A Very Private Plot

by William F. Buckley

  It was she, measuring the need of her eight-year-old boy to be with his father, who finally relented. She and Anthony left the handsome old estate in Coyoacán, letting go or retiring one half the staff, and went to Washington. In Virginia, Sally bought a large and comfortable farmhouse. (“Tu mamá es muy rica,” Anthony was startled to be advised by a Mexican schoolmate when he was seven. His mother’s wealth was exaggerated, Anthony would eventually discover, but not greatly: The Morales trust had left her wealthy.)

  In rural Virginia, in what Mexicans would call an hacienda, Blackford, Sally, and Anthony were surrounded by six hundred acres of redolent Kentucky bluegrass. Sally superintended the raising of cattle and the maintenance of a stable of five horses. Anthony and his mother and his Papabile rode together on their saddle horses when they could. When Blackford was away, his mother went out several times every week with Anthony, who breathed with pleasure the scents of the seasons: the hot humid summers, the little tang of autumn, the blustery chill of mid-winter, the sensual budding of spring. If Sally was unavailable, Anthony was accompanied by the groom until he was ten, after which he would ride on his own. Sometimes he rode with a companion from school who was himself an accomplished young horseman. When he was twelve his mother built an outside course with six varieties of hurdles winding in and out over the area where the junior hunt now convened. And there Anthony learned to jump and competed regularly in the horse shows in Virginia and Maryland.

  Anthony loved his life, his mother, his Papabile, and Ed Turpin, the groom. But in his senior year at St. Albans he made his solemn decision. It was to go to college and law school, as his father and grandfather had done, at the University of Mexico, with the view eventually to occupying the spot that had been held for him ever since his father’s death, in the ancestral firm of Morales y Morales.

  There were just six guests at the anniversary party, one of them the sister of Sally’s late husband, who came with the Mexican ambassador, her husband. “Do you know something, Sally,” Blackford said in the presence of the one remaining guest, his old friend and professional colleague Singer Callaway, “I hate to say it, but Consuela has become rather pompous. You think?”

  Sally looked up at him with a half smile, in answer. She dissolved in Blackford’s eyes to the serious young graduate student who on that crowded afternoon at the fraternity when they first bumped into each other had an effect on Blackford he was forced to think of as hypnotic, delirious, because nothing else at Yale mattered to him after that, other than Sally, for ever so long, until she herself brought him down to earth. He neglected his studies in engineering, twice forgot a rendezvous to take the controls of the newest jet fighter his disorganized father was trying to sell to foreign governments.… How strikingly beautiful she still was, forty-five years after they first met. He could not believe that he had allowed fifteen years to go by before marrying her.

  But the happy day had finally come. It was after his disillusionment with his role in Vietnam, thirty years ago, at the little chapel on the family property in Coyoacán. Sally had now been widowed for a year, and had done the traditional one year of mourning, mourning a husband she had deeply loved. In Blackford’s imagination she now flashed forward from college girl to the thirty-five-year-old woman he had married—an adjunct professor of English literature at the University of Mexico, a scholar of standing, and the dueña of her late husband’s large home, a woman of bearing and refinement, whom he had seduced (actually, there was a trace of a smile in his memory, she had seduced him) ten nights after that fraternity party. There would always be a strain of independence in her, as there was in him: that was what had kept them apart and, very possibly, what kept them so devotedly together.

  The separations would no longer need to happen, he thought, sipping the end of the wine, now that he, Blackford Oakes, was discharged from his post at the CIA, along with most of his friends, including Anthony Trust and Singer Callaway. Granted they were all in their late sixties; but age had never really mattered, not within the CIA. “Mr. Dulles,” as Blackford always thought of him, had been in his seventies. And Rufus, the master spy, had still been coaxed into delicate missions at eighty.

  Rufus! Blackford had heard, just two years ago—it was on the day of President Clinton’s inauguration—of the heart attack. He was grateful that it had done its work decisively; flabbergasted to learn, on his return from Beirut, that Rufus, a widower without children or relatives, had left his entire, but not entirely immodest, estate to him, Blackford—with a testamentary note that burst the seams of Rufus’s legendary self-restraint: After the death of Muriel, you became a son, and so it is to my son that I leave what I have, in gratitude. Rufus.

  Rufus knew the whole story of Nikolai Trimov. Reagan knew it. No other American alive, Blackford kept reminding himself, knew it. Sally nudged him back into the conversation.

  “My point”—Singer Callaway, made aware that Blackford’s mind was elsewhere, repeated what he had just said—“is that we’ve got a good chance to stop Blanton. The President isn’t really on his side—no President wants to be without a covert arm. But he’s being cautious on how to handle Blanton. And there are more and more people around who think the congressional investigating committees are going too far. Professor Glasser, granted, is devotedly attached to lost causes, but his paper in The Harvard Law Review has had a big impact, and it’s only a matter of time, maybe even next week, before we get a cert from the Supreme Court, probably in the Wohlenberg case—”

  “What is the Wohlenberg case?” Sally wanted to know.

  “Carl Wohlenberg was indicted after the Blanton Committee referred his case to the Justice Department, charging that he had violated Section 1001 of Title 18. That’s the law that says that if you don’t tell a committee something you have good reason to suppose the committee wants to hear, you are somehow guilty of perjury. There’s a countermovement coming up here, Black. Say, Bush was great last week, you agree?”

  Blackford said Yes, he agreed. Former President Bush had been invited to appear as a witness before the Blanton Committee, both because he had served as President and because he had served, in the 1970s, as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Bush had answered Blanton with a polite letter, leaked politely to the Washington Times, saying he would be glad to make his views on executive authority and clandestine activity known to the committee, but that he declined to testify in a closed session: his views were for all the American people to hear. Senator Blanton concluded that he did not want George Bush solemnly affirming on nationwide television his devout belief in the continuing necessity of covert activity.

  “What I’m wondering is what exactly Reagan is going to say.” Blackford had his own reasons for worrying about the only other American alive who knew about Trimov and the Narodniki testifying to the Blanton Committee. “I can’t believe they invited Bush without inviting Reagan.”

  “Reagan is an … old man,” Sally said.

  “He was an old man when he was elected President.”

  “I hate to remind you of it, Black,” Singer Callaway interjected, “but when he was elected President, he was your age—and mine.”

  Blackford appeared quite surprised to hear this. He took the bottle of champagne and poured what was left in it into Sally’s glass. She looked at him: a bit annoyed, a bit exasperated, very, very protective.

  “No rest for the weary,” she said, affecting a tone of voice far gone in weariness.

  Blackford tipped his empty glass to her. “No rest for the weary.” He would not contest this. Even Sally didn’t know the full story of Nikolai Trimov.

  CHAPTER 3

  APRIL 1995

  Blackford Oakes entered the room. He blinked when, the door opened, he was hit by the scene. He had simply forgotten. This was the identical chamber in which the Rockefeller Commission had officiated, before which, twenty years earlier, he had appeared. The faces floated by his memory. Great political figures of 1975. Vice President Rockefeller, aff
able, well coordinated, tough-minded. Ronald Reagan, until the year before Governor of California—nobody took him seriously as a presidential candidate. John Connor, Secretary of Commerce under Lyndon Johnson. Douglas Dillon, smooth, aristocratic Secretary of the Treasury for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Erwin Griswold, Solicitor General for Kennedy and Johnson. Lane Kirkland, number-two man at the AFL-CIO, a backbone of the anti-Communist movement. General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under JFK. Edgar Shannon, former president of the University of Virginia. A formidable array.

  Today the velvet curtains seemed newer, but the windows were still glazed, and the daylight that entered the room did so with manifest reluctance. Four senators were present—he recognized them all. Between the table where he would sit and the raised table at the center at which Senator Hugh Blanton sat, the stenotypist squatted, poised to make lapidary the proceedings. He was a middle-aged man who sneezed self-effacingly twice while Blackford was walking toward the seat to which the clerk-escort pointed him.

  On reaching it, he remained standing.

  The chairman spoke. “Mr. Oakes, you will be sworn.”

  A second clerk intoned the usual words. Blackford looked directly at Senator Blanton. He saw the glimmer of light in the eyes of the well-known face, the angular chin, the hair parted directly in the middle, the steel-rimmed glasses smaller than was stylish. He wore a dark gray suit and a regimental tie, and his long fingers were spread out over the documents in front of him.

  “Well?”

  The chairman was asking why Blackford had not taken the oath. He raised his chin and stared hard at Blackford, whose right hand was poised upright, in the oath-taking position.

  Blackford lowered his hand and said, “Senator, may I raise a matter with you and your colleagues before I reach a decision on the matter of the oath?”

  “Mr. Oakes, you are here under a subpoena. You are obliged to take the oath and cooperate with the committee. You do not have the alternative of refusing to take the oath. To do so would be to act in contempt of congressional authority to investigate.”

  “That, Senator, is the question I would like a minute or two to talk with you and your colleagues about.”

  Chief counsel Arthur Blaustein, seated just behind the chairman, leaned forward and whispered in his ear. The chairman whispered back. The colloquy took up a full two minutes.

  “I am inclined,” said the chairman, “to grant you the courtesy you request. You have worked for an arm of the government for many years, and I have been told, though I do not have the details—it may indeed be the business of this committee to discover what are those details—that you have engaged in numerous enterprises which in your judgment were in the interests of your country. So you may be seated, and tell us what are your reservations. Be so kind as to be brief.”

  Blackford sat and said, “Thank you.” He looked up at the senator from South Carolina, and then at the senator from Florida, gave with a slight nod of his head a gesture of thanks for not raising any objections to the unorthodox procedure.

  But then Blackford leaned back, and for a brief but intense moment the blood rushed to his head. He saw the face of Rufus. Of Trust. Of Michael. Of Tucker Montana. Of Peregrine Kirk, heading his jet fighter down to the earth at the speed of sound in order to shelter the reputation of the Queen he had betrayed. All this in a short moment generated a near-explosive wrath, which he labored to subdue. He was left with a concentrated indignation that framed the way in which he spoke.

  “Senator Blanton, you are engaged in an effort which you have spoken about before several forums, which were it to succeed would make a mockery of the forty-five years I have given to the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be to tell me and my colleagues that many of the enterprises in which we engaged were morally wrong, and if you have your way they would in the future be legally wrong.

  “Now I don’t question your authority to build your case as best you can—I respect the sincerity of your concerns. But I do very much question your right to build your case on words from me which I have promised not to utter. And I don’t wish to help you contrive a law that would leave my country, Senator—my country every bit as much as it is your country—powerless to execute certain maneuvers judged by the Chief Executive to be in the best interests of the United States—”

  Senator Blanton didn’t need to bang down his gavel so explosively, given that Blackford Oakes was seated only eight feet from him.

  Blanton quickly decided that he had overreacted. Better to be patronizing.

  “Mr. Oakes, my colleagues and I are too busy to be lectured by you on a matter to which we are giving grave attention. If you wish to write me a letter, or write an article for the National Review, you may do so. I promise to read the former, and might even read the latter, though that would depend on alternative opportunities. Kindly take the oath.”

  “Mr. Chairman,” said Blackford, “I cannot take the oath unless you agree to permit me to decline to answer questions I deem out of order. I have taken formal pledges not to reveal the nature of certain activities I’ve engaged in and others have engaged in at my direction or with my knowledge, and to reveal all this could endanger the reputations and even the lives of people I pledged our—”

  Senator Blanton banged the gavel again. “You have one minute in which to take the oath.”

  Blackford looked now at Hugh Blanton almost absentmindedly, as though he had given pending matters all the time he had for them, all the time they deserved, his mind turning to other matters.

  Arthur Blaustein rose and whispered to the chairman. Senator Blanton spoke: “I shall recommend to the committee a vote to be called immediately to the attention of the president of the Senate, citing you for contempt and recommending your incarceration until you elect to comply with the law of the land, which requires of its citizens that they give such testimony as the duly appointed committees of Congress feel they need in order to perform their duties. The clerk will escort you to the office of the sergeant at arms, where you will be fingerprinted and photographed.”

  Blackford rose, turned, and walked toward the door. The clerk walking behind him whispered, “Sir, if I may, I’ll lead the way.”

  Blackford followed him out.

  CHAPTER 4

  APRIL 1995

  I don’t like it, Boss. Don’t like it at all. Don’t like it for two reasons. One of them is Blackford Oakes can become the next Ollie North, only he’s got a lot working for him that North didn’t have—”

  “Like brains?”

  “Yes—though North isn’t dumb, but he chose to play a kind of I’m-the-American-flag role. Oakes wouldn’t do that. He’d be more like General MacArthur when he was fired. He accepts the consequences of what he’s done, but he doesn’t abandon his own principles. North had a problem: he was meddling with policies Congress hadn’t authorized and the President said he knew nothing about. Nobody is saying Blackford Oakes did anything he wasn’t told to do. By the way, did you ever run into Oakes before you canned him?”

  “No. But I know something about his reputation. Brainy, self-confident, impressive record, admired by just about all my predecessors, very close to JFK and to Reagan, I’ve been told.”

  “Well, I gave you the first reason we should be careful. But the other reason is I know you don’t want that legislation that Blanton is so goddamn fired up about.”

  “Damned right we don’t want his law. On the other hand, we don’t exactly want to come out against it. Don’t want to sound like a cold warrior. It’s not easy.” He stretched out his feet, put them on his desk, and loosened his tie.

  “I know, I know that. On the other hand, if we let Blanton’s law just slide in, it hits a lot of people like a part of our whole disestablishment package. Down with military activity, down with paramilitary activity, down with official state secrets, down with dirty tactics, down with the kind of thing your predecessors went in for. The whole academic parade is behind Blanton on this, yo
u know, and they would not—”

  “—like it one bit if I scuttled the Blanton holy crusade. Meanwhile we’re sitting looking at two covert operations recommended by the CIA and the NSC which could make a hell of a difference in the problems we got in Libya and Iran.”

  He smiled. “Of course, the way these problems are usually settled, Mack, is—is a matter of nomenclature. What the Blanton bill would forbid as a ‘covert act’ we could probably do by simply calling it something else, like a capital investment.” He giggled.

  “You forget the kind of language Blanton is likely to come up with in his bill. It’s likely to be specific enough to forbid any American agent from slipping a ten-dollar bill into the hands of a Swiss Guard to find out what time the Pope is going to preach.”

  “Yes.” The President pursed his lips.

  He seldom put an end to conversational exchanges. He operated on the assumption that the greater the quantity of words said, the likelier it was that a truth would crystallize or an agreement suggest itself. But now he was silent, and in deference to that silence Mack was quiet, but he did not leave the Oval Office. He knew exactly with which gesture the President gave that particular signal. He simply sat. Eventually the President spoke: “Before we fasten in on the language of the bill, let’s talk about this business of Oakes going off to jail. How is that situation sitting?”

  “Not good. He’s got to go, looks like. The civil liberties people don’t like it, but the pride of Congress is on the line. I can give you the hot poop, got it from you-know-who, who was there when old Bob Dole had Oakes in. Dole begged Oakes to go back to the committee and just bug out, plead the Fifth. Oakes said he could only plead the Fifth to guard against self-incrimination, and he hadn’t done anything illegal, not that anybody knew about—”