People used to tell Curtis LeMay that he never knew when to give in; that he never knew when he was beaten. People were wrong about that, too. Just like they were wrong about so much else to do with Old Iron Pants.
The big decisions were the simplest decisions.
Okay, I haven’t been sacked or arrested yet. While I’m still Chief of Staff of the Unites States Air Force I plan to carry on doing my duty. My loyal, patriotic duty consistent with the oath I took when I joined the Army Air Corps Reserve in Ohio in 1929. A lot of people lately don’t seem to be taking their oaths of allegiance seriously lately. I always have and I always will!
His tone was suddenly cool, businesslike.
“I’ll leave some of my people here to interview the base operations staff. I’ll be back in DC as soon as possible bringing the documents I’ve already impounded. Somebody ought to talk to the Head of the Secret Service and that bastard Hoover. Some of our guys — maybe a lot of our guys — have gone bad on us, Bus.”
“Yeah,” the other man acknowledged hoarsely. “It sure looks that way.”
Chapter 19
Robert Francis ‘Bobby’ Kennedy’s anxieties had not been assuaged by Dean Rusk’s unexpected, and for Dean, a mild mannered man, agitated summons to the State Department at thirty minutes notice. Everything was spiralling out of control and he desperately wanted to slow the clock, come up for air, and try to get a handle on what seemed like another ungodly rush towards catastrophe. His brother had found and demonstrated a strange, semi-cathartic calmness that morning but little of it had rubbed off on the other members of his Cabinet, most of whom thought — those who weren’t saying it out aloud — that Jack was exhibiting the first signs of madness.
“Well?” The Attorney General of the United States of America asked, walking unannounced into Dean Rusk’s office.
The Secretary of State was staring out of the windows across a grey, tired, misty vista to Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle of the Potomac River, his hands clasped behind his back. For a moment he seemed not to have heard the younger man. Then he sighed and without moving, his gaze still lost in the dreary mid-distance said: “Every time somebody comes through that door I expect it to be somebody who has come to arrest me.”
“That’s never going to happen, Dean,” the President’s brother retorted impatiently.
The older man half-turned, flicked a look at his watch.
“Five minutes,” he muttered, before explaining that “the British Foreign Office asked for a secure telephone line to be established between Cheltenham and the State Department. The British Ambassador is talking to us via the Swedes at the moment. The call should come through some time in the next five minutes.”
Bobby Kennedy scowled.
“If the Brits want to talk to us they can pick up Jack’s phone any time they want.”
“They think we’ve started bombing them, Bobby,” the Secretary of State reminded the younger man. “What could Premier Heath possibly say to the President that might not make the situation even worse?”
Bobby Kennedy hadn’t thought about that.
“Okay, so why talk to State?”
Dean Rusk obviously didn’t think he ought to have to be drawing a diagram for the man who’d been the President’s most ‘special’ of special personal advisors for several years.
“You ever meet Walter Brenckmann?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“He was our Naval Attaché in England.”
“If you say so, Dean.”
“He submitted a report telling State and the Navy Department that the Brits were one provocation away from declaring war on us.” Dean Rusk dragged away from the window and went to his desk, waving his visitor to take a seat in one of the three chairs next to it. “Did you know that oaf Westheimer was wining and dining the same people in England who have persistently blocked Premier Heath’s attempts to re-organise and rationalise what remains of the United Kingdom’s industrial and economic base on an emergency, command model. The same faction that attempted to veto Operation Manna on the grounds that the United Kingdom would be indebted and beholden for all time to the Commonwealth countries who made it possible?”
“LBJ recommended Westheimer?” Bobby Kennedy reminded Dean Rusk, as if this made the problem go away.
“The Vice-President recommended Westheimer for public consumption only; he made it perfectly plain that he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it if we nominated somebody better qualified.”
Finding an Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral had been a thorny issue after the October War. One likely candidate, the anglophile former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Garfield Sumner had been killed in a car wreck. Several other strong contenders had withdrawn. In the end Loudon Baines Westheimer II had been the last candidate standing, taking up his appointment in early March.
Bobby Kennedy slumped into his chair.
“So what? This guy Brenckmann is some kind of Jeremiad whistleblower telling us what we already know?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him yet.”
One of the two black handsets on Dean Rusk’s desk rang jarringly.
He picked up the receiver.
“Rusk speaking.” He waited, pointed for his visitor to pick up the other telephone.
“Good morning, Mister Secretary,” said the man at the other end of the crackling analogue line, his words spanning the swooping peaks and troughs of amplification. “This is Walter Brenckmann. Captain, United States Navy Reserve. I was sent to England as CINCLANT Liaison to the British Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy Channel Fleet. More recently, I was promoted to my present rank and posted to the Embassy in Cheltenham as Naval Attaché. Shortly before I was declared persona non grata by the British Authorities I resigned my commission and my post and communicated my profound concerns about the state of Anglo-American relations to your Department.”
“You are speaking to Dean Rusk, Secretary of State. With me in the room is the Attorney General. What is the purpose of this call, Captain Brenckmann?”
The line hissed and exploded with distant bursts of static.
“Are you still there Captain Brenckmann?”
“Yes, sir.” The man in England wasn’t in a hurry. “May I ask you a question, sir? And the Attorney General?”
“Go ahead.” Dean Rusk shrugged at Bobby Kennedy.
“Is it the policy of the State Department to intercept, delay and mislay communication from diplomatic staff in England?”
“Don’t be impertinent, Brenckmann!”
“Are you in receipt of any of the reports I copied to both the Navy Department and to your own Department since my appointment as Naval Attaché to the United States Embassy at Cheltenham?”
“Are you some kind of lawyer, Captain?” Bobby Kennedy inquired testily.
“Yes, sir. I only put on a uniform when the people running my country deem it appropriate to participate in foreign wars and adventures.” The voice of the Navy Captain was evenly modulated, clipped and indifferent to the elevated status of his two interlocutors. “Mister Rusk,” he went on with an almost schoolmasterly inflexion, “after what the administration of which you are a prominent member has put us all through in the last year, neither you, nor any of your fellows in Government has the right to accuse me of impertinence, sir.”