I broke the news to Joan that night over a dinner of her delicious meatloaf. I knew she would take the news hard.
“Dear,” she said, “you know that kind of food doesn’t agree with you.” True enough. On a business trip to Guadalajara years earlier I had been severely stricken. It had been an unpleasant and protracted ordeal, and my personal physician had advised me that another such episode could leave my intestines gravely weakened.
“But, dear,” I said, “I can’t tell the President of the United States I can’t go on a historic mission for him because Latin food doesn’t agree with me.”
“Yes,” she said, fighting back the tears, “but I just can’t bear to think of you hunched over the toilet like that, making those awful noises.”
Nevertheless, my duty was clear and, though my decision broke her heart, Joan was a brave girl and she was deeply committed to the goals of Thomas N. Tucker. Three days later I left Washington for Havana. In one of my bags was a three-day supply of food and copious amounts of Pepto-Bismol. Joan was not about to send me off unprepared.
To satisfy Marvin’s bizarre predilection for secrecy, we flew to Havana via Bangor, Maine. He had arranged to give a speech there—to an unlikely foreign-policy forum, the Bangor Chamber of Commerce. He gave interviews afterward to the local press saying how much he was looking forward to spending the next two days fishing in Penobscot Bay. The locals were quite perplexed. “In January, Mr. Edelstein?” asked the reporter from the Bangor Daily News. Caught off guard, Marvin replied that he found the winter weather “invigorating.” I was grateful when he finally boarded the unmarked Air Force jet after a ridiculous charade through the streets of Bangor, changing cars twice to make sure we weren’t being followed.
We arrived at José Martí Airport at four in the morning, I haggard and badly in need of bed. Instead we were whisked off for breakfast with Foreign Minister Galvan. “Breakfast” consisted of coffee the texture of loose sand, pineapple slices, and eggs which would have hatched the next day.
Foreign Minister Galvan was a decent enough fellow who shared with most Latins a native garrulousness. He spoke uninterrupted for two hours and six minutes. It was clear he regarded the “initiativo” as Comandante Castro’s idea. As a matter of fact, it had been President Tucker’s initiativo, and after a while I found it necessary to point this out.
Marvin gave me a smart kick under the table, nearly breaking the skin on my shin.
Foreign Minister Galvan seemed not to hear my protests, but went on merrily, saying that the visits of Castro to Washington and Tucker to Havana would be “instantly hailed around the world as examples of the wisdom of America’s new leadership.” Marvin was saying nothing, only nodding. This was getting out of hand.
Clearing my throat, I begged the Foreign Minister to understand that President Tucker was eager for substance, not mere spectacle, and that we felt an exchange of ambassadors, not Presidents, would be an appropriate start.
Foreign Minister Galvan blinked a few times, relit his cigar, and said how tired we must be.
Once back in our hotel room, Marvin berated me for “interfering.” I drew myself up to full height and informed him that the President had sent me down here to make sure he, Marvin, didn’t paint him into a corner. Marvin huffed off to compose his cable. I went off to crawl under the covers, which were damp from humidity and gave off a mildewy odor.
That night we were taken to see El Comandante. Castro was in a gregarious mood, and not hesitant to talk about his “achievements.” Dinner dragged as I politely declined to partake of one dish after another. At one point the Comandante himself stopped all conversation to ask, through his interpreter, why I was not eating. I told him that my stomach was unsettled. He frowned and in stentorian fashion summoned a doctor. I insisted that I would be fine as long as I trod a delicate gastronomic routine.
Well then, he said, I must have some of the “excellent” Cuban beer.
When I told him I did not consume alcoholic beverages, he made it plain that I had just insulted all of Cuba. Marvin leaned over and hissed, “Will you just take a sip, for Chrissake?”
Well, when in Rome, as they say. I took a swallow of the stuff. Castro indicated his pleasure, and the conversation resumed.
My memory of what followed is indistinct. I remember that my glass was being constantly refilled, even as I held up my hand to decline. There was also much toasting, I dimly recall; and at one point I found myself being embraced by the Cuban leader. His beard smelled of cigar, and prickled. After repeated toasts to normalization, we were loaded onto a procession of jeeps and taken to a newly completed hydroelectric facility. It was during the Comandante’s speech regarding the Czechoslovakian turbines that I became physically indisposed. After that, I remember very little indeed.
We were flown—mercifully—back to Washington the next day, Marvin in a royal huff and barely saying a word to me. I was grateful, as I had never before experienced what is euphemistically called a hangover. To me it seemed more like a combination of the flu, migraine, and bilharziasis. When he demanded that I put on my disguise before landing at Andrews Air Force Base, I told him that under no circumstances would I put on that disgusting beard. To this day beards summon up the most unpleasant associations.
As I walked through the West Wing, people greeted me like a diseased person, lowering their voices, hurrying out of my vicinity. Even through the fog of my distress I thought this unusual. Here I was, returning from a presidential mission, and plainly the worse for wear. Somehow I managed to reach my office. Immediately Barbara said, “He’s waiting for you.”
Holding my throbbing temples between my hands, I groped my way to the Oval.
The President was in one of his quiet tempers. “Welcome back,” he said curtly. “Mind explaining this?”
Dimly I attempted to focus on the cable he’d handed me. It was a description of our negotiations with the Cubans, signed by Marvin. It made him sound like Benjamin Franklin. I, on the other hand, was made to sound like something out of Animal House. Alas, due to my circumstances, I lacked the wit to defend myself.
“Codswallop,” I muttered.
The President said, “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
“A tissue of untruths. He would have given them Florida if they’d asked.”
“So you threw up on their new dam. On Castro’s pant leg. Dammit, Herb.”
I explained to the best of my impaired ability, but it was clear that the President was disappointed in me. For the next few days I made myself scarce, hoping that his displeasure was temporary.
Normalization fever swept through the administration. About a week after my inglorious return we had a meeting in the Oval. The President seemed bemused by all the excitement. “Holt called this morning from State,” he said. “Wanted to know when ‘we’re’ going to Havana. Petrossian’s in a lather because he thinks there goes Florida. Reigeluth’s delighted. He thinks one of the anti-Castro group is going to blow me away. Remind me, Bam,” he said to Lleland, “why did we pick Reigeluth?”
“The Northeast.”
“Oh, yes. Right.”
It was at this meeting that he told us he had decided against going to Havana or inviting Castro to the U.S. Marvin shifted in his seat and tried to persuade him that reciprocal visits were the thing.
“No,” he said, “I won’t do that. Castro’s a dictator. Dictators like parades—makes them feel legitimate. He doesn’t want to be recognized by the U.S., he wants to be respected by the U.S. I’ll give him the first, not the second.”
The President then told me he wanted me to return to Havana to work out arrangements for The Meeting. I was stunned. In front of the others I asked him why he wanted me to go, considering the mess I’d made of things the first time.
He said that Clay Clanahan of CIA thought my “embarrassment” had been arranged. He grinned. “Marvin here was hot for reciprocal visits. You weren’t. Clay thinks this was their little way of making a point. We
ll,” he chuckled, “I too can make a point.”
Wadlough, I said to myself, we’re out of the doghouse. Marvin looked positively miserable.
The President reached behind him, took a desk atlas, and opened it to the Caribbean. He took a ruler and drew a straight line from Key West to Havana.
“There,” he said, making a small X. “Longitude eighty-two west. Latitude twenty-three degrees, fifty minutes north … hell, make it an even twenty-four degrees. Halfway. Tell El Comandante I will meet him there.” He held the point of the pencil in place. Then he added with a slightly devious smile, “Take Leslie Dach along with you.”
Feeley, Marvin, Lleland, and I all looked at each other. I said, “Are you sure that’s wise?” But the President only smiled.
7
LESLIE
Nothing normal about normalization. Grave doubts crowd in. Spoke with Joan over telephone. Most annoying when Embassy operator said, “Be advised there is no privacy over this line.” Joan upset to know our intimate conversation being listened to by communists.
—JOURNAL, JAN. 16, 1991
Leslie R. Dach, Director of Presidential Advance, was by all accounts the best advanceman in the business but an unmitigated political liability. He thought nothing of closing off the Brooklyn Bridge in rush hour to accommodate a motorcade, or of shutting down an airport on Friday of the Labor Day weekend. When the President visited the South Bronx, Dach had several enormous tenement buildings razed overnight so the cameras would have an unobstructed shot of the presidential profile. His motto was “Get the fuck out of my way.” It took on the force of scripture in the advance office. (One of the secretaries in his office had stitched it in needlepoint on a cushion; I forbade any photographs to be taken of it, for obvious reasons.)
Leslie managed to insult more or less everyone with whom he came into contact. Perhaps that is in the nature of advancemen, but during the campaign it was necessary to devise a computer form apology which we routinely sent out after an event. It read:
The Governor deeply regrets you were inconvenienced by Mr. Dach, a member of his advance team. He has spoken sharply to Mr. Dach about it and has received his assurance that such a thing will never happen again.
He would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your assistance in his campaign. He hopes he can count on your continued support, for the good of the campaign and of our country.
Sincerely,
Herbert Wadlough,
Executive Assistant to the Governor
Leslie was serene in his contempt for fools, a category which in his view included most of humanity. But he was so good at what he did that he was untouchable. He made miracles happen, and most politicians like miracles to happen around them. It gives them the illusion of divine aura.
Leslie, Marvin, and I flew to Havana, this time without the disguises. Marvin was still chafing over the President’s decision not to turn the meeting into a bilateral orgy and, I suspected, had not quite resigned himself to it. “He’s missing a great opportunity, Herb,” he told me as the Jet Star sliced through the night 33,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. “To turn this into some clandestine meeting in the middle of the ocean … What’s the point anyway?”
“Marvin,” I said, “the President is firm on these arrangements. We have a job to do.”
He lowered his voice so that Dach, sitting forward of us, couldn’t hear. “What worries me,” he whispered, “is him. He’s a madman, you realize. He’ll ruin everything.”
“Calm yourself,” I said. “Whether the Cubans find him agreeable is irrelevant. And unlikely. No one finds Dach agreeable. Dach is a genius.”
“I don’t care.”
“He has the confidence of the President.”
Marvin slumped in his seat. “Then why do I have a bad feeling in my stomach?”
“I am not acquainted with the vicissitudes of your digestive system, Marvin. But if you are having difficulties, I suggest you drink only bottled water and avoid salads. Among Mr. Castro’s miracles, the elimination of amoebae is not numbered.” With that I turned back to my paperwork.
Galvan was mute with disappointment when Marvin informed him of the President’s decision to meet Castro at 24 North, 82 West instead of 17th and Pennsylvania Avenue. He told us unsmilingly he was not sure El Comandante would agree to the proposal.
“I’m afraid this is not a proposal,” I interjected before Marvin could equivocate.
“We will be in contact,” he said grimly.
“When?” It was Leslie. Marvin and I rushed to assure the Foreign Minister we were at his disposal, but the insult had already registered. He turned on Leslie.
“When I tell you,” he glared. “The Comandante is a busy man.”
Leslie regarded him with casual contempt. “Yeah, well, so am I. So is Mr. Edelstein here and Mr. Wadlough—”
“Leslie!” I said.
“—so why don’t you pick up the phone here and call him? Assuming your phones work, which they don’t, from what I’ve heard.”
Oh, dear, I thought.
At this point both Marvin and the Foreign Minister began screaming at Leslie. Their combined remonstrations had as much effect on him as bugs have on windshields. He yawned. “Listen, Ricky, we’re not getting anywhere, are we?”
The Foreign Minister sputtered. “Ricky?”
“Ricardo, whatever—”
“My name is Galvan! To you I am Your Excellency!”
“Right. Look, why don’t you just turn us over to someone who knows what he’s doing?”
“What?”
Marvin said to me: “You’ve got to stop this. It’s undignified.”
But you couldn’t stop Leslie. Now he was telling the Foreign Minister to put us in touch with someone who “has influence.” Galvan was threatening to have him expelled from the country.
“I’ll be at this number for one hour,” said Leslie, looking out the window at the beach. “After that you can call long distance.” At this the Foreign Minister stormed out.
“I’m hungry,” said Leslie. “They have room service in this country?”
“Leslie,” I said, “you’ve probably ruined the whole thing.”
“I doubt it,” he yawned. “You’ve got to make things clear at the start. You save yourself a lot of trouble that way.”
I called the President on a SECURE line from the American Interests section of the Swiss Embassy and gave him an account of our “progress” so far.
There was a long pause after I finished.
“Do you want me to send Leslie home?” I offered.
“Home? Hell, no. I may make him ambassador.”
Marvin wrested the phone from me. “Mr. President,” he said, “you cannot allow an advanceman to conduct foreign policy.”
When he’d hung up, I asked him what the President had said.
Marvin looked at me miserably. “He said, ‘Well, I’m President. I guess I can do anything I want.’ ”
Shortly afterward we received word that our appointment with Castro was set for eleven o’clock that night. The invitation was exclusivamente for Señor Edelstein and Señor Wadlough.
He greeted me less physically than at our previous encounter; however, I was grateful, inasmuch as El Presidente had been “in the fields” and was sweating profusely. At first I thought he might turn us down, so keen was his disappointment about the President’s Florida Straits Rendezvous With Destiny plan, as it was called. Marvin was eloquent in his unctuousness, however, and in the end Castro agreed to the historic meeting. As he was leaving, he said through his interpreter, “If we are to meet at sea, I hope your President has a stronger stomach than you.”
The great event was set for March 14.
The Cuban government refused to hold the meeting aboard a U.S. naval vessel and we refused to hold it aboard a Cuban naval vessel. The stalemate was broken when Canada offered its new helicopter carrier, the Diefenbaker. Leslie set about making the Canadians regret their decision, and I spent
many hours sweeping up after him, soothing enraged Canadian naval officials. The Captain of the Diefenbaker was sorely tried. He agreed to vacate his cabin, and to paint over the entire flight deck with the United States and Cuban flags. He even accepted with consummate graciousness Leslie’s frequent insults about the condition of the ship, which was nearly as immaculate as the Queen’s own yacht. But when Leslie blithely informed the Captain that he would have to reinsulate the ship “top to bottom” so TV sound crews wouldn’t pick up any hum, the Captain ordered him off his ship and for three frantic days refused to allow him back on board. The President wanted the press contingent limited to 200, which set the Fourth Estate to baying about the “trampling of free speech.” The conservative press was apoplectic, especially Human Events, National Review, and Commentary calling the President “Red Tom.” We could have done without the endorsement from the Daily Worker, but as America warmed to the thaw, no one seemed to notice.
The President himself was surprised by the extent of the hubbub over the Cuba opening.
“Did you see this?” he groused one morning, staring at the Bloomingdale’s ad in the Times for its “Havana ’91” fashion line. Across the top of the two-page spread screamed: REVOLUTION—AND THE LOOK IS NOW! “Jesus,” he groaned, “what have I done?”
Cigars became the rage around the White House until the President banned them. But even in the shopping malls of conservative, suburban Virginia, where the Che Guevara look had never been much in evidence, one could see the bizarre effect the Cuba opening was having on the public. My own teenage son, Herbert, Jr., stopped shaving and came home from high school one day wearing olive fatigues and jungle boots. Joan was beside herself. Another day she called me at work, something she never did unless it was serious. “He’s out back in the yard with that machete. He’s cut all the bark from the maples.”
The High Seas Summit, as the press dubbed it, nearly fell through two days before it was to occur. I had a call from Mr. Docal, my counterpart in Havana. He was fit to be tied. And for good reason.
The White House Mess Page 6