Wag the Dog Read online

  “Look at the polls,” Bush said. Meaning Look at how I’m slipping in the polls, but Reagan is still incredibly popular and I do exactly what he did, how come I have a problem?

  “Well, Bushie, ol’ pard,” Baker said, skinning his cowboy boots off—elegant, eight-hundred-dollar wear-’em-with-a-pinstripe-banker’s-suit cowboy boots but still Texas, if you know what I mean—“the man could shoot a line of shit like no shitter before or since. Why, if you could imagine the size of the bull that could create that much bullshit, you would have yourself the bull that shit Texas.” He got the second boot off and wiggled his toes. Cowboy boots are toe squeezers, no doubt about it, even custom-cut.

  “What’s show time?” Bush asked Baker.

  “Five hours,” Baker said.

  Bush sighed. It’s tough being president. Frankly, it’s a lot tougher than being an actor. Because actors don’t work all that often and nobody cares how fucked up they get. As long as their box is good. The president has meetings all day. Then his chopper takes him out to Air Force One. Although he has an entire plane as his private hotel room with a fawning staff dedicated to his every whim, he will have to get off that plane in two hours or six hours or eight hours, having traveled some portion or all of that time, and appear to be alert, energetic, healthy, to have had enough sleep, not to be jet-lagged, and glad to be there—wherever there is. Getting sleep whenever he can, regardless of his personal clock and biological rhythms, was even more crucial than having makeup when he was in front of the cameras.

  “Time,” Bush said, “for the blue bomb.”9He took out the Halcion. Both of them were using it. By prescriptions and on the recommendation of their doctors, of course. It’s a hypnotic, a chemical cousin of Valium and Librium. Its advantage is that it doesn’t linger in the body, and so, presumably, the pill taker is less groggy the morning or afternoon or whenever after.

  Baker poured them each a tumbler of Chivas to wash it down.

  Bush was still feeling agitated. It’s hard to imagine a president not feeling agitated. Even when there is something to exult over—cutting the budget, beating the Russkies, end-running the Democratic Congress, rising in the polls, pushing back the Commies in Central America—someone out there is immediately carping, complaining, whining, and trying to cut that achievement down. Meanwhile, some new goddamn problem is being picked out by the media to be the new crisis that the president, and only the president, must supply leadership for.

  “Pineapple face,” the president said.

  “I understand your frustration,” Baker said. He knew that Bush was complaining about Noriega’s trial. Bush had sent in troops to get the drug-dealing dictator out of Panama. He’d started a whole war to do it. He’d personally approved the name of the project: Operation Just Cause. A great name that said it all. They’d brought the son of a bitch back to Miami. A good venue, you would think, for drug prosecutions. And the damn trial seemed to be stalled forever. Going through motions and appeals and whatnot, even before the damn thing started. The longer it went on, the more embarrassing it got. “The prosecutor is a good ol’ boy,” Baker reassured his boss. “I checked with Justice and we got none better. None better. It’s just gonna take as long as it takes, but our boy’s gonna bring home the bacon.”

  Bush got up to change into his sleepwear. Pajamas. Barbara had had them made as a special present for the inauguration. They were white flannel printed with seals balancing little presidents on their noses.

  “Y’all want to hear this story I heard down Houston?” Baker asked. There was no answer. Baker poured them each another shot.

  Bush picked up his glass. The 747 cut through the night sky, huge and steady, easily able to keep the Head of the Free World safe. But with the Evil Empire crumbling, “Head of the Free World” was rapidly losing its ring. He was going to have to think of something new to be called. Leader of the . . .? Put the speech-writers on it. They knew about word things.

  “Shit,” Bush said. “I’m going to miss him.”

  Atwater had died, just two nights earlier. The doctors had inserted radioactive pellets into his brain. Actually, the pellets worked. They succeeded in destroying the tumor as well as an unknown amount of healthy brain with it. But almost immediately another tumor had sprouted elsewhere. The doctors determined that he couldn’t take another round of radiation. It was a fast slide down from there.

  Baker raised his glass. “To Lee.”

  “With him here,” Bush said, “what I did, that didn’t matter. Lee could destroy anyone. That was one bad good ol’ boy.”

  By now it was clear that the presidential utterances had a theme, or at least a subtext. He was feeling, as presidents periodically do, insecure. There was nothing too terribly wrong, but there were a great many things not too terribly right. The economy, the S&L mess, his son’s involvement in the S&L mess, the country still seeming to slip vis-à-vis Japan and Germany, creeping unemployment, and mostly he just didn’t get enough respect. In the hands of the right opponent, who knew what could happen. Not that the Democrats were smart enough to come up with the right opponent, but what if they made a mistake and came up with a winner by accident. Baker realized that what might have brought this vague angst to the front burner was Atwater’s death, it was like losing a special weapon or going to war with the rule that you could only have as many guns as the enemy.

  “He got religion at the end, and I’m glad that he did,” Bush said, like the verse of an old country song.

  It might have been the Halcion. It might have been the Chivas. Baker was feeling relaxed, yet powerful and in control. Even his toes didn’t hurt anymore and there was none of that tension in his gut. “George,” he said, “I have to tell you something.”

  “What is it, Jimbo,” Bush asked, snuggling down under the presidential covers with the big seal in the middle.

  “Just before he died,” Baker said, “he called me to his side. There was something about a message.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Well, he was a bad ’ol boy to the end.”

  “You mean he wasn’t groveling on his knees apologizing for sticking Willie Horton on George Dukakis?”

  “Bushie, he gave me something. His final campaign ploy. His ultimate campaign ploy.”

  “Does it apply to anyone the Democrats run?”

  “It applies to us. I have to tell you, my immediate reaction when I read it was that it was insane. That it had to be destroyed. But I kept it. It has a certain strange and compelling logic. It just does. But it’s a madman’s option. Maybe.”

  “Do you have it?” the president asked.

  Baker got off the bed, Barbara’s bed, and went to his briefcase. He decoded the lock and took the folded, bent papers out. Wishing for a moment that he’d never mentioned them, he said, “Nobody has seen this but you and me.” Then he handed the papers to George Herbert Walker Bush, who turned on the light over the bed, put on his reading glasses, and began to read the last great scam of Lee Atwater.10

  7 Newsweek, 1/29/90

  8 How Baker addresses Bush according to The Fabulous Bush & Baker Boys, New York Times Magazine, 5/6/90.

  9 A phrase attributed in print to Baker (Time, 10/14/91). One can imagine that two people so close would pick up on the same slang. In 1990 it was the most prescribed sleeping pill in the world. It was banned in Britain in October 1991.

  10 The reader may have noted two different typefaces. They indicate two different time lines. There is a point where the two facets of the story meet up with each other and unite. Then, for the most part, only one typeface is used.

  Chapter

  SEVEN

  YOU EVER HAVE everything turn inside out? Where one minute it’s one world, and the next second it’s a whole other world.

  Tell you what I mean. About what the feeling is. 1967, Vietnam. There’s a bunch of us, fresh from Parris Island. Marines are going to I Corps. This is the area at the north end of South Vietnam, it includes five provinces from Qua
ng Tri up to the DMZ. The city of Hue, the old imperial capital, and Khe Sanh are both in I Corps. We’re lean and mean, all balls, no brains. We’re a John Wayne movie—the Marines have landed and we’re here to kick ass. Of course, the first thing that happens is that we sit in Danang for a week while they sort us out. Doing nothing. Getting bored, getting drunk, getting in fights, getting the clap, watching the body bags go by, figuring the guys in them were probably careless. Probably not Marines.

  Finally, we get assigned. We get sent up north, to Khe Sanh, which is an airstrip in the northwest corner of the country. This is not what is later called the “siege of Khe Sanh.” That occurs in January ’68.

  We get sent out on patrol. Usually a day at a time. Sometimes two or three days. It’s wet. Rain and fog. The country is rain forest, triple canopy. Steep mountains. Lots of ravines. The only thing that happens is that four guys, they start to drip and they need penicillin shots, and everybody, their feet start to rot, but nobody knows what to do about that. Here I am sixteen, most of the guys are eighteen, nineteen, the LT, he’s all of twenty-two or -three. All of us are loaded with testosterone, machismo, whatever you want to call it, and this is dumber and duller than being back home and broke on a Tuesday night.

  Our third week of patrols. By this time they’re letting new guys walk point. Third day, it’s my turn. It’s tense. But nothing happens. Except its raining. Everything gets wet. We’re climbing up and climbing down. We’re slipping and sliding and like every other day discomfort increases, fear and alertness grow dim. But, we get back to the perimeter. Alive. Now I know I’m immortal. Wet and bored, crotch and toes itching, but immortal. Fourth day, I’m second man, oh, maybe a yard or two behind point. All morning, same damn thing. It’s just drizzling. If we were out of the foliage, visibility might be twenty, thirty feet. In the forest, it’s five, maybe ten, feet.

  I’m a yard or two behind point. Suddenly, I see right in front of his foot—trip wire. That moment freezes. I know that the wire is connected to a grenade. Just like I know that the grenade is connected to an NVA patrol, killers like us, and they are connected to an army and all of us are in this thing that has its own existence, like a giant beast, which is called war. From that moment on, everything is forever different.

  The wire on the telephone is, somehow, the same thing. It is a small piece of wire, one that I cannot see but can detect with an instrument, and that wire, I know, is connected to a listener, that listener is connected to an organization, maybe Universal Security, which is connected to something else, probably larger, because U. Sec. does nothing for itself, it is always employed, an agent of another organization. There is a power out there, a great beast, watching. I have just glimpsed its existence.

  Chapter

  EIGHT

  AIR FORCE ONE rose above the turbulence. Down below there were all sorts of storms. Up here was a sort of heaven. A steel cocoon close to the stars. Superb whisky. Excellent food. Dedicated servants. James Baker watched the president read Lee Atwater’s memo. When he was done, George Bush said, “Jesus fucking Christ,” the same thing that his secretary of state had said. They were very much in tune.

  “You bet,” his secretary of state said.

  “Has anyone seen this?”

  “Me and thee,” Baker said.

  “Talk about nitty-gritty and cutting through to the nuts of the matter. When Lee Atwater is passing, it’s hardball.11I mean this is either out of the park or get thrown out of the game.”

  “That’s true,” Baker said.

  “Does it make sense, or is it from cuckoo-cuckoo land?”

  “Bushie, I have to tell you, I don’t know. Things would have to be pretty extreme before we considered it.”

  “Extremism in defense of virtue is no vice.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, nobody but you and I should see that memo.”

  “You’re right,” the president said. “I want to reread it. Then shred it.”

  It wasn’t a long piece. It had been well thought out. It was short and to the point. That’s the only way to write a memo if you want to actually influence a president. They have too many things to think about to put up with complex ideas.

  Bush read it again. He said three things out loud: “Hollywood?!” “Shred it.” “Jesus fucking Christ.” Somewhere along the line the Halcion caught up with him. He fell asleep with the memo clutched in his hands. Baker was already out.

  The crew made a habit of listening in on the presidential cabin. Not for any malicious reason. Solely so they could better serve, so they could appear with a drink or a dinner almost before it was called for. To be ready with a service just as soon as it was thought of. They trained themselves to not really hear words that weren’t for them, like stagehands politely ignoring breasts when they must enter women’s dressing rooms.

  When Stan, the chief steward, heard the double snores, he knew that both of his passengers were out. He entered quietly to remove dirty glasses and dishes, to cover either of them if they’d fallen asleep on top of their blankets.

  He found the president with his head on the pillows, reading glasses perched on his nose, and Lee Atwater’s memo in his hand.

  Stan lifted the glasses from the presidential nose. Bush, cocooned with the prescription hypnotic and drowsy with Scotch, didn’t notice a thing. Then Stan lifted the memo from the presidential hand.

  He glanced at it. Only enough to see where it should go.

  MEMO FROM: L.A.

  TO: J.B. III/YEO

  WAR has always been a valid political option, through all societies, through all time. We, who grew up in the south, know about revering our . . .

  What registered with Stan was YEO. He’d seen and handled Secret, Top Secret, Top Secret with distribution numbers, Ultra, but this was the first time he’d seen Your Eyes Only. He was so impressed that he didn’t notice the J.B.III. Meaning well, with truly the best of intentions, he folded the memo neatly along its fold lines and put it in the president’s briefcase.

  The next morning when the president and the secretary of state awoke and didn’t see the Atwater memo, each assumed that the other had shredded it. The one that they agreed must never be seen.

  11 George Bush said of himself (6/6/89): “Fluency in English is something that I’m often not accused of.”

  Some other samples of his style are:

  “My running mate took the lead, was the author, of the fob Training partnership act. Now because of a lot of smoke and frenzying of bluefish out there, going after a drop of blood in the water, nobody knows that.” (11/3/88) and “I think there were some difference, there’s no question, and I will still be. We’re talking about a major, major situation here. . . . I mean, we’ve got a major rapport-relationship of economics, major in the security, and all of that, we should not lose sight of.” (1/10/92)

  These quotes, and others, can be found in Bushisms, compiled by the editors of the New Republic (Workman, 1992).

  Chapter

  NINE

  FRANK SHEEHAN FLEW in from Chicago. Sheehan was one of Universal Security’s eight executive VPs. Five of them had clear-cut titles: Accounting and Financial Affairs, Sales, Management and Training, Government Relations, and Overseas. The other three worked for a department called Special Affairs. That was Sheehan’s department.

  He was a big man who’d played football in high school and one season at Notre Dame. He believed in sports because it built character. He was twenty pounds heavier than his playing weight, but, in his own opinion, his six-foot-two-and-a-half-inch frame could handle it. Frank had once considered the seminary. But he was “too masculine.” Everyone told him so. Overall, he was quite glad that he’d listened. He joined the CIA instead. It filled many of the same needs the Church would have done even though there were times when the Agency seemed so flawed and full of failing that his faith was severely tested. But he understood, especially after a brief stint as assistant station chief in Rome, that he would have had to face exactly the same
sort of spiritual crises if he’d been an agent of the Catholic Church. The great advantages of the CIA, aside from sex, had been that the job paid better and that he developed skills that were later transferable to private industry, which paid better still.

  He’d been recruited from the Company to the company by the semilegendary Carter Hamilton Bunker,12founder and CEO of Universal Security. C. H. himself had sent Sheehan to L.A. to look over Mel Taylor’s shoulder and let him know how important this case was. “Show the flag, son, show the flag,” was what he’d actually said. There was something about his enunciation and his attitude that always made Sheehan feel like he was talking to God—not the Catholic God, which would have been blasphemous, just God as played by John Huston.

  Sheehan had arrived without notice. Mel Taylor had not risen as far as he had by not doing his paperwork. The file on the case was up to date and well organized. Not everything was totally under control, but all the bases seemed covered.

  “You know we never second-guess the man in the field,” Sheehan said to Taylor. “You’re in charge. I just want to keep the Boss up to date.”

  Taylor interpreted that to mean If anything goes wrong, it’s your ass. His and his alone. “No problem,” he said. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here. And I welcome some review and oversight on this one.” He meant Now that you’ve looked, it’s the same as signing off on it, and it’s your ass too.