A Very Private Plot by William F. Buckley

Author:William F. Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504018586
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

CHAPTER 18

MAY 1995

When Mack walked in, Allie, who had been taking dictation, knew to get up with her steno pad and leave the office.

President Clinton came right to the point. “Can you tell me, is there anything else in the world other than his goddamn bill that Hugh Blanton would settle for?”

“I guess he would accept the Democratic nomination next year.”

The President was not amused. “We’ve got a bum situation here.” He reached down and picked up that morning’s issue of the Washington Post. “Did you see the organizations lined up behind the Blanton bill? Which by the way he hasn’t yet submitted, am I right?”

“You are right.” Mack laughed lightly. “He’s waiting for the testimony of Blackford Oakes. Actually, we know that his bill is already written out, word for word. But Blanton wants to give the impression that the testimony of Oakes is absolutely critical. Not, obviously, to the language of the bill, but as supporting material. He wants everybody to believe that the kind of activity he wants to outlaw damn near got us into a world war.”

The President protruded his famous jaw. His bulldog pose. “That’s crap of course. Isn’t it, Mack?”

“Well, I’d say so. I’ve been brought up to believe that the Soviets didn’t go to war because they didn’t want their nice country turned into ashes by our stuff.”

“So what then is Blanton talking about?”

“Arthur Blaustein—his chief counsel, and the Eagle Scout bent on driving that bill into law—thinks he’s on to some caper Oakes engaged in which, he thinks, nearly got us into a hell of a mess. But he doesn’t have the details, and apparently Oakes is the only person alive, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who knows the story.”

“Well, if President Reagan, under the intelligence laws, had to inform the congressional intelligence chairman about every covert operation, how come they don’t know about it?”

“Don’t know the answer to that, Chief. But Blaustein looked into every corner of every file and every computer being used in 1985–86. Couldn’t find anything.”

“Exactly what did they look for? What’d he say, ‘Dear Computer, please give me the file on the covert action that almost precipitated a nuclear strike, sometime around 1985, 1986?’”

“The key word is ‘Cyclops.’”

“Oh. Well, did Blaustein approach Reagan?”

“He sent him a very nice letter, you know, full of duty-honor-country language, lots of praise for the Reagan administration—”

“Bombed?”

“Yeah, sort of. Reagan was very polite. He said, What did Senator Blanton’s committee want to know? Blanton said he wanted to look into a covert operation called ‘Cyclops.’ The President replied, Sorry, have no memory of Cyclops. He added a postscript, that he remembered when Boris Karloff was asked to play Cyclops in a horror movie, but said no, because he couldn’t stand one of his eyes being pasted over all day.”

The President, who smiled on the least provocation, did not now do so. “Okay, so Reagan is out. Wisely. What about the Soviet end? Have they tried—hell, have they tried Gorbachev?”

“Interesting you came up with that, because that’s exactly what Blanton now plans to do.

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