Chapter 47

We left Biff to his project and went to the palace of Prime Minister Cordeiro.

There were lengthy introductions of the girls and his cabinet officers along with their office administrators.

The conversation covered several topics that I needed information on. One was how satisfied he was with the security arrangement with JBG so far and another was, were there any changes he wanted to discuss.

Then the discussion went to the Pact with the new countries added and the new contracts that we had brought for them to sign.

There was a joint meeting with all nine countries to finalize the training arrangements and formulate a schedule ten days from today where I needed to be.

It was back to the hotel - the same one where the rest of the men were staying. It was a low four star hotel. We did go out to a swanky restaurant for dinner.

We left Lisbon for Madrid Spain at 0700 on Tuesday to meet with the politicians for a photo op. Then it was on to their national police academy to discuss ideas on their training needs. After that, there was a meeting with the entire group that was coming to Fort Smith for training.

There were lengthy discussions about where JBG command and operations functions were to be located. We finished out the afternoon at the US embassy giving the JBG team a review and audit.

We then spent an hour filling them in on the changes coming. The important thing was there would be some cooperation between the two groups although it was somewhat limited by the contracts.

We finished out the day with another State dinner before going to the Madrid Hilton.

At 0500 we were in the gym and then on to a light breakfast. At 0730 the wheels left the runway for Vienna, Austria. Austria was one of the last countries to join the Pact so I had not met any of the principals involved with the PACT. I had talked with several members of the President’s Cabinet including the important Immigration Minister and the Minister of Justice, to whom the secret police reported.

A closed door meeting was to take place with the President, cabinet and ministers. With politics as usual there would be the important arrival media orgy and after meeting news conference. Then there was the state dinner and more politics.

We were finished by 1300 and had a few hours before we needed to be back for the dinner. With a guide from the ministry of tourism, we went to see the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp that had been designated a National Memorial.

As part of history classes and then as part of Marine training, (why we fight for freedom) I had said if I ever got anywhere near one of these memorials I would visit.

The four hours we spent there were nowhere near enough. I could have spent days there with my interest in history. It was a tough experience; we had tears in our eyes more than once.

To think that man could inflict this kind of torture and brutality on his fellow man was beyond belief. And then the reality sinks in that it goes on today with hardly a whimper from the world powers.

Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the western Pacific mass murders, rape, genocide - all over religious beliefs, economics, greed and power - only gets bigger with killing and torturing more and more. If we just stand by and turn away it will be here in just a few years.

That was the lesson that I wanted to see and understand and there was no better place than this.

After dinner and politics I went to the US embassy in Vienna to use MTAC to call the White House and Section Twelve for updates and to meet with the US ambassador.

Thursday was a repeat of Wednesday, just in a different location - Ljubljana, Slovenia – with more media meetings, public relations and more news conferences. Then we went to the US Embassy for a meeting with US Ambassador and to use MTAC again. Agreements were made for a small operations center and training.

Friday was again a repeat with another new location; Tirana, Albania. This time there were meetings, media and high level meetings with the Albanian security, the President and Prime Minister and a cooperation agreement. They wanted it called a cooperation agreement for political reasons.