The Mandarin Club

by Gerald Felix Warburg

  The new Chinese actions violate private assurances made in Beijing last year to U.S. officials regarding future restraint on missile deployments. In return, the White House reportedly decided to withhold exports to Taiwan of sophisticated Aegis battle management systems sought by that island nation. The PRC’s move increases the possibility of a military conflict in East Asia.

  The new Chinese commitments to their Nanping base, approximately one hundred twenty-five miles west of Taiwan, add to an existing force of CSS-7’s and CSS-6’s already at Lizhou and Yongan. The missiles were apparently manufactured west of Lizhou, at the PRC’s Yunnan Province facility, and were delivered in recent weeks. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, China has recently tested its new Russian-made AA-12 Adder air-to-air missile, and deployed new submarines and a Russian-built Sovremenny destroyer at its fleet facilities in Zhanjiang, near Hainan Island.

  The balance of Alexander’s text proceeded with similar detail. No confirming quotes were provided by the executive branch, and there was no direct comment from Taiwan. Nevertheless, Alexander was elated with his exclusive. This time, he had nailed it.

  The story broke in waves. The Los Angeles Times web site had it up by eleven p.m., the Sunday night before the newspaper hit the stands. The Post and New York Times played catch-up in their late editions, both with brief stories grudgingly crediting Alexander and the LA Times. By mid-morning Monday, his efforts to assemble a follow-up story were overwhelmed by the steady stream of phone calls coming in from the networks. A tacit confirmation of many of his facts came through a non-denial at the State Department’s eleven a.m. briefing, and that produced yet another round of calls, including a request to comment on PBS’s evening news program, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and a slot on a Fox News panel. He was on top of his game again, riding the crest of media interest.

  The Chinese government was thrown on the defensive, and its Foreign Ministry clammed up. On Capitol Hill, key legislators were in a tizzy. The anti-China legislators had a field day before the cameras, demagoging the issue and pouring on gratuitous complaints about the latest PRC human rights violations. The pro-China voices—especially senators from grain exporting states—struggled to focus their comments on the bigger issues at stake in U.S.-China ties, including cooperation in containing the North Koreans’ nuclear ambitions.

  Alexander’s exclusive put Senator Smithson in a peculiar bind. The senator was making final preparations to lead his Foreign Relations Committee colleagues on a trade mission to East Asia. The late June trip was to focus mostly on Japan and Korea, and Smithson would have several leading California high tech executives in tow. But the delegation’s last stop, ending on the Fourth of July, was to be in Beijing. The agenda here would be mixed. Some of the senators from the committee, pushed by Landle, wanted to press grain sales. For Smithson, the China leg was an opportunity for a bit of posturing—“speaking truth to power” on some human rights issues. It was likely to be his last foreign travel before his presidential bid rolled out in earnest. Politics was on everyone’s mind, including that of his old adversary from Iowa. Indeed, it was Senator Landle who brought him another unwelcome headache, when he came to see him in his Senate hideaway office the day Alexander’s story broke.

  “This is an outrage, Jake,” Landle said as they drank coffee in Smithson’s hideaway office off the Senate floor. The Iowan was wearing a seer-sucker suit on another oppressively hot June day.

  “Well, I’m outraged, too,” Smithson agreed. “The Chinese lied to us. And so did the State Department.”

  “Jake, it’s the leak I’m talking about. How can we expect to do business with the administration if somebody’s going to give raw CIA analyses to the newspapers?”

  “Isn’t this about the Chinese?”

  “Jake, it’s about the process,” Landle said. “Congress can’t earn White House respect—we won’t deserve any—if material they share ends up in the paper the next week.”

  “What are you getting at, Tom?” Smithson sipped from his mug as he sat at his old roll top desk.

  “The committee staff was briefed on the CIA analysis of this issue not ten days ago. Then, boom, it shows up in the newspapers. We look like complete amateurs. It’s grandstanding, pure and simple—some smart aleck trying to embarrass the White House before the summit.”

  “Oh c’mon, Tom. Most of the leaks in this town come from executive branch dissenters. You know that. So let’s not jump all over ourselves—”

  “That can’t justify violating the law.”

  “Besides, talking about ‘the process’ like it’s some kind of Vatican ritual is just another way of changing the subject. It’s an old trick around here. The fact is, State has consistently denied there was any conclusive evidence on new missiles. And China’s been lying about how they’ve allegedly shown restraint. I can think of worse things than having both of them called on it.”

  “So you condone this leaking?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You don’t think the Taiwan nuclear buildup might justify some of this Chinese response? Isn’t that just what the U.S. did in 1962, when Castro brought Russian nukes into Cuba?”

  Smithson held him in his gaze a long time. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Darn right, I am, Jake. I won’t tolerate this kind of reckless leaking of classified material. I’ve already called the Ethics Committee. They’ve agreed to an immediate investigation. I want staff taking polygraphs—everybody who handled this material.”

  “And senators?” Smithson added.

  “What do you mean, senators?”

  “Don’t you want to include our elected colleagues in your little inquisition, since we’re most often the ones who leak stuff from the Hill? I mean, why single out the poor staff professionals?”

  “You want to wire up senators?” said Landle, incredulous. “You and me, too? That is out of the—”

  “If you’re going to try to bully the staff, sure,” Smithson said, fiddling with his phone now, avoiding Landle’s eyes. “What’s good for the goose ought to suit the gander.”

  “Mr. Chairman!” Landle fumed. “That’s a non-starter and you know it. Surely you’re bluffing.”

  “Fine then. Go ahead with your FBI interviews. But I won’t sign off on polygraphs for staff unless you’ve got probable cause in each and every case.”

  “Then how can we get the job done?”

  “It ain’t fair,” said Smithson, setting down his mug and folding his hands. “And I, for one, won’t be party to it.”

  Landle glared at him for a long time, before he shook his head in disdain, stood, and walked out.

  NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

  The FBI got to Booth in just three days.

  It was during the preceding hours, however, that his torment was most intense. How did I fall into this crazy game? He lay awake at night, wondering, pondering his future, reconsidering his past.

  Layers of idealism were shed as he questioned his purpose, waiting to meet with the investigators. He had been manipulated by events—he saw that now. His righteousness boiled to rage, then was reduced, upon reflection, to cool resolve. This series of little deaths, one piled upon another, made his future course seem, in retrospect, almost inevitable. There could be no turning back.

  He did not speak of the issue with Smithson. If the chairman suspected him—or if his boss believed Booth was suspicious of him—it remained unsaid. When they did communicate during those three long days of waiting, it was about such basic concerns as the logistics for the upcoming Asia trip. They hid in the routine, choosing to leave unacknowledged the danger closing in upon them both.

  Booth’s staff colleagues were full of flip comments as they trudged back, one by one, from their interviews with the FBI inquisitors.

  “Good cop, bad cop,” a Democratic colleague volunteered, “except the good cop’s got great legs.”

  “Retreads from security clearance interviews,” a Republican frie
nd offered at a lunch table in the Dirksen cafeteria. “Not exactly CSI caliber. They’re at a complete loss—they figure everybody up here leaks.” “Watch out, Booth,” another warned. “I got a hunch they’re looking to nail the chairman-who-would-be-president.” Booth could not sleep. He took to patrolling the house in the blackness, looking in on the children, dozing off on the sofa to anxious dreams before dawn, his father there again, the old man’s voice insisting on distinguishing right from wrong.

  Finally, the hour he dreaded was upon him. He was summoned for his FBI interrogation at two p.m. on the 16th, eight days before wheels up for Asia.

  The room the FBI had set up—on the House side, of all places—was in the decrepit staff annex across the freeway off-ramps from the Rayburn Building. The suite was cramped and windowless. A large, round man named Albertson, bald on top and wearing a short-sleeve white shirt, sat at an old metal desk. Beside him, a demure Ms. Tedesco was perched on a leather chair, feeding the questions. Booth sat opposite, in a metal folding chair too close to the questioners for his taste.

  The first few questions were for the record. Name, title, phone number. Then basics such as: how long had he worked for the committee? Level of security clearance? Office procedures for handling classified documents? Booth remained on guard; he knew these were just warm-ups, questions for the record to which they already knew the answers.

  “Robert, we forgot to swear him in,” the lady interrogator said.

  “Dang, not again.” Albertson snapped his fingers. “Just a formality you know.”

  The man’s eyes betrayed the ploy, Booth thought, as he noted the coolness with which the FBI agent regarded him. Booth raised his right hand and swore to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

  “So you’ve worked with Senator Smithson more than twenty years?”

  “Twenty-six, actually. With time off for good behavior.”

  “Twenty-six?”

  “That includes a couple of years on sabbatical.”

  “You guys get sabbaticals in Congress? Nice deal.”

  “Actually, it was an informal arrangement. I consulted with the Committee while I went back to finish my doctorate at Stanford.”

  “An informal arrangement?”

  “Yeah. I still got paid.”

  “You had access to all the classified stuff while you were in grad school?”

  “Sure.”

  “Weren’t there a bunch of Chinese students in that Stanford program? Foreign Ministry people?” Albertson began throwing out more of the questions now, the prim Ms. Tedesco—and she did have quite shapely legs—taking notes.

  “There were several PRC citizens there over the years, yes. The program is considered one of the best for figuring out what goes on in China. But I only accessed classified documents when in Washington.”

  “If I might ask,” Tedesco said, “what procedures are in place for when you convey classified information to the senator?”

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “How do you brief the senator?”

  “Well, I read the National Intelligence Digest at the Intelligence Committee or Foreign Relations. And I give him a daily ‘NID sweep’—that’s what we call it—whenever he’s in town.”

  “Where?”

  “In his personal office. Or in the committee chambers.”

  “How do you prevent exposure to foreign intelligence?”

  “Detective Albertson—”

  “It’s Agent Albertson, actually. We’re not the police.”

  “Yeah,” Booth conceded. “Agent Albertson, the Senate offices are swept regularly for bugs. Besides, I’m just giving him the headlines, not details or photos.”

  “Photos. Right. That’s why we’re here. Just where would you show him photos?”

  “Photos?’

  “Say the Intelligence Committee was briefed on something hot, like some new nuclear facility in Iran. Just where would you show him the evidence?”

  “Well, that type of stuff would require Codeword level clearance. It’s all kept in the committee safe in S-407, the secure committee room up in the attic of the Capitol.”

  “It never leaves?”

  “Only a few people can check it out. Senators. Staff directors. Leadership staff.”

  “Right. Guys like you.”

  “Sure. I, uh, usually bring it down to him in the hideaway.”

  “Hideaway?”

  “It’s a small private office the chairman has in the Capitol, a perk for the senior members. And yes, we have that swept for bugs regularly, too.”

  “So, let me see,” said Albertson, looking at some notes, “after you checked out the CIA briefing materials the committee requested on the alleged Chinese missile build-up, where did you take them?”

  “Let me think. That was right before the Memorial Day recess?”

  “May the twenty-fourth.”

  “I took them to Senator Smithson. He was in his hideaway.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you take calls from anyone?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you present for a call from any reporters while you and the documents were with Chairman Smithson?”

  “I don’t think I stayed.”

  “You didn’t stay to brief him on this sensitive new information that might make a great headline?”

  “There was a bill I was tracking for him on the floor. . .”

  “Defense appropriations,” said Ms. Tedesco, referring to notes. Impressive.

  “Right. But wait a minute. What exactly are you getting at with this business about headlines?” Booth wasn’t going to let the insinuation hang.

  Albertson stood, walking to where a window might have been—should have been—if they weren’t in some leftover storage room in the House staff annex. “Senator Smithson has something of a reputation for making public speeches about sensitive international military matters—”

  “Never using classified materials as the source.”

  “The fact is, there was a phone call from one Alexander Bonner to the senator’s private line in that office that very afternoon. A twelve-minute phone call.”

  “So what? Senator Smithson talks to Bonner all the time.”

  “All the time?”

  “Sure. He’s a Washington correspondent from the state’s number one paper. He covers Capitol Hill and the diplomatic beat—especially big Asia stories. I bet he called half the committee members that same day.”

  “He’s your old classmate, if I’m not mistaken,” Tedesco said, again being helpful.

  “Right.”

  “Weren’t you in some kind of fraternity together?” Albertson asked, flipping far back in his notebook. “With a bunch of other folks in this town now?”

  “It was actually more like an extended family.”

  “Family?”

  “We were housemates. . . it wasn’t only guys.”

  “Well,” Albertson said with a smirk, “I suppose it was the Sixties—and in California.”

  “It was the Seventies, actually.”

  “So, you had some little commune—and what was your organizing principle?”

  “We stayed in a house together, and were just real good friends.”

  “The Mandarin Club, it was supposedly called,” Albertson said, again studying his notes. “What was that all about?”

  “We stuck together.”

  “Why call yourselves ‘The Mandarins’?” Albertson still didn’t get it.

  “It was just a play on words,” Booth said, letting out a sigh. “We were in this obscure field of language study. Even in a campus full of specialists, there weren’t many people studying Chinese then. Most of us had aspirations to positions of leadership. . . like the Mandarins who used to rule over the Chinese bureaucracy.”

  “So, what became of your little Club?” Albertson said.

  “We’ve stayed in touch.”

>   “And looked out for each other—‘stuck together,’ didn’t you say?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And covered for each other?”

  Booth just shook his head. His inquisitors stole a glance at each other, and another long silence ensued. It was the silences Booth had come to dread. They afforded him too much time to reflect on the consequences of his every word.

  “What’s your point, if I might ask?” said Booth. He felt better posing the questions than answering them.

  “Our point?” Tedesco replied this time.

  “I mean, if you think Smithson tipped Bonner, why don’t you ask the senator?”

  “You’re the senator’s top aide.”

  “But if you want to accuse the chairman of leaking something, have the decency to confront him directly. Don’t drag others into some partisan witch hunt.”

  “So you think this is a ‘partisan witch hunt’?”

  “That’s what he said, Agent Albertson,” said Tedesco.

  “Sure,” Booth shot back, “stuff gets leaked all the time. Bonner is a nationally renowned reporter. The FBI only gets called in when somebody’s out to smear someone. It’s the same old shoot-the-messenger stuff they use all the time. I mean, look at the Wilson thing. Buncha White House guys blow a CIA agent’s cover to punish her husband—and you know who gets sent to jail? A reporter!”

  “You’re getting way off the point—”

  “That’s the way I see it, though.”

  They stared at each other a while, Albertson sipping from a Coke can, Ms. Tedesco gripping her notes. There was very little air in the room. Booth could hear the ancient air conditioning unit straining to function.

  “So, if we asked whether you spoke directly with Alexander Bonner on May the twenty-fourth, your answer would be no?”

  “Yes. It would be ‘no.’”

  “And did you ever discuss the CIA report regarding the Chinese missile build-up with him?”