(Jill St. John, Leonid Brezhnev and Dick Nixon.)
I was sitting and talking to Old Jim at the end of the Willow Bar. It was fiercely and oppressively hot outside, and people in Arlington were acting out. Pedestrians were walking out in the crosswalks against the light, motorists were honking wildly and I saw more people flipping each other off than I had since the Pueblo Crew convinced the North Koreans that the middle finger was the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign.
Mac had left me with a lot of work, but we had arrived at the point in his career where some of the characters being to overlap.
I raised a glass to Jim after graceful Elisabeth-with-an-S topped me up. Aimee was resigned to having to service the sweating customers out on the patio.
My San Diego Attorney was in town from the Left Coast on matters pertaining to litigation and history, and he told me he wanted to talk about the “creative differences” between Doctor Kissinger and the CIA, since that runs directly into the Schlesinger Commission which was the reason Mac was be hired at the CIA after his Navy career was done.
“Henry the K looms over my younger years like the Matterhorn,” I said. “I can’t believe he is still around, pontificating in his new book “On China, and where this is all going to go in the post-American Century.”
“Fuck him,” said Jim.
(Henry and Jill. Photo Corbis.)
“True. But I have to say that his continued vitality is impressive. Think back to his reputation when he was in the Nixon White House. Did you ever run into him?”
“Saw him a few times. Nothing personal. I thought he was a pompous jerk.”
Old Jim had been a part-time speechwriter on staff for a while, which was odd for a radical like Jim. But there was a lot of strange stuff going on then- “Remember Dr. Hunter S. Thompson talking NFL issues with candidate Nixon in the back of his limo on the campaign trail?” I said. “And National Security Advisor Henry-the-K with the rep of a swinger.”
“During the peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris, the Good Doctor was escorting the lovely Jill St. John, the bombshell who stole the show in the Bond film “Diamonds are Forever.”
(Jill St. John in “Diamonds are Forever.”)
I looked up to see The Lawyer coming in the front door, blinking from the heat and brilliance of the sun. I waved and he came over to take a stool next to me.
“Happy Hour White is always good here,” I said. “Welcome to Washington.”
The Lawyer frowned. “Too goddamned hot,” he aid. “I prefer San Diego. I did my time here as a staffer on the Hill and I don’t regret leaving.” The Lawyer is a Princeton man, a speaker of French, and a combat vet from the unpleasantness in SE Asia. He has the bright Mediterranean look of his youth gone only slightly to seed. He has an acid wit and the unflinching eye of an old Spook.
Jim took a deep pull on his long-neck Bud and told The Lawyer we had been talking about Kissinger and Nixon.
The Lawyer looked thoughtful. “Apparently Tricky Dick was not happy about Henry-the-K’s public profile. Hard to believe Ms St John was also dating Sidney Korshak at the same time.”
“Funny how the mob keeps showing up in this history.”
“Isn’t it?” said Jim. “Those fucks.”
“Korshak was an attorney, like me,” said The Lawyer. “Only he was the most powerful one in the world. Sidney was the Chicago Mob’s guy in Hollywood, The Fixer.” The Lawyer looked into his tulip glass and took a decisive sip. “He suggested Jill for the Bond movie, and made it happen. He was the kinda guy who could make creative differences an gambling debts go away, deliver the right actor to the right studio at the right time and make union problems disappear. He was one of the most powerful people you never heard of.”
“She was apparently grateful to the old guy. Very grateful.“
“Anyway, I was thinking about all that ancient history because I had to dig into the Schlesinger Commission to understand why Mac went to work for Bronson Tweedy and DCI Dick Helms in 1972.”
“One has to give it to St John, who was able to simultaneously enthrall both one of the country’s most powerful public officials and its most furtive power broker,” said Jim.
“You can be positively lyrical, Jim” said Aimee, walking by with a tray of empty glasses.
“You said the other day that there was a lot of tension between Langley and the White House, and that there was “surprise” about the Cambodian coup.”
“That is what the history book said about the origin of the Schlesinger Commission to overhaul the intelligence community.”
“That is bullshit,” said The Lawyer. “I was there and I know.” He grimaced. “Nice acting on Kissinger’s part!” said Jim.
“It is clear to me now that the Cambodian coup was engendered slowly, and underwritten by the Special Operations Groupies who had local indigenous troops working SOG projects.” said The Lawyer. “I have been looking at this for a long time.”
He looked pensively in the direction of Elisabeth, who was polishing a glass and peering at it against the light from the front window. “The alphabet soup of militias we had links to- the Khmer Kampuchea Krom, the Khmer Serei being the anti-communist ones, though the Khemer Rouge wound up with some of the money. All of them at one time or another were sent into Cambodia to unsettle Prince Sihanouk or aid Lon Nol. They all were billed as anti-monarchist groups, some commie and some not, but they were in fact funded by CIA black budget money, as Henry the K well knew. The President had directed him to explore two potential CIA actions in Cambodia. They were either going to support covert paramilitary ops against North Vietnamese Regular Forces in the sanctuary areas, or take direct action action against the arms traffic running from the port up the Freedom Highway to the borer. You know the US actually built the road? It was a weird time.”
The Lawyer had been the Naval Intelligence Liaison Officer at Ha Tien, and he could see Cambodia from the front porch of his Hooch. He has some strong opinions about what went on there.
“Lon Nol had long contacts with US Army SPEC FORCES SOG types during the war, and lived in one of the SOG camps in Vietnam for two weeks closely before the Cambodian coup. SOG sent 100 well-armed indigenous KKK/Khmer Serei troops to Phnom Penh to guard Lon Nol as the coup actually went down.”
I frowned and took a sip of Happy Hour White. “There is a lot of stuff no one knew about this. Was it part of Tricky Dick’s Secret Plan to end the war?”
“Dr. Kissinger had a plan. He was trying to stop the flow of arms that was going from the port at Sihanoukville up to the NVA sanctuaries on the Vietnamese border. I know this from SOG guys who were involved. It was actually a perfect set up for “plausible deniability.” The CIA had no station in Cambodia, and only had one retired French sea captain in Phnom Penh as an agent. They Agency guys constantly grilled us for information, giving nothing in return.”
“Bastards.”
“Not all of them. I’m still in touch with the CIA province chief for Kien Giang province where Ha Tien is. We ought to get him to come to Willow and have a drink with him some time.”
“Sounds good,” I said, thinking it was getting on toward time to be in Big Pink’s swimming pool.
“Anyway, I look back on the “surprise” of the Cambodian coup d’etat as one of the best kept secrets and clandestine victories for the US during the Vietnam War. It was so good, nobody can authoritatively pin that on the CIA or the US to this day.”
The Lawyer smiled grimly. He has been active in efforts to try to mitigate the residue of the horror of Pol Pot’s rule with the Khmer Rouge, and got himself crosswise with American policy initiatives in the region.
“Don’t forget,” he said, “in the Kissinger-Nixon tapes that were recorded in April of 1970, Nixon says to Kissinger about Cambodia: “If this fails Henry, it’s your ass!”
“Henry is still around and publishing books on what we ought to do about China.”
“Yeah. Isn’t he the piece of work? Creative differences with Dick Nixon aside, he is still working.”
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com