Free Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart Page B

Somewhere along the line the Halcion caught up with him. He fell asleep with the memo clutched in his hands. Baker was already out.
    The crew made a habit of listening in on the presidential cabin. Not for any malicious reason. Solely so they could better serve, so they could appear with a drink or a dinner almost before it was called for. To be ready with a service just as soon as it was thought of. They trained themselves to not really hear words that weren’t for them, like stagehands politely ignoring breasts when they must enter women’s dressing rooms.
    When Stan, the chief steward, heard the double snores, he knew that both of his passengers were out. He entered quietly to remove dirty glasses and dishes, to cover either of them if they’d fallen asleep on top of their blankets.
    He found the president with his head on the pillows, reading glasses perched on his nose, and Lee Atwater’s memo in his hand.
    Stan lifted the glasses from the presidential nose. Bush, cocooned with the prescription hypnotic and drowsy with Scotch, didn’t notice a thing. Then Stan lifted the memo from the presidential hand.
    He glanced at it. Only enough to see where it should go.
    MEMO FROM: L.A.
    TO: J.B. III/YEO
    WAR has always been a valid political option, through all societies, through all time. We, who grew up in the south, know about revering our . . .
    What registered with Stan was YEO. He’d seen and handled Secret, Top Secret, Top Secret with distribution numbers, Ultra, but this was the first time he’d seen Your Eyes Only. He was so impressed that he didn’t notice the J.B.III. Meaning well, with truly the best of intentions, he folded the memo neatly along its fold lines and put it in the president’s briefcase.
    The next morning when the president and the secretary of state awoke and didn’t see the Atwater memo, each assumed that the other had shredded it. The one that they agreed must never be seen.
    Â 
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    11 George Bush said of himself (6/6/89): “Fluency in English is something that I’m often not accused of.”
    Some other samples of his style are:
    â€œMy running mate took the lead, was the author, of the fob Training partnership act. Now because of a lot of smoke and frenzying of bluefish out there, going after a drop of blood in the water, nobody knows that.” (11/3/88) and “I think there were some difference, there’s no question, and I will still be. We’re talking about a major, major situation here. . . . I mean, we’ve got a major rapport-relationship of economics, major in the security, and all of that, we should not lose sight of.” (1/10/92)
    These quotes, and others, can be found in Bushisms, compiled by the editors of the New Republic (Workman, 1992).

Chapter
N INE

    F RANK S HEEHAN FLEW in from Chicago. Sheehan was one of Universal Security’s eight executive VPs. Five of them had clear-cut titles: Accounting and Financial Affairs, Sales, Management and Training, Government Relations, and Overseas. The other three worked for a department called Special Affairs. That was Sheehan’s department.
    He was a big man who’d played football in high school and one season at Notre Dame. He believed in sports because it built character. He was twenty pounds heavier than his playing weight, but, in his own opinion, his six-foot-two-and-a-half-inch frame could handle it. Frank had once considered the seminary. But he was “too masculine.” Everyone told him so. Overall, he was quite glad that he’d listened. He joined the CIA instead. It filled many of the same needs the Church would have done even though there were times when the Agency seemed so flawed and full of failing that his faith was severely tested. But he understood, especially after a brief stint as assistant station chief in Rome, that he would have had to face exactly the same sort of spiritual crises if he’d been an agent of the Catholic