On the night of June 1, all hell broke loose. One thousand Cubans ran out of the fort, right past federal troops, and onto Highway 22, where they began walking toward Barling. Once again, the troops didn’t lift a finger to stop them. So I did. The only barrier between the Cubans and several hundred angry and armed Arkansans was composed of state troopers under the command of Captain Deloin Causey, a dedicated and coolheaded leader; the National Guardsmen; and Sheriff Bill Cauthron’s deputies. I had given Causey and the National Guard strict instructions not to let the Cubans pass. I knew what would happen if they did: a bloodbath that would make the Little Rock Central High crisis look like a Sunday afternoon picnic. The Cubans kept coming at our people and began throwing rocks. Finally, Causey told the state police to fire shots over their heads. Only then did they turn around and go back to the fort. When the smoke cleared, sixty-two people had been injured, five of them from the shotgun blasts, and three of Fort Chaffee’s buildings had been destroyed. But no one was killed or hurt too badly. I flew up to Chaffee as soon as I could to meet with General Drummond. We had a real shouting match. I was outraged that his troops hadn’t stopped the Cubans after the White House had assured me the Pentagon had received Justice Department approval to do so. The general didn’t flinch. He told me he took his orders from a two-star general in San Antonio, Texas, and no matter what the White House had said to me, his orders hadn’t changed. Drummond was a real straight shooter; he was obviously telling the truth. I called Gene Eidenberg, told him what Drummond had said, and demanded an explanation. Instead I got a lecture. Eidenberg said he’d been told I was overreacting and grandstanding after my disappointing primary showing. It was obvious that Gene, whom I considered a friend, didn’t understand the situation, or me, as well as I had thought he did.
I was fit to be tied. I told him that since he obviously didn’t have confidence in my judgment, he could make the next decision: “You can either come down here and fix this right now, tonight, or I’m going to shut the fort down. I’ll put National Guardsmen at every entrance and no one will go in or out without my approval.”
He was incredulous. “You can’t do that,” he said. “It’s a federal facility.”
“That may be,” I shot back, “but it’s on a state road and I control it. It’s your decision.”
Eidenberg flew to Fort Smith on an air force plane that night. I picked him up, and before we went to the fort I took him on a tour of Barling. It was well after midnight, but down every street we drove, at every house, armed residents were on alert, sitting on their lawns, on their porches, and, in one case, on the roof. I’ll never forget one lady, who looked to be in her seventies, sitting stoically in her lawn chair with her shotgun across her lap. Eidenberg was shocked by what he saw. After we finished the tour he looked at me and said, “I had no idea.”
After the tour, we met with General Drummond and other federal, state, and local officials for an hour or so. Then we talked to the horde of press people who had gathered. Eidenberg promised that the security problem would be fixed. Later that day, June 2, the White House said the Pentagon had received clear instructions to maintain order and keep the Cubans on the base. President Carter also acknowledged that the people of Arkansas had suffered needless anxiety and promised that no more Cubans would be sent to Fort Chaffee.
Delays with the screening process seemed to be the root cause of the turmoil, and the people doing the screening made an effort to speed it up. When I went to visit the fort not long afterward, the situation was calmer and everyone seemed to be in a better frame of mind.
While things seemed to be settling down, I was still troubled by what had happened, or hadn’t, between May 28, when Eidenberg told me the army had been ordered to keep the Cubans from leaving Chaffee, and June 1, when they let one thousand of them escape. Either the White House hadn’t told me the truth, or the Justice Department was slow in getting its legal opinion to the Pentagon, or someone in the Pentagon had defied a lawful order of the Commander in Chief. If that’s what happened, it amounted to a serious breach of the Constitution. I’m not sure the whole truth ever came out. As I learned when I got to Washington, after things go wrong, the willingness to take responsibility often vanishes. In August, Hillary and I went to Denver for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association. All the talk was of presidential politics. President Carter seemed to have survived a vigorous challenge to his renomination from Senator Edward Kennedy, but Kennedy had not withdrawn. We had breakfast with the famous criminal lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, whom Hillary had known for years and who had wanted her to come to work for him after law school. Williams was strongly for Kennedy, and believed he’d have a better chance to defeat Ronald Reagan in the fall campaign because the President was bedeviled by a bad economy and the ten-month-long captivity of our hostages in Iran. I disagreed with him on the politics and the merits. Carter had done a lot of good things as President, wasn’t responsible for the OPEC price increases that had fueled the inflation, and had few good options for dealing with the hostage crisis. Besides, despite the problems with the Cubans, the Carter White House had been good to Arkansas, giving financial aid and support for our reform efforts in education, energy, health, and economic development. I had also been given remarkable access to the White House, for both business and pleasure. In the latter category, the best visit was when I took Mother to hear Willie Nelson sing on the South Lawn of the White House at a picnic the President hosted for NASCAR. After the event, Mother and I accompanied Nelson and the President’s son Chip to the Hay-Adams Hotel, across Lafayette Square from the White House, where Willie sat at the piano and sang for us until two in the morning.
For all those reasons, I was feeling good about my relationship with the White House as the National Governors Association meeting began. The Democratic governors and their Republican counterparts held separate meetings. I had been elected vice chairman of the Democratic governors at the winter meeting, thanks to my nomination by Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina, who would become one of my closest friends among the governors and an ally in the fight for education reform all the way through the White House years. Bob Strauss, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, asked me to get the Democratic Governors Association to endorse President Carter over Senator Kennedy. After a quick canvass of the governors present, I told Strauss the vote would be twenty to four for Carter. We had a civilized debate, with Strauss speaking for the President and Governor Hugh Carey of New York arguing for Kennedy. After the 20–4 vote, Strauss and I spoke briefly to the press, touting the endorsement as a show of confidence in and political boost for President Carter at a time when he needed it.
About fifteen minutes later, I was told the White House was trying to reach me on the phone. Apparently the President wanted to thank me for helping line up the governors’ support. Appearances can be deceiving. What the President wanted to tell me was that the weather was about to turn cold in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the rest of the Cubans were being housed. Because those forts weren’t insulated from the winter weather, he said it would be necessary to move the refugees. Then came the kicker. Now that the security problems were solved at Fort Chaffee, they would be moved there. I responded, “Mr. President, you promised that no more refugees would be sent to Arkansas. Send them to a fort in some warm place out west you’re not going to win in November anyway.” The President replied that he’d considered that but couldn’t do it because it would cost $10 million to outfit a facility out west. I said, “Mr. President, your word to the people of Arkansas is worth $10 million.” He disagreed, and we ended the conversation.