Reuben smiled and nodded.
“We’re in agreement on that,” she said. “Just being Debbie from Long Island sounds pretty nice to me right now.”
“Oh no, no no,” Abram started. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. This is no time for any Jew, especially an Israeli Jew, to look for rest and quiet. We have serious work to do, perhaps dangerous work, especially after what happened to all those Jews in Boston. I’m not saying to run away. I’m saying be careful, that’s all.”
“I know, I know,” Reuben said. “Forgive me a passing fantasy. That’s all that was.”
“So,” Levi interrupted. “Tell us all about what happened in Boston. And tell us what people, what Jews are doing about it.”
“We’re organizing a massive demonstration, a march on Washington,” Sarah said, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “We want to get media coverage across the country to shine a light on what our government has done. I’m organizing the Portland contingent.”
Reuben recalled how in college Sarah could organize a march on almost anywhere over almost anything in almost no time at all. She had a way with slogans and chants and signs.
Nothing ever came of them, though, Reuben thought.
“And I’m organizing a different kind of demonstration,” Goldhersh added. “I have a warehouse full of little items that were waiting for shipment to Israel. I expect we’ll find a use right here for all my goodies. Sarah can march and carry the most clever of signs as long as she wants to, but this country’s government was the first to use force against Jews. The government can’t expect force to be met only with words and songs. After all, we didn’t conquer the West Bank with words, except maybe the words of the tank commanders to move forward and fire accurately.”
He tapped Levi on the shoulder.
“Lieutenant Levi, I have some things that will get President Quaid’s attention. I would not be surprised if other people have attention-getters of their own, would you, Levi?” Goldhersh asked.
“Not in the least, Abram,” Levi replied. “Not in the least.”
CHAPTER 22
The federal justice system was well on the road to recovering from the overload following the arrest of nearly 5,000 people. The Israelis seized from hundreds of homes were taken to the Agganis Arena at Boston University, an indoor stadium where the BU Terrier hockey and basketball teams played. The stadium had seating for more than 7,000 spectators. With guards posted at all entrances, the detainees were given free run of the confined area.
McQueeney returned to Massachusetts, making her fourth round-trip flight between Boston and Washington in a Justice Department executive jet in three days. She sat at the head of a table in the conference room at the US Attorneys office in the federal courthouse. Seated around the table were Arnold Anderson, the US Attorney for Massachusetts, and his top staffers. Although no one mentioned it, each was aware that their colleague Judy Katz was again not present.
Her absence, and their individual assumptions for why she was not asked to attend, caused varying degrees of embarrassment and anger. Nobody raised the topic that she was Jewish.
“As far as I’m concerned, this situation is out of control,” McQueeney said, looking around the table. “I hate to use the phrase, but I ordered this whole roundup because I was following orders. I have never, ever spoken badly of my boss, but I feel that I owe a duty to each of you to be as blunt as possible before any of you go any further down this path. My boss gave me no choice. This may shock you, but I am being candid. I offered to resign rather than do what we are doing. The boss wouldn’t let me resign—at least, not yet.”
There was shocked silence around the table. The Queen continued.
“I don’t want any of you to justify what you are about to do by saying you were following my orders. I am not ordering anybody to do anything. Any of you who wants out of this operation can get up and walk out of this room, now, without retribution from me. I was not offered that choice. I’m not the first attorney general ordered to do something she believed was wrong. In 1973, Eliot Richardson, the man who held my job, a man from Massachusetts in fact, was called into the Oval Office. His boss, Richard Nixon, ordered him to fire a fellow named Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor who was investigating Nixon.
“Richardson refused. So he resigned. Nixon then turned to the deputy attorney general, Bill Ruckelshaus, and ordered him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus resigned, too. Nixon finally found somebody in the chain of command who would do his bidding—Robert Bork. Bork fired Cox and, perhaps not too coincidentally, fourteen years later Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court, but I’m sure you know how badly that nomination failed.
“So why this history lesson when we’re all so busy? Because I want each of you to know that sometimes the honorable thing, the downright right thing to do is to refuse to follow orders. I can tell you that I am ashamed of myself for not doing what Eliot Richardson did. I’ve got my reasons—maybe because with nuclear bombs destroying cities and armed attacks on Coast Guard ships in our own harbors we live in a less innocent time. But I can’t tell you that what we did was the right thing to do. And I can tell you that what we are about to do is the wrong thing to do.”
Again she looked around the table.
“Anybody leaving? Nobody! Well, damn you all then. And damn me. So let’s figure out what we’re going to do with this mess.”
Anderson had accepted appointment by President Quaid as US Attorney for Massachusetts because he saw the position as a stepping stone to other, higher state office, such as senator or even governor. He appreciated that despite his basic agreement with the Queen on this issue, ducking out of it would be political suicide. An astute student of Massachusetts politics, Anderson knew that regardless of Eliot Richardson’s status as the hero of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, Richardson’s later effort to be elected US senator from Massachusetts came to a dead end when he was defeated in the Republican primary by a political nobody.
“The big problem, boss, is that about four thousand of the detainees came off those ships. No question they are in this country illegally. The trouble is, we can’t deport them back to Israel because, well, there isn’t any Israel left to send them to.” Here even Anderson was hesitant. “We don’t want to turn them over to the Arabs, do we?”
Like everybody else in the room, Anderson had seen clandestine surveillance footage from the refugee camps set up by the Palestinians for those surviving Israelis who failed to escape the invading armies. It was worse, far worse, than Guantanamo Bay. Palestinians were the world’s leading authorities on inhumane detention camps, having lived in them for generations.
McQueeney interrupted.
“We’re not going to have to worry about those people, the people from the boats. The way the president was talking yesterday, I think he’s come up with his own solution for dealing with them. A military solution that won’t involve the criminal justice system and therefore won’t involve us.”
She looked around the table, from face to face.
“What are we going to do with the other ones? The Boston people we’re holding? As I was reminded by my boss, more than once, ten Coasties are dead and somebody is going to pay for killing them. Suggestions, anybody?”