10
POLITBURO
PODNUHS, SAY
HOWDY TO
BILLY BOB
I’m not sure Andrei Litvinov was a KGB agent, but a friend in the FBI told me that it was highly likely. All I know is that a few months after Jim Wright became Majority Leader, this personable young man showed up in the office and asked the receptionist if he could see me.
Since Jim Wright was always up to his ears in work, I tried to talk at least briefly with almost anybody who bothered to make a trip to the office.
Mr. Litvinov gave me a calling card identifying himself as Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. I got us a couple of cups of coffee and we sat in my office and talked for a few minutes, sizing each other up. Never before had I met an honest-to-goodness Communist, and I’ll admit I was kind of fascinated by the guy.
And since I got all my defense secrets from the front page of The Washington Post, I saw no reason not to talk with him.
He was a man perhaps in his early forties, with a no-nonsense chin, sandy hair and alert blue eyes that I may have imagined as more restless than they really were. He stood maybe five feet eight and had the tough, wiry build of a Marine sergeant. His English was flawless and occasionally he displayed an inventively dry sense of humor. If he had any trouble understanding my Texas idiom, it didn’t show.
We didn’t spend much time that first day talking about the Cold War. Rather I recounted a little about life in Texas, and he described his life as a farm boy in the Soviet Union. He said his job at the embassy was to gain a better understanding of American government and policy, and that he’d like a chance to meet the Majority Leader some day. I told him Jim Wright was so busy that sometimes even his staff had trouble getting a minute with him, but we’d keep his request in mind.
After that, Mr. Litvinov dropped into the office now and then. Several of our women staffers found him charming and, I presume, somewhat handsome. In fact, if he had not been married, I think a couple of women might have been receptive to the idea of increasing their knowledge of the Soviet Union under his guidance, perhaps over a quiet cocktail. In all his visits, our conversations were more chatty than substantive.
Even so, my curiosity began to grow. I called a trusted longtime friend who at that time was in his second decade as an FBI special agent. I told him about my Communist acquaintance, who by that time we were calling Andy.
“Is my name likely to wind up in an FBI dossier because this guy drops in here to see us?” I asked.
“Probably,” my FBI pal replied. “The Bureau keeps pretty close tabs on all those guys in high-level jobs down at the embassy.”
“Do you think he is KGB?”
“I would guess that he is.”
“Well, what should I do about it?”
“Nothing,” my FBI friend said. “If it’s nothing more than you say, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Emboldened by this advice, I invited Andy and his wife to come out for cocktails one Sunday afternoon to our house in Arlington, Virginia. I told Andy I was also inviting another friend and his wife, but I didn’t mention that the other friend was George Kopecky, a staff investigator with the House Public Works Committee who himself had spent years as an FBI special agent.
When Andy and his wife showed up that Sunday afternoon, they presented my wife Eddie and me with a delightful gift—a bottle of that Stolichnaya vodka. As I was pouring the drinks, I asked Andy whether he wanted his Stoly on the rocks or straight up.
The drinks stimulated the conversation, and before long George Kopecky happened to mention, as FBI veterans often do, an incident that occurred during his service with “the Bureau.”
“The Bureau?” Andy inquired, showing hardly more than polite interest.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was a Special Agent,” George said.
Andy looked at me, laughing. It was kind of embarrassing, because I suppose I had figured George’s FBI affiliation would come up somewhat more delicately, if it came up at all.
At any rate, Andy appeared more amused than offended, and the conversation soon turned to a comparison between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union. George pointed out that the three branches of our government serve as checks and balances on each other.
“That’s all very well when your government makes a mistake,” Andy responded. “But when my government makes a mistake...”
At this point he stopped abruptly. Then, grinning sheepishly, he said: “Of course, I am never supposed to admit to you that our government can make a mistake.”
A few weeks later, I arranged for Andy to have lunch with Jim Wright. It was a delightful occasion, and no national secrets were compromised.
Shortly after that, Andy dropped out of sight. I’m not sure what happened to him. If he was sent back to the Soviet Union, I surely hope the KGB didn’t punish him for spending so much time and getting so little information from Jim Wright and me.
After having dealt face-to-face with at least one real live Communist without spilling the beans as to the location of the Joint Chiefs of Staff latrine, I felt eminently qualified to handle my next encounter with minions of the Evil Empire.
In March, 1985, U.S. and Soviet negotiators were getting ready to open a new round of arms control talks in Geneva. In what probably was an effort to crank up a warm and fuzzy feeling with the citizenry of America in advance of these talks, Moscow decided to send a delegation of 35 high-level Communist Party bigwigs on a goodwill visit to the States.
Leading the group was a portly, moon-faced fellow whom Central Casting would surely have chosen for the role of a typical Kremlin commissar. His name was Vladimir Shcherbitsky, and besides being a Politburo member, he was the high muck-a-muck of the Communist Party in the Ukraine. Even through his political base lay outside Moscow, he was known to exercise respectable muscle in the Soviet leadership.
To satisfy diplomatic niceties, the Soviet visitors came to the U.S. in their role as parliamentarians. They all were, in fact, members of the USSR’s national legislature, the Supreme Soviet. But their real power lay in their Communist Party positions which, in the diplomatic world, gave them no official status.
My own modest role in all this grew out of the fact that the Soviet delegation, after a day or so in Washington, was scheduled to visit three Texas cities, including Fort Worth. As House Majority Leader, Jim Wright would be a prominent host. Several other staffers and I would be needed to help.
In their first few days in the U.S., some of the Soviet heavyweights seemed surprised and maybe a little uncomfortable when they saw how many ordinary working slobs in the United States enjoyed attractive homes, shiny cars and color televisions. Even though nobody said so, you got the impression that most of the Soviet bigwigs grew up in pretty bleak surroundings. On the whole, they seemed to be fairly ordinary guys. Friendly but reserved, they seemed to be dazzled by the affluence of our country but reluctant to admit it. On occasion, a few of them would make a heroic effort to cope with our language.
In Austin, Congressman Jake Pickle treated the group to a lavish luncheon of Texas-style Mexican food. At my table a grandfatherly Soviet guest sampled a dish of refried beans.
“These are you say twice-cooked beans?” he asked.
I nodded politely, figuring that was close enough.
At Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, there was a bit of clowning by Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States who was accompanying the delegation on its U.S. tour. Stroking the arm of a model displaying an $85,000 Russian sable coat, Dobrynin pretended to be ready to buy it. “I am authorized, on behalf of the delegation—” he began.
One member of the delegation was not amused. His eyes swept around the ornate store and its tastefully restrained displays of lavish goods. “I think that only people who are wealthy come here,” he said.
A still more somber note was struck by Shcherbitsky, the delegation leader, during an afternoon barbecue in a Dallas suburb. In an uncomfortable reminder that the whole world was shaken by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Shcherbitsky recounted having been asked by his eight-year-old grandson: “Why are you going to Texas, where they kill people?”
The truth is, I myself was vaguely uneasy about the possibility of some unexpected incident marring this official Soviet visit Texas. Only too well did I recall November 22, 1963.
Ironically, that tragic day had begun as my boss’ finest hour. Having represented the Fort Worth area in Congress for nine years, he had one of the highest privileges a lawmaker can have—the honor of hosting, on his own home turf, the President of the United States. The day began with a momentous public rally outside the Texas Hotel, followed by a fat-cat breakfast which drew hundreds of Texas movers and shakers. Even today I proudly remember that Mr. Kennedy called Fort Worth “Jim Wright’s city” and assured the crowd of dignitaries that “No city in America is better represented in Congress than Fort Worth.”
At that point Jim Wright probably could have gone flying on his own cloud. But the President invited him aboard Air Force One for the flight to Dallas. In the motorcade, the Congressman was only a few cars back when Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire.
When Air Force One brought Kennedy’s body back to Washington that night, I was waiting at Andrews Air Force Base to pick up Jim Wright and drive him, numb and shaken, to his home. From the ramp beside the plane I witnessed the nightmarish scene that television seared into the memory of millions of Americans—the dried splatter of the President’s blood still on Jackie’s dress as she came down the steps...the President’s coffin being unloaded from the plane in the harsh, unearthly glare of television lights.
Even though more than 20 years had passed, I was still haunted by these memories as I worked on the Soviet delegation’s Texas trip. While the Secret Service and state and local police agencies were taking every possible precaution to prevent trouble, there was always a chance some kook might try to harm the visitors. To have violence befall any member of such a high-level Soviet delegation in the United States might have had consequences too frightening to contemplate.
Fortunately, however, the physical security of the delegation was, I devoutly hoped, in more capable hands than mine. My primary job in Fort Worth was not to keep them from getting shot, but to keep them from being embarrassed. Jim Wright’s other staffers and I had to try to steer the Soviets clear of any remark, any incident, at any place, intentional or not, that would humiliate the Soviet delegation and its host, the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. That’s the reason I got concerned when I heard about the visit to Billy Bob’s.
Phil Duncan, then director of Jim Wright’s office in Fort Worth, was briefing me on plans for the delegation’s formal dinner at the Americana Hotel.
“What time do you figure the it will be over?” I asked.
“Maybe about 9:45 or 10,” Phil replied.
“And then they’ll be taken back to their rooms to get some rest?”
“No,” Phil said. “The plan is to take ‘em out to Billy Bob’s”
“To Billy Bob’s?” I exclaimed. “Are they crazy? Is somebody out of their mind? Who made this schedule, anyhow?”
“I don’t know, but everybody has signed off on it.”
“Including the Secret Service?”
“Including the Secret Service,” Phil replied.
“And what are they going to do when some good ol’ boy gets a bellyful of beer and calls ‘em no-good Communist sumbitches and tells ‘em to get the hell outta here? How’s that going to look on the front page of Pravda and The New York Times and every other newspaper in the world? How’s that going to make Jim Wright look?”
For those benighted souls who may have missed the listing in the Guinness Book of Records, please be informed that following after its grand opening in 1981, Billy Bob’s Texas was proclaimed the largest honkytonk not just in Texas, but in the world.
Named for its creator, a six-foot, seven-inch, 270-pound football player, rancher, rodeo performer and hell-raiser named Billy Bob Barnett, this incredible institution was launched in a 100,000-square-foot building once used as a cattle auction barn, located in what was then a dreary, run-down area—the Stockyards on Fort Worth’s North Side.
In the late 1800’s, the Stockyards was the heart of a thriving cattle industry. From here, great, bellowing herds were driven north along the Chisholm Trail. Then, in 1902, the giant Chicago meat packing companies, Swift and Armour, established plants in the city, opening an era of growth and prosperity in the Stockyards that lasted more than 50 years.
But by the time Billy Bob Barnett hatched his honkytonk idea, the glory days of the Stockyards had passed. The giant packing houses were closed, replaced by hundreds of smaller, more efficient feed lots and meat packing plants scattered across the Southwest. In the once-bustling Stockyards, thousands of people had no jobs and Fort Worth’s surrounding North Side was mired in poverty. Winds stirring along deserted brick streets still picked up the pungent smell left behind by the herds, but the cattle were gone and so were most of the people.
Even so, Billy Bob Barnett and Spencer Taylor managed to round up a few courageous investors. They sank $5 million into transforming the one-time auction barn into a honkytonk whose sheer size still boggles the imagination.
Intrigued perhaps by the sheer audacity of the enterprise, the public loved it. On the club’s opening night in 1981, the fire marshal allowed only the first 6,000 customers to enter. The rest took their places in lines outside, fretfully waiting to be admitted as some early arrivals began to depart.
And the lucky 6,000 customers who managed to squeeze through the front door decked out in their boots, blue jeans and cowboy hats—what did they find inside? Well, they found a total of 42 bars, 14,000 square feet of dance floors, a 500-seat rodeo arena for live bulldogging and steer wrestling, a 1,650-square-foot performing stage on wheels, several restaurants, a VIP club, 50 pinball machines, 27 pool tables, a Western wear store, plus places to get your boots shined, your picture taken, your caricature drawn and, perhaps, your fantasies fulfilled.
To this incredible institution come thousands of men and women, most in boots and jeans and 10-gallon hats, to guzzle a few longneck bottles of Pearl (check this), listen to Willie, Waylon and Loretta, dance the Texas Two-Step—and to raise a little hell, Texas style.
Even though patrons of Billy Bob’s rarely punched each other in the jaw, peaceful conduct in a honkytonk flies in the face of a rich Texas tradition. Anybody familiar with the customs of the Lone Star State can tell you that roadhouse fist fights are as much a part of our sacred heritage as the Alamo.
After each participant has drunk enough beer to reach an acceptable state of belligerency, the fight is customarily touched off in one of two ways. The first requires that one participant must call the other a son of a bitch. This phrase in Texas is always interpreted literally, meaning that the other son of a bitch has denounced your mother as a dog. While this method is customarily reliable in jump-starting the punching match, a far more effective way is for one participant to challenge the other’s patriotism.
Say, for example, that one participant is aware that the other’s nephew sought a college deferment during the Vietnam war. It is not necessary for the nephew to have actually been granted a deferment. The request itself is sufficient. “What’s that lily-livered Commie-lover of a nephew of yours doing nowadays?” one might idly inquire. This usually gets results far more expeditiously than the older, son-of-a-bitch method.
In my boyhood days, the knock-down, drag-out fights at Red’s Place, our local saloon, were as much a part of South Texas life as Saturday night baths. We kids used to stand outside and listen for the telltale sound of wooden chairs being noisily pushed back from tables on the bare wooden floor. Inside we knew two guys were lurching unsteadily to their feet to try to clobber each other, and that in a moment one or both would come staggering outside with bloody noses or worse.
As a rule, women dared not venture into Red’s Place. There was only one exception—a rotund, grandmotherly little Salvation Army lady who would march cheerily through its iniquitous swinging doors and move methodically along the bar and through the tables, shaking her tambourine to invite contributions. The guys in the boots and khakis, realizing that by their very presence in Red’s Place they were deeply mired in sin, would self-consciously tip their sweaty hats to the Salvation Army lady and guiltily drop a quarter into her tambourine.
In later life, I was delighted to discover that in big cities like Washington, the watering holes and cocktail lounges were far more sophisticated. For one thing, they were so dark you needed a flashlight to discover, when the check came, that a shot of Jack Daniel’s went for four dollars. But there were positive aspects, also. For one thing, the smell of stale beer was less pronounced than in Red’s Place. But better still, these East Coast saloons were frequented not by corpulent little ladies in Salvation Army bonnets but rather by hypermammiferous young women in slinky, black, low-cut cocktail dresses. The presence of patrons like this, however, often short-circuited men’s attention from really important subjects like patriotism and fist fights.
It was the memory of Red’s Place that made me increasingly edgy as the Americana Hotel formal dinner for the Soviets dragged on and on. At one point I got on the telephone to Phil, who was standing by at Billy Bob’s, awaiting our arrival.
“How do things look out there?” I asked.
“Got an awful big crowd tonight. The place is really jumping,” Phil said.
“I was afraid of that. The longer it takes to get these guys out there, the more danger some drunk will start mouthing off about a bunch of dirty Commie bastards. I’m really worried.”
Phil tried to reassure me. “Marshall, Billy Bob’s got a plan that I think will keep anything from getting out of hand. Instead of taking the Soviets into the public areas out around the bars, he’s going to bring the delegation into the rodeo arena. He’s got ringside seats staked out for the whole bunch. The only thing is, the place is so crowded tonight Billy Bob is having a tough time keeping people out of the seats he’s got reserved.”
“Well, just try to make sure he hangs on to those seats. I’ll let you know when we’re on the way.”
On and on went the after-dinner speeches. And then, to make things worse, I got word that the Soviets had asked to make a brief visit to the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art before going out to Billy Bob’s. I kept looking at my watch and worrying about all those weekend cowboys guzzling all that beer and taking all those seats and looking for prospective sumbitches.
Finally, at long last, the Americana dinner ended. Finally we got the big delegation and its security people moved to the art museum. Mercifully, they did not tarry long, and at last the motorcade started toward Billy Bob’s.
“The seats are gone. People somehow got into them. Billy Bob is doing his best to get them out,” Phil said.
“Oh, shoot,” I said, using a different vowel in the second word.
The ride out North Main to Billy Bob’s seemed like the longest trip of my life. In my mind’s eye I envisioned a confrontation between a surprised and angry Soviet delegation and a horde of bleary-eyed Texas rodeo fans who probably suspected that the Kremlin visitors might be Communists and what the hell were they doing here in Texas in the first place.
As we pulled up at the entrance of Billy Bob’s I had convinced myself that life was over. Future historians would record that, with world peace hanging in the balance, the promising arms control talks originally scheduled for Geneva in 1985 were, alas, never held. Supported by civilized people everywhere, a righteously indignant Soviet Union abruptly canceled the crucial sessions because of the abject humiliation suffered by one of its prestigious goodwill delegations in an inexcusable international incident in a Fort Worth, Texas, honkytonk. Moreover, I was sure the full responsibility for jeopardizing world peace would be laid directly at the feet of one man—U.S. House Majority Leader Jim Wright. His brilliant Administrative Assistant, who was known to have triggered this debacle, was believed to have spent his remaining days as a wretched hermit on an obscure, windswept island in the Bay of Bengal, wherever that is.
And then came one of the most astonishing moments of my life. As the Kremlin delegation marched into Billy Bob’s rodeo arena, several hundred good ol’ boys and their women folk jumped up and started cheering, hoisting longneck beers in enthusiastic Texas honkytonk-style toasts. Again and again they whooped smilingly toward the visitors. Again and again they raised their beer bottles, motioning toward an inviting expanse of empty seats at ringside of the arena.
Understandably impressed by this friendly, cheering throng, the Soviets moved into these seats, nodding and grinning and soon hoisting their own beers to return the salute of their new-found Texas cowboy friends. The tableau would have warmed the hearts of people yearning for peace all over the world. Here were top-level officials from the Soviet Union, America’s fierce arch-enemy of the Cold War, being welcomed in peace, respect and brotherhood by a beloved segment of the U.S. population—the good ol’ boys of Texas. The whole thing gave me, as we say in Fort Worth, a lump in mah thoat.
When the enthusiastic greetings and salutes had died down, I found Phil and slapped him on the back. “Terrific! Wonderful!” I cried. “It was almost too good to believe—all that applause and cheering! The Russkies are on Cloud Nine. They’ll never forget this. But how did you and Billy Bob manage to get these guys to salute a bunch of Communists?”
“But wasn’t everybody standing and cheering and hoisting up their drinks to toast the delegation?”
“It was really more like they were saying thanks.”
“Thanks? Thanks for what?”
“Thanks for all the free beer Billy Bob gave ‘em.”
“Free beer?”
“Yeah,” Phil said. “That’s the only way Billy Bob could clear out all those rodeo seats. He told the good old boys that if they’d get up and let the Soviets sit down, he’d give free beer to everybody. That’s the reason they waved their beers and acted so happy to see the Russkies.”