Legacy

THE STARRS
 
My bad luck started just before Christmas 1985. But at the time, as so often happens, it seemed like good luck.
 
I had graduated from West Point just in time to join the final fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Returning with a chest full of medals, a few earned, most routine, I married Nancy Makin, a girl from Maryland whom I’d been dating whenever I found myself with stateside duty. We had spent our first three years of married life in the Panama Canal Zone, where I had the shameful task of watching as Jimmy Carter gave away that marvel of engineering to the Panamanians. My father, a colonel in the Army Reserve and a noted hero in World War II, called it mildly “the most traitorous act of any American since Aaron Burr.” And believe me, considering what Aaron Burr had done to our family as well as our nation in the early 1800s, that was a savage indictment.
 
It was in Panama that I mastered Spanish, which led to further assignments south of the border; and in Argentina, Chile and especially Guatemala, learning firsthand about Communist subversion on our doorstep.
 
I was never gung ho in my work against the Reds. That’s not my style. I don’t like to be out front unless war’s been declared and I’m in charge of troops. But no one had greater aversion to Communism than I did, after the butchery I’d seen in Nam and the cruel behavior in Guatemala.
 
I’ve never known whether it was my familiarity with Latin American Communism or my Spanish that accounted for the unexpected promotion, but on 10 December 1985, I received orders to leave my duty station in Cartagena, Colombia, where we were trying to stanch the flow of cocaine into the States, and report to the Pentagon.
 
Nancy rejoiced at what she called “a long-overdue assignment,” not only because it meant a promotion, which I needed if I was ever going to make colonel, but also because it allowed me to rejoin her in Washington, where she had established our permanent home. I appreciated the new job because I would be working with men who had been in my class at the Point or on duty with me in Nam.
 
My duties were well matched to my experience: liaison with the various military commissions from South and Central American nations, anti-Communism in general, and exciting duty with Vice-President Bush’s special task force on drug smuggling. I met Bush only a couple of times, always in a crowd of officers, but from my earliest days in Colombia, I’d had a favorable opinion of what he was trying to do.
 
And then, just before Christmas, I was “suddenly handed the exciting news: “Starr, an opportunity like this doesn’t reach down to tap a major very often. Your Spanish and all, or maybe it’s your strong record in Guatemala. Anyway, they want you for a stint at the National Security Council.”
 
“Am I qualified?”
 
“The Army wants you to go. Demands that you go. Too damned many Navy and Marine types over there.”
 
“My duties?”
 
“Cloak-and-dagger? Who ever knows?” He was a two-star general, and he half saluted before I did: “Keep your nose clean this time, Starr. We want you back. Men like you are too precious to lose.”
 
His last words spoiled the good news, because they reminded both him and me that my promotion to lieutenant colonel had been sidetracked. Normally, an Army officer, if he’s good, expects regular promotion up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The real weeding out occurs in the jump from light-chicken to full-chicken. As my West Point bunkmate Zack McMaster once said in his poetic way: “Any asshole can make light colonel. It takes a real man to handle the next leap.” He had left the service after only two years, for it had become clear that because of his outspoken manner, he would never hack it.”
 
My promotion had been held up twice because of an incident in Chile. Information I was picking up on the street, where I moved about in civilian clothes, led me to believe that one of our clandestine exercises was bound to backfire, allowing a gang of real murderers to sneak behind the American flag while they continued their dirty games. I protested in an embassy meeting, failed to get attention, and sat down to write a forceful memorandum. My grandfather, having undergone two messy divorces in which his ardent letters betrayed him, had summarized his experience in a pithy command: “Do right and fear no man. Don’t write and fear no woman.” Forgetting half of this, I drafted a memo that turned out to make my superiors look bad. Infuriated, they had blocked my advancement.
 
Zack, who had turned to law after his nonproductive fling with the Army, had enrolled at Columbia Law, graduated high, served as clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court, and gone on to become one of Washington’s street-smart geniuses who know where the bodies are buried. But if he did a lot of manipulating, he also did much pro bono work. When my promotion was blocked by the bad vibes from Chile, he advised me: “Starr, if you move to another command, keep a low profile and do a superior job. Then not even your enemies will be able to hold you back.” My assignment to the NSC proved him right.
 
But his urgent phone call this morning put an end to that strategy: “Starr, old buddy. You’re in serious trouble.”
 
“How do you know?”
 
“A Washington lawyer is supposed to know everything.”
 
“Like what?”
 
“The Senate Committee on the Iran deal wants to interrogate you. You’ll be notified today.”
 
“Zack, I’ve had nothing to do with Iran.”
 
“The angle isn’t Iran. It’s the contras.”
 
Suddenly my mouth went dry, for the contra affair was much different from the Iranian, and this time I could not paint myself as lily-white. There was, after all, the Tres Toros affair about which rumors had begun to circulate, and I would not feel easy being interrogated about that. “You better come on over.”
 
“Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed away from the White House? Your home maybe?”
 
Today, twenty-four hours later, I can recall every thought that assailed me in the fifteen minutes it took Zack and me, by different routes, to reach our condo in Georgetown. First I clarified my mind as to Iran: Did the Iran project touch me in any way? Never. I knew vaguely that something was under way —but details? I never had a clear word from anyone. How about Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, did I really know him? I heard from everyone that he was a fine dedicated patriot, but I never had direct contact with him on anything to do with Iran. On Iran, I am squeaky clean.
 
But how about Nicaragua? Now, there I did bump into North a couple of times. Strictly professional, strictly within the law, so far as I know. I reported to him twice on the effectiveness of the contra effort. Tried to brief him on the bad cocaine situation in Colombia, but he was too occupied with other things. Did I ever receive orders from him? Never. Did I ever propose Central American actions to him? Never.
 
But if I wasn’t on Colonel North’s team, and I wasn’t, what in hell was I doing in Central America from Christmas ’85 to Christmas ’86? I’m so damned security-conscious that I won’t even spell out in these notes the gory details. All I’ll say is that even at Tres Toros, my actions were inspired by patriotism, my conviction that Communism is a deadly peril, and my belief that the free world must not sit back and let the Reds run rampant. But if I knew nothing about Iran, I did know a great deal about Nicaragua, and I approved ninety-five percent of what we were doing down there. And then, as I approached the street leading to our house, my stomach turned to ice, and I found myself saying aloud, as if my wife were sitting next to me: “This is not going to be easy.”
 
When I entered our house I was relieved to see that Nancy wasn’t home. Explaining complex things to her is never easy, because she has the habit of interrupting with questions that probe embarrassing alleyways.
 
When Zack arrived, it was as if we were back at the Point. He even wore his three-piece suit with the trim appearance of a uniform, and like always, he seemed to keep four steps ahead of me. I was glad to have him on my side.