Tucker's Last Stand Read online

  13

  July 18, 1964

  The Oval Office

  Washington, D.C.

  When Lyndon Johnson wanted legal advice, he wanted Abe. He had known Abe Fortas a good many years; thought of him, as he had several times put it sensitively to close associates, as “one of the smartest Jews in the United States.” And he intended to put him on the United States Supreme Court the first chance he got. Meanwhile Fortas was always good for a little legal or constitutional advice, and not at all bad at giving political advice.

  “Abe,” said the President to the cosmopolitan attorney-musician-intellectual with the dark, handsome face of an elderly Valentino, “I want you to tell me: Is it conceivable that Ike would run for Vice President on a ticket with Barry Goldwater?”

  “You asking me a political question or a constitutional question, Mr. President?”

  “Both. But before that, listen to this.” From his drawer he got out the clippings. “Alexander Wiley, former Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the man—get this, Abe—who actually wrote the Twenty-second Amendment and shepherded it through Congress in 1947. He is quoted in the Baltimore Post as saying that the drafters of the Twenty-second Amendment ‘never meant it to prohibit a man from running for Vice President even if he had served two terms as President.’”

  “Wiley said that?” Abe Fortas wrinkled his brow.

  “Wait. Wait … here’s another one. Joe Martin was Speaker of the House when the amendment was passed. And now he writes, ‘I never thought the Constitution stood in President Eisenhower’s way.’ And so now having given Ike a constitutional okay, he goes on with stuff might as well be a nominatin’ speech: ‘If he would take this new prospective assignment, there’s no question he would be elected. It would chase away any doubts that some people now seem to entertain concerning our coming national ticket. If Ike went on the ticket, he would bring to it that stability, confidence, and security we all want. He well might have to face up to a personal sacrifice’”—President Johnson was standing now, imitating the gestures and the inflections of a nominating speaker at a national convention—“‘He well might have to face up to a personal sacrifice, but I have no doubt it would be a winning sacrifice.’”

  “I hope you’re through, Mr. President.”

  “Nope. George Aiken. George Aiken! Votes half the time with us. ‘I am happy to go along in suggesting former President Eisenhower as Vice President at this critical period in world history!’ Now watch, Abe: He’s putting it to Ike here to save the GOP from Goldwater. Careful now. Watch how he does it: ‘… It will undoubtedly be a great sacrifice for the former President to re-enter the national political arena. However’”—at this point the voice of Lyndon Johnson was sheer molasses. His erstwhile colleagues in the Senate knew that voice well, and it was generally good for ten extra votes—“‘for one who has so ardently preached party unity, it is up to him to decide. If he wants it he undoubtedly will get it.’”

  Lyndon Johnson sat down. He looked at the clippings. “I won’t bother you, Abe, to hear what other senators and congressmen said. Jack Miller, Leslie Arends, Paul Findley, Karl Mundt. No. I’ll read you just the las’ sentence of what Mundt said. ‘I would consider it an honor to nominate Ike for the Vice Presidency.’” He banged his wrist down on the table. “Have none of these people heard of the Constitution of the United States?”

  “Well, Mr. President, presumably Alec Wiley has, since as you point out he wrote that part of the Constitution you’re talking about.”

  “Well goddamnit, it says right there that no person who has—er …”

  “What it says, Mr. President, is ‘No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.’ They’re not proposing to elect him President.”

  “Do you mean to sit there and tell me, Abe Fortas, you who I have always respected, do you mean to say that this shit they’re thinkin’ of would get by the Supreme Court?”

  “Lyndon”—it was almost inevitable, hard though he tried, but when matters got tense it was still and always would be, “Lyndon.” “I think you could make a very good constitutional argument saying that any man you can’t elect as President, you can’t elect as Vice President. You could use all kinds of arguments. If you’re less than thirty-five you can’t serve as President; could you elect a thirty-four-year-old as Vice President? If you’re foreign-born, you can’t serve as President; could you elect someone born in Jamaica as Vice President? You can carry those arguments forward and say that having served two terms is as much of a disqualification as being under thirty-five years old, or being foreign-born. But look at it as a practical matter.”

  “Lookin’ at things as a practical matter is mah specialty, Abe.”

  “I know it is, I know it is. As a practical matter, what happens? Ike gets nominated, say. The Attorney General files a suit asking the Supreme Court to invalidate that nomination. But the Supreme Court can’t hold that the Twenty-second Amendment has been violated until it has been violated. And that wouldn’t be until Ike was sworn in as President—if Goldwater died, or was killed.

  “But here’s where it helps to be practical. And I expect, Mr. President, that you know exactly what I know, which is that the Justice of the Supreme Court never existed who would step in and say, The man you just swore in as President can’t serve. It’s just that simple. If they nominate him, no matter what the Philadelphia lawyers say, or the columnists, or the editorial writers, or the deans of the law schools: If Goldwater wins with Ike on the ticket, he’ll be sworn in as President, and Ike will be sworn in as Vice President.… What you got to do, Lyndon, is make it so Ike won’t be tempted.”

  Johnson looked up. “How’m I going to do that?”

  “You know Ike better than I do.”

  “What you sayin’, Abe?”

  “Ike loves to be above the conflict. And he likes to be thought of as pure of heart. Father-of-his-country type. What you got to do is two things. First, give it out that the Goldwater boys are trying to manipulate him. Get that into Jock Whitney’s Herald Tribune—Ike reads it every day. Quote some of the stuff Goldwater and his cronies have said about the Eisenhower years—they have been pretty careful not to mention him, but there isn’t anything he did or didn’t do that they didn’t blast him for. Hell, he appointed Earl Warren! He’s the guy who didn’t go save the Hungarians! The guy who invited Khrushchev over here! The guy who got caught lying over the U-2 incident! The guy who broke up the summit! Who’s had a budget deficit every year except the first, and that was on account of the Korean War ending. Get him to get mad at the people who are courting him with this idea.”

  Lyndon Johnson was attentive. He removed his glasses. “What’s your second point?”

  “Stick it to Goldwater. The attacks on him have been pretty tough—and well earned, needless to say. But I mean really stick it to him. Get his name associated with American mud. Link his name to—the people Ike led the war against.”

  “You mean …?”

  Abe Fortas looked right back at the President. “I mean …”

  In the cramped working quarters of the LBJ Ranch in Texas President Johnson was serene, as he generally was when outside the heat of Washington. But he was made even more serene by the collection of clippings that had been gathered together for him by his press secretary. They were there in chronological order.

  The New York Herald Tribune: “The Republican Party now does face a clear and present threat from the Know-nothings and purveyors of hate and the apostles of bigotry.”

  “That’s a beauty,” said Lyndon Johnson. “Jock Whitney is one good, responsible, patriotic Republican. I thought the publisher would come through. I think I will have a scotch, haven’t had one all week.” Jack Valenti nodded. “Keep going, Mr. President.”

  He read the lines from the editorial in the New York Times: “Barry Goldwater is a man with an incredibly bad, short-sighted, simplistic voting and speaking record. He is unfit, on the basis of his views and his votes
, to be President of the United States.”

  “I always like the die-rectness of the New York Times, don’t you, Jack? I mean, I cain’t always agree with them. But you just have a feeling they’re … incorruptible. Right?”

  “Right, Mr. President. Go on.”

  “Okay. St. Louis Post-Dispatch: ‘The Goldwater coalition is a coalition of Southern racists, county-seat conservatives, desert rightist radicals and suburban backlashers.’ Don’ much like that Southern-racist business, but that’s really giving it to him.” He had a deep swallow of scotch.

  “Oh man! Jee-zus! This one must have been written by Abe Fortas! Only it’s by Jackie Robinson, fust colored ballplayer in baseball, and God bless him. He says, ‘I would say that I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.’ That is telling it, eh? And what about Martin Luther King? Here he is: ‘Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the fascists.’—Now, can Drew Pearson beat that? Here’s what he says: ‘The smell of fascism has been in the air—’ Get that? Smell of fascism?

  “And, oh-ho, and Pat Brown. The Governor of the Great State of California says that speech by Goldwater ‘had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.’”

  “That’s a pretty good collection. They’ve all gone to Ike?”

  “Jock Whitney volunteered to do that, Mr. President. With a covering letter on the Vice Presidential business.”

  Lyndon Johnson looked out at the setting sun and said, “Do you know, Jack, you get down here in Texas, and the whole world smells clean.”

  “Yes, sir,” Valenti said.

  14

  July 20, 1964

  Danang, South Vietnam

  Blackford flatly disbelieved that the port of Danang had once been, among other things, a beach resort used by the French for pleasure. But Alphonse Juilland, his balding, ascetic, fifty-one-year-old guide, who had taught French to the same young Vietnamese who now scorned the language and disdained anyone who would stoop to learn it, assured him that it was so. “It is very full of shipping here now, I grant you”—he spoke in French, which Blackford managed without much difficulty (when stuck he would resort to German, in which Juilland was shakily fluent)—“with all that shipping, it is difficult to visualize the scene here before Dien Bien Phu.” That had been the critical battle, lost by the French, won by Ho Chi Minh, that had ended the French colony of Indochina. “But there are old photographs, and even a few paintings. On some days, may God save me if I mislead you, the scene there”—he pointed to the north end of the deep harbor—“might have been the beach at Cannes or at Nice.

  “You know, M. Oakes, I have been at Cannes and at Nice. My father was also a schoolteacher, at Lyons, and when I was a boy, before he decided to come here, just before the war, we often went to those places to vacation, so that what I tell you is the truth. Danang was a very beautiful resort facility.”

  Blackford wanted to grumble something to the effect that it was certainly making up now for all the imperialist pleasure it had given in the past. But he only shook his head, which he frequently did in replying to the tall, thin, talkative bachelor, an amiable outcast who was without relatives in France, Blackford was quickly advised. The only skill he could merchandise, now that he could no longer teach French to the Vietnamese, was that bilingualism on which he traded. He would translate any instructions Blackford directed at the leaders of the flotilla of little fishing ships, 95 percent of which came in and out of Danang to sell fish, 5 percent of which came in and out of Danang to report to Central Intelligence.

  The 5 percent fished for information during their innocent little forays into waters close to North Vietnam, when by their movements they triggered radio signals and well-concealed radar devices that beamed out reciprocal attention from the mainland. They regularly provoked defensive bursts from the batteries of North Vietnamese radar installations, the characteristics of whose short-range signals the South Vietnamese military technicians would carefully transcribe, leaving to the offshore American naval vessels attached to the Seventh Fleet the job of tracking and fingerprinting the character and location of the heavier radar installations.

  On that first day Blackford was briefing the captain of one of the larger fishing boats equipped with the new 34-A radar gear. Alphonse Juilland relayed a question by the captain.

  “He wants to know whether he isn’t violating North Vietnamese territorial rights by advancing to within eight miles of Quang Khe, which is in North Vietnam.”

  Blackford replied succinctly. “Tell the captain that the United States acknowledges North Vietnamese territorial rights over only three miles offshore, just as the United States claims for itself only three miles offshore.”

  Juilland came back. “The captain says that the Chinese have always insisted on twelve miles’ jurisdiction, and that when the French were defeated he assumed that the Chinese, not the French tradition, was adopted.”

  “Tell the captain, Alphonse”—Blackford attempted to communicate his conclusion that no more needed to be said on this thorny subject, which so greatly concerned diplomatic nail-biters in Washington—“that the North Vietnamese have entered no such claims before any relevant authority and that therefore any interference with any boat observing the three-mile limit is interference with the freedom of the seas.”

  “How’d he take it, Alphonse?” Blackford asked as they walked down the wharf, looking for the next boatman they needed to brief and rationing their intake of air in a vain attempt to limit their intake of the fetid-fish odor.

  “If you want to know, M. Oakes, he was quite skeptical. I took the liberty of adding to what you said that if the captain did not wish to take this assignment, there were others who would be glad to substitute for him.

  “How close do you intend to maneuver your private navy, if I may ask, M. Oakes. Right up to the three-mile limit?”

  “The answer to that is easy, Alphonse. You may not ask.”

  Alphonse smiled, and then stopped. “Here is the Mau Cao.” They were alongside the scruffy-looking 44-foot fishing boat with its single, stubby mast and coarse, furled mainsail to give it stability in a heavy wind. Blackford looked at the boat with intense concentration to ascertain at what distance its large concealed radar set would be discernible by the enemy as such. He could readily make it out to be what it was, but then he was alongside it at eye level. The North Vietnamese would be training powerful telescopes on the fishing fleet. Would they be able to make it out as radar? Probably not, he concluded. But if one of their little NVA patrol boats ambled up and made its observations from the edge of the three-mile limit focusing 10 x 7 lenses on a boat idling at, say, four miles offshore, what then?

  Still safe, he decided.

  What would not be in the least safe was any situation in which a North Vietnamese patrol boat advanced beyond its own territorial waters to within two or three hundred yards of the 34-A boats. And they had every right to do so, under the law of the seas, provided they did not interfere with the right of the fishing boats to do as they liked. And it was not illegal to have radar, even hidden radar, trained on the coastline of a foreign country. To do such a thing—Blackford recalled the briefing in Washington by the British specialist on the law of the seas—“may be provocative, but it is not illegal. A boat may approach the three-mile limit off Coney Island and snap pictures of a honeymoon couple having at it in a hotel room on the beach and there isn’t anything illegal about it, though we will all agree that that is offensive behavior. But then we’re not talking about prurient activity. We are engaged in examining the resources of the enemy.”

  “Of the potential enemy.” The colonel had interrupted him.

  “Of the potential enemy,” the expert said, correcting himself.

  Summoned by Rufus to Saigon, Blackford landed at the Tan Son Nhut airport at four on that steaming hot afternoon and went to the Naval Officers Quarters, where he was expected in a suite reserved for a “technical consultant.” A
half hour later he flagged a taxi and took it to a corner two blocks from the safe house. Five minutes later he was in Rufus’s company. Beginning at 5:12, they spent an enjoyable two hours together.

  “You’re going to want me to go through all this again when Tucker comes in, right?” Blackford said.

  “I would think he would be as eager to know what is going on on your front as you will be to discover what is going on in planning on the Trail. Since we now have the cross-clearances, you can tell him everything you told me. The objective of your weekly visits, after all, is to coordinate your operations. But on this first trip he’ll be bringing us news from Aberdeen—he left yesterday.”

  “Which reminds me, where in the hell is Tucker?”

  Rufus looked at his watch. “The dispatch said his plane was due in a half hour after yours. He said he would be here at the same time as you, five-twelve.” Rufus went to the telephone. He stood motionless for just a moment. Blackford knew that Rufus was engaged in recalling Air America flights (an unlisted carrier) coming in from Honolulu—arriving, given that the carrier was an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, at unpublished times—and doing calculations. He dialed and spoke a few words, then put down the telephone.