“George,” he replied, welcoming the opportunity to unburden himself, “how can I run foreign policy when I never get to see Reagan alone? There are always a half-dozen of his California cronies putting their two cents in. I swear if this keeps up I’ll offer him my resignation.”
“That’s a very Kissingeresque gesture.” George smiled.
“Yeah.” Al grinned. “And it always worked for Henry.”
Haig made his move the following week after a White House luncheon for the Prime Minister of Japan. He asked the President for five “completely private” minutes of his time.
Reagan threw his arm warmly around Haig’s shoulder. “Al, I’d be glad to give you ten.”
As George stood watching the two men walk around the White House lawn, Dwight Bevington, the National Security Adviser, was suddenly at his shoulder.
“Say, George,” he said with bonhomie, “if your boss is trying an end run, he’s wasting his time. Besides, we all know who the real brains are at State. In fact, I think you and I should try to make our contacts closer.”
Before George could reply, the Secretary returned, a broad smile on his face.
“I don’t know what it is about Ronnie,” beamed Haig, as they were riding together back to State, “but he sure can make a guy feel good. He dismissed my offer to resign and promised we’d have direct communication. Say, I saw that Bevington was buttonholing you. Digging for anything?”
“In vain,” George said calmly.
“Good man. You know I’m counting on your loyalty, old buddy.”
George Keller was now certain that his boss’s days were numbered. And he began positioning himself to jump ship before it sank.
He started having occasional lunches with Bevington just to offer him the benefit of his own experience. But he always reported the meetings to his boss.
He was never overtly disloyal to Alexander Haig. Possibly because events moved so swiftly that he didn’t have the chance.
Desperate to prove his effectiveness to the Reagan administration, the Secretary of State found a rare opportunity in the spring of 1982.
Argentine troops invaded the Falkland Islands. And to protect their tiny colonial outpost, Britain sent a huge armada steaming toward a military confrontation in the South Atlantic.
Haig got the President’s approval to attempt to avert bloodshed by a Kissinger — like shuttle between London and Buenos Aires.
He woke George in the middle of the night and told him to be at Andrews Air Force Base at 0600 hours.
From then on, there was no day and no night for the two diplomats. They snatched what sleep they could in the jet ferrying them back and forth between England and Argentina, through endless time zones, from frustration to frustration.
Then, just before the British attacked, Haig miraculously convinced Argentina’s General Galtieri to withdraw his troops and negotiate. It looked like a real coup.
As they were fastening their seat belts for the long ride home, George congratulated his boss, “Al, I think you won a big one.”
But just as the plane door was shutting, a messenger arrived with a letter from Prime Minister Costa Mendez.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” George asked.
“I don’t have to,” Haig said with a weary sigh. “I know it’s my death warrant.”
Indeed, the execution of Alexander Haig had taken place while he was still in the air.
An unnamed White House source said the administration saw his fruitless mission as mere “grandstanding.” The press took the cue and began to quote various authoritative sources that “Haig is going to go, and go quickly.”
George Keller had more frequent lunches with Dwight Bevington.
He was sitting at his desk polishing a lengthy telex to Phil Habib, then shuttling between Damascus and Jerusalem, when his secretary buzzed.
“Dr. Keller, there’s a phone call from Thomas Leighton.”
“You mean
“I think so, sir.”
“Well, put him on.”
If this was indeed
The journalist had possibly been tipped that George was in the wings to succeed Haig. And, like his Harvard mentor, George intended to play the press like a piano.
“Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Keller. I’d like to ask a favor. I’m on leave from the
“Is it a snow job or a hatchet job?”
“I hope it’ll be an honest job,” the reporter replied. “I won’t say I haven’t heard some nasty things about him. That’s why, if you let me have a couple hours of your time, I might get a more balanced picture.”
“I see your point,” George said, thinking that it would be nice to have such an important journalist on his future team. “Suppose we meet for lunch sometime next week. Is Wednesday good for you?”
“It’s fine,” said Leighton.
“Let’s meet at Sans Souci at twelve.”
The first thing that struck him was the reporter’s youth. He looked less like a Pulitzer Prize winner than a candidate for the
They chatted cordially about their college experiences. Then the journalist got down to business.
“As I’m sure you know, not everybody views Kissinger as a knight in shining armor.”
“No,” George concurred. “But that’s the price you pay when you wield power. What sort of mud are they throwing at Henry?”
“Well, everything from ‘war criminal’ to ‘ruthless manipulator,’ and lots in between. You’d be surprised, he had a reputation even at Harvard.”
“Yes.” George smiled. “I was his student.”
“I know that, too. I also know you deserve your nickname of being ‘Kissinger’s shadow.’ Isn’t it true that you were as privy as any man alive to every significant decision he ever made?”
“That’s a slight exaggeration,” George replied, trying to affect humility. And then joked, “I mean, he didn’t take me into his confidence about marrying Nancy. Anyway, what’s the thrust of your book?”
“I get the impression that your boss was — how can I put it? — sort of amoral. That he played the game of world politics with human beings as pawns.”
“That’s rather brutal,” George interrupted.
“Which is why I want to hear your side of it,” Leighton responded. “I’ll give you a few examples. Some insiders I’ve interviewed say he deliberately withheld arms from the Israelis during the Yom Kippur war to ‘soften’ them into a better negotiating mood.”
“I bet I know who told you that one,” George said with irritation.
“No comment. I always protect my sources. Anyway, I’ve done some digging on my own and found that he was not averse to doing curious favors if it could help him win a point.”
“Could you be most specific?”
“Well, this may seem a small thing, but I think it’s typical of how he operated. Back in 1973, he okayed the
