On Wings of Eagles (9 page)

    unconnected with the government, even though in reality it would be closely

    monitored by a team of White House and State Department people.

    Perot accepted the challenge. (Perot could resist anything but a challenge.

    His eleventh-grade teacher, one Mrs. Duck, had realized this. "It's a

    shame," Mrs. Duck had said, "that you're not as smart as your friends."

    Young Perot insisted he was as smart as his friends. "Well, why do they

    make better grades than you?" It was just that they were interested in

    school and he was not, said Perot. "Anybody can stand there and tell me

    that they could do something," said Mrs. Duck. "But let's look at the

    record: your friends can do it and you can't." Perot was cut to the quick.

    He told her that he would make straight A's for the next six weeks. He made

    straight A's, not just for six weeks, but for the rest of his high school

    career. The perceptive Mrs. Duck had discovered the only way to manipulate

    Perot: challenge him.)

    Accepting Kissinger's challenge, Perot went to J. Walter Tbompson, the

    largest advertising agency in the worid, and told them what he wanted to

    do. They offered to come up with a plan of campaign within thirty to sixty

    days and show some results in a year. Perot turned them down: he wanted to

    start today and see results tomorrow. He went back to Dallas and put

    together a small team of EDS executives who began calling newspaper editors

    and placing simple, unsophisticated advertisements that they wrote

    themselves.

And the mail came in truckloads.

    For Americans who were pro-war, the treatment of the prisoners showed that

    the Vietnamese really were the bad guys; and for those who were anti-war

    the plight of the prisoners was one more reason for getting out of Vietnam.

    Only the most hard-line protesters resented the campaign. In 1970 the FBI

    told Perot that the Viet Cong had instructed the Black Panther~ to murder

    him. (At the crazy end of the sixties this had not sounded particularly

    bizarre.) Perot hired bodyguards. Sure enough, a few weeks later a squad of

    men climbed the fence around Perot's seventeen-acre Dallas property. They

    were chased off by savage dogs. Perot's family, including his indomitable

    mother, would not hear of him giving up the campaign for the sake of their

    safety.

54 Ken Follett

    His greatest publicity stunt took place in December 1969, when he chartered

    two planes and tried to fly into Hanoi with Christmas dinners for the

    prisoners of war. Of course, he was not allowed to land; but during a slow

    news period he created enormous international awareness of the problem. He

    spent two million dollars, but he reckoned the publicity would have cost

    sixty million to buy. And a Gallup poll he commissioned afterward showed

    that the feelings of Americans toward the North Vietnamese were

    overwhelmingly negative.

    During 1970 Perot used less spectacular methods. Small communities all over

    the United States were encouraged to set up their own POW campaigns. They

    raised funds to send people to Paris to badger the North Vietnamese

    delegation there. They organized telethons, and built replicas of the cages

    in which some of the POWs lived. They sent so many protest letters to Hanoi

    that the North Vietnamese postal system collapsed under the strain. Perot

    stumped the country, giving speeches anywhere he was invited. He met with

    North Vietnamese diplomats in Laos, taking with him lists of their

    prisoners held in the south, mail from them, and film of their living

    conditions. He also took a Gallup associate with him, and together they

    went over the results of the poll with the North Vietnamese.

    Some or all of it worked. The treatment of American POWs improved, mail and

    parcels began to get through to them, and the North Vietnamese started to

    release names. Most importantly, the prisoners heard of the campaign-from

    newly captured Amencan soldiers,---and the news boosted their morale

    enormously.

    Eight years later, driving to Denver in the snow, Perot recalled another

    consequence of the campaign; a consequence that had then seemed no more

    than mildly irritating, but could now be important and valuable. Publicity

    for the POWs had meant, inevitably, publicity for Ross Perot. He had become

    nationally known. He would be remembered in the corridors of powerand

    especially in the Pentagon. That Washington monitoring committee had

    included Admiral Tom Moorer, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;

    Alexander Haig, then assistant to Kissinger and now the commander in chief

    of NATO forces; William Sullivan, then a Deputy Assistant Secretary of

    State and now U.S. Ambassador to Iran; and Kissinger himself.

    These people would help Perot get inside the government, find out what was

    happening, and promote help fast. He would call Richard Helms, who had in

    the past been both head of the CIA

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 55

and U.S. Ambassador to Tehran. He would call Kermit Roosevelt, son of Teddy,

who had been involved in the CIA coup that put the Shah back on the throne

in 1953 ...

But what if none of this works? he thought.

It was his habit to think more than one step ahead.

What if the Carter administration could not or would not help?

Then, he thought, I'm going to break them out of jail.

    How would we go about something like that? We've never done anything like

    it. Where would we start? Who could help us?

    He thought of EDS executives Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez and his

    secretary Sally Walther, who had been key organizers of the POW campaign:

    making complex arrangements halfway across the world by phone was meat and

    drink to them, but ... a prison break? And who would staff the mission?

    Since 1968 EDS's recruiters had given priority to Vietnam veterans--a pol-

    icy begun for patriotic reasons and continued when Perot found that the

    vets often made first-class businessmen-but the men who had once been lean,

    fit, highly trained soldiers were now overweight, out-of-condition computer

    executives, more comfortable with a telephone than with a rifle. And who

    would plan and lead the raid?

    Finding the best man for the job was Perot's specialty. Although he was one

    of the most successful self-made men in the history of American capitalism,

    he was not the world's greatest computer expert, or the world's greatest

    salesman, or even the world's greatest business administrator. He did just

    one thing superbly well: pick the right man, give him the resources, moti-

    vate him, then leave him alone to do the job.

    Now, as he approached Denver, he asked himself- who is the world's greatest

    rescuer?

Then he thought of Bull Simons.

    A legend in the U.S. Army, Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons had hit the

    headlines in November 1970 when he and a team of commandos raided the Son

    Tay prison camp, twentythree miles outside Hanoi, in an attempt to rescue

    American prisoners of war. Theraid had been a brave and well-organized

    operation, but the intelligence on which all the planning was based had

    been faulty: the prisoners had been moved, and were no longer at Son Tay.

    'Me raid was widely regarded as a fiasco, which in Perot's opinion was

    grossly unfair. He had been invited to meet the Son Tay Raiders, to boost

    their morale by telling

56 Ken Folleu

them that here was at least one American citizen who was grateful for their

bravery. He had spent a day at Fort Bragg in North Carolina--and he had met

Colonel Simons.

    Peering through his windshield, Perot could picture Simons against the

    cloud of falling snowflakes: a big man, just under six feet tall, with the

    shoulders of an ox. His white hair was cropped in a military crewcut, but

    his bushy eyebrows were still black. On either side of his big nose, two

    deep lines ran down to the comers of his mouth, giving him a permanently

    aggressive expression. He had a big head, big ears, a strong jaw, and the

    most powerful hands Perot had ever seen. The man looked as if he had been

    carved from a single block of granite.

    After spending a day with him, Perot thought: in a world of counterfeits,

    he is the genuine article.

    That day and in years to come Perot learned a lot about Simons. What

    impressed him most was the attitude of Simons's men toward their leader. He

    reminded Perot of Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay

    Packers: he inspired in his men emotions ranging from fear through respect

    and admiration to love. He was an imposing figure and an aggressive com-

    mander-he cursed a lot, and would tell a soldier- "Do what I say or I'll

    cut your bloody head off!"--but that by itself could not account for Ins

    hold on the hearts of skeptical, battle-hardened commandos. Beneath the

    tough exterior there was a tough interior.

    Those who had served under him liked nothing better than to sit around

    telling Simons stories. Although he had a bull-like physique, his nickname

    came not from that but, according to legend, from a game played by Rangers

    called The Bull Pen. A pit would be dug, six feet deep, and one man would

    get into it. The object of the game was to find out how many men it took to

    throw the first man out of the pit. Simons thought the game was foolish,

    but was once needled into playing it. It took fifteen men to get him out,

    and several of them spent the night in the hospital with broken fingers and

    noses and severe bite wounds. After that he was called "Bull. -

    Perot learned later that almost everything in this story was exaggerated.

    Simons played the game more than once; it generally took four men to get

    him out; no one ever had any broken bones. Simons was simply the kind of

    man about whom legends are told. He earned the loyalty of his men not by

    displays of bravado but by his skill as a military commander. He was a

    meticulous, endlessly patient planner, he was cautious,--one of

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 57

his catchphrases was: "That's a risk we don't have to take"; and he took

pride in bringing all his men back from a mission alive.

    In the Vietnam War Simons had run Operation White Star. He went to Laos

    with 107 men and organized twelve battalions of Mao tribesmen to fight the

    Vietnamese. One of the battalions defected to the other side, taking as

    prisoners some of Simons's Green Berets. Simons took a helicopter and

    landed inside the stockade where the defecting battalion was. On seeing

    Simons, the Laotian colonel stepped forward, stood at attention, and

    saluted. Simons told him to produce the prisoners immediately, or he would

    call an air strike and destroy the entire battalion. The colonel produced

    the prisoners. Simons took them away, then called the air strike anyway.

    Simons had come back from Laos three years later with all his 107 men.

    Perot had never checked out this legend-he liked it the way it was.

    The second time Perot met Simons was after the war. Perot virtually took

    over a hotel in San Francisco and threw a weekend party for the returning

    prisoners of war to meet the Son Tay Raiders. It cost Perot a quarter of a

    million dollars, but it was a hell of a party. Nancy Reagan, Clint

    Eastwood, and John Wayne came. Perot would never forget the meeting between

    John Wayne and Bull Simons. Wayne shook Simons's hand with tears in his

    eyes and said: "You are the man I play in the movies."

    Before the ticker-tape parade Perot asked Simons to talk to his Raiders and

    wam them against reacting to demonstrators. "San Francisco has had more

    than its share of anti-war demonstrations, -Perot said. "You didn't pick

    your Raiders for their charm. If one of them gets irritated he might just

    snap some poor devil's neck and regret it later."

    Simons looked at Perot. It was Perot's first experience of The Simons Look.

    It made you feel as if you were the biggest fool in history. It made you

    wish you had not spoken. It made you wish the ground would swallow you up.

    "I've already talked to them," Simons said. "There won't be a problem. "

    That weekend and later, Perot got to know Simons better, and saw other

    sides of his personality. Simons could be very charming, when he chose to

    be. He enchanted Perot's wife, Margot, and the children thought he was

    wonderful. With his men he spoke soldiers' language, using a great deal of

    profanity, but he was surprisingly articulate when talking at a banquet or

    press conference. His college major had been journalism. Some of his

58 Ken FoUett