(Two)
The Texas White House 18 April 1964
When the White House Communications Agency put through the call from General Bellman, Colonel Felter was in the company of the President of the United States. The President was in a good mood. He had not only just knocked a little of the smugness out of three members of the Secret Service., but had won twenty-six dollars in the process.
The President had challenged three off-duty members of his protective staff to shoot a little trap. ..
"Me and Felter," the President had said. "And you three. Dollar a bird. Winner takes all. And me and Felter will shoot from the twenty-yard line. How 'bout it?" The Secret Service agents had all been thoroughly trained in the use of firearms, including shotguns, of course. And, in addition, one of them thought of himself as a pretty good trapshooter.
His concern as they began to shoot, was how the President of the United States was going to react if he was beaten and, if the President was serious about the dollar a bird, what he should do if the President started handing him money.
The Secret Service agent's fears that his superior marksmanship might somehow humiliate the President were soon proved to be invalid. Sharing the President's well-worn Winchester Model 12 pump gun, and firing from the twenty-yard line, the President and Colonel Felter both went straight during the first round. That is to say that fifty clay pigeons were thrown into the air and neither President nor Colonel Felter missed one of them.
Of the seventy five birds thrown from the sixteen-yard line for the three Secret Service agents to shoot at with Remington Model 1100s, ten birds sailed unscathed through the rain of number seven-and-a-half shot.
The second round was just about as humiliating for the agents.
Colonel Felter dropped two birds from twenty yards and the President missed one. The Secret Service dropped fourteen from the sixteen-yard line.
The trapshooting Secret Service agent's question as to whether the President was serious about a dollar a bird was answered when he saw him extending his hand, palm upward, toward Colonel Felter, and then saw Felter put two dollar-bills into it, one for each of his misses.
At that point the telephone rang. More accurately, it buzzed, and began flashing a small red light on its side. The telephone was on a long cable that connected to a box in the ground, and the box connected to the switchboard. Both the President and Felter looked peevishly toward the phone. The President had left word that he didn't want to be bothered, when he was On the trap range.
One of the on-duty Secret Service agents answered it, then handed it to the man with the bag, today an Army Lieutenant colonel charged with carrying the bag containing today's firing codes for nuclear weapons. His orders were never to be more than three seconds from the Commander-in-Chief.
"Colonel Felter," the Lieutenant Colonel called out, "it's a General Bellmon for you. Will you take it, Sir?" Felter went to the telephone.
When he was finished, he walked back to the President, who was folding into a neat oblong the money he had just accepted from the Secret Service.
He looked at Felter with his bushy eyebrows raised.
"You look a little unhappy, Sandy" the President said. "Anything wrong?" The President liked Felter. Deep in his gut he liked the hardass little guy. And he was aware that it was strange that he should, and he wondered why he did. The best answer he, had come up with was that he could trust Felter.
"An Army aircraft has crashed, Sir, killing the two. pilots aboard."
"You on the notification list for airplane crashes, Colonel?"
"No, Sir," Felter said. "This was a special situation."
"I was about to suggest we take these three sharpshooters up to the house and buy them a drink with their own money;" the President said, "but I wanted to talk to you about Army airplanes anyhow, and this is as good a time as any. " He turned to the Secret Service agents. "Thanks, fellas, I enjoyed it. We'll have to do it again sometime after you've had some practice and can come up with some more money." They laughed dutifully. The President handed the nearest agent the Winchester Model 12. "Put that in the rack when it's clean, will you?"
"Yes, Mr. President," the agent said.
The President, his arm around Felter's shoulder, started for the house. The man with the bag followed him. The Secret Service agent with the telephone put it in the box in the ground and then ran after him, his walkie-talkie to his mouth, relaying to the other agents the information that John Wayne and the Mouse were en route to the house. The Presidential trapshooting bothered the Secret. Service, for by definition it meant that someone with a loaded weapon and with a finger, on the trigger would be in range of the President. It didn't matter that three of the other four shooters were Secret Service agents. There could be an accident. And Colonel Felter was not in the Secret Service.
It had been proposed-and at the last moment decided against-posting an agent with a telescopically equipped highpowered rifle. His mission would have been to keep Colonel Felter in the crosshairs so long as he held a weapon in his hand.
In the end, because John Wayne was liable to hear about it and blow his cork, the decision was not to use the sharpshooter, but rather to instruct the Secret Service trapshooters to go to the range with their revolvers and to keep an eye on the Mouse.
Inside the house, the President ordered the Navy Filipino mess steward to prepare drinks, after which he left the room to wash his hands. When he returned to the living room he announced, "Everybody out, I want to talk to Felter." When they were alone he said, "That was good for them. A little humility is good for the soul. And it cost them. Not much. But enough so they'll remember it. Win or lose, if it's for free, it don't mean a goddamned thing." Felter smiled.
"Where'd you learn to shoot like that, Felter?"
"A friend taught me," Felter said. "An officer named Craig Lowell. He has a trap range very much like this one."
"That's the one who owns most of downtown New York City?"
"So it is alleged, Sir," Felter said with a smile.
"Where's he now?"
"He's at McDill Air Force Base, Sir. He's the Army Aviation Officer on the staff of General Evans at STRICOM."
"Then he wasn't one of the pilots killed in the plane crash?"
"No, Sir."
"I thought it might have been him," the President said. "Since General Bellmon called you. . . here. . . about it."
"No, Sir."
"I'm a little curious, Felter, about what you're up to."
"Sir?"
"Both the Army Chief of Staff and the head of the CIA are curious, too," the President said. "Both of them have made a point of telling me they could be more helpful if they knew what you were up to. I just smiled my shit-eating grin at them and said thank you. But what the hell are you up to?"
Felter hesitated. "I'd rather not make that an order, Colonel," the President said, a tinge of impatience in his voice.
"Nothing that should concern the Director ,or the Chief of Staff, Sir. I'm sorry their intelligence about me is so good."
"I'd hate to think you were pissing around the bush with me, Felter," the President said. "I would be very disappointed with you."
"When I was over there, I wasn't particularly impressed with the CIA people in South Africa or in Leopoldville, ex -Belgian Congo. So I put my own man in Durban and had Special Forces, through General Evans at STRICOM, put a couple more A-Teams into the Congo. I was about to send another airplane and a couple. of pilots to the Congo so they would have a means to get around if necessary.
That was the plane that crashed. They were on a training flight long-distance flight by the seat of their pants."
"You think something's going to happen over there, don't you?"
"Yes, Sir," Felter said. "There's no doubt that we're going to have trouble over there."
"Gimmea for example?"
"Both the Russians and the Chinese communists stand to gain from any trouble they can cause in Africa, and they can cause trouble bo
th cheaply and in ways that will not arouse public opinion against them. Not that they are, generally speaking, much concerned with public opinion," Felter said.
"Keep talking," the President said.
"The Chinese, for example-and I believe, Mr. President, that we're going to have more trouble from them than from the Soviets-are already extending the band of socialist brotherhood all over Africa. There's a racial element, of course, which they have been clever enough: to exploit: the yellow and black brothers against the white man. The Chicom embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi, which abuts the x-Belgian Congo-the whole country is about as big as New Jersey-is three hundred men strong. They've sent doctors and teachers and are building dams and roads. The CIA has evidence that some of the crates they've shipped into Burundi, allegedly containing construction equipment, actually contain small arms and ammunition-"
"I've seen the reports," the President interrupted.
"Getting the arms into the ex-Belgian Congo poses no problem at all," Felter went on. "Nor does finding someone to give them to, someone who believes that he can take over the country."
"Both the CIA and the State Department tell me there is virtually no chance whatever of the government in Leopoldville being toppled, now that the Katanga business has been settled."
"I don't think it's been settled," Felter said. "Katanga may revolt again, just as soon as the last of the UN troops leave. And they will leave in June. Katanga is where all the money-in terms of resources and capability-is, and I understand their position. They don't want to share what they have with the rest of the Congo. But whether Katanga is in or out of the Congo doesn't really bother either the Russians or the Chinese, except that another revolt would contribute to what they're really after."
"Which is?"
"Social and economic chaos," Felter said. "Whatever hurts the West's economy-and by the West, I mean Europe, the United States, Japan, plus South Africa-is to their advantage. I don't want to deliver a lecture-".
"Keep talking," the President said. "When I get bored, I'll tell you."
"All right, Sir. The interruption of Congolese raw materials copper, lead, tin, for that matter, coffee and latex-flowing to the West first of all causes the price of those materials to rise, almost certainly causing an economic disruption, and with a little bit of luck, an inflation. But in addition to that, its absolutely knocks out the Congolese economy. Starvation comes in. And it's never very far away. The West, and especially the United States, then finds itself sending money or foodstuffs, which is the same thing-to replace the Congo's lost income; plus, of course military assistance to keep a government friendly to us in power. For peanuts, the cost of some small arms and explosives, they force us to spend billions."
"That's a pretty gloomy picture, Felter," the President said.
"Far gloomier than I've been getting from the State Department."
Felter shrugged.
"What does the shrug mean, Felter?" the President asked sharply.
"That I am not always in absolute agreement with the State Department's evaluation of a given situation, Sir." The President smiled, then chuckled. He looked at Felter thoughtfully for a moment, then took a swallow of his drink and swirled it around inside his mouth before swallowing.
"If you were the Secretary of State, what would your advice to the President be?" Johnson asked.
Felter's face showed that he recognized the question to be very dangerous.
"I'm a soldier, Mr. President," he said. "I don't-"
"Bullshit," the President said. "Answer the question."
"I would maintain a closer relationship with Joseph Mobutu than is presently the case-"
"Colonel Mobutu?"
"Yes, Sir. He runs the Annee Nationale Congolaise," Felter said. "Colonel Joseph-Desire Mobutu."
"I hope I'm not beginning to get, the picture," the President said.
"Sir?"
"I send one of our colonels over there to look around, and he runs into another colonel, and comes back and reports that you and the Colonel are right, and the State Department is all wrong."
Felter did not reply.
"What about this Colonel Mobutu, Colonel?" the President said unpleasantly.
"Sir, I believe that sooner or later, and possibly quite soon, the State Department will have to deal with Colonel Mobutu as head of state."
"Are you suggesting an imminent coup, Felter? That the army will take over?"
"When Colonel Mobutu decides to take over, he will."
"That's not what I hear from the CIA or the State Department Johnson said. He waited for a reply, and when none came, went on: "You don't seem concerned over the prospect of another military dictatorship, Felter," he said.
"Aside from the King of Morocco., I'd say Colonel Mobutu's our best friend on the African continent. He's really impressed with George Washington, for one thing, And it's not a superficial or sentimental thing. He'd like to do for his own country what Washington did here."
"How do you know that? You know him?"
"I paid a courtesy call on Colonel Mobutu when I was in Leopoldville," Felter said. "He was kind enough to have me to dinner. Just the Colonel, Dr. Dannelly-"
"Who?"
"Dr. Dannelly is a physician, a Mormon, from Salt Lake City. I'd say Mobutu is impressed with him as a friend, a Mormon, and a physician, in that order."
"CIA put him in there?"
"You mean is he working for the CIA? Or the State Department? No, Sir. He went over there as a missionary. He got together with Mobutu and he now considers it his duty to stay there."
"His duty to who?"
"To God," Felter said evenly.
"Not his duty as an American, for Christ's sake?"
"No, Sir. His religious duty. He's over there to help the Congolese people. And he has obviously decided that the way to do that is through Colonel Mobutu. I understand that's been difficult for State and the CIA to understand. Or accept."
"Meaning what?"
"Since he has made it plain that he intends to take no 'suggestions' from State or the CIA, they tend to pretend he isn't there."
"I've never even heard of the sonofabitch!" the President said angrily.
"Mr. President," Felter said cautiously, "if you brought Dr. Dannelly up to Mr. McCone or Mr. Rusk"-the Director of the CIA and the Secretary of State-"I think they would both feel obliged to do something about Dr. Dannelly. If they did it would destroy my relationship with both Dannelly and Mobutu."
"Not to mention that they would be even more pissed at you than they already are," the President said. "They would know where I got it."
"Yes, Sir," Felter said, smiling. "That, too."
"So far as you're concerned, Dannelly is all right?"
"As I understand it, our interests in the Congo are to keep the Katanga Province in the union, and to keep the communists--Russian and Chinese-from causing us more trouble than we can easily handle." The President nodded.
"Dr. Dannelly told me he believes the Congo would be an economic nightmare without Katanga," Felter said.
"What did he have to say about the communists?" the President asked dryly. "Chinese or Russian?"
"He didn't have to say anything, Sir. He's a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They regard the communists as the Antichrist."
The President grunted. "Pity Benson wasn't Secretary of State," the President said. "Maybe he could have sown some of those seeds in Foggy Bottom. "
Felter smiled. He also respected Ezra Taft Benson. Benson had been the very conservative Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration. A devout Mormon, he later headed the Mormon Church.
"If Mobutu can take over the government why doesn't he?" the President asked.
"There are several reasons, I think," Felter replied. "He doesn't want to do it without the proper preparation. And it's not time yet. And the Colonel is aware what our State Department thinks about colonels." The President grunted and then smiled. "What shape
is his army in?"
"He's got a regiment of parachutists that aren't nearly as, good as he thinks they are."
"You saw them, I suppose?"
"Yes, Sir. I was given the honor of jumping with them."
"Colonel Mobutu arranged that?"
"Yes, Sir. He jumped, too." The President snorted again.
"And the rest?"
"If anything happens soon, Mr. President, they're not going to be of much use." "You're not suggesting that mercenaries will have to be used again?"
The New Breed Page 3