Tucker's Last Stand (10 page)

—It doesn't always work, of course, but those people get answers they can think about, and they like the guy they talked to.

What makes him really sore isn't the people who wave signs saying things like, “Goldwater Wants World War. He Thinks It Would Be Fun!” What gets him is the guy at the press conference—a reporter, maybe, or the local ADA type—who begins his question, “You said in your speech at Milwaukee last week that you were in favor of giving NATO commanders the right to use nuclear weapons whenever they feel like it—” Yesterday one guy said almost exactly that, and Goldwater answered, “If that's what the reporter wrote, then he can't report and ought to be in another business. If he didn't say that, then it's your problem, you can't read, and you ought to learn to read before you waste my time.” Baroody practically fainted. After the press conference, Baroody went after him about it, and Goldwater just said—excuse me, Ma—he said, “Fuck 'em!”

The speech that night in Toledo was to be on Vietnam. Goldwater's principal military informant, well hidden in the catacombs of the Pentagon, had briefed him from a pay phone. Told him that William Bundy had drafted a congressional resolution that would put it to Congress: Do you, or do you not, want me, the President of the United States, to use American military resources as required in order to protect American interests in Southeast Asia? President Johnson, the hidden general told him, was
thirsting
for explicit congressional backing for more aggressive action in the deteriorating situation. A U.S.-backed naval operation, Goldwater was told, was already in action in Tonkin Bay, its design to provoke North Vietnamese radar installations freshly planted by Soviet technicians to send out signals which U.S. receivers could log, giving the exact location and range of enemy radar. That whole secret operation was going on under the cover code “34-A.” Johnson, the general kept repeating, desperately wanted blanket congressional approval for this
kind
of cautionary military action without being forced to reveal exactly what he
was
doing. But, the general reported, Johnson after a week of going this way then the other way had finally said no to Bundy's draft resolution, on the grounds that it would provoke an outcry from the pacifist left. “LBJ wants a united Democratic party behind him at the convention in Atlantic City.” The general had spiced his report by telling Goldwater that at the Christmas Eve party at the White House, President Johnson had said to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “Tell you what. You help get me elected in November, and you can have your war after that.”

Senator Goldwater's meeting with his principal aides that night had been protracted and tense. It was agreed, of course, that no exact detail of the general's covert package of information could be revealed. But the speech must communicate to its primary audience—Lyndon Baines Johnson—that Goldwater had the inside story, and that Johnson would need to act decisively on Vietnam, even if that meant he'd run the risk of losing the enthusiasm of fifteen and one half Democratic delegates.

“Either that,” Baroody put his pipe right down on the table and, suggesting the actual text, “or else say it: That political and military events in Vietnam point to the collapse of the Western doctrine of containment, and I, President Lyndon Johnson, candidate for reelection, don't intend to do anything about it.”

How to word that speech was Fred Anderson's responsibility and he went to it. He was glad the hotel had a pool and a sauna open twenty-four hours. He took his first cup of coffee from the thermos. “Ladies and gentlemen. Toledo is in the heart of America, and this is a good place to speak from the heart. / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / Toledo is the heart of America, and a good place for a presidential candidate to speak from the heart.…”

When he finished a draft, the sun was up. At ten, Goldwater and his four top aides sat in the spacious hotel suite in Columbus. There were just the two copies, the original and the carbon—Baroody had forbidden the use of the Xerox machine until the approved draft was completed.

And, departing from the usual procedure this time, press copies would not be distributed until after Goldwater had begun speaking. Word had got out that the speech would be challenging, and, accordingly, President Johnson had directed that discreet cable connections bring the speech live on television into the Oval Office, where he sat with his principal aides.

“Handsome bugger,” somebody said.

Johnson stared at him. He might as well have said it: You queer or something?

Goldwater's ovation was prolonged. He made the necessary remarks about being in Toledo, told the famous story about Toledo, Spain: during the Civil War, he said he had been sent a souvenir from Toledo, Spain, a little steel letter opener, and was able to discern the fine print on the blade, “Hecho en Toledo, Ohio.” Made in Toledo, Ohio. Roars.

There was a lot of steel traveling across the oceans these days, he said—unfortunately, not all of it being used to make letter openers. There was a lot of Soviet steel going into the radar and antiaircraft devices being installed along the coast of North Vietnam. What did they intend to do with those installations? Whose airplanes were they planning to shoot down? India's? Sweden's? What was the United States doing about those installations, so clearly aggressive in character and so clearly designed to hinder any attempt by the United States to help South Vietnam maintain its sovereignty?… When President Kennedy died there were sixteen thousand U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam. What has been their mandate? To do nothing?… Nothing is a lot better than what has been done, when you count five military coups in about as many months. And that happened while a Republican served as ambassador to South Vietnam. How many more coups can we expect—

Goldwater looked up, as though addressing his question to a remote authority—to President Lyndon Johnson:

—when a Democrat succeeds him?… If the Ho Chi Minh Trail is being groomed as a superhighway for the infiltration of South Vietnam, what exactly are we doing about it? Hadn't Ambassador Averell Harriman, on behalf of President Kennedy, concluded a treaty with Laos—to which the Soviet Union was a signatory, along with thirteen other nations including North Vietnam—guaranteeing the sovereignty of Laos? And how do you reconcile the sovereignty of Laos with the use of Laos by the North Vietnamese to wage a war of aggression against the South?… Hadn't the Tonkin Gulf become a North Vietnamese lake under our do-nothing Administration?… President Johnson talks a very good line about resisting the forces of aggression, but how is he doing?… Fidel Castro continues to try to undermine countries in Latin America, and he is absolutely secure under Lyndon Johnson. The only Cubans the government is prosecuting are the Cuban-American members of the Alpha Cuban liberation team in Miami.… Lyndon Johnson is a nice man and means well, but he tries to please too many people. He wants to appeal to isolationists who want no responsibility for containing communism.… He wants to appease the Harvard professor types who spend a lot of time studying but never quite enough to learn the differences between Ho Chi Minh and George Washington. They have a lot to learn, but there isn't anything Lyndon Johnson can teach them!…

Et cetera.

Standing ovation.

LBJ used the little remote control on his desk to silence the television set. There was silence in the room. Finally he spoke up. “Some son of a bitch is talkin'.” To Valenti he said, “Get me J. Edgar Hoover.” To Bundy he said, “Let's have another look at the draft of that congressional resolution.” To McNamara: “Work up a plan—a contingency plan—for the South Vietnamese to get the kind of ships necessary to stop the Gulf traffic south and also to knock out those radar installations.” He inclined his head in the general direction of the television set, murmured again, “Somebody's talkin',” and left the room.

10

June 15, 1964

Saigon, South Vietnam

Abe Strauss shook his head as Blackford came around with the large coffeepot, and came to the conclusion of his analysis: There was no alternative to a land operation. “I've looked carefully at your report and your photos and sketches,” he pointed to Blackford, “and what you have, any way you look at it, is a trail over four hundred miles long reaching into the Mekong Delta in the south, and then you have six hundred miles of off-shooting trails into South Vietnam's northern sectors. And all these are being used.”

“Are there operative bottlenecks? Points, or passages, through which they need to go before they reach the offshoots?” Rufus asked.

“Yes,” Colonel Strauss said. Again he turned to Blackford: “It seems to me that the Nape Pass and the Mu Gia Pass don't permit detours. We're going to need more intensive photography of the Nape Pass—”

“You're not going to get it, Abe,” Rufus said. “There's no way to penetrate the overhead cover. If we send photographers by land, think in terms of a fighting battalion because there's no way to anticipate the strength of the North Vietnamese army columns headed south. Besides that, your photographer, shooting from the ground, isn't going to give you the perspective you're looking for.”

Colonel Strauss paused. “I get the point. Still, we know we're talking about a canyon. They have got to go down over Nape, unless they go airborne, and that's a narrow stretch of land. And then, about … sixty miles south of there is Mu Gia, which stretches twenty-two miles and isn't going to let anybody around unless they're prepared to scale this”—he pointed to the rugged mountain on the east, “or that”—another such mountain, on the west. “You could get
individuals
to scale those mountains—they'd better be Swiss, and maybe they'd get through with a pack on their back—but they're never going to get supplies into South Vietnam of any quantity, certainly not the heavy stuff, unless they transport it. And if they transport it, they've got to go over Nape first.”

Colonel Strauss leaned forward and read aloud its coordinates, as if to infuse it with reality: “Eighteen degrees 18 minutes North, 105 degrees 6 minutes East—that's my deduction, Blackford, from the coordinates you gave on either side. Mu Gia is at 17.4 North and 105.47 East. We have to put these passes out of action. But I don't see how we can keep them out of action without sending people there to set up a Maginot Line. Those two places are perfect for Maginot Line strategy. But that kind of operation has got to be done by human beings on the ground.”

Blackford agreed. “There's no other way.”

Tucker Montana slouched, puffing on a small cigar, as he liked to do when the air was very still and he could blow his smoke rings, at which he was proficient. “Trouble is,” he commented, “that means an on-the-ground war, which LBJ ain't about to authorize, and you can't just keep bombing blindly, can you? They can go right back to moving the stuff when you're not there.”

“There's another problem,” Rufus said. “The Geneva Accords. The passes are in Laos, and Laos is supposed to be neutral—never mind that it isn't, but it's supposed to be. Which, after all, is why all our aerial work is being done by Army aircraft coming in from Thailand, or naval aircraft coming in from the Gulf, disguised as South Vietnamese—”

Blackford half-laughed. “That's what we call being neutral?”

Rufus accepted the jibe. “Your point is obvious, Blackford. But after the pact was executed, the North Vietnamese, a party to the agreement, withdrew exactly
forty
men. The South Vietnamese pulled out nine
thousand
. The whole purpose of the Geneva Accords was to end the war in South Vietnam. In fact it is proceeding
exactly
as before, but with greater intensity, through Laotian territory.” He recovered the line of thought in which he had been interrupted and gave its conclusion. “The kind of sustained operation you would need would first require Washington to rescind the treaty, or simply to declare it null and void—on the grounds that all parties are not respecting it.”

“Well, Rufus,” Blackford said, “that's Washington's problem, no? Our job is to figure out how it
could
be done, theirs to decide whether they want to do it and what diplomatic or military means are appropriate to the realization of that end.”

“Yes. But we must recommend something we think can work, and simply to recommend the bombing of the two passes seems to me to leave unanswered, as Tucker says, such questions as just how to bomb. That is: How to know where and when to bomb; how to strike targets, not mountains; how to develop an intensity of aerial coverage that would really make the difference.”

It was at this point that Tucker, finally aroused, spoke up. “Rufus, can I have the floor a minute? Abe?”

He opened his briefcase and took out a large sketch pad. From his pocket he fished out a small metal container. He lifted its cap off and plucked out two large thumbtacks. He ripped the first sketch from the pad and fastened it on the wooden wall behind them.

“That's a Sonobuoy. We use these to keep track of Soviet submarines. Up here,” he pointed to the upper end of what looked like a slim bomb, “you have this little detachable buoy, corklike material. Its function is to keep that little ten-inch antenna up there on top of the water and to maintain the capsule with its microphone at the desired depth. So: The reconn plane drops the Sonobuoy. The little bomblike thing here sinks just deep enough to provide equilibrium for the antenna.

“The Sonobuoy is a sensor, very sensitive. When a submarine passes within a dozen miles of it, the sub's sound registers and a signal is sent to the antenna. That antenna has the power to transmit its signal fifty miles. Nondirectional, so you can pick it up over an area of maybe 175 miles. Now, the crystal on that Sonobuoy is, let's say, Radio Frequency A. The crystal on the Sonobuoy five miles south is B. The crystal on the Sonobuoy five miles west is Frequency C. As those signals come up, the reconn planes can triangulate in and figure out pretty close where the submarine is, what its heading is, and how fast it's traveling. Or, they can project from the passage of the sub and the progressive alerts sent out what direction it's going and at what speed.