William Kunstler spoke for both civilian counsels when he wrote Major Henderson a letter to make his position perfectly clear. “I am totally against accepting such an offer for a number of reasons. First of all, it is so insignificant, insofar as time is concerned, as not to amount to anything. Secondly, I believe that it weakens our appellate position in that the acceptance of such a picayune offer is, in my opinion, tantamount to proclaiming that Clayton is so desperate that he will agree to anything because he does not trust the appellate process. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think that further interrogation of Clayton will be used to try to get him falsely to incriminate others… so that NIS and the Pentagon brass, along with the State Department, can fabricate the Marine ‘spy ring’ at the Moscow Embassy and thus flesh out the original theories propounded last Spring…. I believe that the thirty years were imposed to force false admissions from our client, just as Judge Sirica imposed similar sentences in the Watergate affair. This case simply cannot be treated as any other court-martial. Its politics are far-reaching and pervasive….”
Kunstler believed he had a better idea. In fact, at the very time he wrote that letter he was involved in negotiations with the producers of 60 Minutes, the highly rated CBS newsmagazine, who were interested in opening their 1987 season with a sympathetic segment on Sgt. Clayton Lonetree. Diane Sawyer was slotted to conduct the interview, and Kunstler thought this would be an ideal forum for winning public support and exposing the weaknesses in the government’s case.
Henderson thought that would be a big mistake—for the same reason he didn’t put his client on the stand. It would be placing Lonetree in a public situation for which he was profoundly unfitted. No one knew what Clayton would say next, which could be disastrous. What if, on national television, he said something incriminating? Something that damaged his appellate hopes or could be used against him in a retrial?
The difference of opinion on the defense team was at an impasse when two men walked into Major Henderson’s office and helped resolve matters.
Lt. Col. Jim Schwenk came storming in one day, slammed an order to testify on his desk, and said, “Dave, here it is. You can take this deal and get five years off. Or we’re going to order him to debrief, and if he refuses, five more will be added on for disobedience. It’s time to choose.”
Henderson was sitting there pondering his next move when another man arrived: a Minneapolis attorney by the name of Lawrence Cohen, who said he had been retained by Spencer Lonetree, Clayton’s father, to represent his son. Henderson looked at him askance. By this time he’d had his fill of civilian counsels. But before he could invite Cohen to kindly leave well enough alone, Henderson heard the man saying things like “Bill Kunstler is the last person who should have been representing a Marine in a court-martial. He should be fired.”
As Henderson would later describe his reaction, “Bells went off…. At last someone was talking sense.”
The dismissal of the two civilian attorneys who had been identified with Sgt. Clayton Lonetree from the start was public and messy. In a letter drafted for him by Cohen, Lonetree stated he had lost confidence in both Stuhff and Kunstler as far back as August and did not want “to continue to be represented by persons in whom I do not have faith.” He instructed them not to talk with the media about his case any longer and informed him that his lead attorney from this moment on was Major Henderson.
Stuhff was outraged that a deal had been put together behind his back. There were solid appeals issues he wanted to pursue. He was also more than a little displeased at being booted off the case so unceremoniously after all the time, effort, and expense he had put into it. Kunstler, for his part, said he believed this was something initiated by the military, which was trying to drive a wedge between them and their client in an effort to get Lonetree to cooperate with authorities.
Meanwhile, a post-trial agreement was executed. In it, Lonetree agreed to submit to interrogations regarding the espionage activities under oath, followed by polygraph examinations. In return for his cooperation, five years would be subtracted from his sentence, and a grant of immunity against prosecution would apply to everything he revealed. Unless, that was, incriminating information was developed independent of the briefing that indicated he had withheld information, and then he would be charged and tried in another court-martial.
15
At six-thirty on the morning of October 12, Lt. Col. David Breme arrived at the Quantico brig to pick up his prisoner. Coincidentally, U.S. marshals were holding an Arab terrorist in the brig at this time, and as Breme would later describe the scene, “It looked like the Israelis had been brought in to guard him. There were more goddamn Uzis around than you see in a Steven Seagal movie.”
After he was admitted to the sally port through an electronically operated door, Breme told the guard, “I’m here to pick up Lonetree.”
Five minutes later the prisoner was delivered. “They brought him down this corridor that was lined with cinderblock walls and had a concrete floor covered with linoleum, so every sound was amplified with echoes. He had ankle irons on. He had hand irons on. He had this connecting chain between them so he could only take these mincing steps. You could hear the rattle and clank of him coming and suddenly there he was, looking like Marley’s ghost, with these two apes—I mean two of the biggest brig guards I’ve ever seen—on either side of him. It was pathetic. He had a look on his face like you’d see in a dog pound. Like the faces in the pictures of the downed aviators at the Hanoi Hilton.”
As a final precaution Lonetree was frisked, and then he was turned over to Breme and two MPs, who loaded him into a white Navy Dodge van and headed for a secret location in Washington, D.C., where his debriefing was scheduled for later that morning.
Lieutenant Colonel Breme had been handpicked to be the escort officer because of his reputation as the best shot on the Quantico base. He was armed with an Austrian 9mm seventeen-shot automatic pistol, which he carried in a shoulder holster under a sports jacket worn to conceal his weapon, and two loaded magazines filled a side pocket, so in total he was equipped with fifty-one rounds of ammunition. The nature of the threat had not been specified for him, and when he had asked his superior officer what he imagined they might encounter, Breme had been told, “You never know about these goddamn supposed diplomats in Washington. Half of them are communists.”
Breme had hesitated before replying. “Sir, I’m afraid that’s not who I’m concerned about. I don’t think the KGB gives a shit about Lonetree one way or another. You know who I’m concerned about? I’m concerned about Billy Bob in a pickup truck who’s an Amurican and has a Confederate-flag license plate and who might drive by and say, ‘Goddamn, there’s that sonofabitch Lonetree,’ and open up with a shotgun. I’m more worried about a goofball like that than the Red Menace.”
By nine o’clock they were pulling up to Building 159 in the Washington Navy Yard. It was a five-story brick structure that housed a multitude of different agencies, including a branch of the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office, but a suite of rooms on the second floor had been dedicated as the debriefing center. In one of them an eight-by-ten sound-reduction module had been assembled that was furnished with two comfortable easy chairs—one for Lonetree, one for his interrogator—and a small table-desk inset with a polygraph instrument that was covered whenever it was not in use. An exhaust fan kept the air inside fresh, and a one-way mirror provided the view for a stationary video camera mounted on a tripod. At the same time the debrief was taped, it was going to be broadcast on TV monitors to an adjacent room where chairs had been set up for an audience of thirty.