A statement of policy; albeit one with an entirely reasonable caveat attached. Ben Bradlee hardly knew what to think!
Seizing the opportunity, Bobby Kennedy changed the subject.
“I spoke to you before the Battle of Washington about a conspiracy aimed at the heart of the Republic. The Administration has now been fully appraised of all the intelligence available to the British by Sir Dick White, the Director General of MI6. The President and senior members of the Cabinet were briefed personally by Sir Dick. We now believe that an organisation called Red Dawn — a stay behind KGB terroristic network first created in Stalin’s time — may have had a significant involvement in compromising the chain of command of the US Armed Forces at home and overseas, and in fomenting a coup d’état in DC. The British believe that Red Dawn may have been behind widespread civil unrest and guerrilla-type terrorist attacks on targets in the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean immediately after the October War, and remains active in the Mediterranean at this time. The British speculate that any surviving Soviet or Warsaw Pact military assets in Europe, Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere in the World, for example those engaged in supporting insurgencies in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in Namibia and Mozambique may be swept up by Red Dawn, if indeed they have not already been incorporated into that ‘movement’.
Ben Bradlee was fascinated and a little shocked; neither of which he betrayed to his friend.
“That’s a big claim. Convince me.”
“The CIA are climbing all over this, obviously,” Bobby Kennedy went on, unoffended that the newsman was unwilling to take anything at face value. “The way it looks is that Red Dawn — Krasnaya Zarya, as it is properly called — was never an acknowledged apparatus of the Soviet State because in the event of a catastrophe such as a nuclear war who could say whether the Soviet State, in any meaningful sense, would survive. Red Dawn was an idea which had its roots in the Soviet retreat to Moscow in the 1941, and only became a movement in the years after World War II. It seems that several years before the October War the Soviets realized that in inculcating an unquestioning ‘will to resist’ they had created a monster. Consequently, an attempt was made to purge the leaders of the Red Dawn movement but by then it was too late because Krasnaya Zarya had already infiltrated every organ of the Soviet State. By then Red Dawn and the Soviet State had become indistinguishable. The Brits suspect that after the October War Red Dawn emerged like a vengeful Phoenix from the ashes.”
Ben Bradlee wondered if his friend was going to move on from generalities — the stock in trade of most intelligence community conspiracy theories — to specifics.
“The British have tried to translate what they know about Red Dawn into realistic predictions of what it might look like on the ground and the real threats it may pose to us both. Although the Brits do not think Red Dawn has a single guiding hand; they see plenty of evidence for ‘local’ guiding hands particularly in places less devastated by the October War. For example, they predict that in the USA Red Dawn will have coalesced into a loosely nationalistic underground movement, a ‘resistance’, if you like, capable of developing relatively complex strategies and carrying out extremely ambitious operations. Their assumption is that Red Dawn will have insinuated itself into mainstream political parties, key locations in the military-industrial complex, and particularly into local militias and extremist groups of the right, their thinking being that historically the FBI indiscriminately targets all left-leaning groups and largely leaves the red-neck, racist, anti-Semitic and other right wing coalitions to their own devices. It is inevitable in this scenario that Red Dawn will have a presence in many if not most governmental institutions, in the big labour unions and on the majority of University campuses across America. Some areas of the American state will have been hardly touched by Red Dawn; others, a minority to be sure, will have been deeply compromised. For example, National Guard formations may have been suborned, or parts of critical military command and control infrastructures perverted.”
Ben Bradlee’s hackles were rising.
“You’re telling me that while the FBI has devoted three-quarters of its resources to harassing people of color going about their lawful business that Red Dawn has been left to its own devices?”
Bobby Kennedy nodded.
“The FBI has now started talking about the possible existence of a ‘resistance’ of some kind in several states. The Army interrogators at Camp Benedict Arnold where most of the captured suspected rebels are being processed by the Army have identified several possible leaders of the coup d’état. Hardly anybody we’ve captured has alluded to anything called ‘Red Dawn’ but several prisoners have talked about an analogous ‘underground’ of which ‘the resistance’, basically the crazies who tried to overthrow the government nine days ago is the visible manifestation. We’re still in the early stages of unravelling it all. Right now we think that ‘Red Dawn’, if such a thing exists, somehow became separated, divorced from the guys — let’s call them ‘the resistance’ — involved in the fighting in DC and elsewhere. That’s why the focus has switched to rooting out anybody who might be suspect or problematic in the armed forces and the civil service. We’re pretty sure that the crazies who torched half of Washington last week weren’t the guys who sent out the orders for the Air Force to bomb British ships and bases, or who infiltrated the State Department to manipulate the Fascist government in Spain to launch a proxy war against the Brits over Gibraltar. As for the shit Admiral McDonald’s people are digging up in the Navy Department. Hell, it’s hard to know where to begin. I wish I could say we’re talking about communist subversion and fifth columnists; the trouble is I think it’s more likely we’re just dealing with imbeciles!”
He moved on without preamble.
“What have you heard about the Scorpion?”
Ben Bradlee knew the Navy had lost a nuclear boat in murky circumstances that had also involved the Royal Navy’s only nuclear-powered submarine HMS Dreadnought. He had never bought the story that Dreadnought had stalked and sunk the USS Scorpion in international waters for no particular reason. Several papers had carried lurid accusations and an old admiral had been wheeled out on the Ed Sullivan Show to demand that the British ‘come clean’.
“Do we know what actually happened?”
“Yes,” Bobby Kennedy rasped sourly. “Not from our people, obviously. The Brits have given us a full account of the circumstances in which HMS Dreadnought was attacked and partially disabled by a near miss from a homing torpedo fired by a US Navy Grumman S-2 Tracker anti-submarine aircraft flying off the USS Enterprise. Two S-2s each launched two such torpedoes. The first salvo sank the USS Scorpion which appears to have deliberately manoeuvred so as to make it impossible for the Enterprise’s aircraft to ‘safely’ launch their fish at HMS Dreadnought. The British sub was damaged when one of the torpedoes aimed at it detonated close to its stern at the end of its attack run. HMS Dreadnought eventually limped into Gibraltar where she is currently undergoing repairs. Initially, the Brits offered to give us full access to the Dreadnought and gave permission for our investigators to speak to its captain and his senior officers. Notwithstanding, the Navy Department has refused to be part of any British ‘cover up’. When the American Consul in Gibraltar attempted to serve a subpoena…”