As they threaded their way up through the government buildings, Admiral Dunsmore asked two questions: “Will he be alone? And who speaks first?”
“Yes, to the first. At least initially. I do, to the second. Then I’m passing the ball right into your safe hands.”
“Where are you going to be during my explanation?”
“I am afraid to say, right next to you.”
“West Executive Avenue entrance coming up, sir,” announced the driver as he hit the brakes. And it was already clear they were expected. The guard waved them straight through, and at the door they were both instantly issued security passes handed to them by Secret Service agents.
Two of them escorted the military Chiefs straight into the West Wing, directly to the southeast corner, to the Oval Office. The senior agent tapped just once and opened the door. He and his colleague walked through first, beckoning the general and the admiral to follow. The President stood up, nodded to the agents to wait outside, shook hands gravely with his visitors — both of whom he knew well — and asked them to sit down in the two sturdy wooden armchairs set before his desk.
The admiral glanced briefly at the portrait of General Washington, admired the beautifully scalloped arch above the bookshelves, and stared out onto the sunlit southern lawn of the White House. He could hear General Paul speaking.
“Mr. President, it is my very sad duty to inform you that we have lost a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in some kind of a nuclear accident in the Arabian Sea, about three hours ago. There were six thousand men on board and you may assume there are no survivors.”
The President hesitated, grappling with the immensity of the words. “I may assume there is absolutely no possibility of a mistake, General?”
“You may, sir.”
“God Almighty! Six thousand dead? Six thousand American servicemen dead? How could such a thing possibly happen?”
“Mr. President, I just wish I knew. But we were all ten thousand miles away from the Arabian Sea. There’s never been anyone killed in a nuclear accident. I just cannot offer any explanation. But Admiral Dunsmore may be able to clarify the situation a little better than I.”
“Okay. Okay. Now let’s just stay calm, despite the fact that the United States is about to earn both the ridicule and the sympathy of the entire world during the next twenty-four hours. Come on, Scott, any clues? Any excuses? Any ray of light? Can you give me a rough outline of what transpired? I guess we’ll have to announce something real quick. But talk me through it first. Then I’ll call in some help.”
The admiral ran swiftly through the facts — the position of the Thomas Jefferson and the Battle Group, the sudden underwater eruption, the huge waves, the nuclear fallout, the lack of sonar confirmation of a big ship breaking up. The sudden, inexplicable disappearance of the carrier. The devastating, irrevocable conclusion that the USS Thomas Jefferson had been vaporized in some kind of a nuclear holocaust.
The big Oklahoman behind the presidential desk was still for a moment, resting his chin upon his hands. Then he asked suddenly, “Who was the Flag officer?”
“Zack Carson, sir.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” he said. “He and I are from the same part of the world.”
Both the military Chiefs already knew that. Everyone in America was acquainted with the President’s rural background in the Oklahoma Panhandle, close to the Kansas border, where his family’s cattle ranch was well known. He later had a dazzling academic career at Harvard Law School.
“Sir, I think the announcement should be made from here, given the scale of a national disaster. I would recommend that the CNO makes a formal statement to the White House Press Corps in the next forty-five minutes. Then you should address the nation at around 2100 this evening. Or before.”
“I agree with that,” replied the President. “But I have one question. You sure this was an accident?”
Admiral Dunsmore looked up sharply, surprised by the directness of the question he knew must be asked sooner or later. He paused for a moment, staring past the President at the flags of the Marines, Navy, and Air Force which flanked the tall windows. Then he answered, “No, sir. I cannot be sure of that. At this stage no one can. We cannot rule out an attack from an unknown enemy. Nor can we rule out some act of sabotage. However, until we have some kind of suggestion to that effect, sir, I see no reason to cause that kind of alarm to the public.”
The President looked thoughtful. “It’s kinda hard to know which way to swing,” he said. “An accident makes the Navy look incompetent, which I would dearly like to avoid. A successful attack on an American aircraft carrier, possibly by some guy essentially dressed in a sheet, would spread great consternation, possibly even panic. The fucking liberal press would absolutely love it. I guess we are talking about the lesser of two evils. And either way the Navy looks bad.”
“The way I see it,” said General Paul, interrupting the Navy-Presidential conference, “is this. If that ship was attacked, then I guess we’ll find out in the end. But I see no need, at this stage, to suggest the possibility to the press or the public. As things stand, we must deal with a huge outpouring of grief, recrimination, scorn, and derision. There is no need to add public fear to an already lousy equation.”
“I agree,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “Let’s not add to our woes. At this point, despite some natural reservations, I think we should announce a shocking accident on one of our carriers. There is no advantage whatsoever in suggesting a U.S. Battle Group came under attack and a $4 billion carrier was obliterated by foreign persons unknown. My God, if you’re not safe in a carrier, protected by a private strike/attack air force, guided missile cruisers, and two nuclear submarines, how on earth can anyone, anywhere, ever feel safe?”
“My thoughts precisely, gentlemen,” said the President. Then, smiling wryly, “And I trust you will forgive me for bringing up the unthinkable?”
Scott Dunsmore nodded courteously. But he was thinking, “Every time I meet you, I understand better why you are sitting in that chair. If you’d been in the Navy, you’da been sitting in mine. Or more likely the General’s.”
In the next thirty minutes, the White House staff geared up for the press conference. The two military Chiefs adjourned to President Reagan’s old Situation Room in the West Wing basement, with the Press Secretary, Dick Stafford, and two writers.
The general sat in on the statement, while Admiral Dunsmore sat in the corner with an open line to the Pentagon, summoning top Navy brass to a conference on the fourth floor, E Ring, which would begin at 2200 right after the President’s address to the nation.
He placed his number two, the Vice CNO, Admiral Freddy Roberts, in charge of this, and a Navy jet was already refueling out at the San Diego Navy base in readiness for the flight to Washington. On board would be the C-in-C Pacific Fleet, and the Commander of the Naval Surface Fleet in the Pacific. The Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces (Central Command and Middle East), who was visiting San Diego, would also be on board. The Commander of Space and Naval Warfare Systems was being traced on a visit to an electronics corporation in Dallas and would be scooped up by the same aircraft.
Admiral Dunsmore also requested the presence at the meeting of Admiral Morgan, and of a young lieutenant commander from Naval Intelligence, Bill Baldridge, the best nuclear weapons man in the service, whose brother had been lost on the carrier. As the monstrous Naval crisis began to take shape in the White House, he was gunning his 1991 Ford Mustang up the Suitland Parkway at around 87 mph, chatting on his mobile phone to the raven-haired wife of a notoriously uninteresting Midwestern senator. “Yeah, I don’t know what it’s about yet, but we don’t start till 10 P.M. I could be at the Watergate by 2:30. I still got my key. Yeah, I knew he was in Hawaii, read it in the paper.”
Meanwhile the President was in conference in the Oval Office with his National Security Adviser, Sam Haynes, his White House Chief of Staff, Louis Fallon, and the Secretary of Defense, who had just arrived b
y helicopter from Norfolk, Virginia. The problem was how to distance the President from any kind of responsibility, protect the Navy, and make political capital from being seen to be concerned to the point of distraction.
By now Dick Stafford was shuttling between the Situation Room and the Oval Office, trying to mastermind the confident phrases which would allay the terrible damage the press were about to inflict on the U.S. Navy and the Presidency.
The one being written for Admiral Dunsmore was much the easier of the two, and at 4.30 P.M. he stood before the packed White House press briefing room and read his prepared statement. “It is my sad and unfortunate duty to announce the loss of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Thomas Jefferson,” he began. The statement concluded with the words: “There were six thousand men on board, and there are no survivors.”
For perhaps ten seconds there was a stunned, disbelieving silence in the room, as if no one wanted to accept the paralyzing news as real. But when pandemonium finally broke out, it very nearly registered on the Richter Scale. It seemed that every journalist in the room, all two hundred of them, leapt to their feet at the same time waving notebooks and microphones, yelling for information.
Admiral Scott Dunsmore wisely refrained from answering the questions which rained down on him from all areas of the room.
“When exactly did it happen?”
“When do we get a list of the dead?”
“How do you know there were no survivors?”
“Is this the biggest peacetime disaster in U.S. military history?”
“Will the Chief of the Navy resign?”
White House aides moved instantly to the admiral’s side, the press secretary appealed for order…“Gentlemen…gentlemen! This is a day of great tragedy…please! Try to act in a dignified manner!”
Too late. This was beyond a press conference. This was a feeding frenzy; the sharks of the media scented blood. Anyone’s blood. And they were circling Scott Dunsmore as if he were Adolf Hitler come back to life. Flashbulbs lit up the room, cameramen fought for position, trying to photograph the devastated CNO. No one could be heard clearly above the frenzy, which eased only marginally as the wire service men from UPI, Associated Press, and Reuters dived for quiet corners, mobile phones vibrating with the sheer magnitude of the story they were imparting to their city desks.
The White House Chief of Staff ordered the Marine guards to move forward between the front row and the dais and the press secretary ordered the room cleared.
Even as Admiral Dunsmore was being escorted from the room by four U.S. Marines, tomorrow’s tabloid headlines were already being drafted…“6,000 U.S. SERVICEMEN DIE — NAVY NUKES ITSELF”…“NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST ON U.S. CARRIER”…“U.S. FLATTOP SELF-DESTRUCTS”…“NAVY NUKES 6,000 AMERICANS.”
It would be up to the President to check the balance, to try to convince a by-then hysterical public that the U.S. Navy was not in fact being run by a group of homicidal maniacs. He had about four hours to perfect his words. Dinner for the ten participants involved in the drafting process — which included Scott Dunsmore and Josh Paul — consisted of ham sandwiches and coffee. By the time the last sandwich had gone, the American public was being blitzed by news, news of death and destruction in a faraway ocean, news of massive incompetence by the U.S. Navy, news of evasion by service Chiefs, news implying a cover-up, news designed to spread consternation, uneasiness, and, above all else, news to make the public want more. Much more.
Meanwhile, the two service Chiefs left for the Pentagon at 8:30 P.M. At just about the same time the Navy jet from San Diego and Dallas touched down at Andrews Air Force Base. There was a Navy helicopter on the runway, waiting to fly them in, direct to the Pentagon.
Twenty-five minutes later, the President, wearing a perfectly cut dark blue suit and a jet-black silk tie, left the Oval Office with Dick Stafford, and walked down the long corridor to face the media; Stafford for the second time that day, the President for the first time in six weeks. His mood was one of wary contempt. His party might dominate the Senate, but it did not dominate the awaiting pack. He would have to face them alone, with all of his formidable intellect, and all of his renowned rattlesnake cunning under pressure.
Stafford announced there might be a limited “questions and answers” at the conclusion of the speech. But too little was yet known by the Navy’s investigating professionals. There would however be a major briefing at the Pentagon at 1100 hours tomorrow morning. Then he requested silence for the President of the United States, who walked steadily to the dais and stood before hundreds of microphones. The cameras whirred. The lighting was dazzling, the mood pseudo-reverential.
The President spoke carefully, in the thoughtful tones that unfailingly mesmerized a big audience. And right now he had one of the biggest television audiences in history. Maybe the biggest.
“My fellow Americans,” he began, I address you this evening on one of the truly saddest days in the entire history of the United States — a day when we have lost several thousand of our finest men in what appears to have been a freak accident, a one-in-a-billion chance, which is baffling our most senior military scientists.
There has never been a nuclear accident in our armed forces — and the sheer scale of this one, which this afternoon devastated the great aircraft carrier, the Thomas Jefferson, has brought to each one of us a sense of shock; of grief for the anguished families of the men who served in her; of sorrow for colleagues and friends.
This most appalling event will in the coming days touch every corner of our country, because the scale of this disaster will spread its sorrow into communities for which death has usually been of intimate local importance, brushing only those lives which came close to a lost friend or relative.
The bereavement we all face now is of another dimension. I too had friends serving on board the Thomas Jefferson. And I am all too aware of the sadness their deaths will bring to lonely farming communities in the High Plains of the state of Kansas. One of them was a beloved senior admiral, another a first-class captain, destined for the very highest office in the service.
I know there will be personal sorrow too in little towns along the coast of Maine, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas…the traditional recruiting grounds for some of our finest Navy commanders.
In Georgia and Florida, too. In the South and the Midwest, and perhaps most of all, up and down the coast of California…in particular in the great port of San Diego, which was home to the Thomas Jefferson, and to so many of those who sailed in her.
At this time I would ask your forbearance in what I am about to say. For I come only to praise them, these finest of American patriots, who have made the final sacrifice of their calling in the most unforeseen way. But death to them, in the split-second unconscious heart stop of a nuclear fireball, was not quite what a similar death might have been to us — we, whose risks are so minimal, whose lives are mostly led without fear and ever-present tension.
For these men who died on the Thomas Jefferson, death, and its unseen threat, was a perpetual companion.
Because peacetime to us did not mean peacetime to them. We have a perception of peacetime only because of them. They were not part of its blessing. They were the cause of it; they were its guardian and its savior. No more in life than in death. They were not ordinary men. They were men who went down to the sea in ships; who patrolled the world’s oceans beneath the flag of this great nation. They were men who demanded peace. Pax Americana—peace on the terms laid down by the great steadying hand of the United States of America. Peace because we say there’s going to be peace, because we say the world’s free trade must always be permitted…in peaceful waters. Peace because we say so.
How many times, in moments of international strife, have you read the words: ‘The United States has warned…’? The United States can issue warnings only because of the men who died on the Thomas Jefferson. They were not like other men. The
y even have a joke about facing death in battle: ‘You shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.’ The words of our military men down the ages.
Each man who sailed in the great warship knew that deep in her bowels there were weapons of destruction that did not merely pack sufficient punch to blow up any enemy; they formed the barricade behind which all of the free world lives in peace. The men on the Thomas Jefferson knew that. As they gazed out at the awesome fighter/attack bombers that flew from her decks they saw the fire and the fury we could use against any aggressor. They knew that.
But these men had joined the United States Navy. And they knew something else. They also knew that in their most dangerous calling they might be asked to make the final sacrifice, in war, or in peace, at any time. They always knew that. For them, few days passed without reminders of the proximity of death. For their workplace was lethal — filled with mach-one fighter aircraft screaming in over the stern of the carrier; with guided missiles; with great Navy guns and bombs; with nuclear submarines. These men, the men of the Thomas Jefferson Battle Group, knew the frightening responsibilities of their profession. And they knew the great honor that profession bestowed upon them, and all of their families — every day of their lives. They died with suddenness, all of them in the prime of their being…these were the men for whom we sing, ‘For those in peril on the sea…’—the sailor’s hymn.
Which brings me, as it brought many other occupants of this office, to the lines written by the English poet Laurence Binyon:
They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.
And now I would like to ask each one of you to reflect, in the memory of these men, upon an issue which each one of them held dear until the end. Should the United States continue to police the world’s oceans? Is the danger, the shocking danger of it all, just too much to ask? I know my answer, and I believe I know the answer we would have received from the admiral who commanded the Thomas Jefferson—down all six thousand men, to the most junior rating, to the youngest of the missile officers. Is it worth it? That the USA should take on such onerous obligations and risks in order that we as a nation, and most of the world, may live without fear from any enemy?
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