Oliver's Twist (19 page)

Did the CIA have 24 Sussex bugged? Were they eavesdropping on the prime minister's phone calls? I concluded the guess must have been a fortuitous one; why would someone in Casey's position give away secrets? Casey died of brain cancer in 1987, but not before his role in covert activities in Afghanistan, in various Soviet bloc countries, and in South and Central America became common knowledge. An old friend of his, columnist William Safire, wrote after Casey's death that the CIA had been concerned that the cancer might have impaired Casey's judgment before it was detected.

The administration was looking beyond Trudeau well before his formal departure, however, and they were quick to recognize a more congenial figure in Brian Mulroney when he became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1983. He and his beautiful wife, Mila, attracted some attention in the local press, and I was invited to appear on the
McNeil/Lehrer News Hour
where I predicted Mulroney would win Canada's next federal election. As it turned out, Mulroney had an ally in Washington that he might never have expected.

Allan Gotlieb was the sociable Ottawa mandarin whose mix of brilliant charm and political savvy made him an ideal match for the Reagan crowd when Trudeau appointed him
ambassador to the United States in 1981. Peering myopically through circular glasses, Gotlieb looked every bit the pinstriped and bookish Canadian emissary. He was anything but. Instead of sitting in his office, operating through junior officers and waiting for his calls to be returned, Gotlieb decided to court the Reagan administration's power brokers. He arranged a birthday party for Michael Deaver, the president's much-trusted public relations and media manager, and sent invitations to everyone in the administration. Few declined to fete the well-liked and influential Deaver.

Whether because of our mutual connection with Trudeau or because I was a single man happy to fill a chair left empty by an unexpected cancellation, I enjoyed a lot of dinners on the embassy tab and was able to see the effectiveness of Gotlieb's strategy. Once the major players were in your dining room, the relationship became personal and the access much easier. It helped that Gotlieb was clever and engaging and that his wife, Sondra, was hilariously eccentric, as well as an accomplished hostess. She wrote an amusing column in the
Washington Post
about a mythical ambassador's wife who is overwhelmed by her life in the American capital. Everyone knew it was Sondra writing about herself.

Receptions and parties at their official residence became something of an after-work club for certain members of the Reagan administration, among them George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, and James Baker. They did business and talked out differences away from the pressures of their offices, and it was not unusual to see senior figures, from Cabinet officers to congressional leaders, pulling one another aside for private chats. An invitation from Canada was the hottest ticket in town: People
wanted to be there because they knew that others they wished or needed to see would be there too.

In Ottawa, Gotlieb had been considered almost an honorary member of the Liberal Party. In fact he was a professional public servant, and when Mulroney won the Conservative leadership, Gotlieb saw that he might soon have new political masters. Happily, he believed in the need for a continent-wide trade deal to protect Canada's crucial privileged entry into the American market, and so did Mulroney. Not long after, I was at another dazzling party at the Gotlieb residence when Ed Meese, then White House Chief of Staff, asked me about Mulroney. Over port and cigars, the big heavy-jowled Californian told me, “This is a man we can work with.”

The White House let Gotlieb know they would welcome a visit. The subsequent Canadian embassy party was a hugely successful coming-out for Mulroney. In an unprecedented show of diplomatic courtesy to an Opposition leader, all of the top officials of the administration attended. Gotlieb took his career in his hands with this event. He made an effusive after-dinner toast in which he predicted a bright new era for Canada under a youthful new leader. The Trudeau camp was furious at this traitorous talk, but Gotlieb had made the right move.

Unfortunately, the Gotliebs' and Canada's star fell abruptly a few years later with a notorious incident on an evening in 1986, when the Gotliebs were hosting Prime Minister Mulroney and Vice-President Bush. The ambassador and his wife were under great stress to get it right at an event that could set the tone for the leaders' future working relationship. But there was a laughable error. To accommodate so many guests, the hosts had to cover the swimming pool with temporary flooring and fill the
space with dining tables. I noticed after an hour or so that my feet were getting wet; someone had neglected to shut down the pool's running water. Then the vice-president was late in arriving, holding up the proceedings.

Apparently the pressure was too much for Sondra. For reasons that are not clear even today, she slugged the embassy social secretary, a well-known, elegant woman named Connie Conners. It was no gentle tap: Connie was knocked off balance and broke an earring. Such an episode might have gone unreported, but it happened on the front steps of the embassy in full view of a Canadian Press reporter, Julie O'Neill. It fell to my former Ottawa colleague Bruce Phillips, recently appointed as the embassy's communications director, to offer excuses for Sondra's behaviour. Although O'Neill had witnessed the whole fracas, her desk would not use the story. It ran the next day in the
Washington Post
.

Connie Conners could have sued for assault. A woman lawyer she and I both knew advised her to do so, but in true diplomatic style, Connie accepted an apology from Sondra and left it at that. It was rumoured that Sondra had also bowled over a reporter from
Women's Wear Daily
the same night. I knew Sondra to be a charming person who could become overexcited, and well remember chatting with her one evening over a drink when she suddenly turned and ran hard, right into a wall. Colourful behaviour made for a high profile, but Sondra's position as one of the city's foremost hostesses was forever lost. Washington society, where servants were called “assistants,” could not tolerate bad manners and certainly not in public.

Nonetheless Allan Gotlieb continued to be one of the best-connected and influential ambassadors on the diplomatic
circuit. The relationships he forged helped smooth the negotiation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that came into effect in 1989. He also broke new ground by conducting an active lobbying effort with the politicians in the Senate and House of Representatives. This is common practice today, but he was among the first diplomats to use his credentials for access to more than the executive mansion.

When foreign reporters speak of covering the White House, it is understood that they are really talking about covering America, with all its magnificence, madness, and contradictions. The United States is really many nations bound together by myths, most of its citizens knowing as little about each other as they do about, say, Canada. As reporters, we dealt with an elite, a veneer on the population. Getting out of the capital and meeting Americans on their home ground was always rewarding and enlightening. The more I travelled the Union, the more my affection grew for this most complex and idiosyncratic of nations.

One such working trip changed my life. It was 1985 and I was in Florida covering the devastation of Hurricane Gloria. My cameraman and I were travelling fast and light, transmitting our material, including stand-ups and whatever interviews and video we shot, in bits and pieces to Toronto. There, it was sewn into a single coherent news item. The message I got back was that the young woman assigned to do this assembly and editing work was producing good stories for us. She was also pleasantly unflappable during our sometimes-frantic calls. Who was she?

I called on my friend Sandie Rinaldo for a bit of intelligence. The young woman's name was Anne-Marie Bergeron and she was in her late twenties. Sandie reported that she was blonde
and the most beautiful woman in the CTV building. Whenever she stretched across the news desk to toss or retrieve copy, every man in the room stopped in his tracks to watch. Sandie also informed me that Anne-Marie was spending a lot of time with a senior writer on the desk, although whether or not the relationship was a romantic one was unknown. All this was enough to convince me that at the very least I could invite this colleague for a business lunch next time I was in the city, as thanks for her work on our stories. I was bowled over when we met a few weeks later. She was smart, cool, and reserved, clearly not someone who would cling.

My pattern with women was well established by this time. I had no problem with physical intimacy, but emotional commitment was a different matter. As soon as a relationship ripened into a demand for closeness, the inner voice told me to run. Childhood memory taught that love was about hurt and abandonment and it was preferable to choose companions who would not want to stick around. I was a loner who fooled the world into believing otherwise and was not yet prepared to confront the deception myself.

Not long before the Florida assignment, though, there occurred something like a Road-to-Damascus experience. My travels in Central America had taken me away from Washington for a month. I had been back barely long enough to do laundry and check in with friends before Don Cameron sent me down to South America. Another month flew by. Home again, I did not unpack before calling a woman from the World Bank I had been seeing. She had clearly moved on. “What about the Argentinian sweater I brought for you?” I inquired.

“Leave it at the front desk at the bank,” she said.

I sat down before a tall stack of unopened mail and unexpectedly burst into tears. It was not that I felt sad to be dumped; the truth was, I didn't care one way or another about her. It was the disconnectedness of my life that suddenly became clear. My glamorous, well-paid existence was an accident of circumstance, it seemed. Apart from meeting that day's deadline, I was without goals or objectives, living a haphazard life.

I liked who I was, but not what I was becoming. I had always believed that we create our own lives and that nothing prevents us from re-creating them at any point. Every person makes the choices that drag her into the abyss, as my mother was doing, or raises her to the heights. I saw that my determination never to put myself in a position of dependence on another person had cost me the achievement of real happiness.

Looking back, I believe that was the moment when I won the upper hand over the inner nuisance. He was not entirely vanquished and for some time after still insisted he knew my best interests. But I was starting to regard him as a false prophet.

After meeting Anne-Marie Bergeron, I thought it wise to have a conversation with the colleague who was dating her. No profit for anyone if I was interfering where I was unwanted. The two suitors held what amounted to a negotiation about the way ahead. Anne-Marie would make her own choices, but I wanted to know from my colleague whether I would cause offence if I pursued my interest in her. Not in the least, he assured me, adding that I was not the kind of man who would appeal to her in any case. We parted on the friendliest of terms, as we always had.

Anne-Marie moved to Halifax as the network producer covering the Maritimes, but we kept up a long-distance
friendship. Whenever I felt the old urge to flee, she pulled me back. She was not someone who could allow herself to retreat from commitments. In 1986, and on her thirtieth birthday, we got engaged in a grass hut in Bora-Bora. By then her other swain had become so distraught and angry he'd quit the network. How different my life would have been had he been honest in his initial reaction.

When I told Mom, she did not respond with the joy I'd hoped for. She had always preferred my first wife over any girlfriend I introduced her to, as if each were somehow responsible for the breakup of my marriage. When she came to Washington with her sister for a visit, I made sure not to raise the topic, though it would likely not have made much difference. From the time she and Aunt Mary arrived, Mom was distracted and anxious in the great city. The two of them went for a walk one evening and got caught in one of those hot summer downpours that clear the air and then pass over quickly. Mary returned to the apartment alone, telling me Mom needed help outside. I found her lying in the gutter, rolling in the gushing rainwater and laughing, seriously drunk. That night I asked her what the hell she was after. She answered with a single, haunting word, “Oblivion.”

Reagan will be remembered as the president who escalated and then ended the Cold War, the ideological conflict that had held the world hostage for four decades. In the early eighties, he condemned the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and supported anti-Communist movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Alongside vastly increased military spending, he proposed the
Strategic Defense Initiative, the infamous Star Wars project that was meant to create a defence shield for the United States against nuclear missiles.