by James Philip
Katzenbach’s whistle-stop journey to the North-West had done little to allay his growing fears for the cohesion of the Union. The disconnection between what was going on Washington State and the positively surreal way in which the denizens of the capital city viewed the reality beyond their immediately environs, was horribly dangerous. Although the President and his closest advisors – among whose number he did not presently count himself – might not know or care to recognise what was going on in the rest of the country, he hoped that somebody, somewhere in the vicinity of the White House had a grip of the situation; but he did not know this to be a fact and that scared him. Likewise, the attitude of the military seemed unduly complacent. None of the Chiefs of Staff had raised his head above the parapet over the ‘Bellingham issue’, each preferring to focus on managing the process of disarmament in his own service inherent in the Administration’s ungodly rush to cash in the ‘peace dividend’.
Nicholas Katzenbach did not personally cavil about the general concept of a ‘peace dividend’, quite the contrary, he believed that ‘cashing in’ on the peace was an essential investment in the future wealth, economic, technical and industrial development of the nation, and the obvious way to free up scarce Federal funds to address the most pressing social, welfare and inequality issues facing America. However, he had never supported attempting to ‘cash in’ that peace dividend overnight; a transparently crude and blatantly ‘political’ move ahead of next year’s Presidential election. As such it was not just a very bad mistake, it was unethical politically and frankly, just plain dumb.
Which was more or less what Bob McNamara, the Secretary of Defence had told the President ‘in Cabinet’ back in February. At the time Katzenbach had been astonished McNamara had not resigned. A less cerebral and less loyal man than Bob would certainly have resigned; most likely he had only stayed on because he could not think of anybody else more capable than himself of limiting the damage.
The trouble was that the way the ‘Peace Dividend’ had been initiated; by the Treasury Department simply turning off the ‘money tap’ to the Pentagon was always going to be an unmitigated disaster. Bob McNamara was a business guru; he must have seen it coming but the Washington DC departmental bureaucracies, locked away inside the DC bubble had gone about translating Presidential edicts into action with the subtle aplomb of blacksmiths mending precision Swiss watches with hammers.
Right now the entire apparatus of Government was working overtime to first, make the mandated cuts to the Armed Forces of the Republic, and second, to get its sweaty hands on every single dollar allegedly ‘saved’ by the ill-thought out, criminally rushed ‘cuts’. As Bob McNamara had – apocryphally - told his Treasury counterpart in a score of Capitol Hill off the record briefings ‘no sane man would try to run a candy store this way’. From where Katzenbach sat it seemed to him that the Administration was tearing itself to pieces trying to reconcile a raft of wholly irreconcilable and incompatible policies at a time of extreme ongoing crisis; at exactly the same time it was dismantling the victorious military machine which had actually won the Cuban Missiles War.
That, of course, was the problem. One camp honestly believed that the October War marked a departure from the path the United States had been on since the end of the Japanese War in 1945. That camp was convinced that it was time for a fresh start.
Another camp maintained that real life was not that simple. That there was no such thing as a clean slate in domestic or international affairs; and that before it mothballed a single ship or aircraft or disbanded a single infantry platoon the Administration ought to have sat down, taken a very deep breath and reviewed all – not just the politically seductive – options and decided where America’s real long-term geopolitical interests lay in the changed World. This camp subscribed to the view that even to think about cashing in a ‘peace dividend’ so soon after the war was dangerously, if not criminally premature.
Nicholas Katzenbach sat squarely within this second camp. Possibly a majority of the Cabinet also sat in that camp; unfortunately, the President and Katzenbach’s boss at the Department of Justice, did not.
The Administration had been drifting – some said it had been in free fall – for much of the last year. The execution of the peace dividend had been comprehensively botched and every pre-war, pre-existing stress and contradiction within American society had been allowed to fester. If it had not been before, the body politic was poisoned and what had happened in Bellingham might just turn out to be a chilling small scale prequel to the fate of the Union.
Such were the matters upon which United States Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach had been brooding on the flight back to Washington from McChord Air Force Base.
“I’m Gretchen Betancourt,” the attractive brunette said, barring Katzenbach’s way in the reception lounge of the VIP Centre.
The Deputy Attorney General blinked at the young woman and flicked a disinterested glance at the dapper, tired young man at her shoulder. Somebody had passed him a note about one of his junior counsels wanting five minutes of his time as soon as he got back to Washington. He checked his watch: 5:25 AM. His stay in Olympia and his discussions with the three West Coast Governors had, of necessity, somewhat overshot his staff’s unrealistic scheduling.
“Who is your friend, Miss Betancourt?”
“I’m Dan Brenckmann, sir,” The man in the dark coat said, shaking the Katzenbach’s hand. “I’m here in the capacity of Gretchen’s chaperone. Things are a bit rough hereabouts for a woman on her own.”
Gretchen visibly blanched at this.
“Dan’s a member of the Massachusetts bar, sir,” she said, impatient to get past the civilities. “There are three files you need to see before your appointment with Director Hoover tomorrow,” she corrected her error, “sorry, this afternoon, sir.”
“You can tell me about it on the way back to DC.” He eyed Gretchen’s chaperone. “Brenckmann? I recollect encountering a Walter Brenckmann at a pre-trial hearing in Boston a few years back? Navy man?”
“That would be my Pa, sir. He was sent to England a while back. As liaison with the British Royal Navy, or some such.”
Katzenbach nodded, took a mental breath, ordered his thoughts. He was a solid, high browed figure with the presence of a man who was used to commanding respect and to the casual exercise of authority.
“Miss Betancourt’s chaperone is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do you feel about being Miss Betancourt’s special assistant, Mr Brenckmann?”
“Er, well...”
“You don’t have to make a decision now. Come back in the car with Miss Betancourt and me and let me know what you think later this morning.”
“Dan has his own practice in Boston, sir,” Gretchen protested half-heartedly.
Nicholas Katzenbach smiled.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, Miss Betancourt. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Ten minutes later the United States Deputy Attorney General, Gretchen and Dan Brenckmann, and a duty staffer from the Department of Justice were facing each other in the back of one of the armoured Presidential limousines kept at Andrews Air Force Base for transporting VIPs from Andrews Field to destinations in and around Washington DC. Gretchen and Dan sat with their backs to the driver, Gretchen opposite Nicholas Katzenbach, Dan Brenckmann across from the yawning DOJ man.
“Director Hoover has Special Agents tapping the Attorney General’s phones and documenting his meetings with Dr King and other leading members of the Civil Rights movement, sir,” Gretchen reported, dispensing with an exploratory preamble. “The FBI is also illegally tailing and, for want of a better word, ‘persecuting’ associates of the leaders of the African-American groups with whom the Attorney General is meeting or is otherwise in communication with. For example, a man called Dwayne John is currently in custody in San Francisco awaiting interrogation by a team of FBI men whose job appears to be to travel around the country try
ing to dig up evidence to implicate Dr King and others in ‘un-American activities’. It was my understanding that we had moved on from those days, sir?”
The United States Deputy Attorney General raised a weary eyebrow.
“Director Hoover never moves on, Miss Betancourt.”
“The FBI only showed me the files because they want to be able to turn around at some later date and claim that you and the Attorney General knew what was going on all the time, sir.”
Katzenbach nodded.
“That would be Director Hoover’s SOP,” he agreed mildly.
Gretchen frowned.
“Standard operating procedure,” Dan Brenckmann murmured helpfully.
She threw a vexed look at him.
“Sorry, with two Navy men in the family there’s a lot of Navy talk around the dinner table...”
Nicholas Katzenbach tried hard not to grin too broadly.
“What else do you need to tell me?” He asked.
“The first two files were to do with the Bureau’s activities against persons involved in the Civil Rights movement,” Gretchen explained primly. “The third was a summary file preparatory to a court submission to compel the Air Force to hand over confidential files on several civilian contractors who had had ‘contact’ with the Head of Security at Ent Air Force Base at Colorado Springs. Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Gunther was found dead in his car seven days ago. Ignoring the fact that Colonel Gunther had no history of depression, and that he was happily married with young sons; Special Investigation Branch at the Pentagon have classified the death as an open and shut suicide. The report mentions ‘pressure of work’ as a possible motive for suicide but there is no supporting evidence for this. However, Colonel Gunther’s superiors had warned him on two separate occasions to stop ‘harassing civilian contractors’. A civilian analyst called Maxwell Herman Calman, and another Burroughs Corporation man, a Solomon Kaufmann both filed harassment complaints against Gunther.”
“Ent Air Force Base is the Headquarters of NORAD,” Katzenbach mused, his brow slightly furrowed. “Was the local PD or pathologist’s report on the death in the file?”
“No, I requested sight of it, sir. It seems that it was one of the documents embargoed at the Pentagon.”
“What exactly is the Bureau’s beef with the Air Force?”
“There is a note that there have been several other suspicious deaths of Air Force officers in recent weeks, sir. Somebody in the Judge Advocate’s Office flagged the deaths, none of which occurred within the boundaries of any military base, training area, aircraft or vessel, and asked why the relevant military authorities did not appear to be co-operating fully with local police and justice officials. I don’t know how the FBI initially got involved. Presumably, somebody tipped somebody off at the DOJ.”
Katzenbach was too tired to get drawn into a quasi territorial-judicial spat with the FBI, the Air Force and for all he knew, several sulking and uncooperative city and county police departments. The first thing a man learned in a job like his was that there was never enough time, and that there were never enough people who knew their arse from their elbows to do everything properly. One had to prioritise, to decide what really mattered and to never, ever take one’s eye off that ball.
“I think we’ll let the FBI worry about their ‘suspicious suicides’ for now, Miss Betancourt.” This issue kicked into the long grass he returned to the earlier irregularities the young woman had brought to his attention. “I will raise the matter of Director Hoover’s flouting of the civil liberties of American citizens with him later today. Thank you for your briefing.”
He noted Gretchen’s ill-concealed disappointment.
“Do you do shorthand?” He asked, idly.
“No,” she retorted. Secretaries did shorthand, not ambitious young attorneys. “No, sir,” she added hurriedly in what she hoped was a less dismissive and more respectful fashion.
Nicholas Katzenbach shook his head, smiled mostly to himself.
“Can you act as if you do shorthand, Miss Betancourt?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Good. You will attend the interview with Director Hoover in the capacity of my junior associate.”
Chapter 13
Tuesday 26th November 1963
Bellingham, Washington State
Major General Colin Dempsey arrived as dawn was breaking over the scene of total devastation which had once been the peaceful, thriving fishing and logging community of Bellingham. He had ordered the bodies of the insurgents to be burned and now great pyres roared and guttered in the wind and the stench of gasoline fumes fouled the clean air falling down to the sea off the mountains. Outside the town survey teams were searching for the mass graves containing the bodies of untold thousands of Bellingham’s pre-war population.
Dempsey had not been in Germany in 1945; he had missed witnessing Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and the half-a-hundred other nightmare concentration and death camps of the Nazis. Likewise, by the time he had got to Japan in late 1945 all the Allied prisoners had been repatriated and the Japanese were left scrabbling about in the ashes of their broken civilization, pathetic survivors reduced to figures evoking sympathy and pity rather than contempt. He had heard about the things that had happened in Russia under Josef Stalin’s barbaric tyranny. However, nothing had really prepared him for what he had found in Bellingham. What he had found on American soil! Or the monstrous scale of the atrocities committed by Americans against fellow Americans! It turned his stomach just to think about it.
The men and boys had been beaten, starved and worked to death. When their usefulness was at an end they had been clubbed into oblivion with baseball bats or rifle butts, the lucky ones had been granted the mercy of a bullet through the head. The women and children had suffered unimaginable torments. To be a young girl or woman in Bellingham had been to live in purgatory, to suffer degradations so obscene as to be very nearly unthinkable in the modern World. He doubted if any Vandal or Mongol horde of antiquity had ever subjected a single population to such an extended orgy of unrestrained sexual violence. If Bellingham was an example of what happened when society disintegrated then he had vowed to die before he let it happen again anywhere else.
The defenders – criminals and insurgents, inhuman beasts really - had had no shortage of firepower, or of fit fighting age men to man the barricades. ‘Fit’ as in the context of animals that had coalesced into a vicious, murderous tribe at Bellingham was a relative term. For most of the last year there had been no twentieth century medical facilities in the town – the conquerors had butchered local doctors and nurses and ransacked the local hospital for drugs early in their ‘occupation’. Tuberculosis and venereal diseases of all types were endemic in the ranks of the defenders, and by the time the final assault went in many of the foot soldiers behind the hastily thrown up barricades and berms were starving. There had been no clean water in the town for months, and nobody had bothered to bury the dead after the initial mass executions.
The napalm, rockets and cannon fire of the Marine Corps A-1 Skyraiders had had killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of men – and a few women, no doubt – before the M48s and the armoured personnel carriers had smashed through the upturned cars and trucks the rabble inside the town imagined were ‘defences’.
Dempsey had lost thirty-seven dead and eighty-nine seriously wounded. He was not interested in how many of the ‘animals’ his men had killed. Nor had he intervened when his officers reported that the infantrymen and tankers inside Bellingham were systematically ‘finishing off’ the enemy wounded.
There had been eighty-eight prisoners; including five women.
The women seemed even more depraved than the men.
Of the original pre-war population of Bellingham, over thirty thousand souls, there were no survivors. The best guess was that between five and ten thousand people had left or escaped before the town was taken over by the gangs and the drifters who came down from the mountains, and before the flood of refugees surg
ing north from the ruins of Seattle had swamped the area. The newcomers had inflicted an increasingly barbaric, sadistically cruel regime on Bellingham and the State authorities had been powerless to do anything about it.
The problems of housing and feeding the survivors of Seattle, of ensuring that they received some bare minimum level of health provision had occupied the surviving resources of the state of Washington. Help from outside had trickled in but from the outset it was obvious the Federal Government was more concerned with the security of the massive Hanford nuclear works than with the piffling ‘little local difficulties’ of the Governor.
Bellingham and Washington State had hardly registered on the Federal Government’s ‘big picture’.
Of all the bombed cities Chicago had first call on military, medical and every other form of aide or succour, and the resources earmarked for the other northern ‘war damaged zones’ often got no further than the Windy City. Chicago’s million dead and million homeless automatically trumped Seattle’s quarter-of-a-million fatalities in the grim game of picking up the pieces of Armageddon.
Now Dempsey eyed the long line of filthy, variously bloodied prisoners with cold dispassion. The surviving ‘officers’ and ‘gang leaders’ - one woman and seven men - had been separated from the pack and taken down to Olympia for interrogation overnight. The old soldier had absolutely no compunction about what had to be done, or in the matter of how it was to be done.
The prisoners stood in a shambling, shuffling line in front of the trench bulldozed overnight. The Governor, Albert Dean Rosellini had signed the execution orders of the four women and seventy-six men in the execution line.
Given the choice the eight prisoners sent down to Olympia would almost certainly have opted to stand in the execution line this morning because the interrogators in Olympia had been specifically instructed not ‘to hold back’. Several of the members of the interrogation unit had been selected specifically because they had lost close family members or old friends in Bellingham.