by James Philip
The Chiefs of Staff Committee had been fighting the war with one hand tied behind its collective back. Property was to be respected and safeguarded, infrastructure preserved and martial law was not to be imposed ‘extra-judicially’ in the Midwest. That was no way to fight any war, particularly the one LeMay was having to fight with totally inadequate forces on the ground and in the air.
The Administration had received the Chiefs of Staffs Committee’s report on the likely progression of the rebellion and the measures necessary to begin to restore order to the ‘Minnesota-Iowa-Wisconsin-Illinois-Indiana Front’.
Needless to say all the President’s men had been sitting on that report for seventy-two long hours.
The clock was ticking; and every minute of delay was costing lives.
One: lacking sufficient men and materiel on the ground it is impractical to mount a general defense, or to mount concerted offensive action likely to halt the insurgents’ advance into virgin territory; therefore, mobile forces must seek to mount delaying actions while strong points and communications hubs (like Madison) should be defended where possible unless or until they are over run.
Two: force deficiencies on the ground must be compensated for by the unrestricted use of air power; specifically, there must be no artificial political restraints placed on the use of the said air power.
Three: US Navy forces in Lake Michigan must be free to harry the enemy’s rear areas with gunfire and other weapons and given an unrestricted remit to mount hit and run amphibious combined operations against the water flanks of the rebels.
Four: it follows logically that a policy of scorched earth should be implemented ahead of the rebels’ likely lines of advance. All habitation, all utilities, all food and fuel stores should be systematically destroyed and civilian populations evacuated west of the Mississippi River. Settlements should be systematically fired and mined to impede the enemy’s line of advance.
Five: roads and railways should be destroyed in detail east of the Mississippi in Wisconsin and Illinois north of the First Army front line by bombing; and all bridges in the said area ‘dropped’. Included in the above plan all bridges across the Mississippi between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Clinton, Iowa should be immediately prepared for demolition.
Six: the President should declare by Executive order a state of emergency in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana placing those states under unconditional martial law.
Thereafter, the US military might have an even chance – at some stage in the next weeks and months – of containing the contagion.
LeMay had hoped that the Vice President might have returned to the inner circle of the Administration in this hour of crisis but when he marched into the President’s Reception Chalet the tall Texan was absent. Presumably, he was still drinking Bourbon on his veranda watching the cattle grazing along the banks of the Pedernales River in Stonewall, Texas!
The President was flanked by Bob McNamara, LeMay’s political boss, Nicholas Katzenbach, the US Deputy Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall.
Although this was supposed to be a ‘breakfast meeting’ there was only coffee on the table.
“I was concerned to learn that no further reinforcements have been sent to Madison, General?” Jack Kennedy kicked off.
“Madison will be cut off within one, two, three days at most, sir,” LeMay growled with a veneer of respect and deference that was paper thin. “Any assets we put inside the Madison perimeter at this time will be lost to us for the rest of the campaign.”
“Governor Reynolds has complained that...”
“The Governor of Wisconsin has had the last eighteen months to plan for a civil defense emergency, sir. If he’d got his finger out of his arse any time before the last fortnight a Helluva lot of his people wouldn’t be trapped in Madison now or dying on the roads out of it!”
LeMay became aware he was crushing his coffee cup so hard he was amazed it did not shatter in his hand.
McNamara had removed his spectacles and was carefully cleaning the lenses with a small cloth. He looked to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
“I learned that General Shoup has taken command of the forces around Minneapolis?” It was asked with quiet, solemn intensity.
“Shoup has temporarily taken command in Minnesota,” LeMay grunted. “Governor Andersen directly requested that a senior officer be appointed to co-ordinate Federal and state forces. The Adjutant General of the Minnesota National Guard had to be relieved of his duties by General Decker; he refused two direct orders to deploy units under his command across the state line into Wisconsin in support of Federal troops.”
Every man in the room knew that General David Shoup, the Commandant of the Marine Corps was possibly the finest logician and trainer of troops in the Union.
In the ensuing silence LeMay seized the initiative.
“Every tin pot politician who has ever worn a uniform, and some that have dodged every draft there’s ever been, wants to get their hands on a little piece of the action on the Michigan Front. It’s not going to happen under my watch. You people have done enough damage already!”
He had gone too far and he knew it.
Nevertheless, he had no intention of backtracking a single inch.
“I told you something this bad could happen but you ignored me, sir,” he told his Commander-in-Chief. “We could have strangled this thing at birth; like Colin Dempsey and the West Coast Governors did up in Bellingham and around Seattle last year. It wouldn’t have been pretty and you’d have looked bad but we’d have avoided this God-awful FUBAR!”
Fucked Up Beyond All Repair hardly began to do justice to the magnitude of the disaster unfolding between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River west of Chicago.
Jack Kennedy held up his right hand.
“I didn’t ask you to come to Camp David to exchange recriminations, General LeMay,” he drawled irritably. “I asked you to come here to formally notify you of the changed military and foreign policy agenda of the United States to enable you to plan forthcoming military operations. We discussed the Middle East and the Midwest Front a few days ago. Directives I issued then as general guidance have now been hardened up.”
LeMay tried without success to stop his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
When a politician talked about ‘hardening up’ what he usually meant was that he had made a fuller assessment of how he reckoned this or that cockamamie brainstorm was likely to play with his constituency. Specifically, either he wanted to look strong or to be putting one over on somebody else; neither of which were good motivations, and certainly not sound grounds, on which to base military deployments and actions.
Jack Kennedy nodded to Robert McNamara.
“The Administration has determined that its priority is to make peace with the Soviet Union. If possible the Administration will make a peace with honor; but it is imperative that steps are taken to ensure that there is no repeat of the events of October 1962.”
Curtis LeMay listened with the deadly intensity of a volcano building up to a an explosive eruption; dangerously silent as if he sensed in his old soldier’s bones that nothing good was going to come out of this exercise.
“At this time nothing which is said in this room,” McNamara went on, “may be repeated or documented outside the circle of the Chiefs of Staff and specific officers in the field. This is because certain ‘trust building’ operations will be necessary if the Soviets are to be brought to the peace table.”
LeMay waited, knowing it got worse.
Much worse…
The President leaned forward in his chair.
“Making peace with our former enemies is the paramount objective of the Administration and all other considerations are, at this time, secondary to it. At this time the single impediment to our goal is the ongoing war in the Middle East. In this connection the intervention of Strategic Air Command and the Navy – Carrier Division Seven – may be required to
separate the warring parties in the Persian Gulf.”
LeMay resisted the urge to ask how exactly ‘separating’ the ‘warring parties’ was conducive to making peace with either of them? To him it sounded more like a sure-fire recipe for starting a war with both of them!
“What will the Sixth Fleet and its air assets be doing in the Mediterranean while all this ‘peacemaking’ is going on in the Gulf, sir?” He asked, biting down on his exasperation.
On paper the Sixth Fleet – the US Navy’s massive presence in the Mediterranean – was a larger, better balanced and even more impressive fighting force than Admiral Bringle’s Carrier Division Seven. Built around the USS Independence, it included the majority of the Navy’s newest and most advanced warships. Based at Malta it massively outnumbered and hugely outgunned the depleted and exhausted British Mediterranean Fleet.
“Sixth Fleet will sit this one out,” McNamara declared.
“Sixth Fleet,” Jack Kennedy interjected, “has been working hand in glove with the British and the Fleet Commander, Admiral Clarey and his staff enjoy friendly and collegiate relations with their British counterparts. Employing the Sixth Fleet to gain stay British operations in the Mediterranean would likely result in the outbreak of general hostilities.”
LeMay scowled.
“And ‘separating the warring parties’ in the Persian Gulf won’t?” He asked bluntly.
“No,” his President retorted, ignoring LeMay’s jibe. “Sixth Fleet will not be involved in any of the ‘peacemaking and peacekeeping operations envisaged in the Persian Gulf.”
Notwithstanding that Curtis LeMay was beginning to feel like the asylum had been taken over by its inmates, he tried to insert a modicum of military pragmatism into the debate.
“What you are describing, Mr President,” he observed, “flies in the face of accepted doctrine. Failure to co-ordinate the operations of Sixth Fleet and Carrier Division Seven, regardless of other considerations, is a mistake. My professional opinion, which I am sure will be seconded by the other Chiefs, is that any attempt to intervene by our forces in one theatre without simultaneously supporting that action in all other theatres of operations is a recipe for disaster.”
Jack Kennedy had thrashed this out with his National Security Advisor McGeorge ‘Mac’ Bundy, Robert McNamara, Bill Fulbright and the heads of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
He had his answers lined up in advance.
“It will be our position that Carrier Division Seven will be supported by at least one Strategic Air Command Bombardment Wing operating in a non-nuclear configuration. Given the range at which your B-52s will be operating from friendly bases, runways on Soviet territory and corridors through Soviet airspace will be made available to SAC. Should, that is, the involvement of SAC aircraft be necessary. A more likely scenario is one in which the British will have no option but to accept, as a fait accompli, the imposition of Carrier Division Seven’s immensely superior firepower between their naval forces in the Persian Gulf and the Soviets. Admiral Bringle’s ships ought to be more than sufficient to ‘bully’ the Brits into accepting the inevitable.”
LeMay was momentarily stunned into silence.
“Axiomatically, the British and their Commonwealth allies will have to be prised out of the Persian Gulf if there is to be a lasting peace with the Soviets,” Jack Kennedy continued. “The Red Army is going to roll straight over them; heck, if things work out we’ll be doing the British a favor, softening the blow, allowing them to walk away with honor. One school of State Department analysts have believed all along that the British would pull out anyway when they realized ‘the game was up’.”
LeMay almost choked on what he was being told as he contemplated all the things that could go disastrously, monstrously wrong.
Inserting Carrier Division Seven into the Gulf; initially to gather theatre intelligence, to land reconnaissance and fire support teams in southern Iran and the Faw Peninsula of Iraq would enable the US Navy to salt the battlefield in the event, highly unlikely, that it would be obliged to enforce a separation between the Soviet and British forces. However, these operations like those preparatory to facilitating the operation of US aircraft – specifically SAC B-52s – over Soviet airspace, needed to be set in train now if the Russians were going to take the Administration’s peace overtures seriously.
Rightly, the Soviets were preoccupied with the very real threat of RAF V-Bombers ranging at will over their surviving cities. While the war in Iraq raged and Red Army tanks rolled ever closer to Abadan Island, the men in the Chelyabinsk Kremlin constantly looked to the skies and it was this, and only this, which had probably opened the window of opportunity in which a peace treaty might – might being the operative word – be achievable.
“I understand why you will have many questions, General LeMay,” Jack Kennedy conceded grimly. He glanced sidelong at the Deputy Attorney General and the Secretary of the Interior. “We realize that hard decisions must be taken to contain the rebellion in the Midwest; and harder decisions still may await us in enforcing our will for peace in the Persian Gulf. Please,” he invited, spreading his hands wide, “ask the questions which I know must be greatly troubling you.”
The veteran airman just stared at his President.
He was briefly dumbfounded to the point of incredulity but then his mind started working again and he found his voice. He looked around at the faces of the politicians: McNamara was studiously inscrutable, Udall the Secretary of the Interior was clearly still wondering what he was doing at Camp David and badly wanted to be someplace else.
“This is insane,” he growled almost but not quite under his breath.
Chapter 20
Monday 15th June 1964
McDermott’s Open, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Former Special Agent Dwight Christie did not look like a monster. In fact he was the sort of guy who went unnoticed on a busy street. His dark hair was thinning at the temples and he looked shabby in the dark suit his captors had instructed him to put on prior to being transported, in utmost secrecy, to the Brenckmann’s palatial – shortly to be abandoned – marital home.
The previous evening a detachment of eight FBI men had arrived at McDermott’s Open, searched the mansion and explored every inch of its grounds before establishing a secure cordon – blocking two of the three entrances to the estate – and spreading out to cover any approach from the golf-course side of the property. More G-men had reported for duty at first light.
If Gretchen had not realized what she was getting into before – she had, of course – this morning would have come as a rude, somewhat disconcerting if not positively unnerving experience.
The ground floor reception room, a ‘hall’ by the standards on any normal suburban middle-class home in any of the surrounding states, had been cleared ahead of this morning’s ‘business’. A long table and hard chairs had been brought in, furniture pushed to the walls; and at Gretchen’s request the FBI had brought in a film crew to record the proceedings.
That had been Dan’s suggestion.
‘If this goes badly Justice and the Bureau will wash their hands of us,’ he had said. Moreover, he had said it in that particular, non-confrontational way which told her that he was quite prepared to dig his heels in and have a stand up row with her if that was what it took to get her to pay attention. They had still to have that first ‘scene’ but over the weekend her husband had left her in no doubt that if he ever thought she was doing something ‘really dumb’, he was going to tell her so. ‘We need to be as cast iron as everybody else.’
Associate Director of the FBI Clyde Tolson had started to object to Dan Brenckmann’s presence immediately prior to Dwight Christie being walked into the room.
‘Dan is here in the capacity of my assistant attorney, Mr Tolson,’ Gretchen had viewed J. Edgar Hoover’s gang-busting sidekick from the thirties with imperious haughtiness. ‘If you have a problem with that then our business is at an end and I shall bid you good day, si
r.’
Her husband had planned to be a little more diplomatic. He smiled apologetically to the older man as if to say ‘hey, what can I do?’
Dwight Christie was in shackles with two muscular, much younger crew cut G-men firmly gripping his upper arms. His manacled wrists were chained to a metal belt around his waist and a second chain rattled down to his ankles, which were so closely restrained that he could only shuffle forward in clanking baby steps.
The prisoner eyed Gretchen impassively; there might have been a flicker of curiosity in his hooded eyes as he glanced at Dan.
“Nice place you have here, lady,” he observed.
Gretchen noted the man’s nondescript accent; neither Yankee drawl nor southern edge, an absence of any suggestion of a Midwest infection or the attenuation of Canadian vowels. Here was a man who made a virtue out of being forgettable.
Perhaps, he was a spy after all...
She turned to Clyde Tolson.
“By all means chain Mr Christie to a chair or something but I would appreciate it if you would release his hands, Director. I’m sure that Mr Christie understands that his first false move will be his last.”
Clyde Tolson had left the ‘legal’ arrangements for this morning ‘preliminary interview’ in the hands of Frank Lovell, an attorney nominally attached to the State Department who was legendary from his days as the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘go to’ counsel. Gretchen and Dan had encountered him at Administration functions that spring before they discovered that Lovell had been instrumental in resolving the ‘misunderstanding’ in California with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office which had seen Dan’s musician brother Sam facing a murder rap. Although Sam and his new wife and baby daughter had come up to Philadelphia in May for the wedding there had been no real opportunity to get to the bottom of all that. Dan’s mother and father had had no more luck than him; and in any event they had had only had twenty-four hours back in the States, before having to return to England. Neither Gretchen nor her husband had known Frank Lovell was in the ‘FBI-Christie’ loop until that morning.