This stung so sharply that the Attorney General recoiled and said something he realised instantly, he might later rue.
“Yeah, well,” he snapped, “whatever’s going on LeMay is still down in Louisiana playing with his toys!”
Bradlee gave the other man a hard look. He might be very close to the Kennedy brothers but he was also a hard-headed newsman and when a thing did not look or smell right it was usually wrong. Nothing Bobby Kennedy was saying to him gave him any kind of confidence that somebody had got a grip of the situation. Okay, the missiles had not started flying again but that was not the same thing as achieving a meaningful reconciliation with an old ally. Nor was this the time to start rehashing the arguments about Curtis LeMay’s role in the October War. LeMay was a lot of things that were antipathetic to liberal DC sensitivities, but he was no communist stooge and he was, at least by his own lights, the most diehard of patriots.
The news that LeMay was in Louisiana was not news either. The White House might only just have heard about the Air Force Chief of Staff’s rampage down to Barksdale; everybody in the DC press corps had known all about it last night. Unlike the bureaucrats and dilettantes hanging around the Oval Office and shuffling haplessly around the corridors of the great buildings of state in the capital, LeMay and other senior members of the US military high command were actually trying very hard to find out what had gone so wrong with their country that its aircraft had attacked friendly ships and bases. It would have also probably have been helpful if the State Department had been as motivated to discover exactly why its diplomats had given the Spanish and the Italians the idea that attacking British ships and overseas territories had suddenly become such a good idea, rather than to carry on attempting to unload all the blame onto the Pentagon. Likewise, somebody ought to be asking what the Central Intelligence Agency had been doing the last year; because it beggared belief that somebody at Langley had failed to notice the changing mood music in Madrid and Rome.
The newsman bit back his contempt and tried to explain to his old friend how bad all this looked to everybody outside the Administration.
“You’re not even beginning to think this thing through, Bobby,” Ben Bradlee cautioned. “If the Chiefs of Staff were holding out on the Administration there would have been a coup by now. There would be tanks on the streets and F-4 Phantoms in the sky over the White House. Think about it. Italian A-4s and B-52s bomb Malta, US Air Force A-4s attack two British warships in the Atlantic, and what about the Navy’s problem with one of their Polaris boats last month?”
The Attorney General scowled.
Ben Bradlee started getting worried again.
He thinks I’m fishing for a story!
“What are you talking about?” Bobby Kennedy demanded. “The Navy hasn’t reported any problems…”
The two men exchanged thoughtful looks.
“The USS Sam Houston. But you didn’t hear it from me, Bobby.” Ben Bradlee had only heard the rumour himself in a bar last night from an old Navy buddy who had had one drink too many to contain his despair. “I’m just saying that this isn’t about just a few rogue officers trying to cause trouble. Whatever is going on is more complicated. If the Administration plans to write this off to a few irresponsible hotheads and some sort of communist conspiracy, I’ll tell you now a lot of people, me included, aren’t going to buy it.”
The United States Attorney General’s composure, like his silky charm, was fraying around the edges.
“The only problem we have with the Navy is that they’ve been trying to play goddammed war games with the Brits,” the President’s younger brother replied heatedly, electing to ignore practically everything his friend had just said to him.
“War games?”
“Jack’s put a stop to it now,” Bobby Kennedy assured Bradlee.
“Well, that’s one less thing to worry about,” the Newsweek Bureau Chief acknowledged with more irony than he meant. Hurriedly, he moved on to the object of the meeting. “So what is the Administration’s official line on this?”
“That a small number of disaffected junior officers misunderstood their orders and the general thrust of US foreign policy. Due to a lack of supervision, breaches of discipline and the influence of elements clearly sympathetic to the cause of the old Soviet Union, great harm has been done to our friends and allies in Britain. Which, obviously, the President deeply regrets…”
Ben Bradlee did not need to hear any more.
When, sometime in the next few hours his President and his inept advisors got him blown up by the British he intended to die with his professional journalistic reputation unsullied by this…
Horseshit!
“Presumably,” he retorted, “the President now also regrets cutting off aid shipments and lines of credit to the UKIEA, and the encouragement certain members of his Administration have given to American corporations to plunder former British colonial assets all around the World, Bobby?”
“Let’s not get into that debate again, Ben!”
The newsman held up his hands.
He understood the reasons why, immediately after the war, the Administration had chosen to concentrate on domestic issues, placate Congress and to attempt to maintain something resembling pre-war normality across as much of the country as possible. Notwithstanding, he had believed at the time that by signalling an America first, isolationist lurch to the right the Democratic Party was, in effect, betraying not just the United States’ overseas friends and allies, but selling its soul for short-term political advantage. But that was then and this was now, water under the bridge; they were where they were now.
“Who else are you talking to, Bobby?”
“The Post, the networks. Jack is working the phones at the moment. Our policy is to wait on developments. If we are attacked we will retaliate but so far the Brits seemed to have sucked up the pain.” Although he immediately thought better of that phrase it was too late to take it back. “Lines of communication are kind of screwy at the moment. The Brits have threatened to expel our Ambassador. They may already have done it. Our guy in England is a jerk. One of LBJ’s nominations.” He shrugged. “It is a mess. Dean Rusk is pulling out his hair, Ben. The President will hold off on addressing the nation until we’ve got a better handle on what is going on. There’s some talk of bringing in security teams, maybe even the FBI going into the Pentagon and the State Department to start a preliminary investigation into this…”
“You’d seriously consider letting Hoover’s people into the Pentagon?”
The two men were staring down the dull, dreary length of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool towards the distant Washington Monument. The sky was dark and ominous, the clouds low and threatening.
“Maybe,” the Attorney General confirmed. “We’re kind of running out of options, Ben.”
“You’re making a big mistake, Bobby. Well, the White House is, anyway. The country already believes the President and the Administration have covered up what really happened that day before the October War. Trying to hide the truth now will finish the Administration; the American people will never trust you, any of you, ever again.”
“The President just needs the papers and the networks to hold off for another day or two…”
“Not going to happen, Bobby,” Ben Bradlee groaned, sick at heart to be the one having to tell his friend that the music had stopped and he needed to sit down in a hurry. “You’re asking me to be a part of a cover up to conceal the self-evident failure and the moral and political bankruptcy your Administration. The American people might, one day, understand the reasons why we’re in this mess if you’re brave enough to level with them; but what they will never forgive you for is covering up the truth.”