS line in Epstein's office buzzing unanswered. She knew he was in the office: He had just returned from lunch downstairs in the White House Mess and had told her to remind him to call Commander Larsen, the Navy officer in charge of the Mess, which meant that he had a complaint about the preparation of a certain dish, the quality of the salad dressing, the limited choice of entrees on the day's menu, the freshness of the bread, the presence in the Mess of a person or persons he considered inappropriate to eat in company as august as the Second Sitting, or the conduct of one of the Filipino messboys, as obsequious a covey of Orientals as had ever confirmed the tacit racism in the American military.

  Esther knew Epstein wasn't on the phone to someone else: She had placed no call for him, and neither of his private, direct lines was lit. Besides, he would have abruptly cut off anyone to answer the POTUS phone.

  That left only one possibility, and it put Esther in an awkward position. If she went in and picked up the POTUS phone, she risked a dressing-down from the President. No one but the principal was supposed to answer a POTUS phone. If she let the buzz continue (she could envision the muscles in the President's jaw beginning to twitch), the rest of the day was as good as shot. The President would set sail upon a sea of rage. Then, as apologies and explanations filtered through to him, he would slide into a sulk. Then, as understanding nudged petulance aside, he would feel guilty, and the last few hours of the day would be taken up with his attempts to soothe all the feelings he had bruised.

  Screw it, she thought. She had been tongue-lashed by past masters. LBJ had once said to her, "Esther, I 'spect you don't have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel." She could weather any salvos this President could fire.

  So she entered Epstein's office, eyeing the closed door at the far end of the room, knowing he could hear the buzz, imagining him frantically torn between personal need and professional duty, and picked up the POTUS phone.

  "I'm sorry, sir, he's ..."

  "Epstein!"

  "No, sir, he's ..."

  "Who's this!"

  ' 'Esther Tagliaferro.''

  "Goddammit, Esther, where is he?"

  Her first impulse was to say, "I don't know," but three decades of experience with seven Presidents told her that response was not only unacceptable, it was impossible. An Epstein was neve
r out of touch.

  So she said, "He's . . . indisposed, Mr. President," and she thought: I bet that's a new one for you.

  "He's what?”

  "Indisposed, sir."

  She heard a quick, incredulous suck of breath. "Do you know who this is?" The voice was calm, as if it thought it was dealing with a child or a deranged person.

  The possibilities that rattled through Esther's head included: "What number were you calling?" "Could you spell that?" "May I ask what this is in reference to?" "May I refer you to Mr. Epstein's assistant?" "President of what?" and "Sure you are, and I'm Princess Diana."

  "Why yes, sir."

  "Tell me. Tell me who this is."

  To her surprise, Esther found herself growing angry, angry

  at being patronized by the President of the United States, angry at being sneered at by a man who had worked here for six years when she'd been here for more than thirty, and to her amazement she heard herself say, "Mr. President, do you want me to spell it out for you?"

  "What?"

  "I said: Mr. Epstein is in-dis-posed.”

  There was a pause, and the President said quickly, "Oh. Oh." But his retreat was momentary. "Esther," he said, coming back strong, "I don't want you to go home, I don't want Epstein to go home, I don't want anybody going home tonight, until there's a phone in that crapper!" The line went dead.

  The door at the far end of the room flew open, and Epstein emerged looking like a fundamentalist Baptist caught in a raid on a cathouse—belt unbuckled, zipper at half-mast, one trouser leg hitched in a sock, face flushed, tie askew—from the only private lavatory in the West Wing of the White House except for the President's own.

  That was how Epstein got his second POTUS telephone.

  And that episode, the details of which leaked from office to office, was why Burnham wanted no part of a POTUS phone. He held the heretical belief that peristalsis was a private affair.