McGoverning #1: Let it Burn
Let it burn, said the voice in the head of the man in glasses.
He sat calm and alert, like the marine lieutenant he’d been in a youth not so far back, field radio in hand, parked facing the opposite direction a block down from the target in a late-model Mercury Monterey paid for cash on the nail with a bum’s name by one of the Cubans. Sat, let the electricity of the moment brew in him, and considered what that phrase meant.
The enemy — furious blacks and Latins with guns and bombs, angry longhaired kids gone communist who wanted to destroy everything good about the country, the genteel but treacherous elites who benefited politically from the chaos thus sowed — used the words a lot. Let it all burn, they said: hard work, duty, liberty, civic order, free enterprise, success, strength, loyalty. Madness. Took strong men like the ones in this administration to hold the gates against that.
What had Orwell said about ordinary people who slept in peace free from tyranny only because hard men were willing to do terrible deeds on their behalf? Something like that. At any rate turnabout was the first rule of real politics, the hardball stuff. Tonight he and the men they’d brought together for the job — less than his old rifle platoon of forty-five but no less faithful — would burn a thing or two for the side of the angels.
As he checked his watch and pondered another Benzedrine — just because it was the deep night, the human body wanted to shut down then but this was action stations time — he reflected on the people he was lucky, grateful, to work with. All strivers, most of whom had come up from not much by brains, hard work, a sense of when you went for the throat, a sense of the bigger vision.
People talked a lot of nonsense about the man at the top — Richard Nixon, the sitting president — but the man in glasses knew from long hours in Nixon’s company that the president set the tone for the whole outfit. What Nixon had carried on down through the administration, through the Committee to Re-Elect. What made these folks extraordinary, like the president they served, was their capacity.
So, when in early summer the year before Dick Nixon identified a threat to the security of the country and the integrity of his presidency, the man in glasses sat, and listened in Nixon’s private den of a back office, took notes, and planned.
Blow the safe, said the President of the United States. Get to the Brookings Institution, likely the source of the scurrilous, disastrous Pentagon Papers leaks, blow the safe, see what else they’ve hidden away to undermine the rightful government, to spike our ability to make peace with honor in Vietnam. The man in glasses listened and saw where his duty lay.
Safe-cracking was a reasonable strategy, but J. Edgar was an old man now and skittish, and John Ehrlichman’s team of White House lawyers cried foul. No surprise; Ehrlichman believed in the danger of exposure more than he did the art of the possible.
In time that autumn, fortune blew Gordon his way: Gordon Liddy was a damned good lawyer really, a man of ideas, and a romantic. The man in glasses appreciated each of those qualities. Gordon’s thoughts on Brookings were more ambitious too. False-flag a firebomb, as though the Weathermen or some other terrorists were to blame, sneak a fake fire truck in first to the scene, rifle the safe under cover of the distraction. What that was was flair, not just campaign tricks but proper intelligence work.
Gordon brought that same touch to a whole grand strategy for Nixon’s reelection campaign that Gordon called Project GEMSTONE: different types of activities, from spies in Democratic campaigns to electronic surveillance, honey traps to occasional light kidnapping, each codenamed with different gems. And what did John Mitchell, the supposedly ruthless Attorney General now running the Committee to Re-Elect, do? Tell Gordon it’d all cost too much money.
Soon enough the man in glasses was in the same boat, torn away from his cosy proximity to the president, where politics was about shared vision and a warmth almost like family, now exiled to CRP headquarters across the canyon of Pennsylvania Avenue from his political home.
That brought together the guys who had real vision like Gordon, earlier hire and debonair CIA veteran Howard Hunt, a few others. There were willing foes all around — the whole real point of CRP was to defeat those foes — but no sea room, just penny ante stuff like hoaxes, ginned up scandals like that phony Muskie letter, stuff any state-legislature campaign director could do. Never the decisive moment, the crowded hour.
Until May. Then, just as things seemed past hoping, they instead came together. The man in glasses had scrimped and saved just the way he’d done as he climbed the heights of the legal profession. Run small but effective ops on the cheap, kept the vanilla fieldwork lean, put a bit aside so GEMSTONE could resource at least one decisive blow. Meanwhile that meek leftist McGovern surged among the Democrats and some punk kid took a pop at George Wallace, enough to put Wallace’s incendiary, unpredictable campaign out of action. The man in glasses had wanted, almost desperately, to get leftist or McGovern literature planted at the dimwitted gunman’s apartment but clearance for the plan took too long — that Mitchell, dammit — so a swarm of federal agents and wire service stringers descended first.
However — the time was ripe for something. At the very start of June Nixon had returned from Moscow with not one but two arms control agreements, the very model of a peacemaker that the big man was. Before the nights got any shorter it was a perfect time to hit the other side hard, undermine them fatally, sew up a Nixon victory even before the Republican convention. The president himself would know who to thank, and to whom he — Richard Nixon himself — should listen. Those who would do what it took.
In the spirit of redemption, and in honor of the many GEMSTONE plans left by the wayside, Gordon called this one CROWN JEWELS. The key thing — the strike at the enemy’s heart — was the Brookings job. Concurrent with that — plans folded in from the OPAL series of proposed black-bag jobs on opposition offices — smaller teams would hit the McGovern campaign headquarters in town and the Democratic National Committee’s executive suite over in the office blocks of the Watergate complex.
Brookings would be at once the centerpiece and the distraction, so that bug-laying and intelligence trawls at the other two Democratic sites would pass unnoticed. The enemy compromised fatally on three fronts; one fell swoop.
Everyone, it seemed, had a new lease on life now. Gordon surpassed himself tracking down a retired engine in Maryland that could pass muster, made chop-shop contacts involved in turning it out like a proper DC Fire rig — the sort of deception quality you got with proper CIA work, he felt sure — and turned up a retired Navy CPO who could run a quick and dirty course on firefighting for Howard’s Cubans. Howard reached farther into his Bay of Pigs connections for additional staff. The man in glasses kept the regular campaign itself — the innocuous front office — humming so the elite team in back would go unnoticed, paid for in some of those mountains of unmarked bills Hugh Sloan had around from the trawl of illicit contributions back in the winter.
The man in glasses felt it too — not hurt, probably, by the Benzedrine prescription. He’d gone in looking for a soldier’s clarity on the eve of battle like that long night spent with his rifle platoon off the coast of Guatemala years ago before his war was called off; boy had he found it. It made the decisive simplicity of CROWN JEWELS that much more obvious. The way this battle would decide the war. How proper application of attention and effort here — if you gave it your all, gave Dick Nixon the chance to surpass himself — was a lever to move the world.
That grew clearer and clearer the smoother his boost. So too there was his old fortitude: when he told Gordon that he’d take radio point on Mass Ave so the direct action team at Brookings could focus on the job, Gordon looked … proud. Proud to know him, like they should all be proud. Proud servants of the good fight.
Speaking of — he checked his watch. The last handful of minutes swept themselves away in an amphetamine stream as the clouds started to part, maybe not a bad thing if the explosion took out any of Brookings’ exterior lighting. He watched the engine slow roll past him on an empty boulevard, just as they’d planned. Watches synchronized, timed up to the spot just close enough but off the edge of the coming —
Thud. There it was. The earthquake rumble and the rush of flame like a highway torch. The car’s windows rattled hard then stilled. Reminded him of live-fire demonstrations during his youthful service. The man in glasses checked the channel to Gordon, who was tucked in at the Howard Johnson across from the Watergate. “Watchman to Falcon” — Falcon was Gordon, the Cubans’ sobriquet well earned — “go at Site One.”
“Go all sites,” came Gordon’s rumble on the other end. Howard and a couple of the Cubans would penetrate the back entrance at McGovern headquarters; they’d roped in James McCord who knew a couple of black-bag men from his past who’d see over the Watergate job then exfiltrate.
This was … life. This was what that was. To be alive. Committed. His blood raced with the memory of a long-ago climb up a volcano in the Corps, risk, pride of purpose. Sturgis, leader of the Brookings team, would give him a signal when the safe-crackers hit their target, as the other Cubans industriously rolled out the hoses and sprayed down the blooming flames that jigged like Christmas lights until the water wore them down. When the safe crew backtracked to the engine, the man in glasses would start his car, then blithely go his way. Just a late drive back to Patricia and Wendell, who slept sound. The Cubans —
Wait.
First he looked deep into the rearview, then craned around for a line of sight. Someone was talking to a crewman at the engine — Sturgis, probably, by his height. Street clothes, thin, on the tall side — who was on Mass Ave now? Howard had cased the street the week before, quarter past three on a Monday morning was a dead zone. For the man in glasses, the roaring pinch at the back of his skull ran up against a gate swung shut by a lightning mind. You’d get lookie-loos, if such were out. Sturgis was an old pro. Smile, talk like a firefighter, move them on. Long as the engine was loaded up by the time of an actual response, still good.
Two now. Three? Who was coming? From where? He raced to comprehend as the tension bore down like knives through his collarbones that pinned him to the seat. Even if there was a crowd you stuck to the plan — nothing like brazening it out. He looped in Gordon, who remained coolheaded. Step up the pace on the other jobs, and maybe Watchman should clear out? The man in glasses brushed it off. He took pride in his work; you didn’t just leave your men.
A squad car now? He had to look twice but there was the rack of lights atop the cruiser though they didn’t use them. A scrum of men at the entrance now as the fire guttered. Men moved back and forth — not his men. Were they blown? How?
Now came that cutting Doppler roar, the siren on a real engine, red and white lights that glared across the wide avenue like flame as more firefighters — the real thing — trucked down Mass Ave waved down by what looked like a uniformed cop.
Fair enough; time to go. He turned the car over.
Dammit.
Again. Paused, as his body electrified, then pumped the gas. Again — nothing. How could the battery be dead? His field radio didn’t even jack into the cigarette lighter. No running lights, nothing that should’ve done it. The back of his mind screamed out over a wide chasm as the front office adapted. Adapt and overcome, that’s what marines did — time to do it again.
“Watchman on foot. Roll up the sites,” he said as he dropped the unit in the well of the driver’s seat and caught Gordon saying “Godspeed, Watchman,” as he swung the door shut behind him. Get it towed in the morning. Walk now. Walk in dark and calm, the show was back up the street. Wouldn’t even notice him. Not a guy who attracted notice anyway, which was a gift in the job. Around a corner, then a taxi, then home to clean up the mess.
Another engine rolled past blaring as he hugged the concrete fronts along the eastbound side of the avenue. They would sort it. Burn documents as necessary at the scene, Sturgis and the Cubans would keep their mouths well shut. Close off a deep look at FBI level on national security grounds — get that straight from the man at the top — and wait for the ruckus to fade into the back pages of next Sunday’s Post. Not clean but they’d get the OPAL jobs done and press ahead.
Footsteps.
Just keep walking. Walk, he told himself. Nothing unusual. Just a late-night stroll. A stroll and unlucky timing. If someone stopped him to ask he’d be as cheery as a milkman. Funny old night, get on his way. Taxi. Home. Damage control.
Senses alight, he heard them pick up to a trot. He quickened his pace. It wasn’t choice, it wasn’t a debate over the merits, just the blood in his own veins that turned into a run.
Then they were at it; his was a long stride, the extra jolt from his prescription enough to give him the dandy pace of youth when he ran every morning in the service. Every few feet his eyes ached for a sidelight, spaces between buildings, not even an alley just a narrow dodge. Nothing, as his mind calmly removed itself from the fury of his body and started to plan the sequence by which he would keep his job…
The race was to the swift. He moved like a man possessed but the other figure, even weighed down in one of those greatcoats that brushed off flames, closed the distance with the relentless finality of the victory won over pride and principle by reality and time.
The fireman made the collar three blocks down from the car. Behind, another police cruiser rolled up, drowsy off a late-night deli, with policemen’s practiced eye for a runner. There was only a moment’s commotion, right as the fireman pulled the suited man in glasses’ wallet off him, as the substance of his jeopardy broke through and rattled him.
The cop off the cruiser’s passenger side swung up his flashlight, which danced across those glasses, as the firefighter pushed a mahogany hand forward on the peace officer’s right. Like a veteran patrolman the officer took the lean leather wallet in hand and made a show of examination.
“Colson?” he asked. The man in glasses’ head tilted down a fraction.
“Mr. Charles Colson … what brings you out on a night like this?”