Vic Socotra

20 December 2010

Governor Bill Averts Atomic Crisis

(GovDel Richardson in Pyongyang, DPRK, last Friday. Photo CNN)

I thought we might be at war this morning, which goes to show you that the North Koreans are neither crazy nor foolish. Reckless, maybe, but I should have known they are not nuts.

Honestly, when the sun was going down here on Friday I was a tense as I have ever been about the situation on the Peninsula. China was uptight. The Kremlin announced it was “seriously concerned” about what might happen just down the road from their major Pacific port at Vladivostok.

The Yanks and the ROKS had their plans in order, and phlegmatically stated that they were going to conduct a live-fire drill on the disputed island of Yeonpyong near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) that the North has never really acknowledged.

That is where the North murdered a couple ROK Marines a few weeks ago, and injured a bunch of civilians who have the misfortune to live there. That comes on top of the torpedo attack on the ROK Navy Coastal Patrol ship Cheonan (PCC-772), which killed 46 sailors.

The announcement from the Blue House Friday was stark, and in between other events on the weekend I was worried. ROKAF F-15K strike fighters were on strip alert with a load of air-to-surface missiles and GPS-guided GBU-38 (500 lbs) and GBU-31 (2,000 lbs) JDAMs to pin-point North Korean artillery positions in caves along the country's west coast.

Apparently US military laser designators were placed on the island to provide terminal guidance in case the Northerners attempt to jam the GPS signals. Destroyers, frigates and escort ships were placed on high alert and P-3C Orion surveillance planes were on patrol. Indigenously produced "Hyunmu" I and II missiles and U.S.-manufactured ATACMS Block 1A surface-to-surface missiles were placed on alert.

(Click to see larger - Northern Limit Line is depicted by blue dots. Yeonpyong Island is at Figure 1. Seoul’s main airport is now located at Incheon (4), near the site of MacArthur’s famed amphibious landing. The red line represents North Korea’s bizarre view of the sea frontier. The islands in the keyholes were specifically apportioned to the ROK in the Armistice agreement, and the North respected the NLL until the 1990s, when it decided the fishing grounds were worth fighting about. Cheonan was sunk about a mile SW of Baengyeong-do Island (2), which is what “do” means in Korean, so I apologize for the redundancy.)

The grandstanding by the North was as spectacular as I have observed, though the death toll still does not amount to those murdered in 1987 in the sabotage bombing of KAL flight 858 that killed 110.

I should have known it was all just more elaborate political theater. I mean, I have spent time with those assholes, and I know for a fact that they are not suicidal, even if their hands are soaked in blood.

I should have had my “Do!” moment and realized it was a sham because Bill was back in Pyongyang. I am kicking myself this morning for wasting any time worrying about it.

Bill Richardson brought the whole delegation back with him safely, and all-star media event featuring Wolf Blitzer, the pioneering cable journalist I met back in DESERT STORM days, when CNN ruled the airwaves with breaking news.

Wolf was the Pentagon correspondent then, and I got to be a horse-holder in the Intelligence part of the briefings to the media, that generation’s version of the Five O’clock Follies. We got him interested in the classified television station we ran after the war, and we felt we were colleagues, of a sort, after he toured our little studio in the J-2 spaces of the Pentagon.

Governor Bill is the go-to guy for the North Koreans. He had made one trip to the North to negotiate the release of one living and one dead crewman of a US Army helicopter that had strayed across the border and been shot down.

The North did well enough on that trip- my Air Force colleague John in Leg Affairs had done the logistics- that they were willing to have him back.

I got a chance to arrange that trip, and carry the bags, since I had done fairly well on managing trips to the DomRep and Haiti. This was something else, thoroughly surreal.

Bill was on the House Intelligence Committee then, having been elected to Congress from the Third District of New Mexico. He had not come to the post as a Washington outsider. He was a pitcher on the Tufts University baseball team and had a stint with the Cape Cod Cotuit Kettleers in amateur ball waiting to see if he would get drafted for the Minors.

He didn’t, although his official bio included the note that he had been picked up by the Kansas City A’s. It is a cautionary note about padding the resume. Sometimes you wind up famous, and the media will pick you to pieces.

He told me about that when we were floating in pool at the Jaragua Hotel in Santo Domingo. It is a great hotel if you ever pass through there, and the nightclub has the hottest meringue bands at night.

Congressional travel is a bitch.

Anyway, Bill retained his interest in foreign affairs after he decided to be a Congressman. He went down to New Mexico and lost narrowly in a race against wily veteran Manual Lujan, and then ran in the newly-created Third District and won in 1983.

He used his popularity back home to take a broad portfolio and traveled to hot spots all over the world: Cuba, Angola, Vietnam, Burma, China, Taiwan and Haiti to name a few besides North Korea. I was privileged to be in the last five of them myself.

Ostensibly that trip was about missing US POWs, but it was actually about the Agreed Framework nuclear agreement. That is what this one was about, too, that and the succession of Government from L’il Kim to his 27-year-old son Kim Jong-un.

That did not come up in the official announcement, which coincided with the ROK live-fire drill, that Bill had managed to get the North to allow nuclear inspectors to return to the reactor complex at Yongbyon, and that they never had any intention of responding to the live-fire drill, even though it was a grave provocation.

He is in his second term as governor and term limits has him stepping down. You recall that he ran for president and did pretty well, considering who he was up against. He was supposed to be Commerce Secretary in this administration except for some trumped-up accusations of contract shenanigans back in New Mexico.

(William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid.)

The last thing on his plate before he leaves office, aside from providing the North Koreans a face-saving means of stepping back from the brink of all-out nuclear war, is to consider a pardon for Billy the Kid, who only killed nine people. At issue is whether the New Mexico territorial governor at the time, Civil War Hero and author Lew Wallace, had promised to void an indictment against William Bonney in the murder of Sheriff William Brady in return for testimony against three men in the slaying of an innocent, one-armed lawyer.

The matter has been unresolved for 130 years, so the governor is clearly getting to the bottom of the in-basket now.

He has the matter out for comments from the public, which are due on his desk in Santa Fe by Sunday, if you want to register an opinion.

I for one am in favor of it. What the hell, if the North Koreans can keep getting away with it, why not? And, besides, whatever Governor Bill is up to, I am one of his biggest fans.