Chapter Nine

GUESTHOUSE TO THE WORLD

I like the gaiety of Camp David.

—Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to President Nixon

TRICIA NIXON ONCE said of Camp David, “It’s like a resort hotel where you’re the only guest.” However, Camp David has hosted a rotating cast of world leaders since its inception. Not only does the invitation to Camp David confer a certain prestige, but a president knows that his counterparts appreciate the chance to get away from the hot lights of scrutiny that follow them to meetings with the American president.

“Camp David is a far more intimate setting than the White House,” wrote Laura Bush. “It is a place where you can get to know another leader without the crush of a roomful of a hundred or so invited guests.… A visit to Camp David is more like a visit to someone’s weekend place. And it cements a different friendship than simply having a fancy event amid gleaming silver and glittering chandeliers.”

Nearly every president since Roosevelt has brought world leaders to camp for high-level sleepovers or even just lunch meetings. Some of these are friendly, others chilly, but all allow fascinating personal views.

Camp David, as we’ve seen, has a way of imposing its mood on the people who visit. Whether playing horseshoes or driving golf carts, these usually sober leaders let down their guard for a moment, and the result is a revealing glimpse behind the curtain. This is clearly apparent at high-level summits, but it also exists during one-on-one meetings. The underlying purpose of inviting a foreign leader to Camp David is always diplomacy, but an invitation to Camp David is more significant than an invitation to the White House, which is why it is not extended that often. In the scheme of things, except for large summits, relatively few foreign leaders have had the opportunity to visit the presidential retreat, and they don’t often get much coverage because the press is held at bay. For example, while Khrushchev received a lot of attention when Eisenhower took him to Camp David in 1959, less note was given to two important visitors with related concerns—Harold Macmillan in March 1959 and Charles de Gaulle in April 1960. Macmillan, who was at the camp to talk to President Eisenhower about the Soviets and Berlin, nonetheless was given a little downtime. No doubt the two men reminisced about their time in the war, after which they watched what Macmillan later described as “inconceivably banal” movies from Eisenhower’s list of Western favorites. (These were the same movies Khrushchev would eagerly ask for during his visit a few months later.)

In his book Silent Missions, Lieutenant General Vernon Walters described the sixty-nine-year-old Charles de Gaulle’s “aura of aloofness and mystery that he felt was absolutely necessary for greatness.” Yet at Camp David, in the company of Eisenhower, de Gaulle softened. The two men took a side trip to Eisenhower’s farm in nearby Gettysburg, where they strolled through the Civil War battlefield, and later on they hunkered down at Camp David and discussed how to end the Cold War. During his final days in office, Eisenhower was increasingly focused on that goal. On Sunday morning they drove down the mountain to attend church at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Thurmont.

More than a year after being elected president of France, de Gaulle was critical of both the Soviet Union and the United States, so the discussions were blunt. But the two men, who had been sparring since World War II, understood each other.

The opportunity for personal diplomacy is one of the hallmarks of Camp David, and that diplomacy was most actively pursued with the Soviet Union and then Russia. Eisenhower’s charm offensive with Khrushchev was one for the history books, but it didn’t crack the shell of resistance. In the coming decades, Camp David would play host to several Soviet and then Russian leaders, although the freeze hardened after Khrushchev’s visit and stayed that way for a long time. Johnson tried to get Khrushchev’s successor, Alexei Kosygin, to Camp David in 1967, but the Soviet Union leader declined. He did, however, invite Johnson to Moscow, and the president accepted, only to cancel the trip after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. The freeze continued. It wasn’t until June 1973 that another Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, accepted a U.S. president’s invitation; Nixon invited Brezhnev to a weeklong summit in the White House and then a visit to Camp David after the meetings. Unbeknownst to the Soviet leader, Nixon taped their conversations, which were unusually friendly and mild. At one point Nixon commented on Brezhnev’s cigarette box, which had a special timer that allowed him to retrieve a cigarette only at intervals. “That’s a way to discipline yourself,” Nixon said admiringly.

When Nixon asked Brezhnev if he’d like to go to Camp David, he replied, “Anything you suggest, I’m happy to go along with. I like the gaiety of Camp David”—although gaiety was an odd word choice in reference to Camp David. He probably meant the chance for relaxed discussion and a break from closed-door meetings.

“Diplomacy is not always an easy art,” Nixon wrote of the occasion in his memoir, and Brezhnev’s visit to Camp David was literally a bumpy ride. Trying to court the Soviet leader, Nixon presented him with a gift—a dark blue 1973 Lincoln Continental that had been donated by the Ford Motor Company. Brezhnev was delighted. He immediately suggested they try out the vehicle. As Nixon recounted, “He got behind the wheel and motioned me into the passenger seat. The head of my Secret Service detail went pale as I climbed in and we took off down one of the narrow roads that run around the perimeter of Camp David.… At one point there is a very steep slope with a sign at the top reading, ‘Slow, dangerous curve’… Brezhnev was driving more than 50 miles an hour as we approached the slope. I reached over and said, ‘Slow down, slow down,’ but he paid no attention.” At the bottom, brakes squealing, Brezhnev made the turn, and Nixon, hanging on for dear life, said, “You are an excellent driver. I would never have been able to make that turn at the speed at which we were traveling.” One can easily imagine the scene—a nervous, even terrified Nixon, frantic Secret Service men, and a gleeful Brezhnev. When the car finally arrived safely at the bottom of the hill, Nixon was relieved, but he also might have glimpsed a reckless side of the man he was trying to charm. Indeed, at a summit in Washington the previous year, Nixon had been caught off guard by Brezhnev’s style, when he shifted so easily from good humor to rage—like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Nixon thought.

A tape released by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in 2013 shows that the two men got along well at Camp David and perhaps shared their grievances over being misunderstood. In April Nixon had fired Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and the Watergate threat was pressing in on his presidency. In one memorable exchange between the two leaders, Brezhnev expressed his disdain for the critics who tried to thwart the efforts of strong leaders like himself and Nixon. He said, “Now, there are some people who keep throwing in this idea of there being two superpowers in the world who are out to dictate their, as they say, dictate their will, to foist their will upon others, and so forth. Now, but, are we to blame for being big? Are we to blame for being strong? What can we do about it? That is the way it is. I mean, what do these people want us to do… turn ourselves into some kind of Guinea, or a country like that?” But in spite of their common view of their critics, the president and Mr. Brezhnev did not reach the détente Nixon was seeking.

Achieving a breakthrough in relations with the Soviet Union became one of the central endeavors of the Reagan presidency, but he never brought Mikhail Gorbachev to Camp David, although the two men had several summits after Gorbachev became general secretary in 1985. Nevertheless, the Soviets were much on Reagan’s mind at Camp David, especially during a visit by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The visit was Thatcher’s idea. After Reagan won reelection in 1984, Thatcher wrote that she was planning to be in Peking in December, and if the president was going to be in California, she’d like to visit him on the way home. He responded that he’d be at Camp David, and she asked if she could visit him there.

Normally Reagan didn’t like to entertain world leaders at the camp, seeing it more as a private retreat for himself and Nancy, but Thatcher was considered a close friend—almost like family—so he invited her to lunch at the camp on December 22.

Thatcher’s advisers suggested she dress casually, as was fitting for the camp, but when Reagan met her at the landing zone in his golf cart, she was wearing her typical tweed suit. She got in beside the informally dressed president, and they took off for Aspen. As they passed Cedar, Reagan saw CO Rispoli’s kids playing in the driveway; he leaned over to point them out to Thatcher, and he almost smashed into a tree. Fortunately for all concerned, he corrected course, and they continued on their way.

Finally, having safely arrived at Aspen, the two leaders had lunch and their important conversation about the SDI—Star Wars—mentioned earlier.

“He was at his most idealistic,” Thatcher wrote in her memoir. “He stressed that SDI would be a defensive system and that it was not his intention to obtain for the United States a unilateral advantage.… He reaffirmed his long term goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely.” By the time he left office, Reagan had made some headway on that vision, but things were about to change once again.

In 1990, soon after Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union—the first to hold this position—President Bush invited him to Camp David. The visit of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev was a huge event for the camp crew. CO Berry hosted several setup visits by the White House advance team, the USSR advance team, the KGB, the USSR communications team, the press advance team, and the White House chefs.

All the regular phones were taken out of the cabins and the Soviets installed their own. While the camp phones were high-tech and encrypted, the Soviet phones looked like holdovers from the 1950s—big, black, rotary-dial contraptions. The camp transport garage was cleared for Soviet communications, and when they started broadcasting to Moscow, they jacked the power so high that it interfered with the American communications. “We were hearing Russian,” Berry said. “We had to ask them to tone it down.”

The original plan was for Bush and Gorbachev to arrive in separate helicopters, but Gorbachev refused to fly in a U.S. helicopter unless the president was with him. This caused a change in protocol, as the president would usually be at camp first to greet his guest at the landing zone. Berry remembered the dramatic arrival ceremony, with both presidents coming down the steps of the helicopter, all smiles.

Each side had a full complement of officials—thirteen for the Soviets and fifteen for the Americans, including Vice President Quayle, Governor Sununu, Secretary Baker, Secretary Cheney, and General Colin Powell.

As the president and Gorbachev headed to the golf cart, Bush asked, “Do you want to drive?” Gorbachev motioned Bush to go ahead. They climbed in and Bush announced, “Here we go!” and they headed to Birch, where the Gorbachevs would be staying. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Gorbachev got into a separate golf cart, with Mrs. Bush driving. Later the two women took a stroll around the grounds, the First Lady in her signature pearls and wearing sneakers.

President Bush was always a gracious host who put other leaders at ease, Berry observed, and the same was true of Gorbachev. They toured the camp, their ties off and relaxed. When they came to the horseshoe pit, one of Bush’s favorite spots, Gorbachev said he’d never played the game, so Bush asked him if he’d like to. The Soviet leader got a ringer on his first shot, impressing everyone, including himself. Bush had the horseshoe mounted by a camp Seabee and then presented it to Gorbachev at dinner that night. Raisa Gorbachev also played horseshoes with Barbara Bush.

At the end of the visit, Bush gave the Gorbachevs personalized Camp David jackets with their names embroidered on the front. The press was at camp to witness the departure, and they saw the golf cart approaching with Gorbachev at the wheel and both men laughing and joking.

Few could guess during that visit that the Soviet Union was in its final death throes. On Christmas Day of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and less than a month later, the new Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, was at Camp David with President Bush. Yeltsin was accompanied by his wife, Naina.

The press was allowed in to witness the arrival. CO Joe Camp remembered the big crowd of security and translators. Bush and Yeltsin jumped into a golf cart, the cameras flashing, and sped off. Camp noticed that Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Yeltsin were left standing there with no ride. Horrified, he quickly brought his cart around and took them to Aspen.

Barbara Bush and Naina Yeltsin would become friends during that visit. The First Lady was impressed by Naina’s warmth. When the Bushes’ daughter Doro walked into Aspen and gave Mrs. Yeltsin a big hug, no one thought it odd. “Mrs. Yeltsin is that kind of person; you want to hug her,” Barbara Bush wrote.

After their meeting, the two leaders proclaimed a new era of friendship and partnership, and for a time it seemed as if the age-old conflicts had finally ended. But in the coming years, as Russian leaders, old and new, jockeyed for power and prominence, the relationship went through many difficulties. President Clinton attempted to form a close relationship with Yeltsin but was often sidetracked by Yeltsin’s unpredictable nature.

President Bush 43 thought he could work with Vladimir Putin, the president who had replaced Yeltsin in 2000. One of Bush’s fondest goals was to achieve a reset with the Russians, something that had eluded every president before him. With so much to divide the two countries, he hoped that they could find common ground. After their first meeting in Slovenia in June 2001, Bush had said, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.” When Putin expressed support after 9/11, it looked as if the two men were on solid footing.

In spite of Putin’s opposition to the war in Iraq, Bush invited him to Camp David in September 2003. Bush hoped that the spirit of Camp David would have a positive effect on the Russian president.

President Bush was at the camp to meet Putin when he arrived in a convoy of two helicopters accompanied by a large entourage. A caravan of fifteen golf carts made its way to the residence. Soon after, CO Bob McLean received a call from the steward. President Putin had forgotten his bedroom slippers. One of the crew was sent to Walmart to purchase a new pair.

At a press availability, Bush welcomed “my friend” Vladimir Putin and said, “For decades, when the leaders of our two countries met, they talked mainly of missiles and warheads, because the only common ground we shared was the desire to avoid catastrophic conflict. In recent years, the United States and Russia have made great progress in building a new relationship. Today, our relationship is broad and it is strong.” But in spite of its auspicious start, Bush’s reset never took hold.

Later Bush would describe a telling clue to Putin’s style. Relating how the Russian president sniffed derisively on meeting Barney and later introduced Bush to his real dog, a Russian Labrador, Bush said, “I learned a lot about Putin then. ‘My dog is bigger than your dog.’”

Having foreign dignitaries at camp is always stressful, but not every guest is involved in high-risk diplomacy. Nixon made it a practice to send foreign dignitaries to Camp David before or after meeting them in the White House. In February 1970 Camp David hosted French president Georges Pompidou for a visit prior to a meeting at the White House. Nixon wasn’t at camp and President Pompidou and his wife, Claude, stayed at Aspen. A formal dinner was planned at Aspen for the evening of their arrival. CO Dettbarn was thrilled when he and his wife, Gloria, were invited. The White House sent a culinary crew to prepare and serve the dinner, and there would be fourteen people seated.

This created an immediate challenge for Dettbarn, since Aspen did not have a large enough dining table to accommodate that many people. So the Seabees took two existing tables, pushed them together, and put a one-inch-thick piece of plywood on each table to cover the split and provide a stable surface. On top of that, they placed the appropriate pads and a tablecloth.

A Department of State official sitting at one end of the table was a large and gruff guy who tended to put his elbows on the table and pound it during a fun and exciting dinner. Dettbarn, seated at the midpoint where the two pieces of plywood met, felt the pieces shifting every time the official banged the table. Dettbarn fearfully imagined the calamity of the table tipping over and shattering the fancy White House china and crystal. He spent most of the dinner with a steadying hand on the connection point; fortunately, the makeshift table survived the meal.

After dinner there was a movie—or part of one. Pompidou had been watching the newly released movie Patton on the plane, and he wanted to finish viewing it. Drinks and cigars were passed around, and despite Madame Pompidou’s insistence that she and her husband should go to bed, the last reel of Patton was started. She left the room.

About fifteen minutes later, Madame Pompidou reappeared in the living room in a housecoat with her hair in curlers. She lightly scolded her husband for watching the movie and said he had to come to bed, as there was an early meeting at the White House the following morning. Pompidou reluctantly got up and shuffled down the hallway; the movie was stopped and everyone left, leaving Dettbarn to reflect that most homes weren’t all that different from one another.

As noted, foreign dignitaries didn’t visit much during Reagan’s presidency, but in 1981 he hosted Mexican president José López Portillo for an elaborate barbecue behind Aspen that would feature country-western singer Janie Fricke. The day before the barbecue, Nancy Reagan summoned CO Bill Waters to Aspen. Deer on the compound had eaten the flowers on the patio. Nancy told him, “I want the area festooned with flowers”—introducing Waters to a new word. The crew scrambled to find replacements, and on the day of the barbecue everything looked beautiful—and festooned.

The barbecue was a huge event, with a Who’s Who of Washington invited. Waters remembered walking down the road with the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the vice president, congressmen, and members of the cabinet “like we were buddies.” Reagan clearly felt very warmly toward Portillo, and in a toast at the pool that evening he promised a continued friendship with America’s good neighbors.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, British prime minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, visited Camp David several times, the first time in February 2001, shortly after Bush’s inauguration and during my term as CO. We planned an elaborate visit that included bringing twenty-four members of the press to camp to cover the Blairs’ arrival. There would be two additional press events that day. We positioned the press on the grass in front of the flagpole. The Bushes arrived first and an hour later the Blairs landed in a helicopter dubbed State One. We provided the typical military cordon—ten Marines, ten Sailors, and a six-member color guard. The hatch popped open and for the first time, the Bushes met the Blairs. The Bushes escorted them to Birch.

Before the weekend Mrs. Bush had been a little bit nervous about meeting Cherie Blair. As she recalled in her memoir, she knew how close the Clintons and the Blairs had been, and the British press had been scathing in advance of the visit. One typical headline read “Frosty Forecast as Our Modern Mum Meets Bush’s Little Woman.” The characterization stung. But the two women hit it off over a private lunch at Aspen—“Rather like two busy mothers catching up over coffee,” Mrs. Bush wrote. Indeed, the relationship between the two couples would become the closest of Bush’s presidency.

One humorous, although embarrassing at the time, incident for me was the departure ceremony for the Blairs. The departure would again include an honor guard with the two national flags and our Sailors and Marines in full dress uniform forming the cordon down the walkway to the helicopter. About thirty minutes prior to the scheduled departure—and President Bush was always on time—I heard chatter over the radio that the president and prime minister were already at the landing zone. “Oh, crap, you’ve got to be kidding me!” I yelled at Michele, as she was standing next to me in Cedar. Fortunately, I was already dressed. I flew out the side door, jumped in my golf cart, and peeled out of the driveway to the landing zone.

Arriving there, trying to be cool but not dismissive, I quickly noticed that the two world leaders and Mrs. Bush were standing together, chatting and in a good mood, but Mrs. Blair was not present. Thank God. The president actually chuckled when he saw the concern on my face, and said, “Don’t worry, Mike, Cherie’s not here yet.” Turns out she was shopping in Shangri-La, and she arrived a few minutes later. Departure went off very well, the Bushes were pleased with their first head-of-state guest visit to camp, and the crew went back to the normal business of the weekend.

Another part of effective leadership is learning from your mistakes and adjusting fire. While the nearly delayed departure ceremony with the Blairs ended up being a light moment, we certainly didn’t want to run the risk of disappointing our president. Thus was born the Thirty-Minute Bush Rule. From then on, the crew and I would be ready and in place thirty minutes prior to every arrival, departure, meeting, meal, and event.

Blair’s third camp visit, in March 2003, was a sober meeting to discuss the progress of the war. A press conference was planned in the hangar. When Blair came off the helicopter, he asked CO O’Connor, “Do you have anyone on your staff who can press trousers?”

“Of course,” O’Connor replied. He found a crewman who knew how to iron and sent him to Birch with an iron and an ironing board. He knocked on the door and Blair opened it and welcomed him in. While the crewman set up his board, Blair took off his pants right there and then sat in a chair in his boxer shorts, chatting while his pants were ironed.

President Bush’s second head-of-state visitor to Camp David was Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan on June 30, 2001. I think that, as he did with Blair, Bush wanted to reach across the ocean and invite the newly elected prime minister and one of our key allies. Once again, it was fascinating to watch from the sidelines.

We welcomed the president’s guest with an honor guard, and we were thirty minutes early for arrival and departure! President and Mrs. Bush attended, dressed casually, as had been scripted between the delegations, and former senator Howard Baker, now the ambassador to Japan, was also present; he and the president greeted the prime minister coming off the helicopter.

The one-day visit focused on economic ties, trade, the environment, and baseball! At the press conference afterward, the president and prime minister playfully tossed a baseball back and forth.

Both leaders remembered the day in very positive tones. Prime Minister Koizumi said, “I would be able to give my frank views [to President Bush] and… to speak from the bottom of my heart.” Similarly, President Bush said that he admired Koizumi’s frankness and noted that he was a “courageous leader” who took the challenge “not to avoid but to lead.”

My leadership takeaway from watching President Bush engage Prime Minister Blair and Prime Minister Koizumi was quite simple: build relationships before you need them.

Some of the most colorful visitors during Bush 43’s time were Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and, in a separate visit, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president of the United Arab Emirates, both of whom were accompanied by entourages. In each case, the guests bought out the Shangri-La gift shop, and they left some gifts too. At the end of one visit, they left two large suitcases at the command office full of special-edition watches—one hundred of them—to show their thanks to the crew. What to do? CO Reuning researched the matter and learned that the watches had to be appraised by the GSA, and if anyone wanted to purchase a watch, he or she could do so at the assessed value. “My watch was appraised at twenty-seven hundred dollars,” Reuning said. “I took a picture of it.”

In March 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry hosted Afghan president Ashraf Ghani for a “strategic dialogue” at Camp David, capping meetings at the White House with President Obama. A large advance team arrived the night before to do reconnaissance for the visit. As always, there was a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes. CO Rang told the crew that the goal was for everything to go smoothly and for the guests to have the “camp experience.”

There were a couple of close calls in setting up for the visit. The supply officer lighting a fire at Holly, where the meeting would take place, forgot to open the flue and practically burned the cabin down. The smoky air smelled terrible, so the crew gathered a bunch of scented candles and lit them. “Now Holly smelled like a burned candle,” Rang said. Better, but not ideal.

And then there was the snow. A few weeks before the visit, there had been a big snowstorm, and the temperatures had remained cold, so the snow hung around. This worried Rang because old snow gets dirty, and the place looked terrible. Just as he was seriously contemplating a radical solution to restore the winter white—spray paint, perhaps—the temperatures rose and the snow melted. One more crisis averted.

THE HIDDEN NATURE of Camp David makes it an ideal location for high-level planning outside the view of the press and the public. In August 1990, during the buildup to the Gulf War, which was tightly under wraps, President Bush brought General Colin Powell, General Norman Schwarzkopf, and key military and civilian advisers to Camp David. CO Berry did not know the meeting’s full purpose—no one did, including, it seemed, some of the principals.

Berry met Colin Powell’s helicopter and saw that the general was struggling to carry a large covered chart. Berry instinctively reached out to help him. Powell quickly pulled back, giving Berry a warning look that said, Don’t you dare touch that.

On that day, after the full briefings in the Laurel conference room, the senior political leadership asked the military to leave so they could confer privately. Bush walked Schwarzkopf outside and asked Berry to take the general on a tour of the camp. As Berry drove Schwarzkopf around, the general, in a somber mood, sighed. “Here I go to CENTCOM for my twilight tour, and now all hell breaks loose,” he said. A twilight assignment is traditional for a person nearing the end of his or her career, something quiet and low pressure. That was certainly not to be for the general.

Before the start of Operation Desert Storm, which launched with an invasion of strategic targets in Iraq on January 17, 1991, everything was top secret. Some of Bush’s own people didn’t know the plan. Seeking to throw everyone off the scent, Bush scheduled a normal visit to Camp David. Berry’s only hint that something was afoot was a call from the president’s personal secretary asking him to have Marine One ready in case the president needed to get back to Washington quickly. Bush did everything he could not to raise suspicions or alarms—secrecy essential for the success of the mission. “It was good OPSEC,” said Berry. Once the bombing started, Bush left Camp David for the White House. As the helicopter rose up above the trees, the president might have felt a sense of regret that he was leaving a place of such peace to become a wartime president.