04 November 2003

The war news this morning was depressing. Maybe that is the only kind of war news there is. Even victory had sadness. I heard a story about some crazy Brits who had followed the path of Mao Tse-Tung's Long March and discovered that it was only 6, 100 kilometers, only half of what the Communists had claimed in the hagoigraphy of the revolution. Not that it wasn't still an impressive accomplishment. It was just a lie.

Then some correspondent started in on the house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Auun San Suu Chi in Burma. I alway get a feeling of deja vu when I hear stories about her, the dimunitive powerhouse of a woman who has been staring down the thugs who run her country for decades. The idiot on the radio started talking about a "carrot and stick" approach with the Burmese. I snorted and turned off the radio. There is nothing new under the sun. But I thought about Asia, and the golden pagodas glimmering in the rich afternoon sun of Rangoon.

In late May of 1995 I was the military escort for a Congressional Delegation by Rep Bill Richardson. I had been Bill's escort for a couple trips to Haiti and other hot spots in the Caribbean in 1994. It had been a heady experience for me and things seemed to have worked out pretty well for the Congressman. He had become a de facto independent Foreign Affairs Department, and the President used him as a sort of weathervane. Bill was Chief Deputy Party Whip and met with Mr. Clinton regularly through the Democratic Leadership meetings. His predilection for traveling to the hotr spots made him a useful instrument for the White House and Bill liked the adventure.

He had been to North Korea, opening up a line of dialogue about their nuclear weapons program while getting back the pilots- one alive- of an Army helicopter that had been shot down after straying north of the DMZ. The suspicious Northerners seemed to think they could trust him, which was a useful thing as the State Department and the White House wanted to make some progress on limiting the nuclear materials the North had at their prototype reactor at Yongbyon.

He also was a regular in Angola, where he maintained a prickly relationship with Jonas Savimbi, our version of the Great White Hope against the Marxist central government. And of course, Haiti and any other place where there were harried diplomats or the rattle of small arms off in the distance.

It was sometime in April of 1995. I had been ambling across the white marble floor of the Seante Hart Building. The spectacular Calder Stabile is the focal point of the soaring marble atrium, the black oblong shapes suspended from the ceiling over the jagged peaks of a three-story black steel mountain shape. We always called it "Stealth Bombers over Colorado" though that wasn't the real name.

I saw the Congressman striding along toward the main exit where I presume a car was waiting for him.I was a little surprised to see him all the way over on the disant end of the Senate side of the Hill. It was unusual to see Members of Congress over in the offices of the Other Body. Bill is an impressive guy in person, tall and broad-shouldered like the ballplayer he used to be.

I gave him a big hello- the 22 seconds of activity in Haiti that ran on CNN for eight cycles had impressed my young sons and had been as strange a time as I had ever spent. He had been only moderately pleased with the outcome of the trips. My logistic support had been flawless, all the cars and airplanes, and he had succeeded in getting the same terms from the rogue government of Raoul Cedras as former President Carter and General Powell did the next year, and he had done it without the 82nd Airborne in their airplanes, drilling across the ocean.

It was simple really, the General and his junta buddies just wanted to be allowed to leave with the loot and their families as Latin dictators have done for decades when they became inconvenient to the United Fruit Company. The alternative was what happened to Trujillo on the road to Santo Domingo or a fate like Pizza Face Noriega rotting in an American jail.

But they had not taken Bill seriously on his Haitian initiative, and we went on with the last-minute military adventure. I think he was disappointed in the outcome, and I did not hear from his office for a few months.

When he focused on me there in the soaring vastness of the Hart, his olive face went from the mechanical smile of a politician to actual recognition. He stopped and we chatted briefly, and I asked him if he needed support for any adventures. I would be leaving the Office of Legislative Affairs in a few months, I said, and would be happy to line something up for him before I went back to the Fleet. He said he had something working and he would have Dolores, his Chief of Staff, get ahold of me. "Asia" he said. "I have some things I want to do in Asia."

"Sounds great, Sir" I said. "I look forward to helping." Then we went about our affairs, the Congressman off to another meeting and me headed up to the second floor to make a call on the Senate Select Committee and wait for a while on the famous SSC couch in the outer waiting room. . I did not know whether or not to expect a call.

I did, and it was soon. Dolores gave me the agenda and I whistled. Bill was interested in what amounted to a Pariah States World Tour: Taiwan, Burma, Vietnam, China and North Korea. The hook to it all, she explained, was the house arrest of the Nobel Laureate Auun San Suu Chi in Burma, the status of refugees on the border with Thailand, and POW-MIA issues in Vietnam and the Koreas. I told her I would get busy and start drafting an itinerary for his approval.

I won't bore you with the details of putting these trips together, and the Visa requirements alone made it a challenge. The Embassy of Myanmar, which is what the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) junta had decided to rename Burma was only open a few hours a day and there was no guarantee that they would cooperate. I had to conduct liaison with State desk and the embassies, the guy who had been working North Korea for Bill, and the North's only representation in America at the United Nations. China, of course, since that was the only way to get to Pyongyang, and the easy ones of The Government on Taiwan and the Republic of Korea. Vietnam was a bit tricky as well, they were hidden in an office on K Street because there was no official presence in Washington. I ran out of space in my passport for stamps, damn, I hate it when that happens, and had to race to Main State to have additional pages put in the book the day before we left. The North Korean Visas didn't make it and we would have to launch and hipe that it all worked.

One day, as the trip neared, I was pulling my hair out and commandeered a Navy car and driver and spent the day arcing around Embassy row, alternatively pleading and blustering to get things in order. There is nothing quite as daunting as finding yourself in a line of Chinese nationals waiting for one tiny lady to process documents. I had to play the Ugly American to get some attention- "Official Business!" I yelled, waving the delegation's black passports. God, did they hate me!

Later that afternoon a quiet and gracious diplomat offered me green tea in a silent residence as he handed me the black booklets. They wanted this to happen, and once I got to the right people it became smooth as fine silk.

Which there was, actually, but that was one of the things Bill wanted to fix. He was going to meet with the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam through the good offices of the Jount Task Force-Full Accounting military liaison group in Hanoi, which was our de facto embassy.

There are a lot of de factos floating around on trips like this. There was a set of activists for each of the issue items, including one stunning Burmese woman from New York, who was active in the struggle to free the Gallant Lady from arrest.

Which is a long way around the rose bush to say that I picked him up at Kirtland Air Force Base in the Third District of New Mexico where he had been traveling with First Lady Hillary Clinton. It was sunny and brisk in the high desert, and I snagged a cab and pinned him down with a big tip up front to have him waiting to whisk us over to the commercial terminal and be on our way.

My credentials got me on the tarmac to greet him when he disembarked from Air Force One with Hillary and the two worked the crowd, First Lady first, of course, chilly and gracious and with that scary smile. Trying to link up the schedule of the wife of the President and trans-oceanic schedules was another challenge, but I got him to LA, though we had to run, and on an Evergreen Big Top 747 with full reclining couches.

We had a morning meeting in Taiwan with men from the Institute, since there is Embassy and but one China, and they kindly did not stamp our passports. Then we were somehow in Rangoon, Yangon, the SLORC called it, and meeting with the Country Team in the late soft afternoon at the Embassy. I could barely take notes from earnest Chief of Mission Jacky Rinn. She briefed the Congressman and his key Stafer Calvin on who we were to see and what we were to do. We would see all of them, all he Generals, and the lay the case before them that they should release The Lady and give her western Husband a visa to join her.

We finally got to The Strand Hotel downtown, were they have changed all the names except that one, and have completely refurbished the old Victorian hotel as a five-star luxury destination. Punka fans sway in the now air-conditioned dark wood halls and little Burmese men sit attentively at desks on each floor to meet you r every need.

I'll cut to the chase. We spent two days meeting with the Generals in charge and wound up at an audience at the old Burma House compound with Vice Admiral Than Nyut. He was the economics minister and reputed to be the most Western of all the SLORC xenophobes. We sat down in the rigid formal audience seats and Bill made his remarks, offering reason and assistance in exchange for the same. The Admiral started out on a rote speech as though he were a white-coated doll and someone had pulled a cord on his back.

Bill listened for a while, storm clouds growing on his face. Then he abruptly got up, curtly thanks the Admiral in mid-speech and we swept out of the old Imperial building. The Chief of Mission took it phlegmatically. This happened when you dealt with thugs. Bill looked at her and she said that was the problem with the Burmese. She waved to the Embassy driver and the car pulled up in front of the graceful spires of a thoroughly English building.

"They don't like carrots, and they are not afraid of sticks."

Bill grunted and we left the next day. But apparently the walkout helped. They released The Lady the next week. Not that they wouldn't arrest her again. The SLORC is like that.

We also ended the war in Vietnam, sprung a guy from a Hanoi Jail and advanced the Agreed Framework in Pyongyang, but that would be another story.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra