My American Journey

by Colin L. Powell

  Carl Smith, Weinberger’s current military assistant, had been promoted to brigadier general with me on the same day four years before in Harold Brown’s office. Two days after my return to Fort Leavenworth, Carl called. Secretary Weinberger wanted me to come back to Washington for a chat, Carl said, adding, “Colin, I’m getting out of here even if I have to stick it to an old buddy to do it.”

  A few days later I was walking down the familiar E-Ring to the Secretary’s office. As I entered, Weinberger rose and shook my hand warmly in his gentlemanly manner. “Colin,” he said without wasting words, “you know General Smith wants to leave. Do you want his job?”

  “No, Mr. Secretary, I’m happy where I am. But,” I added, “I’ll serve wherever I’m sent.”

  “I expected you to say no less,” Weinberger answered. “I would have been disappointed if a soldier didn’t prefer the field.” We chatted a few more minutes and parted, with me still praying for deliverance by Pete Dawkins.

  Before I could get out of the building, Carl Smith found me. I had the job, he informed me with evident relief. Within minutes, Wickham confirmed the news. “We haven’t had an Army man in that spot since I left in 1976,” he explained. “And we want it. But don’t worry. I’m arranging a house for you at Fort Myer, Residence 27A, two minutes from the Pentagon and a fine place. And when you come back here, it will be with your second star.”

  Still, I had to go back and tell Alma that after less than a year, it was goodbye to Fort Leavenworth and the beloved house of history.

  I particularly regretted leaving the Buffalo Soldiers project unfinished. I had been able to light a fire under it, and I did not want that fire to go out. I had a black civilian on my staff whom I trusted implicitly, Alonzo Dougherty, who was also an officer in the Kansas National Guard. “Lonnie,” I said, “you know what this project means to me. I’m turning it over to you. I’ll continue to do whatever I can, long distance. But I am counting on you to keep it alive here.” Dougherty agreed to carry on.

  On June 29, 1983, one of the last days of my CACDA tour, I stood in Grant Auditorium and Lieutenant General Carl Vuono, now deputy commander of TRADOC, pinned that second star on me. The promotion to major general was welcome enough professionally. Emotionally it meant that I was finally out of purgatory. I had taken a gut wound and had survived. It would not be wise, however, to run that risk again.

  After eleven all too short months, the Powell family left Fort Leavenworth and reluctantly headed back to Washington.

  Twelve

  The Phone Never Stops Ringing

  OVER THE PREVIOUS TWO MONTHS I HAD BECOME A LIGHT SLEEPER. I HEARD the phone this night, September 1, 1983, on the first ring. Alma passed the receiver to me as if in a trance, without waking up. I glanced at the red readout on the clock radio: nearly midnight.

  “General Powell, this is the DDO”—the deputy director of operations. He was calling from the National Military Command Center, which monitors the globe around the clock. The DDO and I had become frequent nocturnal communicators of late. “Got a problem,” he informed me. “A Korean jetliner out of Anchorage en route to Seoul has dropped off the radar screen.”

  I would have to decide whether I should wake up the Secretary of Defense and give him this news fragment. “Do you have anything more?” I asked.

  “That’s all for now,” he said. “The plane just left the scope.”

  I lay there in the dark, deciding what to do, imagining Seoul Airport, with anxious families wondering why the delay. I phoned the Secretary. If the jet had gone down in the Pacific, we might want to call out U.S. forces for a search-and-rescue mission. Cap Weinberger sounded as composed in the middle of the night as at noon at the Pentagon. He asked me to keep him informed.

  As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again.

  “General.” It was the duty officer again. “It looks okay. We just got a report that the plane probably made an emergency landing.”

  I passed this word along to Weinberger. Still, I could not get back to sleep. My instincts kept nagging me. You do not lose and find airplanes that casually. I had just started to doze off when the duty officer called a third time.

  “Sir, Burning Wind intercepted some odd traffic between the Soviet Air Defense Command and one of their fighter pilots. The Korean plane may have violated Soviet airspace.” Burning Wind was an air intelligence operation we carried out over the Pacific using RC-135 reconnaissance planes.

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” he answered. I knew we were both feeling the same foreboding. Could the Soviets have shot down a commercial jetliner full of civilian passengers?

  That is how a tragedy unfolds in the Pentagon—not in the neat, complete paragraphs of newspapers or the rounded sentences of TV correspondents, but in fragments. Finally, enough information dribbled in for the Secretary of State, George Shultz, to issue a statement at 10:45 that morning saying that a Soviet fighter plane had, in fact, shot down a Korean airliner. “The United States reacts with revulsion to this attack,” Shultz said. “Loss of life appears to be heavy. We can see no excuse whatever for this appalling act.”

  The initial Soviet response was a flat denial. When that story was punctured by the truth, the Russians said the plane had intruded into Soviet airspace and that they had tried to direct it to the nearest airfield, but the pilot just kept on flying. Finally, the Soviets admitted they had shot down the plane, but claimed it was on a “deliberate, thoroughly planned intelligence operation,” directed from the United States and Japan.

  It would be years before the whole truth came out, after the collapse of the Soviet Union tore away the veil of state secrecy. Korean Air Lines flight 007, en route from Alaska to Korea, had accidentally drifted 360 miles off course and had in fact flown over Soviet airspace twice, first over the Kamchatka Peninsula and then over the island of Sakhalin. The pilot sent up by the Soviet Air Defense Command to intercept KAL 007, Major Gennady Osipovich, flying a Sukhoi-15 fighter, reported that the intruder was using navigation lights and the flashing anti-collision beacon commonly employed on commercial night flights. Osipovich had also flown along the right side of the jet (how close we do not know) for a closer look. The Soviet pilot, who had logged at least a thousand interceptions against American military aircraft and knew their outlines as well as his own plane’s, claimed he did not recognize the Boeing 747 as a commercial jetliner. He dropped back, locked his radar on the target, and when given the order, shot down KAL 007 just as the plane was exiting Sakhalin and about to reenter international airspace. Osipovich fired two missiles. One struck the tail; the other tore off half of the left wing. It took twelve minutes for the stricken plane and its 269 passengers to plunge into the ocean at a speed of several hundred miles an hour.

  Why did the Soviets shoot down an innocent civilian aircraft? The best answer appears to be that the then Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, was trying to buck up sloppy military discipline and had promulgated a tough new “Law on the State Border.” Thereafter, intimidated Soviet military officers had carried out the law’s requirements like unthinking robots.

  During the Cold War, almost no event stood in isolation. Every occurrence had to be forced into the matrix of East-West confrontation. The Russians had tried to pass off KAL 007 as a spy plane, adding falsehood to a tragic blunder. From our side, I watched Cap Weinberger and George Shultz wrestle for policy dominance on this issue. Weinberger saw the incident as a morality play, with the Soviet Union performing its role as evil incarnate. He argued that Shultz should cancel an upcoming meeting in Madrid with the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko. Shultz took the position that we could condemn to our heart’s content, but we should not let this incident, however tragic, derail negotiations with the Soviets to further our mutual interests. President Reagan did a bit of each. He called the Soviet behavior “an act of barbarism born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life.” Yet, he wanted
the Shultz-Gromyko talks to go forward.

  The downing of KAL 007 occurred less than two months after I had taken over my new job as military assistant to Weinberger. I drew some useful lessons from the incident. Don’t be stampeded by first reports. Don’t let your judgments run ahead of your facts. And, even with supposed facts in hand, question them if they do not add up. Something deeper and wiser than bits of data inform our instincts. I also learned that it is best to get the facts out as soon as possible, even when new facts contradict the old. Untidy truth is better than smooth lies that unravel in the end anyway. Avoid putting a spin on a story that subsequent revelations may discredit (the trap the Soviets fell into). Be prepared to see an international event expand—or contract—for political ends apart from its intrinsic meaning. And finally, in a world bristling with engines of destruction, don’t be surprised if they explode from time to time.

  Five years later, in 1988, when I had become National Security Advisor, we faced a similar situation when we had to explain to the world why the American cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian airbus, killing 290 passengers and crew. It was a tragic blunder. We said so and released the facts publicly as fast as possible.

  I had received that initial phone call on KAL 007, not at Quarters 27A, which we were supposed to occupy at Fort Myer, but at Quarters 23A, a small house across the street from the unending noise and bustle of the officers’ club. We had been bumped from the grander digs we had been promised by a higher-ranking officer. I set aside a small room in the new house as my secure communications center, and the bundles of wires running into it made the place look like ganglia under a microscope. Chesapeake and Potomac telephone crews were forever at the house, repairing, replacing, reconfiguring, until Alma knew them all by their first names. And the phones never stopped ringing from the day we moved in.

  I was now working with a Weinberger team much changed since I had left back in 1981. Frank Carlucci had departed government service at the end of 1982 to become president of Sears World Trade, Inc. A businessman, Paul Thayer, replaced Frank as deputy for a time; but Thayer ran into legal difficulties and had to resign. Will Taft replaced Thayer as the second in command of the Defense Department. Along with sharp judgment honed as general counsel, Will had a special qualification. He was one of a handful of people who enjoyed Weinberger’s total confidence and who could influence the headstrong Secretary’s views.

  I had inherited from my predecessor, Carl Smith, a gem in his secretary, Nancy Hughes, smart, level-headed, tactful, and possessed of a priceless gift, the capacity to anticipate a boss’s thinking. Nancy, with brief interruptions, would work for me to the end of my military career. You don’t tamper with perfection.

  While I had been on Harold Brown’s staff, I used to sit inconspicuously against the back wall of his office taking notes during staff meetings. As Weinberger’s military assistant I made a symbolic leap. Weinberger held his meetings punctually at 8:30 A.M. I should say “held court,” since he was far different from the cerebral and solitary Brown. Brown tolerated a tight little circle, though he would rather have been alone. Weinberger liked to be surrounded by an entourage. Brown preferred get-it-over-with informality. Weinberger enjoyed meetings displaying ritual and structure. He presided from an overstuffed pale blue armchair. To his left, in another armchair, sat his legislative affairs assistant. To his right, on a couch, sat his public affairs assistant, while I sat at the other end. Across a coffee table, facing the Secretary, sat his deputy and general counsel. The seating of principals remained as fixed as a constellation in the heavens, even as the meeting grew. Fred Ikle, the number three official in the department, soon wanted in. Weinberger said fine; and Ikle managed to claim the empty middle seat on the couch. If his boss, Ikle, was in, Rich Armitage wanted to attend. Weinberger agreed. Others asked to come. Why not, Weinberger said. Their assistants wanted to come too. Weinberger concurred. The morning meeting grew so large that five minutes before, enlisted receptionists started hauling in chairs from neighboring offices like movers from Allied Van Lines. This gathering was an affirmation of Robert Ardrey’s Territorial Imperative. You staked out your turf the way tigers do when they urinate on trees. Your scent had to be stronger than someone else’s or you would be elbowed aside. Neither the jungle nor the upper reaches of government have any unclaimed space. It is already taken, or seized by the stronger.

  The only real issues covered at these meetings were media hot potatoes and pending legislation reported by the public relations and legislative assistants. After they had had their say, Weinberger would go around the room, calling on everyone. The only ones who spoke at length were those who did not understand the game. I always had plenty to discuss with the Secretary, but not before a crowd. The staff meeting served one useful purpose, however. It stroked the participants’ egos and made them feel part of the team. Afterward they could return to their own staffs in the glow of reflected glory. “The Secretary just told me …” they could say. Or better still, “I just told Weinberger …” The big tent was a technique I adopted myself in the future.

  I had received an early education in the style of my new boss on one of my first days on the job. On July 26, 1983, I had arrived at about 6:30 A.M. and was flipping through the Early Bird, the Pentagon’s overnight news summary, when an item plucked from the Washington Post caught my eye. The Navy had established a “Wound Laboratory” at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland to train medical students in the treatment of battlefield injuries. They were to practice on dogs that had been anesthetized, then shot. Alarm bells started going off in my head. I had visions of Americans learning that Lassie or Snoopy had been sacrificed to military medical experimentation. I called my counterpart in the Secretary of the Navy’s office, Captain Paul David Miller. Secretary Weinberger was going to want to know what this was all about. Paul told me that nobody was available at Bethesda this early. “I’ll get you something later in the morning,” he said. I told him he’d better give me something now. The Secretary was due any minute. A vote on the placement of MX missiles was the hot issue this morning, and the Secretary had scheduled early interviews with all three networks. Miller passed along what little information he had.

  I had barely hung up when Weinberger came through the door. His first words were “What’s this about shooting little dogs?” (The Weinbergers owned a collie named Kiltie.)

  “Sir,” I started to explain, “it’s important when Marines are in combat situations …”

  “Put a stop to it,” he said.

  “Sir, this kind of medical research is helping …”

  “Tell the Navy it’s over. The program is canceled. They are not even to consider it. Is that clear?”

  I called Miller back, transmitted the order, and got a lot of disbelieving “but-but-but.” I told him that I would explain later. For now, we had to get the Secretary down to the Pentagon broadcast studio on the second floor and wired up for his first appearance on the Today show.

  The world could have been on the brink of nuclear extinction, but Bryant Gumbel’s first question was about the Washington Post’s dog story. No such thing could happen, Weinberger answered coolly. He had already given orders canceling any such program, if indeed one ever existed. His other interviews led off with the same question, and in every case, the Secretary assured the nation that the military would not be shooting little dogs, for whatever allegedly good purpose.

  Weinberger’s reaction that day had been intuitive. He had not called for a blue-ribbon panel of surgeons, psychiatrists, veterinarians, and People for Ethical Treatment of Animals to masticate the issue. He had recognized instantly, in a nation of pet lovers, that whatever the scientific premise, this idea would not fly. And so he killed it on the spot. Mail came pouring in. Phone calls jammed the Pentagon switchboards. Editorial writers sang Weinberger’s praises. Weinberger was a hero. I had learned a lesson from a master in public relations. Certain matters are sacrosanct. Also, you can face the messiest public
issue and, if you tackle it head-on and quickly, you can move a liability to the asset column.

  One September morning, Weinberger informed me on his arrival that I should prepare myself for hot-weather travel. We were going to Central America, my first trip abroad with him. On September 6, we departed from Andrews Air Force Base aboard a DC-9 with “The United States of America” emblazoned across the fuselage; the plane was part of the 89th Airlift Wing, which operates the government’s VIP fleet. As we boarded, I noticed among the party, including Rich Armitage and fourteen reporters, a new face, a confident junior staffer who quickly made clear that he represented the National Security Council. From the moment we were airborne, he started worming his way into Weinberger’s presence, though the Secretary’s formal facade usually kept outsiders at arm’s length. As we worked around a small conference table, preparing ourselves for meetings with three Central American chiefs of state, our newcomer, assertive and well informed, deferred to no one but Weinberger, apparently seeing himself as the second-ranking dog on this sled. Who is this guy? I wondered. I looked him up in the trip book, which contained itineraries, maps and bios that our staff had prepared. There he was: Oliver L. North, Major, USMC.

  … … …

  Secretary Weinberger and his wife were extremely close, and he always wanted Jane along on his foreign trips. For spouses, official travel means constant exposure to unfamiliar faces, a stream of polite chitchat, and smiles so fixed that they almost have to be pried off at night. Jane Weinberger was a more private person than her husband, a warm, intelligent woman, one-on-one; who had little enthusiasm for her public role. Weinberger often invited other spouses along as companions for Jane. On September 22, we were scheduled to begin another trip, this one around the world, and Weinberger insisted that Alma come along under “invitational travel orders,” which made her an official member of the party. I thought it might be stretching a point to bring the wife of the Secretary’s chief horse holder, dog robber, and gofer, but Weinberger insisted. Alma came, and the first night she expressed her puzzlement to me. Was she a tourist? Excess baggage? What exactly was she supposed to do?