Nothing normal about normalization. Grave doubts crowd in. Spoke with Joan over telephone. Most annoying when Embassy operator said, “Be advised there is no privacy over this line.” Joan upset to know our intimate conversation being listened to by communists.
—JOURNAL, JAN. 16, 1991
Leslie R. Dach, Director of Presidential Advance, was by all accounts the best advanceman in the business but an unmitigated political liability. He thought nothing of closing off the Brooklyn Bridge in rush hour to accommodate a motorcade, or of shutting down an airport on Friday of the Labor Day weekend. When the President visited the South Bronx, Dach had several enormous tenement buildings razed overnight so the cameras would have an unobstructed shot of the presidential profile. His motto was “Get the fuck out of my way.” It took on the force of scripture in the advance office. (One of the secretaries in his office had stitched it in needlepoint on a cushion; I forbade any photographs to be taken of it, for obvious reasons.)
Leslie managed to insult more or less everyone with whom he came into contact. Perhaps that is in the nature of advancemen, but during the campaign it was necessary to devise a computer form apology which we routinely sent out after an event. It read:
The Governor deeply regrets you were inconvenienced by Mr. Dach, a member of his advance team. He has spoken sharply to Mr. Dach about it and has received his assurance that such a thing will never happen again.
He would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your assistance in his campaign. He hopes he can count on your continued support, for the good of the campaign and of our country.
Sincerely,
Herbert Wadlough,
Executive Assistant to the Governor
Leslie was serene in his contempt for fools, a category which in his view included most of humanity. But he was so good at what he did that he was untouchable. He made miracles happen, and most politicians like miracles to happen around them. It gives them the illusion of divine aura.
Leslie, Marvin, and I flew to Havana, this time without the disguises. Marvin was still chafing over the President’s decision not to turn the meeting into a bilateral orgy and, I suspected, had not quite resigned himself to it. “He’s missing a great opportunity, Herb,” he told me as the Jet Star sliced through the night 33,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. “To turn this into some clandestine meeting in the middle of the ocean … What’s the point anyway?”
“Marvin,” I said, “the President is firm on these arrangements. We have a job to do.”
He lowered his voice so that Dach, sitting forward of us, couldn’t hear. “What worries me,” he whispered, “is him. He’s a madman, you realize. He’ll ruin everything.”
“Calm yourself,” I said. “Whether the Cubans find him agreeable is irrelevant. And unlikely. No one finds Dach agreeable. Dach is a genius.”
“I don’t care.”
“He has the confidence of the President.”
Marvin slumped in his seat. “Then why do I have a bad feeling in my stomach?”
“I am not acquainted with the vicissitudes of your digestive system, Marvin. But if you are having difficulties, I suggest you drink only bottled water and avoid salads. Among Mr. Castro’s miracles, the elimination of amoebae is not numbered.” With that I turned back to my paperwork.
Galvan was mute with disappointment when Marvin informed him of the President’s decision to meet Castro at 24 North, 82 West instead of 17th and Pennsylvania Avenue. He told us unsmilingly he was not sure El Comandante would agree to the proposal.
“I’m afraid this is not a proposal,” I interjected before Marvin could equivocate.
“We will be in contact,” he said grimly.
“When?” It was Leslie. Marvin and I rushed to assure the Foreign Minister we were at his disposal, but the insult had already registered. He turned on Leslie.
“When I tell you,” he glared. “The Comandante is a busy man.”
Leslie regarded him with casual contempt. “Yeah, well, so am I. So is Mr. Edelstein here and Mr. Wadlough—”
“Leslie!” I said.
“—so why don’t you pick up the phone here and call him? Assuming your phones work, which they don’t, from what I’ve heard.”
Oh, dear, I thought.
At this point both Marvin and the Foreign Minister began screaming at Leslie. Their combined remonstrations had as much effect on him as bugs have on windshields. He yawned. “Listen, Ricky, we’re not getting anywhere, are we?”
The Foreign Minister sputtered. “Ricky?”
“Ricardo, whatever—”
“My name is Galvan! To you I am Your Excellency!”
“Right. Look, why don’t you just turn us over to someone who knows what he’s doing?”
“What?”
Marvin said to me: “You’ve got to stop this. It’s undignified.”
But you couldn’t stop Leslie. Now he was telling the Foreign Minister to put us in touch with someone who “has influence.” Galvan was threatening to have him expelled from the country.
“I’ll be at this number for one hour,” said Leslie, looking out the window at the beach. “After that you can call long distance.” At this the Foreign Minister stormed out.
“I’m hungry,” said Leslie. “They have room service in this country?”
“Leslie,” I said, “you’ve probably ruined the whole thing.”
“I doubt it,” he yawned. “You’ve got to make things clear at the start. You save yourself a lot of trouble that way.”
I called the President on a SECURE line from the American Interests section of the Swiss Embassy and gave him an account of our “progress” so far.
There was a long pause after I finished.
“Do you want me to send Leslie home?” I offered.
“Home? Hell, no. I may make him ambassador.”
Marvin wrested the phone from me. “Mr. President,” he said, “you cannot allow an advanceman to conduct foreign policy.”
When he’d hung up, I asked him what the President had said.
Marvin looked at me miserably. “He said, ‘Well, I’m President. I guess I can do anything I want.’ ”
Shortly afterward we received word that our appointment with Castro was set for eleven o’clock that night. The invitation was exclusivamente for Señor Edelstein and Señor Wadlough.
He greeted me less physically than at our previous encounter; however, I was grateful, inasmuch as El Presidente had been “in the fields” and was sweating profusely. At first I thought he might turn us down, so keen was his disappointment about the President’s Florida Straits Rendezvous With Destiny plan, as it was called. Marvin was eloquent in his unctuousness, however, and in the end Castro agreed to the historic meeting. As he was leaving, he said through his interpreter, “If we are to meet at sea, I hope your President has a stronger stomach than you.”
The great event was set for March 14.
The Cuban government refused to hold the meeting aboard a U.S. naval vessel and we refused to hold it aboard a Cuban naval vessel. The stalemate was broken when Canada offered its new helicopter carrier, the Diefenbaker. Leslie set about making the Canadians regret their decision, and I spent many hours sweeping up after him, soothing enraged Canadian naval officials. The Captain of the Diefenbaker was sorely tried. He agreed to vacate his cabin, and to paint over the entire flight deck with the United States and Cuban flags. He even accepted with consummate graciousness Leslie’s frequent insults about the condition of the ship, which was nearly as immaculate as the Queen’s own yacht. But when Leslie blithely informed the Captain that he would have to reinsulate the ship “top to bottom” so TV sound crews wouldn’t pick up any hum, the Captain ordered him off his ship and for three frantic days refused to allow him back on board. The President wanted the press contingent limited to 200, which set the Fourth Estate to baying about the “trampling of free speech.” The conservative press was apoplectic, especially Human Events, National Review, and Commentary calling the President “Red Tom.” We could have done without the endorsement from the Daily Worker, but as America warmed to the thaw, no one seemed to notice.
The President himself was surprised by the extent of the hubbub over the Cuba opening.
“Did you see this?” he groused one morning, staring at the Bloomingdale’s ad in the Times for its “Havana ’91” fashion line. Across the top of the two-page spread screamed: REVOLUTION—AND THE LOOK IS NOW! “Jesus,” he groaned, “what have I done?”
Cigars became the rage around the White House until the President banned them. But even in the shopping malls of conservative, suburban Virginia, where the Che Guevara look had never been much in evidence, one could see the bizarre effect the Cuba opening was having on the public. My own teenage son, Herbert, Jr., stopped shaving and came home from high school one day wearing olive fatigues and jungle boots. Joan was beside herself. Another day she called me at work, something she never did unless it was serious. “He’s out back in the yard with that machete. He’s cut all the bark from the maples.”
The High Seas Summit, as the press dubbed it, nearly fell through two days before it was to occur. I had a call from Mr. Docal, my counterpart in Havana. He was fit to be tied. And for good reason.
Major Arnold had been keeping tabs on the recent outbreak of dengue fever—he’d had conversations with Leslie about it. Now Leslie, acting on his own authority, had blithely informed Docal’s deputy that all Cuban officials to come into contact with the President would have to be fumigated by a U.S. Department of Health official. I told the fuming Docal that there had undoubtedly been a failure of communication, and not to worry.
My next call was to Leslie. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” I screamed into the phone. “You can’t expect high Cuban officials to allow themselves to be sprayed!”
“Calm down, Herb. You ever seen a case of dengue? Great big, nasty blotches—”
“Now you listen here, Leslie. There will be no spraying of Fidel Castro, or of any Cuban. If I so much as see you with a can of deodorant, I will have you hanged. Do you hear me?”
“Uh-huh.”
I don’t like to use threats, but they were the only language he understood.