32

June 1, 1958

Dear Kittredge,

I wish I could say a multitude of events have whisked me right up to June 1, but that, I fear, is hardly so. You are the witch-goddess who keeps our Station humming so long as I send letters to you. When I cease, it all seems to stop.

Of course, a few things did pass our way this month. Vice President Nixon stopped in Montevideo on his South American junket, and Hunt took him on a tour through our Embassy quarters, savaging Station cover pretty completely, I expect, by offering outrageous thumbnail sketches of each of us to Mr. Nixon and Mrs. Nixon as, viz, “This is Sherman Porringer, who can tell you anything you might want to know, Mr. Vice President, about Uruguayan labor unions and how we aid them in getting rid of their leftists.”

Porringer, bless him, was so embarrassed that he hee-hawed like an Oklahoma mule.

“Good democratic spirit in some of these unions?” asked Nixon. “I wouldn’t say no to that,” said Porringer. Thrice weekly we had to listen to his harangue on local labor leaders: “Stupid sons of bitches, Uruguayan meatballs.” Now Hunt tells him right in front of Vice President Nixon, “Well, if you wouldn’t say no to that, would you say yes?”

“There’s some real democratic spirit around,” Porringer manages to mutter.

Hunt now chooses to deliver his piece in front of all of us rather than take Mr. and Mrs. Nixon back to his office. I don’t know if it’s nervousness, bravura, or the calculation that he might as well impress us too, but, in any event, as Chief of Station, he’s entitled to his two-minute aria before returning our guests to the Ambassador. “Mr. Vice President,” says Hunt, “I am going to presume on this occasion to restore for you a wholly minor incident in your busy life, but I do recollect an evening when my wife, Dorothy, and I, repairing to Harvey’s Restaurant for a bit of after-theater supper, had the great good luck to be seated near to you and Mrs. Nixon. May I say that on impulse, I walked over to your table and introduced myself. You were kind enough to invite Dorothy and me to join you.”

“Howard Hunt, I can recall that occasion very well,” said the Vice President.

Kittredge, to me, it did not look as if he did. Nixon has a deep voice that makes you think of some valuable driller’s-bit packed in oil; the lubrication slides him through many an embarrassing episode. A politician’s life has to be filled with half-recollections, wouldn’t you think? So many people. At any rate, his voice may have come out as smarmy as a British radio announcer stating, “And now Her Majesty is passing the expectant throng,” but his eyes sent one quick signal to wife, Pat, and she, lean as whipcord, said, “Yes, Dick, it was on that night four years ago when you addressed the Society of Former FBI Agents.”

“Indeed,” said Dick, “a sterling group, SFFA, and not so slow on the draw when it came to the question period.”

“Ho, ho,” said Hunt.

“The Hiss case came up,” said Pat Nixon.

“I remember,” said the Vice President, “that you, Howard, congratulated me on what you called ‘my indefatigable pursuit’ of Alger Hiss, and I had to thank you. In those days, there was still, concerning that matter, a lot of división de opiniones, if I’m employing acceptable Spanish.”

“You certainly are,” said Hunt. He looked in danger of bouncing on his toes, he was thus excited. “I remember,” he said, “it turned out to be a particularly pleasant half-hour discussion of the foreign and domestic scene. Your memory is superb, sir.”

“A most pleasurable meeting,” concluded Nixon, and shifted his weight, a signal doubtless to Hunt, who now steered him down the hall to the Ambassador’s office. I wish you could have seen the Vice President, Kittredge. Nixon’s an ordinary man in appearance, yet he’s not. He must be as completely the instrument of his own will as Hugh Montague. Can you conceive of two people, however, who are more unalike?

Hunt now comes back to say to us, “Gang, you have just met the next President of the United States.”

I wonder if Howard is considering a resignation from the Agency in order to work for Nixon in 1960. He’s growing dissatisfied these days, and the cause is our new Ambassador, a nicely tailored specimen named Robert Woodward whom Hunt was complaining about before Woodward even reached the Embassy. “Another eminent nonentity,” was Howard’s initial description. “The man’s ambassadorial credentials consist of a stint in Costa Rica.”

Woodward, however, proved no nugatory presence. He ties into a State Department bloc who are flat-out opposed to the Agency, and one of his first questions to Hunt was, “What mischief are you fomenting down here?”

“I,” Howard informed us, “replied to him, ‘My mandate does not extend to overthrowing a friendly government, sir.’”

Woodward then gave a lecture which Howard will be dining out on for years. “‘Mr. Hunt, please recognize,’” goes Howard’s imitation, “‘that this country of Uruguay, while small in size, is the finest democracy extant in South America. There are few nations which can lay claim to being as well run, as clean of corruption, and so much of a model to less fortunate small nations. Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America.’” Howard repeats all this for Gatsby and Kearns, Porringer, Waterston, and myself, then repeats, “clean of corruption! Why, these welfare-state crooks in the Legislative Assembly can purchase a new foreign car every year free of duty. What is that worth when they sell it? Ten thousand extra frogskins?”

He’s right, of course. Uruguay is corrupt. The liberals steal and so does the right. Don Jaime Saavedra Carbajal, for example, is not above herding thousands of his cattle over the Jaguar River into Brazil as a means of saving untold customs duty. In a word, smuggling. The border police certainly have to be bought off. Howard doesn’t disapprove, however. It reminds him, he says, of how the first great Texas fortunes were built. I don’t see how this alters the judgment, but then, it’s not the day to argue with Howard. The real problem is that Station no longer has its way with State. While we never mingled all that much with their personnel, we could always cater to our vanity by trotting over to any of the offices in the Embassy; the boys there, whether thirty years old or sixty, were properly resentful of the warm welcome we receive from the State Department ladies.

Now we’ve become the greaser gang. State Department personnel are beginning to act hollow and overfriendly, as if they are our social superiors but don’t want us to know it because greasers do wreck property. Two weeks ago Hunt was notified that Woodward and his new deputy will attend all the foreign embassy functions; Hunt can, in effect, take a well-deserved rest in the evening and enjoy his family. Needless to say, this removes us from the foreign embassy circuit, a blessing—I’ll be able to read a book—but social ostracism does have its bite even if you don’t mind what you are being cut out of. Hunt is, of course, inwardly livid.

Final note. There is, actually, more going on than I admit to. Over the last month we’ve managed to set up a love nest for Zenia Masarov and Georgi Varkhov, an operation that—how could it be otherwise?—involved numerous steps. Apart from managing to bait the trap, technicians had to fly down from Washington to install the audio and test the bugs, the best of which is emplaced in no less of a salient than one of the posts of a four-poster bed.

I have to admit that we at the Station may be showing a certain prurient anticipation. In ten days, we’ll see if it works. I could let you know earlier, but will accept your strictures for what they are. July 1 will have to prove soon enough.

Yours,
Harry