“Jesus!” This was the ugly downside to cutting the military down in size. A huge number of really good, dedicated, brave, and smart guys were being cut loose left and right. I leaned forward and rubbed my face. “Well, we can’t be having that, now, can we? So, you’re going to be the Pentagon’s spy in my office. I might as well introduce you to my Chief of Staff.”
I stood up and opened my office door. I didn’t have far to look. Marty was standing at Mindy’s desk talking to both her and Babs. He saw the door open and looked up, and I motioned him in. “Marty, got a few minutes?”
“Of course, Congressman.”
Marty came through the door and saw I was with someone. I closed the door behind us and invited him over. “Harlan, I’d like to introduce my Chief of Staff, Marty Adrianopolis. Marty, this is Lieutenant Colonel Harlan Buckminster, my new liaison officer from the Pentagon.”
Harlan stood and the two men shook hands. I waved them both to seats and looked over at Marty. “Marty, feel free to call me by my first name when we’re with Harlan. He’s almost as old a friend as you. He and I go back to summer training when I was still at RPI with you.” To Harlan I explained, “Marty likes to use my title when I’m with the staff or people outside of the office, but he’s an old buddy like you are.”
“You were at college with Carl?” asked Harlan.
“I was two years ahead of him. Did the two of you really capture an entire enemy army all by yourselves, or is he just full of crap?” asked Marty.
“I’ll tell you his army stories if you tell me his college stories.”
“Keep it up, guys. I’ll send you both back where I found you,” I laughed. “Hey, Marty, Harlan is supposed to be our new liaison…”
“Yeah, I heard something about us getting a liaison officer. How’s that going to work?” Marty replied, as much to Harlan as to me.
“The way it’s been explained to me, if you need something from the Pentagon, you tell me and I go and get it,” answered Harlan.
I smiled at Marty. “And then he runs and tells his boss what Congressman Buckman is up to.”
Marty nodded and said, “Bingo!”
Harlan smiled at me but looked confused. “You want to explain that?”
I shrugged. “Harlan, correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been staff before but this is your first duty at the Pentagon, right?” He nodded agreement, so I continued. “Trust me on this. The first thing that your General Thompson is going to ask the next time he sees you is for a total debrief on our visit, right down to the size of the meal we served you at the house and whether we offered you seconds. I am one of the most dangerous legislators they will ever meet, because I’m a legislator who actually knows something about the military. They won’t be able to buffalo me like they would really prefer.”
Marty nodded and agreed. “As far as the Pentagon is concerned, or really, any government agency, the perfect Congressman is somebody who doesn’t know anything about what they are supposed to be regulating. That way the agency can guide them appropriately, which basically means raising their budget no matter what.”
Harlan’s eyes widened some, but he nodded. “There is supposed to be a course on this somewhere, but this happened so fast they haven’t had time to run me through it.”
“Well, you tell them that I’m giving my blessing, but that if you need to take a few weeks to figure it out, I’ll understand,” I told him. “Is this considered a joint billet for Goldwater-Nichols?”
Congressional liaison is a big deal at the Pentagon. The military budget is one of the largest items in the total, and they have huge numbers of officers dedicated to keeping it large and growing it larger. If I had been in the Navy, or was on the Naval and Marines subcommittee, an Admiral would have brought around somebody. There are also officers assigned to the Senate and the various staff committees as well. These are all field grade officers (O-4 through O-6, majors through full colonels, officers who should be running battalions and brigades instead of this nonsense) all of whom were reporting to a flag officer of some sort (generals and admirals) some of who were assigned to specific commands and some of who were assigned to various procurement programs. It’s an impossible muddle.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 decided to ‘streamline’ the system, and instead added a gargantuan number of ‘joint’ slots to the system, where Army officers served on staffs combining other services as well, so they could ‘jointly’ work on problems. At some point an officer has to serve in a ‘joint’ position to be considered promotable to a senior rank.
Harlan nodded. “It’s joint, but it doesn’t matter. These days, unless you’re better than Audie Murphy you’ll be lucky to get your twenty in. I am just hanging in until then.”
Marty commented, “Well, they have you stashed somewhere until you find your way around?” Harlan nodded. “Make some friends over there and buy a place down in the Virginia suburbs. There’s a lot of defense contractors out along the corridor to Dulles. Do it right and you won’t even need to move at the end of your time. You can get in with a contractor and hawk their wares for even more money.”
I grinned and nodded. Harlan simply rolled his eyes and said, “I think I have fallen down the rabbit hole!”
“Oh, my friend, if you only knew!” I told him.
Chapter 119: Counterattack
1995
Before John and Helen left for their trip, we had a big party for them at a banquet hall in Timonium. It was a big group of us, people from the company, political types from all over the district and from elsewhere in Maryland, other friends and neighbors, and Allen and Rachel both flew in with their families. Prior to this John had met with me and introduced me to his handpicked replacement, an attorney just a few years older than me, Tucker Potsdam, who had been a tax lawyer with the Buckman Group and didn’t take to the corporate life and the killer hours it occasionally involved. Now he was hanging out his own shingle as tax lawyer and private equity manager. We were going to continue with the fig leaf of independence from active management of my investments. I would talk to the new guy, who would talk to my trustee. Perfectly legal, at least by Congressional standards.
The party turned out to be… strange. Nobody wanted to say the obvious, that we were having a party and talking about a dead man walking. At one point I was sitting at a table with Allen Steiner, John’s son and an old buddy from Boy Scout days, having a drink. He asked, “Does this feel more than a little weird to you?”
“I’ve never been to a funeral where the guest of honor was walking around the room,” I answered.
Allen snorted out a laugh and coughed out a bit of his drink. “It’s bizarre, all right!” He coughed a little and then drank some more.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without him,” I told my boyhood friend. “I mean, a guy develops feelings for the first man who bails him out of jail.”
That caused Allen to start laughing and coughing again. “Will you stop it? If I keep laughing and inhaling my drink, I’m going to end up in the box before my dad!”
“Hey, I’m just saying, I have history with him.”
He nodded. “Yeah, there were times I was even a little jealous, you know? I was three thousand miles away, and you were still back here with Dad. It sounds stupid now.”
“Allen, you have to know, you and Rachel… Listen, my picture was out in the lobby. Yours and Rachel’s were on his desk!” I protested.
He waved it off. “Hey, don’t sweat it, I know that. I’m just saying, Dad feels the same way about you. I mean, he sat me and Rach down the other night and reviewed the wills and stuff. Good Lord! He’s worth $60 million dollars! He told us he wouldn’t have had a fraction of that if he hadn’t gotten in with you and your company.”