I had 25 acres around the house and about 10 across the road. I wondered if it would be sufficient!
One thing I had to deal with over the weekend was a ridiculous case of racism. It had been simmering all week, but what with the memorial services, I was prevented from dealing with it appropriately. It all dated from Monday, at the funeral for Harlan, when during the eulogy I had said that in basic, 'I was on the top bunk and Harlan was beneath me.' Reverend Al Sharpton had been taking me to task ever since then about my obvious racism and how black people were beneath me!
When Ari Fleischer told me this, I simply stared at him in disbelief. Finally, I got my brain to working and asked, "Are you kidding me?!"
"I am dead serious, Mister President!"
"Ari, we were assigned our bunks. I never chose, or I'd have chosen the bottom bunk! Are you shitting me?!"
"He is also claiming that your position carrying the coffin meant something demeaning. That one I don't understand myself."
I gave him another odd look. "There were six of us, and I was in the center on the left. I've got a bad knee, and if I bobbled the thing, the guys in front and behind could catch it. This is nuts."
"Al Sharpton doesn't have to make sense. All he wants to do is keep his name out there. He thinks he's the next Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr., all rolled into one."
"Shit! Okay, if you have to put out something, simply say that the bunks were assigned and that is all that means. Jesus Christ! I have to bury a President and this asshole thinks it's a good time to grandstand!", I told him.
Ari put out an appropriate statement, but that didn't shut Sharpton up. He loved the sound of his own voice, and facts never swayed him. It came to a head that Sunday morning on Meet the Press. Tim Russert, who I had known for years, had Sharpton on in an early segment, and as a counterpoint, had a retired Major General Jonathan Buller. It took me a second to recognize him, but then it dawned on me that General Buller had been my battalion commander when I had Bravo Battery. The interesting thing, though, was that Buller, who had been a fine battalion commander and who had continued rising through the ranks, was as black as the ace of spades. That had never been important to me when he had been Lieutenant Colonel Buller and I had been First Lieutenant Buckman. He said 'Jump!' and I said, 'How high?' How they ever dug him up I will never fathom.
Sharpton was being broadcast from a studio in New York City, and Buller was in the studio with Russert. Sharpton started off with a litany of woes about the racism of the Buckman administration, which had only been in office about 12 days at that point. As proof, he cited my long personal history of racism, starting with my statement about Harlan being beneath me. When Tim stated that I had explicitly stated that I was in the top bunk and Harlan was in the bottom bunk, Sharpton replied, "That's what Mister Buckman says, of course, but that doesn't mean it's true!"
Tim looked over at General Buller. "General? You used to command the President. Is he a racist?"
"Absolutely not! This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of! Lieutenant Buckman was one of the finest officers I ever had the privilege of commanding, and I never saw a trace of racism in his words or his actions. I recommended him for early promotion twice, and if he had stayed in the army he would have had an outstanding career. He was an excellent officer."
"Then what about the significance of which bunk he was in? Or is there a significance?"
Buller snorted. "This happened when he was in cadet training, which for an officer is the same thing as boot camp. They start at one end of the barracks and a sergeant assigns each boy a bunk alphabetically. It's a bunch of 18 and 19 year old kids, and the sergeant just goes you ... you ... you ... right down the line. Buckman ... Buckminster ... next! They sleep where they are told, they march where they are told, they do what they are told, and they do it with whoever they are told to do it with! That's all it is. Every soldier and every officer goes through it. It's basic training and that's how it works. If Al Sharpton had ever served the country like he serves his mouth, he'd know better!"
It only got better from there! I watched with vast amusement as my old friend had to put up with Sharpton and Buller trading insults. Sharpton called my former commander a 'Tom' and a 'house boy around the plantation' and Buller called Sharpton a 'damn fool' and a lying sack of [bleeped]!' I was laughing my ass off at that point, and Russert pulled the plug on the pair of them. I told Marilyn we would have to invite General Buller to dinner some night, maybe to speak to the NAACP, at which point she told me to 'Behave!' and gave me a finger wagging. Somehow I suspected the problem was going to go away at that point. I dreaded to think of what Harlan's family thought of it all.
Monday morning, I took Marine One back to Washington while Marilyn stayed home with the girls. This was their senior year in high school. We needed to somehow make a two-home family work, just until they graduated. This was going to be tricky, since Marilyn was now the First Lady, and needed to be in Washington with me. It wouldn't be easy.
I left the house early and got to my office about 8:00, and went directly to the Oval Office. First things first – I received a Presidential Daily Briefing without any attitude now. The official intelligence was still that everything pointed towards Iraq. The intel I was getting from the Three Amigos was pointing towards Al Qaeda and Afghanistan.
Priority Number One – Sort this shit out! My first call was to Collins Barnwell, and tell him I wanted the three of them to be here at 11:00 with the latest info. Barnwell was the titular head of the investigation, and an Executive Assistant Director of the FBI. The other two, Secret Service Assistant Director William Basham and CIA Deputy Director of Analysis Winston Creedmore, were to come along with him.
Until then I puttered around doing odds and ends. That's not saying I was goofing off, but at the Presidential level, even the odds and ends are important. The secretaries try to keep things straight, but there are never enough hours in a day. Even going to the bathroom seems to be on a schedule. Forget about goofing off and reading a magazine or playing Solitaire on the computer. You are already booked for that time. Meanwhile, something is bound to come up that throws everything out of whack. By the way, everything that lands on your desk can literally involve life and death decisions.
Nobody has yet come up with a way to determine if somebody will be up to the job of being President. Some business executives ran on the basis of their ability to run big operations and multi-task. These are useful skills, and are also found in a number of governors who had held the job. Then again, over the years we've had some governors who didn't do as well as others (Carter and Bush 43, not great; Clinton, better than average) and Senators without executive experience that had done okay (Kennedy) and others who hadn't (Obama). All the scholars could do was make wild ass guesses about what it took. From what I could see you needed to be a world class juggler and as flexible as a contortionist. Maybe they needed to start recruiting at the circus.
Barnwell gave the presentation on what they had discovered so far, and it was impressive. The FBI technique is to throw a zillion agents at a problem, with each one assigned to a specific task, and that agent becomes an expert on that task. So, the simple answer was to take the passenger and crew lists from each airplane and assign an agent to each passenger or family of passengers, and to each crew member and investigate them thoroughly. Could they have been involved? Where were they sitting? Who were they sitting next to? What was that person doing? What was their background and history? If they were clean, that agent got assigned to something else.