Six Crises (37 page)

In Colombia I was greatly impressed by the knowledge and understanding of Alberto Lleras who had just been elected President of the country. Here, as in Argentina, the members of the military junta who had overthrown the dictator, Rojas Pinilla, were men of outstanding quality. After my talk with them I realized why those who say we should withdraw all support of military forces in Latin America and concentrate our aid completely on economic projects would play right into the Communists' hands. It is true that the military assistance our Latin American allies could provide in the event of war would be nominal. At best such forces could maintain only internal security. But what we must realize is that the military of Latin America is a
great stabilizing force and includes some of the ablest and most dedicated leaders in the hemisphere. While military leaders can be a threat to freedom, where they use their power to impose and support dictatorship, more and more of them are using their power and prestige to support free governments. A free government without strong military support would not last a month in a Latin American country against the highly-trained subversive cadres maintained by the Communists.

The aftermath of San Marcos also was gratifying. A flood of “well done” messages from officials and individuals came to us by cable, letter, and telephone. Chris Herter read President Eisenhower's wire to me over the plane's radio telephone on our flight from Peru to Ecuador. “Dear Dick. Your courage, patience, and calmness in the demonstration directed against you by radical agitators have brought you a new respect and admiration in our country.” Clare Boothe Luce summed up the general tenor of the messages in her one word wire, “Bully.”

We tried to call our two girls at home by radio telephone on this flight but were unable to make connections. We learned later that they had heard of the Lima riots for the first time when Tricia turned on the radio when she and Julie had come home from school for lunch. She immediately called Loie Gaunt at my office in Washington and said, “What are they doing to Daddy and Mommy in South America?” This was the first news my office staff received of the incident.

In Lima, the government finally cracked down on the Communist operation there. The student federation at San Marcos University issued a formal communique condemning the violence and insisting that outsiders, not students, were responsible for the “barbaric acts.” At a concert of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Lima four days after the incident, Leonard Bernstein told me later, the entire audience stood and applauded for several minutes the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.

In Ecuador and Colombia, we learned of several elaborate plans for Communist demonstrations but in each case they failed to materialize or fizzled like a wet firecracker.

As our plane took off from Bogota, it never occurred to me that the next day I would face death in the midst of a wild mob in Caracas, Venezuela, where Communist leaders had been preparing their revenge.

“The Central Intelligence Agency advises the Secret Service in Washington that information has been received relating to rumors of a plot to assassinate the VP in Venezuela.” This message came from U. E. Baughman, Chief of the Secret Service, and was relayed to me by Sherwood two days before we were scheduled to reach Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.

Since the violence in Lima, Sherwood, as agent in charge of the detail of Secret Service escorting me, kept in constant radio-telephonic contact with his Washington headquarters. We had been alerted for possible disturbances in Ecuador and Colombia which had not materialized. Whenever any top-ranking government official visits a foreign country, there are the usual rumors and reports of assassination plots of the crackpot variety. While each one is investigated, such reports must be taken in stride. Since the cold war began, Moscow radio and the whole Soviet propaganda machine had blasted away at each and every good-will mission undertaken by President Eisenhower or myself. For days before I left Washington for my trip to South America and throughout the tour, Moscow radio joined Communist-controlled radio stations in South America in condemning the tour and trying to inflame public sentiment against me.

The report of an assassination plot in Venezuela came with a whole sheaf of background intelligence messages. But it was backed up with a report from Frank M. Barry, a former Secret Service agent who had become a principal adviser on security matters for Nicaragua. He sent word that his private intelligence sources had reported that a huge anti-American demonstration was being organized by a Communist-led student group in Caracas with an assassination attempt as the highlight of the plan. The day before we took off from Bogota for Caracas, I questioned Sherwood in detail with regard to these reports. Were these the regular run of rumors and threats? Or were they more serious? Sherwood's answer was that in either event we should and would take every precaution, especially in view of what had already happened in Lima.

He arranged to have the advance Secret Service agents, who had preceded us to Ecuador and Colombia to check security there, go on to Caracas rather than return to Washington as was customary. Thus we would have a twelve-man detail of Secret Service agents in Caracas while I was there instead of the usual three or four. At the same time, the U. S. Embassy in Caracas was told to prod the Venezuelan authorities into double-checking their security arrangements and to keep us posted. We received periodic reports from the Embassy up to the
time we landed in Caracas and each one stated that the Venezuelan Government foresaw no serious trouble and was prepared to deal with any incidents which might arise.

On the eve of my departure for Caracas, the reporters traveling with me learned of the assassination reports and asked me for comment. I told them that such rumors were “just one of those things” which had occurred many times in the past and that I would not be frightened away by such obvious threats.

Actually, I had sent word that the Venezuelan Government should clearly understand that they were free to withdraw their invitation if they felt at all unable to handle the security arrangements incumbent upon the host country. The night before our departure for Caracas, our Embassy there sent me this message: “Venezuelan government security agencies are confident of their ability to handle the situation but are increasing security measures to such an extent that the advance representatives feel the Vice President might believe he is being overguarded.”

My decision to go to Caracas as scheduled was not an act of “bravery.” Security arrangements there were outside my domain and I relied upon Security Service and intelligence estimates. It was far more significant to me that the State Department considered Venezuela potentially the most important stop of the entire South American tour. In January, only five months earlier, the ten-year-old dictatorship of Perez Jimenez, second only to Peron in power and entrenchment, had been overthrown by revolution. Perez Jimenez, who was probably the most hated dictator in all of Latin America, had fled with his despised Chief of Secret Police, Pedro Estrada, to exile in the United States.

Our government, which does not believe that deposed rulers, no matter how despicable, should be put before firing squads without trial, granted the men sanctuary. This was meat for the Communist propaganda grinder and placed the United States in what is called a diplomatically delicate position. The Communist and nationalist elements in Caracas had been flatly equating the United States with the oppressions of the Perez Jimenez regime. We were in a position of having to explain how we could grant sanctuary to two men without approving of them or their actions, and to demonstrate that we believed in democracy and preferred the new ruling junta in Venezuela over the past regime. Even that is a simplification of why the State Department considered a good-will visit from the Vice President of
the United States to Venezuela so important for establishing a new, abiding relationship with the ruling five-man junta.

The Junta Patriotica, a temporary coalition government pending the promised open and free elections, included representatives of the Communist Party. This accorded the Communists power and influence beyond their actual number in the country. They wielded their power through various student organizations and through the nation's press. According to my briefing papers, the Communists had infiltrated every daily newspaper in Caracas except one run by the Catholic Church and one English language paper. On the list of “distinguished personalities” invited by the Venezuelan Government to a luncheon in my honor, scheduled for my first day in Caracas, were six Communists and avid pro-Communists.

There was plenty of evidence that the Communists intended to demonstrate vociferously during my visit. But Charles R. Burroughs, the Minister-Counselor of our Embassy in Venezuela, reported to me on our flight from Bogota to Caracas that there would be tremendous numbers of friendly people who also would demonstrate their warm regard for the United States. He showed me various newspaper reports about my impending visit. One which I remember was the
Tribuna Popular,
the Communist Party weekly. This paper contained a particularly vicious attack on the United States and a front-page photograph of me, doctored so that my teeth looked like fangs and my face like that of a war-mongering fiend. I was to see that retouched photograph on hundreds of placards during my two-day visit to Caracas.

Yet, at the time, neither our Embassy staff nor our intelligence people in Venezuela were able to discover that the Communist high command in South America had made a high-level decision to regain the ground they had lost in Lima by mounting a massive pay-off demonstration in Caracas. It was the scope of the effort which our people failed to assess properly.

Security arrangements in Caracas were checked and rechecked through the night prior to my arrival. At midnight, eleven hours before my plane was to put down at the Caracas airport, our Embassy advised that the government authority had “everything under control.” A rumor of a plot to poison me had caused a switch in the caterer for the buffet reception in my honor. At 3
A.M.
Sherwood got final word: the Caracas authorities had made still another check of security arrangements and they definitely wanted me to come.

As we flew from Bogota to Caracas that morning, I did not expect my visit to Venezuela to be a picnic. I knew there might be some incidents. But I didn't think anything could top what I had been through in Lima.

I felt, as a matter of fact, that I had had a pretty complete course in handling Communist hecklers at Pegu, Burma, on Thanksgiving Day in 1953, and at the University of Montevideo in Uruguay on this trip. By taking the offensive and making maximum use of the element of surprise, I had been able to turn potentially antagonistic crowds against the Communist agitators who were attempting to inflame them against me. At Lima, I thought I had had the graduate course on how to handle a mob. If I had written a thesis on mobs it would have set forth these conclusions:

A mob does not act intelligently. Those who make up a mob do not think independently. They do not think rationally. They are likely to do irrational things, including even turning on their leaders.

Individually, people in a mob are cowardly; only collectively, goaded on by a leader, will a mob appear to act courageously.

A mob is bloodthirsty. A taste of blood will whet its appetite for more violence and for more blood.

How then does one handle a mob?

Since a mob is unreasonable and irrational, nothing must be done which will tend to accentuate those characteristics. A mob has lost its temper collectively. An individual dealing with a mob must never lose his or he will be reduced to its level, and become easy prey for it. He must be as cold in his emotions as a mob is hot, as controlled as the mob is uncontrolled.

Since those who make up a mob are basically cowards, one must never show fear in the face of a mob. Since a mob is not intelligent, but stupid, it is important whenever possible to confront it with an unexpected maneuver. The leader of the mob may be able to cope with such tactics but by the time he gets the mob under control and changes its direction, the individual against whom the mob is demonstrating will have moved out of the path of danger.

I do not suggest that I consciously thought of these principles in those tense moments when I faced the mob at San Marcos University, but in retrospect, I can see the subconscious guidelines which influenced my conduct.

•  •  •

We landed at Maiquetia Airport, about twelve miles from the center of Caracas, Tuesday morning, May 13. As our plane stopped before
the terminal building, we could hear the screeches and whistles of the crowd. When the steps were rolled up, Mrs. Nixon and I came out and stood at the top of the ramp for the traditional nineteen-gun salute and the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Venezuela. There was the usual group of visiting dignitaries at the foot of the ramp to greet us and one of the largest welcoming crowds that we had seen at an airport during our whole South American tour. They were standing outside the gate of the airfield and on the observation deck above the terminal building, waving banners and placards and shouting so loudly that we could hardly hear the sound of the music or of the salute.

Walters, standing beside me, whispered in my ear, “They aren't friendly, Mr. Vice President.” Without being able to read the slogans on the placards or understand what they were saying, I could sense that this was the understatement of the trip. Most of those I could see appeared to be teenagers, but I could spot some tough-looking older men who obviously were the ringleaders. I learned later that the younger participants had been transported to the airport from Caracas in an organized caravan of buses and automobiles and, when one of our Embassy officials urged the Venezuelan Chief of Security before our arrival to make certain the mob did not get out of hand, he had replied: “Oh, they are just kids. They are harmless.”