Chapter 133: ‘The Buckman Crisis’

Sunday, September 17, 2000

We flew home and I felt exhausted and drained. My very future was on the line, and it seemed like the Fates were conspiring against me. By the time I got around to watching the news that night, we had gone international. Both Honduras and Nicaragua were demanding my head, although the U.S. could keep the other pieces. Honduras was screaming that I had defamed them somehow, even though I hadn’t made any public pronouncements at all. Nicaragua, now being run by the ‘Contras’ and not the Sandinistas, was still volatile, and they were demanding I return and stand trial for invading their country and killing their citizens.

George Bush was still campaigning. The official message was that he had full faith and confidence in me and that the charges were a baseless political attack by the Clinton White House. I was working to prove these false claims were lies and wouldn’t be available for a few days while I did this. I had talked to George late Monday and told him my plans for today and called him that Tuesday evening to let him know what had happened with 60 Minutes. We were expecting it to be broadcast on Sunday evening.

We were still trying to piece together who was doing this. It was much harsher and blunter than Clinton’s normal antics. I wondered if it was Carville. James Carville and Dick Morris had always been his go-to guys for dirty tricks, with Carville being the hammer and Morris being the velvet glove. Morris was gone, though, brought down by a prostitution scandal during the last election. This felt more like James Carville playing hard and fast with the truth, and consequences be damned. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Cheney or Rove, though. They didn’t want me around either, but the time to slit my throat was before the convention, not after.

Once I was back home, Marilyn and I had a long talk with the girls about what had happened back in 1981, and what was happening now. I warned them that it was going to get crazier before it got better and told them not to talk to reporters. If anybody asked them questions, they were to simply tell them to find me or their mother. It didn’t matter if it was a reporter, a teacher, or another student, but they weren’t to talk about it. It was more than I could ask of them, but I needed their help. They were suitably impressed and made solemn oaths not to talk. I smiled over at their mother when they said that, and we sent them on their way. Charlie was back at sea now, heading towards Australia and amphibious training with the Aussies, and probably wouldn’t have a chance to call anytime soon. We did get a few emails from him after the story broke, telling me he believed me and not the newspapers.

Wednesday proved to be a mixed bag. I stayed at home but was on the phone all day. On the bad news side, Honduras recalled their ambassador for discussions and Nicaragua decided to sever diplomatic relations with the United States. The evening news shows were now referring to this as ‘The Buckman Crisis’ and forecasting gloom and doom over our international relations with everybody south of the Rio Grande. Likewise, I was contacted by somebody from the Justice Department, asking me to come in for ‘discussions’, and I referred them to my lawyer, Tucker Potsdam, who I had instructed to sit on everything and stall them until I had this under control. The moment I showed up at any U.S. Attorney’s office, there would be flashbulbs and cameras, and the very real possibility of a perp walk. I needed to stay away from the Justice Department as long as possible.

On the plus side, however, I began to get some phone calls from retired soldiers across the country, guys from both Bravo Battery and C Company. Initially they called my office in Congress, but after Marty heard about them, he called me. We had a rule that nobody got my home number, but this was the exception to the rule. They were to be called back and given my personal phone number. By early evening, as guys began drifting home from work and began getting messages to call a newspaper or television station, I began getting phone calls at home. By Wednesday various news organizations were using their own sources to dig up names and addresses of people who might know something.

I must admit, there was a tremendous feeling of relief as I answered some of these calls. No matter how much of a cloud I had gone out with, almost all the calls were offering support, even from the guys I had never had contact with. When they asked what they should do, I told them to tell the truth, especially if 60 Minutes came calling. The only way I could survive was if some of the guys who had been there that day said so and said it was all bullshit.

Thursday and Friday simply got louder and stranger. My prepared statement that Governor Bush had full faith and confidence in me was wearing thin. By Thursday evening CBS was running promotional ads with video of Mike Wallace questioning me in a menacing manner and promising that Sunday night was going to be a special broadcast. I took that as a good thing. If it had been the standard fifteen-minute segment, then it meant they weren’t getting any rebuttal witnesses. Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced they were considering charges related to both war crimes and civil rights violations. It seemed that drug dealers in foreign countries had American constitutional rights; whether I still had any was under discussion.

It was becoming clear that 60 Minutes was talking to some of the guys who had made the jump and wanted them to do a taped interview. I got a couple of calls from guys asking what they should do, and I told them to do the interview and simply be honest. If they were asked what they saw, and they didn’t see anything, then say it. The most interesting guy who called was Alex Briscoe, the senior sergeant on the plane. He had retired after the Gulf War as an E-8 Master Sergeant. We talked about what was going on, and he told me what he had been hearing as well. He was tied in with some old timer non-coms and they passed around news and such. Several of the non-coms had been contacted by the Justice Department and warned against speaking on camera, as it might be considered interference with an ongoing investigation. I found that quite interesting. I asked him to call some of those guys back and get me some names and phone numbers, and not to worry about the Justice Department. I would handle that.

Sunday night we ate dinner early enough so that at 7:00 we could watch television. Needless to say, 60 Minutes was delayed almost half an hour by a football game. I tried to pay attention, but I just couldn’t care; Minnesota was at New England, and I didn’t particularly like either team.

Stormy was in seventh heaven, however. She had four laps to choose from and eight hands to rub her belly and scratch her head. She began jumping from lap to lap testing us to see which of us was better at spoiling her. You had to brace yourself when she jumped into your lap. She seemed to take more after her St. Bernard father than her Golden Retriever mix mother. She looked like an all brown St. Bernard, only a bit shaggier. And she was big! She was now somewhere around four months old, and weighed between forty and fifty pounds, and was growing at about four pounds a week! She was monstrous! This was, without a doubt, the largest dog I had ever owned, and I could easily foresee her to be growing bigger than Marilyn or the girls.

Eventually the show started, and it looked to be a doozie! Mike Wallace was sitting on the stool in front of a picture of me, with the caption ‘The Buckman Crisis’ overwritten on the photo. He announced that tonight’s entire show was going to be on the Buckman Crisis and my response to it, and further, that the regular show was being expanded to ninety minutes instead of the regular sixty. That was news to me. I wasn’t sure what he could scrape up for that much time. A typical 60 Minutes show contains three thirteen-minute segments and about three minutes of Andy Rooney at the end. The numbers only add up to about forty-two minutes, with the rest being commercials between the segments.

With that he went directly into the first segment, a discussion of the charges against me followed by excerpts from the interview with me. I was pleasantly surprised in that it wasn’t a hack job, although an awful lot of stuff was left on the cutting room floor. Most of the background material, on why we were there and why we were sent, was reduced to ‘a routine training deployment.’ Still, there are different ways to edit a story, and it wasn’t done anti-Buckman.

After the commercial break, the next segment was introduced by Wallace with the statement “So far, all that has been heard on the events in Honduras and Nicaragua has been either the allegations of misconduct by General Anthony Hawkins, his accuser, or by Congressman Carl Buckman. Still, others served with Captain Buckman, and they have their own stories.” The segment opened with Wallace and another man seated in armchairs, much like we had been on Tuesday. Wallace did a voiceover at that, and explained he was talking to Maxwell Fletcher, a project manager for a commercial contractor in Boston, and ‘Executive Officer of Bravo Battery under the command of Captain Carl Buckman.’ He had left the Army after fourteen years, as a major.

I blinked and stared at the image. “Holy shit! It’s Max!” I exclaimed. Marilyn and the girls turned to face me. I looked at my wife and pointed at the screen. “It’s Max!” Marilyn just gave me a blank look, so I waved her off and looked back at the screen. Max was older and heavier, and now had a mustache, but I remembered him. He had been a 2^nd Lieutenant when he was first assigned to Bravo Battery, did well, and was promoted to 1^st Lieutenant when I made Captain and was given command of the battery.

Wallace: “Major Fletcher, your first assignment in the Army was to Bravo Battery, Captain Buckman’s outfit, isn’t that correct?”

Max: “Pretty much. I was a Second Lieutenant just out of jump school and artillery school and was assigned to the 1^st of the 319 ^th. When I got there, I was introduced to Carl Buckman, who was a First Lieutenant.”

Wallace: “What was he like?”

Max: “It was kind of strange when I first met Carl. I had been told that I was being assigned to the best battery in the battalion, and then was told I was meeting the commanding officer. The next guy I met was this young guy, only about a year older than I was, but he was already the exec of the battery and pretty much its commanding officer.”

Wallace: “Pretty much? What do you mean?”

Max: “We had a captain, but he was leaving, and we were on our own for a while. For the next year or so we would get a new captain every few months, but they wouldn’t work out and leave. Meanwhile Carl Buckman was actually running the best battery in the division. I found out later that eventually the colonel just left Carl in command and stopped trying to find captains for us.”

Wallace: “Was that unusual?”

Max: “Very unusual. Captains run batteries, not lieutenants, and definitely not lieutenants who have only been out of artillery school for a year or so. Carl Buckman was just one hell of a lieutenant!”

Wallace: “What was he like?”

Max: “He was one of the finest officers I ever served under. After we met, the first thing he told me was that there were no bad troops, only bad officers. He held himself to a very high standard, and he held his officers to that same standard. We were expected to hold our non-coms, the sergeants and corporals, to a high standard and we were expected to make sure they held the rest of the troops to a high standard. He expected us to be the best battery in the unit.”

Wallace: “So he was a martinet?”

Max: “Hardly! Carl had a surprisingly dry sense of humor, and most importantly, the troops respected him. Troops know when an officer knows what he’s doing, and Carl Buckman knew what he was doing. He was tough but fair, kept the [bleeped] to a minimum, and kept battalion and division off their necks.”

Wallace: “Did the men like him?”

Max: “That wasn’t important to him. Doc didn’t care if they liked him or not. What was important was that they respected him and obeyed orders. That was one of the first things he would teach his officers, that they weren’t in the like or dislike business. If they couldn’t hack that, he would give them the address to the dog pound and a transfer out. They could pick up a puppy if they wanted to be liked.”

Wallace: “He was known as Doc?”

Max: “Yeah, well, he was a doctor, right? Everybody knew about the boy genius with the doctorate in math. He hated the nickname, though. You never said it to his face, not unless you outranked him. The majors and colonels all called him Doc.”

Wallace: “You were in Honduras with him, correct?”

At that point Mike Wallace began quizzing Max about the deployment and why we were there. Max verified what I had said, and then Wallace asked why I had made the drop.

Max: “Carl told me that it was going to be his last drop with the battery. We already knew he was transferring out as soon as we got home. He had this plum assignment lined up at Fort Sill, and a stint at command school after that. He figured he’d do one last drop, have a little fun, and go home. Boy, did he get that wrong!”

That pretty much ended Max’s participation in this, and the next scene had Wallace with three men who were sitting on bar stools and facing him. They were introduced as ‘Alex Briscoe, Raul Gonzalez, and John Thompson.’ As I looked at them, memories came flooding back. I had talked to Briscoe the other day, but not Gonzalez or Thompson. Thompson had been the RTO with us, and Gonzalez had been one of my Spanish speaking scouts on the hike home. Wallace gave a quick bio on each man, specifying that they had all seen action in the Eighties and had all left the Army after twenty or more years of service. He even told what they had done after they left the service. Briscoe worked security for a casino, Gonzalez owned a small used car sales lot, and Thompson was in the telecom field.

Wallace: “Sergeant Briscoe, what was so special about this mission? What made it different than normal?”

Briscoe: “It was all messed up. That idiot general wanted to make Brownie points with the Hondos, so he had them drop us out of World War II C-47s. None of us had ever even seen a plane that old, let alone trained in one. And he didn’t want to hear it when he was told it wasn’t safe. We were going or he’d have us all up on charges.”

Wallace: “Couldn’t you refuse?”

Gonzalez: “Hey, the guy was a general and I was a private. You obey orders or go to Leavenworth. It’s pretty straightforward. We got on the plane and made the jump.”

Wallace: “What were your ranks and what did you do during the jump?”

Briscoe: “At the time I was a Sergeant First Class, and I was the senior non-com on the plane.”

Gonzalez: “I was a PFC, Private First Class. I spoke Spanish, so after we landed, the Captain assigned me as one of the scouts.”

Thompson: “I was a Spec 4, the radio operator. I just followed the Captain around and ran the radio.”

Wallace: “So you were there when General Hawkins ordered Captain Buckman to turn himself in to the Nicaraguan authorities?”

Thompson: “We never received any such orders. We were ordered to march north to the border, and not get caught doing so.”

Wallace: “General Hawkins says he ordered you to surrender yourselves and Captain Buckman refused those orders and then threatened you if you disobeyed him.”

Thompson: [Snorting and shaking his head] “General Hawkins is lying. That radio never left my possession, and I was always with the Captain when he was talking to anybody. What he is saying is simply not possible. It didn’t happen.”

Briscoe: “Captain Buckman never threatened anybody, unless maybe he told that worthless lieutenant to get his act together.”

Gonzalez: “The Captain couldn’t threaten us. If we didn’t like what he wanted to do, we could have just walked away!” [Laughing from all three of them]

Wallace: “What do you mean?”

Gonzalez: “He really busted up his leg on the landing. He should have been on a stretcher, too, but he didn’t want to slow us down. He refused any morphine, too, said to give it to the guys who needed it more. He just had us wrap his leg as best we could, and we rigged him up a crutch.”

Wallace: “What do you mean about Lieutenant Fairfax? Why do you say he was worthless?”

Briscoe: [Glanced at others and then shrugged] “It’s just ... listen ... not everybody is cut out for a combat outfit. Lieutenant Fairfax was simply clueless. He was just a lousy officer. Now, I don’t know what he did after he left the Army. Maybe he became an insurance adjuster, and maybe he became the world’s best insurance adjuster, but as a combat officer he was a disaster.”

Gonzalez: “He’d have gotten us all killed or captured, that’s for sure. Captain Buckman, the one thing he kept telling us over and over was that we were all going home, together, no matter what. Then he made it happen.”

Briscoe: “I remember one funny moment when we were going through this one valley, and he led us all in the Paratrooper’s Psalm.”

Wallace: “The Paratrooper’s Psalm? What...?”

Gonzalez: [Laughing] “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil...”

Briscoe and Thompson: [Together with Gonzalez, laughing] “ ... because I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley!” [Laughing]

Thompson: “It’s just too bad he wasn’t infantry.” [Laughing and ‘HOO-AH’s from the others]

Wallace: “Meaning?”

Briscoe: “We were all Infantry. Captain Buckman was Artillery. He wasn’t one of our regular officers. He was actually along as an observer.”

Wallace: “So when he took command, he actually did mutiny.”

Briscoe: “Not at all. Artillery is a line command, just like Infantry, and captains outrank second lieutenants. No way would we have gone along with a mutiny. He simply outranked Lieutenant Fairfax. It was as simple as that.”