Chapter 2: Bond Girl Emeritus

We did some considerable remodeling over our several apartment floors. One was absolutely restricted to clan members. It was also built to the security standards of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, using some temporarily imported workers, and mind control on the building inspector. No one outside our circles knew we had a SCIF, to wonder why we would want one.

Once the new facilities were available, I called a meeting. “You all know that I have a sense of world direction. All of you should be proud that we were able to help, without controlling, the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that case, JFK really had a good sense of juggling interests, and we more helped him in the direction in which he already was going.

“This isn’t the case in Southeast Asia. As with Cuba, he inherited some programs from the Eisenhower Administration.

“Kennedy was very different in the way he used staff and advisers. Eisenhower had a formal National Security Structure that was directly drawn from his experience with military staff doctrine. Proposals were studied, experts looked at options, and alternatives formally presented.

A first seminar

“We”, however, was expanding. Referring to my earlier life, I contacted an adjunct professor of intelligence analysis, Dr. Lorna Meitner, who ran a small think tank focused on developing nations in conflict, especially in Southeast Asia.

She sometimes had a comical effect in intelligence forums, not with quite the sex appeal of a Bond Girl, but a subtler and devastating form. It was with tongue in cheek that she tended to wear a trench coat and dark glasses. I thought of her as a Bond Girl Emeritus.

I’ve never been good about ages, but I’d put her in the early to middle forties. She was tall, had long and flaming red hair, and looked ready to pounce. Later, I learned that she was a marathon runner and judoka. She had a firm yet attractive face, with sharply defined features that I associated with runway models. I overheard another faculty member comment that “I’m glad she doesn’t play golf, as I don’t want to think what she’d do to my balls.”

At our first meeting, facilitated by Lois, we used telempathy to make her sympathetic and interested, fully accepting that apparent young teenagers were worthy of her attention.

I had suggested that we were interested in developments in Southeast Asia, for which she addressed the clan in our large salon room. Taking off her trenchcoat revealed that she was not wearing the dull clothing of an academic, but a bright red dress. It was tightly tailored, but also had a flaring skirt that dramatized her movement. While it was knee-length, we were definitely aware of her legs. From my previous life, “MILF”, “Mother I’d Like to Fuck”, came to mind. Nevertheless, I listened closely.

“In my view, we are there due to historic involvement with the French, reflexive anti-Communism of the early fifties, and now a militant anti-Communism by military assistance and force. Whenever a Communist presence exists, the U.S. Government seeks to Do Something. Once, we had a consistent strategy, based on Kennan’s work. We don’t anymore, but move from crisis to perceived crisis to crisis.

“While decolonization was FDR’s declared policy, Truman was more concerned with the Communist threat in Europe, and wanted to be sure that the fickle French remained U.S. allies. For that reason, we failed to object to the restoral of a French colonial government, even though Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the communist nationalist forces, appealed to us to form a protectorate that would lead to independence, as a neutral government.

“The French briefly restored their colonial control what they called French Indochina, which broke into Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. In Vietnam, a resistance called the Viet Minh fought the French. French forces fought a huge and eventually losing battle at a place called Dien Bien Phu. They appealed for help to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recommended a plan, called Operation VULTURE, to assist them. VULTURE would involve major air support, up to, and potentially including, the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This has not been made public, but, under the nondisclosure conditions under which I am speaking, I believe I can mention it. In any event, President Eisenhower emphatically rejected the Chiefs’ decision.”

Since the issue of tactical nuclear weapons in the Cuban Crisis was not known, and I had told the clan about it only under geas, it was inappropriate to mention that in a comment to Dr. Meitner. I made a mental note to discuss that when the Clan met.

“After the military defeat of the French, an international group met in Switzerland, and partitioned the former Indochina into a Communist North, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and a non-Communist South, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). I note that neither was especially democratic. The United States supported the authoritarian RVN, under President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic in a majority Buddhist nation. Diem himself was an ascetic who believed that Confucian principles legitimized his role. The United States felt we had to replace the French as guardians of a non-Communist government in the South, no matter how little that represented Western democratic values, or how little it represented the Buddhist values of the majority. He prevented free elections after the Accords, which might have consolidated the country, but almost certainly as a Communist state. To the United States of the time, keeping the Communists at bay was more important than human rights.

“There had been sporadic attacks by local Communists in the South, until the latter part of 1959, when attacks increased steadily. In December 1960, Radio Hanoi announced the formation of an underground National Liberation Front to lead the revolution in the South.”

Terry asked, “Were they connected to the U.S. or Vatican Catholic establishment?”

“Absolutely. Cardinal Spellman was a leader, if not the leader.”

“When the French withdrew in 1954, we reflexively took on their mantle, without ever asking seriously, “Why are we here?” Originally, the U.S. had developed a “containment policy” based on a brilliant “Long Telegram” from a diplomat, George F. Kennan. He suggested that the Soviets would avoid loss and back away when their probes were rebuffed. Kennan regarded them as essentially opportunistic.

“Within several years, however, containment changed to intervention. Intervention, especially in Southeast Asia, was based on the Domino Theory. That assumed that every change to Communism would make neighboring countries “fall like dominoes.” In Europe, one effective countermeasure was the NATO alliance.

“One key figure for intervention was an Air Force officer, detailed to the CIA, who indeed had had success in dealing with a Communist insurgency in the Philippines.

“His name was Edward Lansdale.” Murmurs moved through the room. “You know the name? He’s mostly a shadowy figure.” I said something noncommittal, while James informed me of something that I was already thinking.

He is an important figure. It will be a test of the Clan to see if people discover the relationships between the Cuban and Southeast Asian operations.

“Lansdale came to Vietnam before the 1954 Geneva Accords that split up French Indochina into North and South Vietnam. He put espionage and action teams into the North, but they didn’t affect much.”

“President Eisenhower, based on the NATO success, went to a related model in 1954, a year after partition. We took an active role in forming the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), to which he sent 700 overt personnel from the military, plus economic and military aid. The military aid seemed intent on building an army that could repel an attack like that of North Korea against South Korea. In general, it didn’t address counterinsurgency.

“Still, infiltration from the North increased. In 1961, the Kennedy Administration, in cooperation with the South Vietnamese government, put its primary effort into something called the Strategic Hamlet Program. The leaders, on both sides, came to a consensus, that it could be the unifying concept for a strategy designed to pacify rural Vietnam (the Viet Cong’s chosen battleground) and to develop support among the peasants for the central government.

“Again, it wasn’t a strategy. It didn’t include a vision of South Vietnam.

Intervention wasn’t always overt. It could be clandestine, but in either case, there might well be U.S. clandestine involvement, usually by the CIA, to identify weaknesses in both the friendly and hostile groups. Unfortunately, the government started to lean toward intervention’s sake. U.S. Army Special Forces, sometimes under CIA direction and sometimes the Pentagon, was another interventional force, but often for a higher level of conflict than the CIA alone.

Telepathically, Lois sensed Lorna Meitner. Immense intellectual power was her first impression, followed by a loneliness. She was a widow, who had lost a husband with whom she had a deep connection.

Lois wondered if Lorna would be a plausible part of the Clan.

“About this time in my presentation, people usually want some references.” She distributed a mimeographed handout, but then asked for an easel, which Greta and Vivian obtained from the war room. Lisa displayed and discussed a number of maps, and identified a number of participants. For many people, this would be deadly dull, but she made it interesting.”

Eventually, it was time for a break. This was useful because I wanted to get the reactions of the Clan to Dr. Meitner as a person. On a break, I’d only have time for a few people.

Lois told me, “I like her. She’s a born teacher as well as analyst. Since the loss of her husband, she has been lonely and depressed, but you’re seeing her when she has something meaningful to do.”

Terry examined other aspects. “Watch her move as she lectures. She makes an effort to stay athletic at age 42. I certainly get her intellectual power, but that she continues to keep strong, otherwise in depression, says something to me. She’s very aware of her body as well as her mind. To be blunt, she’s horny and won’t admit it to herself. I suspect she can be incredible in bed, and that I can connect with her as a woman of comparable age. Yes, I’m a little younger.”

“OK. Let’s make her feel as comfortable as she can, and then see if she would like to be part of us.”

Educating the Educator

When our telempathic senses reached out, Lorna drank from them as if dying of emotional thirst. Her attractions to us were complex. Only in her most selective graduate seminars did she have students so eager to learn. With us, she felt intellectual appreciation, but also frank, not crude, appreciation of her athleticism and the body she tried so hard to keep in fine shape.

She was delighted to have an advanced group that not just had token women, but a majority of them. Further, she was delighted to sense, from their appreciation, that her bisexuality was welcome, not a grounds for rejection.

We shared an intuition that Lorna needed to join the Clan as soon as possible. Her mind answered ours with joy, and happy tears.