The White House Mess

by Christopher Buckley

  It had been a trying day for the President: a morning speech to the National Association of Manufacturers, legislative strategy session, appointments with Admiral Boyd of the Joint Chiefs and members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Then a private lunch with Ambassador Massot of France.

  Massot was a pleasant but impossibly long-winded Gaul whose briefest reminiscence about his days in the Resistance tended to last an hour. The President was not fond of submitting to these gaseous sessions with Massot, but, as Massot’s son was President of France and as he placed great value on Franco–U.S. relations, he did. But he also made sure that Aquinas, his Filipino steward, kept him well fortified with martinis. (He was otherwise abstemious at lunch.)

  Their lunch ran twenty minutes over schedule, and when I brought in the afternoon’s agenda, the President looked tired. The knot in his tie was askew and his breathing was heavy. A three-martini lunch, from appearances.

  “How was the Ambassador?” I asked.

  He rolled his slightly bloodshot eyes. “Glorious. We relived the siege of Rouen. Who’ve we got?”

  I handed him a backgrounder. “A Mrs. Smith to see you.”

  “Good. I could use a Mrs. Smith about now. You know, Massot must breathe through his asshole, he never even stops talking.”

  “One of these days, Mr. President, you’re going to say something like that in public and—”

  “Okay, okay.” He usually got impatient with me when I admonished him about his language, but I felt it my duty.

  We went over the rest of the day’s schedule and I went back to my own office and busied myself with arrangements for the upcoming European pre-advance trip I was making with Leslie Dach, director of Presidential Advance.

  At 2:18 p.m. he buzzed me. I got the distinct impression he was displeased. “Wadlough,” he said, “get the fuck in here.”

  He shoved a piece of paper at me. It was the OHB backgrounder on Mrs. Smith. “Read this.”

  It told a tragic story. Mrs. Smith’s daughter was an alcoholic. Her only son had been killed in Vietnam. Social Security had just cut the benefits of her husband, who was in the hospital with emphysema. And two months earlier a tank truck had hit a telephone pole outside her home, causing a firestorm from which she had escaped with only her negligee, slippers, and dentures. I grimaced. How had Hu let this quite un-ordinary woman through the turnstile?

  “A tragic story, Mr. President,” I said. “I anticipate your criticism. But I’m sure her visit with you was a great comfort.”

  The President lit a cigarette and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I talked,” he said, “for five minutes. I told her this country owed her more than it could ever repay for the loss of her son. I told her I was sorry about her daughter and offered to help get her into the Betty Ford Center.”

  “Generous of you, sir. Very generous.”

  “I sympathized about her husband. I told her about my Uncle Luke, who had it too. And I told her that before sundown the skin of the GS-7 who cut her husband’s disability would be hanging from the top of the Washington Monument. It was a pretty inspired performance, Wadlough. You’d have been proud of me.”

  “I’m sure I would have, sir,” I said a bit uneasily, for I saw that something was out of kilter here.

  “Do you know, Wadlough, how I felt when I was finished?”

  “Relieved, sir?”

  “No, Wadlough. Imbecilic.”

  The trouble lay in the fact that the woman was a Mrs. Cora Smith, of Mamaroneck, New York. The backgrounder was for a Mrs. Sylvia Smith.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, dear.”

  The President crumpled the backgrounder into a tight ball and threw it in the wastebasket.

  “No, Wadlough. Oh, shit.”

  The worst of it was that Mrs. Cora Smith subsequently sold her story to the Ladies’ Home Journal and of course the President became the butt of many jibes. He was deeply wounded. Lleland saw it as an opportunity to criticize my handling of Open Door. His henchmen taunted Hu, renewing their “Rice Bowl” epithets. But President Tucker was not a quitter, and he got right back on the horse. Three days later he buzzed for another ordinary American. But one month later the unfortunate incident with Mr. Leverett occurred. Somehow the fact that he was under a psychiatrist’s care for exhibitionist tendencies had eluded OHB. I was mortified.

  As I look back on it, the whole episode showed the need for tighter security screening. I made that point at the staff meeting the next day, but Lleland hardly acknowledged my comment or my presence, and the President informed me, through Lleland, that the Ordinary Americans program was henceforward discontinued. The era of Open Door was at an end.

  5

  CITADEL

  Serious incident involving the Chancellor of Germany yesterday. Lleland trying to put the blame on me, but am sure the President understands I can hardly be held accountable for ionospheric disturbances. Still, whole thing a nuisance.

  —JOURNAL, JULY 17, 1990

  We had been told of the existence of Citadel in a Defense Department briefing a few days after the election. Frankly, I was shocked. The idea of turning the most historic room in the nation into a bomb shelter struck me as in exceedingly bad taste. The military said it was essential, but I privately wondered if it wasn’t just another of those expensive toys so beloved by former President Reagan.

  The argument for it, we were told, went like this:

  When the Soviet Union deployed its new generation of GROK SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), the interval between launch and impact—as the military planners blandly put it—was reduced from fourteen minutes to four. As a result, the White House Emergency Procedures, or WHEPs, had to be entirely redrawn.

  Pre-GROK, the WHEPs had been based on the principle of being able to evacuate the President from the White House and have him inside the National Emergency Airborne Command Post—“Kneecap”—within twelve minutes.

  Another WHEP called for evacuating the President by helicopter to any of seventy-five Presidential Emergency Sites, or PESs, underground command stations from which the President could direct nuclear retaliation. “Rare, medium, or well-done,” as one former White House military director described it. Still another WHEP called for the President removing himself to the bomb shelter built during President Truman’s time underneath the East Wing of the White House.

  The GROKs made all these procedures obsolete. During simulated nuclear alerts they had never gotten a President to Kneecap in less than half an hour. And the problem with the PESs was that the Soviets knew where they were and could “dig them out” even if the President could get to them in time. The bomb shelter under the East Wing could only withstand twenty-five psi—adequate at the time, perhaps, but in the age of GROK no more effective than cellophane.

  President Reagan had approved Citadel as the least expensive, most reliable, and most effective means of ensuring “survivability.” The moment NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) confirmed an “incoming [missile] with high degree of probability,” the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon would notify the President. He, his family, and “essential personnel” would then proceed to the Oval Office, which would then sink forty-five feet into the earth.

  Citadel was also equipped with a so-called safety trigger. When the missiles were one minute from impact, Citadel would automatically activate itself.

  The mind boggled, but there it was, every distressing detail. It had been built secretly, under the guise of “renovations,” during one of President Reagan’s three-month summer holidays. Only a handful of us knew of it. Its very existence had the highest classification. Of course I was delighted to be “essential personnel,” but the thought of leaving poor Joan and the children to face nuclear holocaust without me was wrenching indeed. Public service makes heavy demands on a man.

  One day, right in the middle of a meeting with Feeley, Marvin, Lleland, and me, the President decided to take Citadel “for a spin.” He reached into a desk dr
awer, released the “safety” and snapped a red toggle switch. A few clicks and whirrs and the Oval Office sank into the ground. With a gentle thump it stopped. Then one wall peeled away to reveal a large room with black electronic screens on the walls, a large conference table, and about twenty cots.

  “Hey,” said Feeley, “can I use this this weekend? I’ve got some people coming in from out of town.”

  “Sorry, Feeley,” said the President, “this is strictly for essential personnel.”

  “Well,” he said, “you’re going to need a press secretary to explain why you’re still alive when everyone else isn’t.”

  A year into the administration an unfortunate incident occurred involving Citadel and the German Chancellor.

  The President was conducting a meeting in the Oval with Chancellor Schmeer and several high officials when a computer in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon wrongly interpreted an ionospheric disturbance as a massive Soviet nuclear attack. Citadel was automatically activated. Without warning, the entire Oval Office began whirring and clicking and started to sink beneath the ground.

  The President and I exchanged quick, horrified glances. Citadel had never malfunctioned before, so at first we thought this must be the real thing. Poor Joan, I thought.

  The President dashed to his desk and picked up the phone linking him to the NMCC. “What’s happening?” he demanded. I was saying the Lord’s Prayer and wondering what apocalyptic briefing he was receiving from the duty officer. His face relaxed.

  “False alarm?” he said. Oh thank heavens.

  “Then would you mind stopping this thing?” he said into the phone.

  He hung up and began pressing the ARREST FUNCTION switch in one of the drawers. Nothing. The lights flickered. A hydraulic vibration accompanied us on our descent. For some reason, despite all that was happening, my eyes fixed on the Charles Wilson Peale portrait of Washington over the mantel. The vibrating caused it to tilt. When we finally came to rest with a resonant clang, the picture was jarred to a forty-five-degree angle askew—a metaphor, I mused, of the Tucker Presidency.

  Then with an electronic whirring sound the east wall lifted to reveal the Citadel’s nuclear command and survival facility.

  Chancellor Schmeer and the German Foreign Minister looked at each other. The President was back on the phone, his jaw tightening. “Right,” he said abruptly and hung up. He smiled weakly at the assembly of officials, waved me over to him, swiveled so he wasn’t facing his guests, and whispered to me, “Get us out of here. I’ll try to keep them busy.” He swiveled back toward his guests.

  “Chancellor,” he beamed, “my profound apologies.” He said he’d arranged a little demonstration to show them the extent of our nuclear deterrent facilities, but that the timing was “a little off.”

  As the President led the Chancellor into Citadel, Foreign Minister Echt touched my arm and whispered, “It would be best if we do not linger.”

  “Quite,” I said. “We’re due at lunch in ten minutes.”

  “That is not the problem,” he said. “The Chancellor has”—he gestured—“Platzangst.”

  I stared. German is not one of my languages.

  The interpreter was hovering between the President and the Chancellor and out of our reach.

  “He is uncomfortable without windows.”

  Well, I thought, so am I uncomfortable without windows.

  “Elevators. Small places.” He gestured, hugging the air.

  “Oh,” I said, “claustrophobic?”

  “Exact!” he said.

  “I understand,” I said grimly. He went to join the President, who was explaining the function of a console with a number of television screens built into it. I wondered what he was telling them. It was well known inside the White House that the President was not mechanically minded, so much so that the communications people had periodically to re-explain the functioning of his (admittedly complicated) telephone intercom system. The Chancellor, I noticed, was sweating, despite Citadel’s cooler temperature. I made quickly for the phone and reached Colonel Ed Swygert, director of the Office of Special Support Services. “What in the blazes is going on?” I said in a whispered shriek.

  “We’re very embarrassed, sir. We think the problem may have originated at Unimak.”

  “Unimak?”

  “Yes, sir. In the Aleutians. One of our DEW line facilities. The computer—”

  “Good God, man,” I said, “I don’t care if the problem originated in Siam.”

  “That would be unlikely, sir. We don’t maintain any facilities in Siam.”

  I ground my teeth. “Some other time, Swygert, if you don’t mind. Now get us up.”

  “Sir, we’re trying.”

  “Trying? What do you mean, trying?”

  “Yes, sir. We apparently have a fluid problem.”

  “If you do not undo this, Swygert, fluid will be the least of your problems.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We have men on their way down the access hatch. They’ll be there in a matter of minutes. You’ll be able to exit through that, if it’s not inconvenient.”

  “Inconvenient?” I stammered. “You want me to tell the President of the United States and the Chancellor of West Germany they have to crawl through a mineshaft? Have you taken leave of your senses, man?”

  He said they were doing everything possible.

  “More. You have to do more.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went over to give the President the news. The Chancellor had loosened his tie and was breathing heavily. The Foreign Minister shot me a nasty look. The President, I was sure, was now making up his explanations of the various Citadel command-post functions. My own vocabulary of Armageddon was limited, but I was reasonably sure there was no such thing as a “prompt hard-target kill capability.” It was just as well, since the President was not supposed to be divulging America’s nuclear counterforce strategies to foreign nationals, no matter how high up they were. I managed to get the President aside while Marvin Edelstein and Secretary of State Holt continued chatting with the poor Chancellor. I explained the situation.

  “Christ,” he said when I told him about the emergency hatch. He looked at the stoutly built Chancellor. “He probably won’t even fit, for Godsakes.”

  I told him about the claustrophobia.

  “You don’t think he’s going to go weird on us, do you?” he said. I replied that it was my earnest hope this would not be the case. He took out his cigarette case. He never smoked in front of visitors.

  “Sir,” I said, “do you think that’s wise?”

  “Not now, Wadlough.” He snapped the Zippo shut. It sounded like the guillotine blade I knew would be descending on certain heads after this was over.

  I was back on the phone with Swygert two minutes later. I was in the midst of a fresh threat when with a violent lurch the east wall of the Oval Office began to shut. Seconds later the Oval Office lifted off the floor of Citadel and was propelled upward at an accelerated rate. I had been leaning with one arm on the President’s desk. I was knocked down, and as I lay there getting my bearings, I saw the Chancellor, trying, somewhat frantically, to get to the closing wall and back into the ascending Oval Office. As the Oval Office floor came flush with the ceiling of Citadel, scissoring it out of view, I caught a last glimpse of the view and the others. They were watching with faces of serious alarm.

  Moments later there was another clang and the Oval Office was aswarm with Secret Service agents and military people.

  “Where’s Firebird? Where’s Firebird!” They looked at me accusingly, as if I had eaten him.

  “Where do you think he is?” I said through clenched teeth. “Buried alive. With the leader of our most important ally. Idiots! Get me back down there!”

  Someone hit the down button and the Oval once again began its forty-foot descent into the earth. When I got back down to Citadel, the scene was an unfortunate one. The Chancellor’s claustrophobia had apparently overcome h
im. There were signs of a struggle: several chairs knocked over, Marvin Edelstein’s glasses broken, and the Chancellor staring straight ahead, breathing rapidly and being spoken to in soft, soothing tones by the Foreign Minister.

  “Going up?” said the President sulfurously.

  On the way back up, everyone stood, as if in an elevator. Major Arnold attended to the Chancellor’s medical needs, which were greatly helped by a mild sedative. The Foreign Minister glowered at the Major as he administered the injection. At lunch someone remarked that the Chancellor seemed “subdued.” A special effort was made to insulate him from the press.

  Citadel was deactivated the next day, and Ed Swygert was sent to our radar facility at Unimak to conduct a month-long “administrative review” of the incident. Though the fault was hardly my own, the President seemed to associate me with the whole unfortunate episode. He did not buzz me for several days.

  BOOK TWO

  FIRST FLUSH OF POWER

  6

  ASSIGNMENT: HAVANA

  Am finding the Latin temperament trying, but much is at stake.

  —JOURNAL, JAN. 6, 1991

  On the first morning of the new year the President told me he was going to normalize relations with Fidel Castro.

  I welcomed this bold initiative, but our plurality in the election had been marginal, and I worried how the Republicans would react. As usual, the President had anticipated me.

  “It can’t be one of those Nixon-in-China deals,” he said. “If I say anything nice about Castro, the Right’ll have my ass for breakfast.”

  An infelicitous metaphor, to be sure, but he was right. The thing had to be handled carefully. The President wanted “no rhumbas, no kissy-kissy,” just a “straightforward signing of bilateral agreements and exchange of ambassadors.”

  To my surprise, he asked me to accompany Marvin on his exploratory mission to Havana. “You’ll be my eyes and ears,” he said.