Getting It Right

by William F. Buckley

  “The trouble with reason,” Romney said, “is that it hinders you from understanding people who act unreasonably. And it keeps you from talking with people you need to talk to to make progress in the world.”

  “People like who?”

  “People like voters. President Kennedy is going to run again and the Republicans are going to have to come up with somebody who can—reasonably—call for a harder line against Khrushchev, and they’re not going to be attracted by any movement pledged to inhuman policies. It isn’t going to help the Republican candidate—that’ll be Nelson Rockefeller, I assume—to read The Fountainhead. Perhaps your Mr. Welch will convince Rockefeller that Miss Rand is a secret agent.”

  “Oh, cut it out.”

  The older man smiled and reached for the flashlight in the bookcase. He wanted to shine it on the mountain peak he was worried about. He still hadn’t caught Mount Olympus, and he knew it.

  Marvin Liebman, famously affable, liked meeting with one or two people at most. Often his work required him to meet with ten or a dozen, notably at the committee board meetings. But these he managed to hold down, and always succeeded in doing so because the trustees and directors of all his groups had confidence in him.

  The central figure in Liebman’s life was Charles Edison, the elderly son of the great inventor. Edison, sometime secretary of the navy, had once been the Democratic governor of New Jersey. After the war, he had turned his attentions to the struggle against big government at home and the Communists abroad.

  His hearing gravely deteriorated, his health shaky, the widower Edison left New Jersey to live in the Waldorf Towers hotel, one floor removed from General Douglas MacArthur, one floor from former president Herbert Hoover.

  Edison distributed his money cautiously, but he was usually there to encourage Marvin Liebman. There was always a prospective mailing to an inchoate committee to protest whatever. In recent years, there had been President Eisenhower’s invitation to Khrushchev to visit the United States—Liebman initiated a committee to oppose the visit. South Korean prime minister Syngman Rhee had unilaterally released South Korean prisoners under United Nations detention—after the UN Security Council condemned Rhee, Liebman initiated a committee applauding him. Students at the University of California in Berkeley had mounted Operation Abolition, urging Congress to discontinue the work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities—Liebman backed the congressional committee and produced a film on the operations of the California lobby. Castro had announced his determination to bring socialism to Latin America aided by the Soviet Union—Liebman had a Committee for the Monroe Doctrine. All these political ventures needed modest capital to launch them. Charles Edison was there to advance it.

  Marvin was always amused by untoward incidents in his complicated life. At lunch, puffing on his cigarette at Paone’s restaurant, where he liked to eat and where the editors of National Review so often lunched, he recounted to Woodroe that Governor Edison had asked him to screen for General MacArthur a documentary one of Marvin’s committees had made on the subject of the territorial advances of the Communists in Asia and Europe. It was called The March of Marx.

  “Imagine, being responsible for taking a projector to MacArthur’s own suite. Governor Edison was there, but my hands were so shaky I could hardly thread the film. But I did, and then I said, as though I was good at that kind of thing, I said, ‘General, Governor, whenever you say!’ ‘Go ahead,’ the general said. So I pushed the play button and pftt! The bulb exploded; I just got some black smoke. What to do? The general pushed a button of some kind and a colonel—Colonel Whitney, an aide—came in. MacArthur pointed to the projector and the colonel came over to look at it. He got down on his knees and smelled it. For a minute I thought he was smelling me. Mind you, I was on the floor, on my knees—”

  Woodroe laughed. He delighted in the company he was cultivating.

  After the story was done (the Waldorf couldn’t come up with a replacement bulb; Marvin slinked home, carrying the wounded projector; “MacArthur never made another request to see The March of Marx”), they talked about conservative activity in New York City. The heart of it, Liebman said, “is right over there on Thirty-fifth Street. Buckley, James Burnham, Bill Rusher, Whittaker Chambers—until he died last year—Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk. The National Review gang. Then there are a half dozen key activists. They appear on various of my committees. Two young lawyers, Dan Mahoney and Kieran O’Doherty, they’re related by marriage, have started a state Conservative Party. The new party will try to get some voice for conservatives in state politics, which is dominated by Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits.” He spoke of the powerful figure just reelected governor of New York, and of the influential liberal Republican beginning his second term in the Senate. “Jack Javits might as well be a Democrat. You say you’re a Bircher. Are you a crazy Bircher or a—”

  Woodroe grinned. “A noncrazy Bircher?”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself. Well, just answer me one question: Do you think Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist agent?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Earl Warren is a Communist?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what are you doing in the John Birch Society?”

  Woodroe was sensitive on the questions. He thought he knew how to contend with them. “We’re both Republicans, you and I. What are we doing as members of a political party that has let government grow larger and failed to stop the Communists in Cuba and Hungary and China? So we have a big tent. The JBS is the biggest anti-Communist organization in the United States and has a lot of important conservatives backing it—”

  “I know, I know. And a lot of the same people contribute money to my organizations. But that Ike hang-up of Welch’s—”

  “You know, The Politician is not an official Birch Society publication.”

  “It might as well be.”

  “Marvin, that’s not right. Nobody—remember, I’m an employee and have been for a year and a half—nobody is asked even to read the book, never mind taking an oath to subscribe to its conclusions.”

  “Well, Woodroe, no point in dragging that out. What you want from me, I can see, is something to do in the anti-Communist movement in New York: YAF, the Committee of One Million, the UN Reform Committee—all those. Here’s the thing. We can’t put any Bircher up front with these groups, at least not up there with the governing trustees. Though”—he laughed and lit up again—“I am de facto the governing trustees! But there are a couple of people I couldn’t afford to antagonize, and wouldn’t want to antagonize.”

  “Governor Edison?”

  “Yes. And, of course, the National Review people. Now, listen, Woodroe, I’ve trusted you. You are not going to report to Belmont what I’ve just said to you about the JBS?”

  “I understand. But I have to report that there is this . . . feeling around in New York about the JBS.”

  “Sure. You can do that. Now here are the names of a couple of people in New York”—Liebman scratched on the pad with his fountain pen, always at hand—“you can tell Belmont about. They’re anti-Birch and don’t care who knows it. Here’s something useful you can do. Get in touch with student conservatives in colleges here. Every college has maybe three or four conservatives—Hunter, Columbia, CCNY, and of course Fordham and St. John’s have quite a few. So see what they’re up to. Give them things to read. Not The Politician! Poke around.

  “Here’s something else. One of my committees is called ‘Keep South Vietnam Free.’ That’s an endangered part of the world. Ho Chi Minh obviously intends to sponsor terror operations against the South. There’s a young South Vietnamese teacher in town. We brought him over for a few press conferences, got him here with the help of Diem’s sister-in-law. That’s Madame Nhu. They call her ‘The Dragon Lady.’ The young man’s name is Than Koo and he’s staying with an uncle who emigrated a few years ago. Look him up. Maybe your boss would like a story on him.”

  “Does he speak English?
”

  “Yes. And French. Do you speak French?”

  “A little. I studied it in Salt Lake and Princeton.”

  “Well, you should be fluent!” Marvin said. “Let me know how it works out for you.” He passed over a slip with a telephone number. “I’ll call him and tell him to cooperate. But maybe I won’t tell him you’re with the John Birch Society. I’ll just tell him you’re interested in doing a story on him. After all, that’s what he’s here for, to attract attention to South Vietnam.”

  Marvin turned grave. “I thought there was a good chance of a nuclear war in October. That’s how serious the foreign policy situation is.”

  They shook hands. Woodroe walked out of the restaurant; Liebman stayed to make a phone call.

  When Woodroe reached his office, he was surprised to learn from Tish, his secretary, that General Walker had called.

  He went to his office and called Dallas.

  It was very odd. The general spoke to him as if Woodroe were still in Dallas, living around the corner. Maybe, thinking Woodroe was still in town, he had simply told his secretary, “Get Woodroe Raynor on the phone.”

  The general spoke discursively, as though the two were having lunch.

  Yes, Woodroe said, yes he had read Khrushchev’s statement that the Cuban precedent—the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles—would not restrict the Kremlin in any future decision relating to the security interests of the Soviet Union. But Woodroe said, “Khrushchev may feel he has to say that kind of thing, don’t you think so, General?”

  “You know what, Woodroe, I don’t do this with many young people. But I’d like you to call me Ed. It isn’t as though we were both in the military and I was talking to a subordinate.”

  “Well, I’m honored . . . Ed.”

  “I’ve always been governed by my own intuitions. I don’t mind telling you that when Helena brought you into the picture I had my people do a little background check. And I learned about your stay in Austria. And the fact that you were shot up. How old were you then?”

  “Nineteen, sir.”

  “Well, that’s old enough to go to war. We’ll visit soon. Tomorrow I’m off with the Reverend Billy James Hargis. You know him?”

  “I know he’s president of . . . I can’t remember the name of it. A fundamentalist college in Tulsa.”

  “That’s right. And he’s a great televangelist, a powerful speaker, the Reverend Billy James. We’re doing a joint speaking tour. Let’s make a date for when I get back. Just a man-to-man evening. We won’t even invite Helena.”

  Woodroe was stumped. Should he tell him he wasn’t in Dallas anymore?

  “Doesn’t have to be tomorrow, or the next day, but I’ll put it down, and I’ll call you. God bless America, Woodroe.”

  “God bless America, General. Ed.”

  The call ended. Woodroe was perplexed.

  Should he call Helena? He discarded the idea. To tell her about this call, he sensed, would be something on the order of betrayal. Clearly General Walker had intended a purely personal talk.

  He would just wait. Perhaps there would be no next call from—Ed. But there would be, on the eighth of April.

  28

  THERE WAS A HORN AND HARDART Automat near Than Koo’s address in Queens, and Than suggested it as a meeting place for the interview with Woodroe at five the next day. Woodroe told Mr. Than he would bring along a copy of Newsweek magazine to facilitate recognition.

  Woodroe didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he was surprised by the youth of the Asian emissary who, with a slight bow of his head, introduced himself as Than Koo.

  The shirt collar was too large for his neck. Patches of his blue cotton jacket, glazed from use, reflected light from the neon Automat sign outside the window. Woodroe asked Mr. Than if he would like something from the Automat fare—“after all, it’s teatime.” In the Automat’s famous individual compartments, the food was exhibited and priced. Customers would insert nickels and dimes and quarters, in the sums required, to spring open the door and permit access to the cavity with the selected item.

  Than Koo said he would take some tea. He looked up at Woodroe questioningly. “And perhaps”—he pointed to a cinnamon roll, for sale for “three nickels,” or “one dime and one nickel.” Woodroe had changed a dollar and his hand was full of silver. They walked then to the beverage bar and Woodroe paid for one tea and one coffee.

  “Well, Mr. Than, you go ahead and tackle your cinnamon roll and I’ll talk, because I’m just taking coffee. Then when you’re ready, you can talk. Okay?”

  Than Koo bowed his head and began with his fork to dismember the roll.

  “I’m from Salt Lake City—you know where that is?”

  “Of course. Mormon country. I am a Mormon.”

  Woodroe confessed his astonishment at hearing this, but remembered his promise to give Than a chance to eat and went on to tell his own story. “I was a Mormon missionary in Austria. And I had a very close view of the Communists at work. They were suppressing Hungarian freedom initiatives. They finally made their point, Mr. Than, by running Russian tanks over students.”

  Through a full mouth, Than managed to say, “We use Chinese tanks.”

  “Then I went to Princeton. I was one of the founders of the Young Americans for Freedom. That’s an anti-Communist, antisocialist youth organization. We were for Senator Barry Goldwater in Chicago, 1960, when they nominated Richard Nixon.”

  Than nodded as he finished his roll.

  “After graduating, I went to work for the John Birch Society. Marvin Liebman thought I shouldn’t tell you that. The John Birch Society is heavily attacked in America. People think our anti-Communism is . . . extreme. And Mr. Welch has some positions of his own which are, well”—Woodroe smiled: he had got used to the little Welch qualifier—“his own.”

  Than Koo wiped his mouth with his napkin, then put it down and shoved it out of the way.

  He explained that Madame Nhu—wife of the chief of security, General Nhu, and sister-in-law of President Ngo Dinh Diem—was his sponsor on this trip to America, that he had met with reporters in Los Angeles and Chicago, and that Madame Nhu was familiar with the John Birch Society, which after all was named after a Christian martyr in China. He, Than Koo, was honored to meet a member of this anti-Communist society, in particular to meet someone who had seen the Communists operate in Europe and knew what they did, and how.

  Than Koo, twenty-eight years old, told the story of his education at a French Catholic school in Hué. After the defeat of the French in 1954, he had been sent to college and had attended a secretarial training school. Then he had been drafted by the government and placed in service with a security detail in the North which endeavored to protect farming hamlets from the Vietcong.

  He told of his experience at Thom An Van Thuong. “It is twelve kilometers east of the eastern mountain range that flanks the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where all the supplies are brought down for the Vietcong. It was there that, when the barbed-wire gate was opened at daybreak to let the farmers out to the fields, someone banged at my door and reported that the chief councilor had been found dead at his desk, his throat slashed. The office stapler had been used to tack on the back of his neck a sheet of paper with ‘IMPERIALIST LACKEY’ written on it.”

  The murder/execution had to have been done, Than explained with deliberation, by one of the residents of the hamlet, and there were only eighty-five. He had sent his little squad on to its rendezvous with the next hamlet, north, but stayed back himself to attempt, by interrogating the villagers, to try to establish who, with late-night access to the councilor, had murdered him.

  He had been interrogating one suspect that night in the hut maintained for visiting military. “I was taking notes when the blow on my head came.”

  He woke in a Vietcong detention cell. “Then it began”—he lowered his collar to reveal the scars on his neck. “I don’t know how many days it was, but one morning, blindfolded, I was taken to a crossroads and I was exchange
d for three Vietcong prisoners. I was in very bad condition. In the hospital, my nurse had been five years in Utah in college and nursing school. She had become a Mormon, and I fell very much in love with her. We were married. Then—”

  With his little finger he stirred the tea and, for a moment, stopped talking.

  “—then when walking to the hospital one night—I was back on duty and we lived our happy nights together in a room in her uncle’s house—she was shot. It was not yet dawn, she was on the early-morning shift, and when they found her there was, again, a message on her neck. The same words, ‘IMPERIALIST LACKEY.’

  “I wanted to try to chase down the Vietcong who did this, but my major sent me to Saigon. They needed men who could speak English, and also French.

  “That is where I met Madame Nhu, because I serve directly under the general, her husband, who is in charge of intelligence. It was her idea to send me to America for three weeks. I hope to tell the story of the Vietnam that tries to be free.”

  “Is the Diem government hopeful?” Woodroe asked.

  “Everything depends on American aid. The Vietcong crop up everywhere, and their supply routes seem impossible to block. But President Kennedy has of course sent observers to Vietnam and they give us much encouragement. It will be a long struggle—did you see, Mr. Raynor, the declaration of Ho Chi Minh yesterday?”

  Woodroe hadn’t seen it.

  “He denounced American intervention in the South and pledged ten years of guerrilla action against South Vietnam, ‘if necessary.’ On the same day he said this, our government uncovered the huge cache of Communist Chinese weapons, north of Banmethuot.”

  Woodroe was moved by the old young man with the sad eyes. Impulsively, he said, “Mr. Than—”

  “I wish you would call me Koo.”

  “Well, yes. Koo—I’m Woodroe—are you free to come with me to Manhattan for dinner?”

  “I am entirely at your disposal.”