At that point Wallace cut away, and a voiceover stated that he talked with Newt Gingrich about the events in 1992. There were excerpts from an interview he did with Newt in Washington and Mike Wallace in New York. After that he mentioned that while he was not able to do an interview with Senator Boren, who had left office in 1994 and was now the President of the University of Oklahoma, Boren had verified by telephone the events of 1992.
Then he reviewed the latest information as of earlier that day, that Bill Clinton was claiming innocence in the release of the classified documents, that the only two men who were claiming I had killed the prisoners and otherwise disobeyed orders were Hawkins and the just named Provost Marshall, Richard Reinhart, and that Nicaragua was now demanding my extradition and had issued a warrant on me through Interpol. Second Lieutenant Fairfax had left the Army and moved home to Mendocino, California, where he had gotten a job at a video game company, gotten married, had two children, gotten divorced, and then been killed by a drunk driver four years ago. His widow, now remarried, had no knowledge of any of the events under question. Meanwhile, several of the soldiers had reported that they had been warned by the Justice Department to not talk to 60 Minutes. Then he closed with:
Wallace: “By almost all accounts, the claim that Congressman Buckman, while still an Army captain, murdered captured prisoners and committed other war crimes seems false. CBS News and 60 Minutes have been unable to find a single source to back the claims by the two individuals making them. In fact, it would appear that the Bronze Star Congressman Buckman received in 1982 was well deserved. Still, there are many troubling aspects to this story.
Why, after so many years, has the story come to light? The Congressman has always claimed that his orders and national security prevented him from speaking. The national security issue actually seems true, at least in earlier years, when the Sandinistas still ruled Nicaragua. The timing, in the end run of a close election, seems very suspicious. The Congressman says he will refuse to cooperate with any further investigation, since the incident was fully investigated back in 1981, when it occurred. However, CBS News and 60 Minutes have been unable to obtain a copy of the Judge Advocate General’s report on the incident or its conclusion. Until that becomes available, a new investigation may well be required to finally lay this to rest.”
The phone rang about thirty seconds later, before Marilyn and the girls could even begin to ask me questions. “Carl!”
It was George Bush’s voice. “Governor?”
“Well, that seemed to go well. Better than I thought it would, in fact. I have to ask, Carl, it’s been a week now. You’d better have a good plan now.”
“George, are you in D.C.?”
“For the night. Tomorrow I fly to Chicago.”
“Well, I’ll be at your office at 8:00 AM. We’ll need Karl and Dick and Gerson and Scully and everybody else.”
“What’s on your mind, Carl? You’ve got a plan?”
I smiled as I answered. “In military terms, we just ate the attack. Now we counterattack! Now we destroy them!”
By the time I made it to the campaign office the next morning, the newspapers were out and the morning news shows were on. The big topic was the latest on the Buckman Crisis, and the tone was generally positive. Fox News was heaping praises on my head, but that was kind of expected. What wasn’t quite as expected was a generally positive tone from both the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, with them saying that this was undoubtedly a political attack disguised as an international incident. The New York Times was still damning me, but you almost expected that of them; it was their story after all, and they had to stand by it. (Plus, they were also still pissed by my using their newspaper to paper train my dog!)
We had a packed conference room when I got there; all the first and second tier people were there. The critical people were Bush, Rove, Cheney, and me. George was actually smiling for once, and Rove was looking thoughtful. Only Cheney had any overt hostility towards me, and that was muted. The Governor started the discussion saying, “So, Carl, you think the show last night rescued you? You told me we were going to counterattack when we talked last night. What are you thinking?”
I nodded. “This is a two part defense. The first part was last week, when you kept me on, and for that, I truly thank you.” I was really saying this for the others. Bush might hate my guts, but I had no reason to sow dissension in the ranks. “By keeping me on, you show strength and faith in me, etcetera, etcetera. You were letting me respond to the outrageous lies being spread. That’s what you did last week. Now we go into the second part. We push back and go full bore back at them. We do it hard enough, we crush them.”
“What do you have in mind, Carl?” asked Rove. You could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. The right wing conservative who didn’t want me was battling with the devious political operative who liked to play the game, and the operative was winning.
“Two parts to this. The Governor here goes after Al Gore for his part in this, and he goes after him hard,” I said.
“And you go after Kerry?” asked an incredulous Cheney. “That leaves us where we started!”
“Screw Kerry! Ignore Kerry. Nobody cares about the VP, you know that. No, I ignore John Kerry. I’m the attack dog from now on! I am going after Bill Clinton!”
We had some back and forth on this, but nobody had a problem with the general concept. We basically hit on the following areas of attack:
* The election of Al Gore was actually the Clintons trying to stay in power. He was their puppet.
* George Bush had faith and trust in me; I would make a worthy Vice President. I was thankful that the Governor was able to see beyond mere politics and was able to trust that I was innocent of everything. It was a mutual love fest from here on out.
* John Kerry was a nice guy but irrelevant. We would ignore him. We weren’t even agreeing to a debate between the VP candidates at the moment, not until the ‘crisis’ was over. We would demand that he repudiate these charges against me.
* Clinton had intentionally leaked the files on me.
* We would begin demanding release of the JAG investigation report.
* We would not accept any other investigations, including by the Justice Department, while the JAG investigation was not available. In fact, in a case of reverse jujitsu, we actually wanted the Clinton Administration to try and get the Justice Department after me, since then we could keep screaming about how they were ‘suppressing the truth’ and ‘double jeopardy.’
* Likewise, any international repercussions with Honduras or Nicaragua showed how the Clinton White House was playing politics with international relations. Clinton didn’t have a great reputation in the area anyway, so this just played into our hands.
* I would keep finding character witnesses from my old unit and C Company. Some of these guys would know other guys, and sooner or later we would be hearing from them.
* We would publicize the millions of dollars that I had donated to the USO and the 82nd Airborne’s scholarship funds. It showed how I didn’t hold any grudges against the Army, just against the assholes who had screwed up.
Dick Cheney got the job (from Rove and Bush, not me) of playing Devil’s Advocate and trying to poke holes in the plan. It was a job he took to with relish. To be fair, he tightened up some of the talking points and toned down others. The man knew what he was doing. We just didn’t like each other.