Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt Read online

  millions of Americans protesting, not without justification, that the war

  was wrong and should not be won. Then, one day in 1969, he had met little

  Billy Singleton, a boy who did not know whether he had a father or not.

  Billy's father had been missing in Vietnam before ever seeing his son:

  there was no way of knowing whether he was a prisoner, or dead. It was

  heartbreaking.

  For Perot, sentiment was not a mournful emotion but a clarion call to

  action.

  He learned that Billy's father was not unique. There were many, perhaps

  hundreds, of wives and children who did not know whether their husbands and

  fathers had been killed or just captured. The Vietriamese, arguing that

  they were not bound by the rules of the Geneva Convention because the

  United States had never declared war, refused to release the names of their

  prisoners.

  Worse still, many of the prisoners were dying of brutality and neglect.

  President Nixon was planning to "Vietnamize" the war and disengage in three

  years' time, but by then, according to CIA reports, half the prisoners

  would have died. Even if Billy Singleton's father were alive, he might not

  survive to come home.

  Perot wanted to do something.

  EDS had good connections with the Nixon White House. Perot went to

  Washington and talked to Chief Foreign Policy Advisor Henry Kissinger. And

  Kissinger had a plan.

  The Vietnamese were maintaining, at least for the purposes of propaganda,

  that they had no quarrel with the American peopleonly with the U.S.

  government. Furthermore, they were presenting themselves to the world as

  the little guy in a David-andGoliath conflict. It seemed that they valued

  their public image. It might be possible, Kissinger thought, to embarrass

  them into improving their treatment of prisoners, and releasing the names,

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 53

  by an international campaign to publicize the sufferings of the prisoners

  and their families.

  The campaign must be privately financed, and must seem to be quite

  unconnected with the government, even though in reality it would be closely

  monitored by a team of White House and State Department people.

  Perot accepted the challenge. (Perot could resist anything but a challenge.

  His eleventh-grade teacher, one Mrs. Duck, had realized this. "It's a

  shame," Mrs. Duck had said, "that you're not as smart as your friends."

  Young Perot insisted he was as smart as his friends. "Well, why do they

  make better grades than you?" It was just that they were interested in

  school and he was not, said Perot. "Anybody can stand there and tell me

  that they could do something," said Mrs. Duck. "But let's look at the

  record: your friends can do it and you can't." Perot was cut to the quick.

  He told her that he would make straight A's for the next six weeks. He made

  straight A's, not just for six weeks, but for the rest of his high school

  career. The perceptive Mrs. Duck had discovered the only way to manipulate

  Perot: challenge him.)

  Accepting Kissinger's challenge, Perot went to J. Walter Tbompson, the

  largest advertising agency in the worid, and told them what he wanted to

  do. They offered to come up with a plan of campaign within thirty to sixty

  days and show some results in a year. Perot turned them down: he wanted to

  start today and see results tomorrow. He went back to Dallas and put

  together a small team of EDS executives who began calling newspaper editors

  and placing simple, unsophisticated advertisements that they wrote

  themselves.

  And the mail came in truckloads.

  For Americans who were pro-war, the treatment of the prisoners showed that

  the Vietnamese really were the bad guys; and for those who were anti-war

  the plight of the prisoners was one more reason for getting out of Vietnam.

  Only the most hard-line protesters resented the campaign. In 1970 the FBI

  told Perot that the Viet Cong had instructed the Black Panther~ to murder

  him. (At the crazy end of the sixties this had not sounded particularly

  bizarre.) Perot hired bodyguards. Sure enough, a few weeks later a squad of

  men climbed the fence around Perot's seventeen-acre Dallas property. They

  were chased off by savage dogs. Perot's family, including his indomitable

  mother, would not hear of him giving up the campaign for the sake of their

  safety.

  54 Ken Follett

  His greatest publicity stunt took place in December 1969, when he chartered

  two planes and tried to fly into Hanoi with Christmas dinners for the

  prisoners of war. Of course, he was not allowed to land; but during a slow

  news period he created enormous international awareness of the problem. He

  spent two million dollars, but he reckoned the publicity would have cost

  sixty million to buy. And a Gallup poll he commissioned afterward showed

  that the feelings of Americans toward the North Vietnamese were

  overwhelmingly negative.

  During 1970 Perot used less spectacular methods. Small communities all over

  the United States were encouraged to set up their own POW campaigns. They

  raised funds to send people to Paris to badger the North Vietnamese

  delegation there. They organized telethons, and built replicas of the cages

  in which some of the POWs lived. They sent so many protest letters to Hanoi

  that the North Vietnamese postal system collapsed under the strain. Perot

  stumped the country, giving speeches anywhere he was invited. He met with

  North Vietnamese diplomats in Laos, taking with him lists of their

  prisoners held in the south, mail from them, and film of their living

  conditions. He also took a Gallup associate with him, and together they

  went over the results of the poll with the North Vietnamese.

  Some or all of it worked. The treatment of American POWs improved, mail and

  parcels began to get through to them, and the North Vietnamese started to

  release names. Most importantly, the prisoners heard of the campaign-from

  newly captured Amencan soldiers,---and the news boosted their morale

  enormously.

  Eight years later, driving to Denver in the snow, Perot recalled another

  consequence of the campaign; a consequence that had then seemed no more

  than mildly irritating, but could now be important and valuable. Publicity

  for the POWs had meant, inevitably, publicity for Ross Perot. He had become

  nationally known. He would be remembered in the corridors of powerand

  especially in the Pentagon. That Washington monitoring committee had

  included Admiral Tom Moorer, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;

  Alexander Haig, then assistant to Kissinger and now the commander in chief

  of NATO forces; William Sullivan, then a Deputy Assistant Secretary of

  State and now U.S. Ambassador to Iran; and Kissinger himself.

  These people would help Perot get inside the government, find out what was

  happening, and promote help fast. He would call Richard Helms, who had in

  the past been both head of the CIA

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 55

  and U.S. Ambassador to Tehran. He would call Kermit Roosevelt, son of Teddy,

  who had been involved in the CIA coup that put the Shah back on the throne
/>
  in 1953 ...

  But what if none of this works? he thought.

  It was his habit to think more than one step ahead.

  What if the Carter administration could not or would not help?

  Then, he thought, I'm going to break them out of jail.

  How would we go about something like that? We've never done anything like

  it. Where would we start? Who could help us?

  He thought of EDS executives Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez and his

  secretary Sally Walther, who had been key organizers of the POW campaign:

  making complex arrangements halfway across the world by phone was meat and

  drink to them, but ... a prison break? And who would staff the mission?

  Since 1968 EDS's recruiters had given priority to Vietnam veterans--a pol-

  icy begun for patriotic reasons and continued when Perot found that the

  vets often made first-class businessmen-but the men who had once been lean,

  fit, highly trained soldiers were now overweight, out-of-condition computer

  executives, more comfortable with a telephone than with a rifle. And who

  would plan and lead the raid?

  Finding the best man for the job was Perot's specialty. Although he was one

  of the most successful self-made men in the history of American capitalism,

  he was not the world's greatest computer expert, or the world's greatest

  salesman, or even the world's greatest business administrator. He did just

  one thing superbly well: pick the right man, give him the resources, moti-

  vate him, then leave him alone to do the job.

  Now, as he approached Denver, he asked himself- who is the world's greatest

  rescuer?

  Then he thought of Bull Simons.

  A legend in the U.S. Army, Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons had hit the

  headlines in November 1970 when he and a team of commandos raided the Son

  Tay prison camp, twentythree miles outside Hanoi, in an attempt to rescue

  American prisoners of war. Theraid had been a brave and well-organized

  operation, but the intelligence on which all the planning was based had

  been faulty: the prisoners had been moved, and were no longer at Son Tay.

  'Me raid was widely regarded as a fiasco, which in Perot's opinion was

  grossly unfair. He had been invited to meet the Son Tay Raiders, to boost

  their morale by telling

  56 Ken Folleu

  them that here was at least one American citizen who was grateful for their

  bravery. He had spent a day at Fort Bragg in North Carolina--and he had met

  Colonel Simons.

  Peering through his windshield, Perot could picture Simons against the

  cloud of falling snowflakes: a big man, just under six feet tall, with the

  shoulders of an ox. His white hair was cropped in a military crewcut, but

  his bushy eyebrows were still black. On either side of his big nose, two

  deep lines ran down to the comers of his mouth, giving him a permanently

  aggressive expression. He had a big head, big ears, a strong jaw, and the

  most powerful hands Perot had ever seen. The man looked as if he had been

  carved from a single block of granite.

  After spending a day with him, Perot thought: in a world of counterfeits,

  he is the genuine article.

  That day and in years to come Perot learned a lot about Simons. What

  impressed him most was the attitude of Simons's men toward their leader. He

  reminded Perot of Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay

  Packers: he inspired in his men emotions ranging from fear through respect

  and admiration to love. He was an imposing figure and an aggressive com-

  mander-he cursed a lot, and would tell a soldier- "Do what I say or I'll

  cut your bloody head off!"--but that by itself could not account for Ins

  hold on the hearts of skeptical, battle-hardened commandos. Beneath the

  tough exterior there was a tough interior.

  Those who had served under him liked nothing better than to sit around

  telling Simons stories. Although he had a bull-like physique, his nickname

  came not from that but, according to legend, from a game played by Rangers

  called The Bull Pen. A pit would be dug, six feet deep, and one man would

  get into it. The object of the game was to find out how many men it took to

  throw the first man out of the pit. Simons thought the game was foolish,

  but was once needled into playing it. It took fifteen men to get him out,

  and several of them spent the night in the hospital with broken fingers and

  noses and severe bite wounds. After that he was called "Bull. -

  Perot learned later that almost everything in this story was exaggerated.

  Simons played the game more than once; it generally took four men to get

  him out; no one ever had any broken bones. Simons was simply the kind of

  man about whom legends are told. He earned the loyalty of his men not by

  displays of bravado but by his skill as a military commander. He was a

  meticulous, endlessly patient planner, he was cautious,--one of

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 57

  his catchphrases was: "That's a risk we don't have to take"; and he took

  pride in bringing all his men back from a mission alive.

  In the Vietnam War Simons had run Operation White Star. He went to Laos

  with 107 men and organized twelve battalions of Mao tribesmen to fight the

  Vietnamese. One of the battalions defected to the other side, taking as

  prisoners some of Simons's Green Berets. Simons took a helicopter and

  landed inside the stockade where the defecting battalion was. On seeing

  Simons, the Laotian colonel stepped forward, stood at attention, and

  saluted. Simons told him to produce the prisoners immediately, or he would

  call an air strike and destroy the entire battalion. The colonel produced

  the prisoners. Simons took them away, then called the air strike anyway.

  Simons had come back from Laos three years later with all his 107 men.

  Perot had never checked out this legend-he liked it the way it was.

  The second time Perot met Simons was after the war. Perot virtually took

  over a hotel in San Francisco and threw a weekend party for the returning

  prisoners of war to meet the Son Tay Raiders. It cost Perot a quarter of a

  million dollars, but it was a hell of a party. Nancy Reagan, Clint

  Eastwood, and John Wayne came. Perot would never forget the meeting between

  John Wayne and Bull Simons. Wayne shook Simons's hand with tears in his

  eyes and said: "You are the man I play in the movies."

  Before the ticker-tape parade Perot asked Simons to talk to his Raiders and

  wam them against reacting to demonstrators. "San Francisco has had more

  than its share of anti-war demonstrations, -Perot said. "You didn't pick

  your Raiders for their charm. If one of them gets irritated he might just

  snap some poor devil's neck and regret it later."

  Simons looked at Perot. It was Perot's first experience of The Simons Look.

  It made you feel as if you were the biggest fool in history. It made you

  wish you had not spoken. It made you wish the ground would swallow you up.

  "I've already talked to them," Simons said. "There won't be a problem. "

  That weekend and later, Perot got to know Simons better, and saw other

  sides of his personality. Simons could be very charming, when he chose to

  be. He enchanted Perot's wife, Margot, a
nd the children thought he was

  wonderful. With his men he spoke soldiers' language, using a great deal of

  profanity, but he was surprisingly articulate when talking at a banquet or

  press conference. His college major had been journalism. Some of his

  58 Ken FoUett

  tastes were simple-he read westerns by the boxful, and enjoyed what his sons

  called "supermarket music"--but he also read a lot of nonfiction, and had a

  lively curiosity about all sorts of things. He could talk about antiques or

  history as easily as battles and weaponry.

  Perot and Simons, two willful, dominating personalities, got along by

  giving one another plenty of room. They did not become close friends. Perot

  never called Simons by his first name, Art (although Margot did). Like most

  people, Perot never knew what Simons was thinking unless Simons chose to

  tell him. Perot recalled their first meeting in Fort Bragg. Before getting

  up to make his speech, Perot had asked Simons's wife, Lucille: "What is

  Colonel Simons really like?" She had replied: "Oh, he's just a great big

  teddy bear." Perot repeated this in his speech. The Son Tay Raiders fell

  apart. Simons never cracked a smile.

  Perot did not know whether this impenetrable man would care to rescue two

  EDS executives from a Persian jail. Was Simons grateful for the San

  Francisco party? Perhaps. After that party Perot had financed Simons on a

  trip to Laos to search for MlAs-American soldiers missing in action-who had

  not come back with the prisoners of war. On his return from Laos, Simons

  had remarked to a group of EDS executives: "Perot is a hard man to say no

  to."

  As he pulled into Denver Airport, Perot wondered whether, six years later,

  Simons would still find him a hard man to say no to.

  But that contingency was a long way down the line. Perot was going to try

  everything else first.

  He went into the terminal, bought a seat on the next flight to Dallas, and

  found a phone. He called EDS and spoke to T. J. Marquez, one of his most

  senior executives, who was known as T.J. rather than Tom because there were

  so many Toms around EDS. "I want you to go find my passport," he told T.J.,

  "and get me a visa for Iran."

  T. J. said: "Ross, I think that's the world's worst idea."