Chapter 113: An Old Friend.

Thursday, December 17, 1992

There are some things that only the House of Representatives can do and some things only the Senate can do. The House is much more involved in the budget process than the Senate. On the other hand, only the Senate gets to weigh in on a President’s appointments to high office. The Senate is supposed to be the more senior of the two bodies and is supposed to be the older and wiser grownups. It goes to most Senator’s heads, and makes a lot of them into pompous asses, but that’s a different topic.

The one thing I didn’t have to pay any attention to was cabinet appointments or nominations to the Supreme Court. No matter what I thought of the person, I had no legal right to get involved. If somebody were to ask, I could toss my two cents in, but even then, it mostly doesn’t matter. As far as the Cabinet is concerned, there are four biggies - State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury - and everything else is who-gives-a-shit territory. For instance, nobody cared about Transportation until a bunch of planes crashed on 9-11, otherwise, who gives a shit?

What most people don’t realize is that most of these positions have deputies who are also political appointees and need Senate approval. These jobs never end up on the evening news, never get any kind of argument, and are rubber-stamped. The only time things get mucked up is when a Senator gets his panties in a wad and puts a hold on things to try and make a point. For instance, when George W. Bush came into office in 2001, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina put holds on a bunch of his appointees to force the President to change a law.

As a plain and simple junior Congressman, I was beneath the gaze of my more powerful brothers in the Senate. Everybody already knew by December who Bill Clinton was nominating for various positions. The various deputies were simply listed on a paper that got sent to everybody as part of a routine data dump. Vast amounts of this stuff get sent around, almost none of which is ever read. In general, if you even notice it, you glance over it, and send it back to be filed or tossed.

I received a courtesy list of nominations for Cabinet Deputy Secretaries and Under Secretaries towards the end of December. There are huge numbers of these bureaucrats, and the titles are intentionally confusing. Who ranks higher, a Deputy Secretary, an Under Secretary, or an Assistant Secretary? Who’s more important, a Deputy Assistant or an Assistant Deputy? Does anybody care? Well, it’s important to know if you are trying to get anything done. A Deputy is a shitload higher up in the pecking order than an Assistant, so if you need something to get done, you have to know who on the ladder can help.

At this point, though, I just scanned over the list, to see if I remembered any of the names from my first time through. In fact, one of them did ring a bell. I called Mindy into my office and handed her the list, with one of the names circled on it. “Do me a favor, Mindy, and find out who this guy is?”

She looked at the list, a bit confused. “Who is he?”

“That’s what I want you to find out. He must have a bio somewhere in the system. All I have right now is the name. I just want to see if it’s the same fellow I think, or somebody different.”

She shrugged and nodded. “An old friend?”

I smiled back. “Maybe. Let’s find out.”

Mindy took off and I put it out of my mind and went to the next piece of paper in the In Box, a list of some legislation about to be introduced as soon as Bill Clinton took office. Bill was feeling pretty cocky, with a happy Democratic Congress ready to do his bidding. Well, good for him, but in a couple of years he was going to get a very rude wakeup call.

Mindy came in the next morning with a manila envelope. “Here’s the information you asked for.” She opened the envelope and handed me what looked like a stock bio and a picture of a handsome and smiling man. “Is this who you thought it was?”

I stared at the picture as my stomach churned. “Yes, yes, it is. Thank you.” I looked up at her and saw the curiosity in her face. “Now, I want you to call Gingrich’s office and get me a meeting with him as soon as possible. Don’t take no for an answer. It won’t be a long meeting, but I need to meet him soon, and I’ll stay as late as I need to.”

“What’s wrong, Congressman Buckman?”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry, just get me that meeting. Thanks.”

Mindy nodded and left, still mystified. I looked back down at the bio and photo, pondering how this man had wandered back into my life like this. It was a good photo, too, showing a handsome man, tall, and slim, with a full head of ‘executive hair’ and bright white teeth.

It was my old friend, Brigadier General Anthony Hawkins!

I never used his full name in 1981, when I met the man, although I knew it. I was a Captain, and he was a Brigadier General. His first name was ‘General’, and I needed to toss a lot of ‘Sir’s in as well. When last I saw him, he was ordering my sorry ass onto a C-47, and then a few days later I heard him demanding I march my dead and injured men back to Honduras. I never saw him after the dustoff picked us up at that ‘abandoned’ airstrip; he kept his hands relatively clean and had the Provost Marshal and his people kick the shit out of me in that basement jail cell.

Colonel Featherstone had told me that Hawkins was being promoted to Major General at about the time I was ending my career. I looked down the bio and shook my head in amazement. He did two years in Brussels with NATO, and then transferred back to the states, where he managed to pick up a third star, and then moved on to Hawaii as the Army commander reporting to CINCPAC, the Navy four star who ran the Pacific. That was it for him in the Army. He retired a Lieutenant General six years ago. After that he spent some time on the board of a defense contractor, and when that was bought by Grumman and he was out of a job, he went on to join the Center for Military Progress, a Washington think tank.

What really surprised me was that Hawkins was a Democrat. Military people are a conservative bunch, and they tend towards the Republican Party. One of the benefits of conscription, drafting people, is that you get much more of a mix of society than you do with an all-volunteer force, which tends to be self-replicating. No, I’m not advocating the return of the draft, but it wasn’t all bad, either.

I hadn’t really thought much about the dumb bastard since I got out of the service. My knee was fucked up, but that could have happened another time or place, a different jump, or even just falling down the stairs. I had left the Army almost eleven years ago, and it wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I never regretted my service, and would have loved to have stayed in, but it just didn’t work out that way. I certainly couldn’t complain about my life since then!

Now, as I thought back to those days, I realized how foolish and naïve I had been. What would have happened if I had just said “NO!” and refused to get on board that Goony Bird? What if we had all refused what we knew were ridiculous and illegal orders? It’s not like we were at war, where you have to do what you have to do. It was a fucking training exercise, and that asshole would have cheerfully killed us all as long as it didn’t hurt his next promotion. What’s the worst that would have happened? He could have court-martialed me for refusing to obey an order, but I could have beaten that one at trial easily. My career would have been shot, but it was over with as soon as Hawkins got involved anyway. More importantly, two good men wouldn’t have had to die, and another good man wouldn’t have been crippled, and I don’t mean me. I had allowed my personal courage and sense of duty to override my duty to my fellow soldiers.

There was no way I was going to let Hawkins back into the service of the U.S. government!

Right after lunch Mindy told me that Newt was giving me five minutes at four to talk to him. I thanked her and had her clear my schedule for the afternoon. At half past three I walked over to his office and waited my turn. I was ushered in about five after four and smiled as I wound my way through his offices. It was nicer than mine, by a long shot.

Ever since we had picked up some more seats in the House, Newt was a lot happier with me than before, when I was working with the Democrats. I was still planning on working with them, but I saw no need to rub it in his face. In fact, what I wanted to do now would be a sharp stick in the eye for the Democrats, and he was sure to appreciate it.

“Carl, good to see you again. How can I help you?”

“Thank you for seeing me, Newt, I appreciate it.”

He smiled expansively. “So, what brings you here?” I reached inside my jacket and pulled out the bio and photo of Hawkins and laid them on his desk. “What’s this? Who’s this fellow?” he asked.

“That would be the information on Lieutenant General Anthony Hawkins, who has been nominated by Bill Clinton as the Deputy Secretary of State under Warren Christopher.”

“So?”

“So, it’s not going to happen. I knew this guy back when I was in the Army. He is not qualified for a leadership position anywhere in the government. I don’t want to get into it because there are national security implications, but I won’t let him serve again. Nobody in the Senate or over at Clinton’s offices knows me or would listen to me, but they know you. I am asking that you contact somebody and have this nomination killed off.”

Newt had been sitting back in his chair lazily listening to me, but as I talked and got to the phrase ‘national security’ he straightened up. “Carl, we are in the House of Representatives, not the Senate. The Senate gets to ‘advise and consent’, not us.”

“I understand that, and it’s why I’m talking to you. I’m serious, though. If I have to crash his confirmation hearing and do it on live TV, I’ll do it, and if it costs me my office, I’ll pay the price.”

“You pull a stunt like that, and it will cost you your office! It will result in a Congressional censure and contempt of Congress charge, at the least!”

I nodded. “As I said, I will pay the price.”

He looked at me carefully. “You need to tell me what’s going on, Carl. What the hell is this national security nonsense?”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell you. It was classified Top Secret. I will have to pay that price as well, if I speak out in a public hearing.”

“Carl, I’m not sure what you expect out of me if you don’t tell me what is going on, or what happened, or whatever.”

“Newt, on this one you are going to have to trust me.”

He just shook his head. “Give me some time to make some phone calls, but don’t do anything stupid without talking to me first. If this is bullshit, I will hang your balls out to dry in the noonday sun.”

“Fair enough.” I stood and took my leave of him. I flew home, and then had several drinks too many that night. Too damn much of that nightmare in Central America was being dredged up. Even Marilyn noticed I was being short and snappy with her.

Newt called me two days later. “Carl, the best I could do was set up a meeting with some people in the Senate, and you are going to have to explain this national security stuff to them.”

“When?”

“Thursday the 17^th.”

That was next week. “Just let me know when and where,” I told him.

“You’d better know what you’re doing, Carl, or this is going to be a disaster.” Newt finished and hung up on me.

The meeting was in Newt’s office at two in the afternoon. I was waiting with him, just chatting over plans for 1993, as people began showing up. It was a meeting of the Washington Congressional and Senatorial elite - and me. The Senate Majority Whip, Wendell Ford, was present, as was the head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Claiborne Pell, which was the committee that would have to hold the hearings on Hawkins. Probably because of the national security implications I was mentioning, the head of the Select Committee on Intelligence, David Boren, was present. The last to appear was a handler from the Clinton transition team named John Baldwin, who was one of Warren Christopher’s people, and Hawkins himself. The only Republicans in the room were me and Newt.