Teacher spy assassin, p.30
Teacher, Spy, Assassin, page 30
“Were you able to see anything about military readiness?” Alex asked.
“Not really. All I saw was the usual teenagers with automatic weapons, and pimples, in wool uniforms, guarding government buildings and standing at crosswalks at important intersections, looking bored, as usual.”
“The collars on people’s coats are looking threadbare and people seem to have lost most of their fear to talk negatively about the government. For those that have access to hard currency, domestic goods are cheap. Our teachers get paid in hard currency and they have amazing options. I am told that in the tourist areas in Slovenia and Croatia, and parts of Bosnia, and Montenegro the tips paid in foreign currency are fueling a better economy.”
“The mood is angry. People are fed up. Young people cannot find work. The high-end restaurants are overflowing with well-dressed patrons. The other restaurants are nearly empty and threadbare.”
“Where do you see this going?” Jim asked.
“It will be decided by who takes the lead. The collective presidency is still not working, and with puppet Governments installed by Serbia in Vojvodina, Kosovo, and now Montenegro, Serbia seems to be in the driver’s seat.”
“My old ‘friend’, Milosevic, seems to be the driver. He is a populist who has support because he fills the air with ethnic slurs and public resentments. He sees himself and Serbia as victims. He is always railing against the other republics. Serbia is the victim, according to him. Everyone knows things are bad. They have a hero now. Milosevic can join them at the far end of the bar and mutter irrational lies with them. That makes the rabble feel good because they have never been able to say these things before. But the catharsis is not moving them forward.”
“Where is this thing going?” Alexander asked.
“It is hard to say. Events are going to decide that. There certainly are pressures in Slovenia and Croatia to break away. They are the ones who could prosper not tied to the anchor that is Serbia. Milosevic simply pisses them off. Tito kept it together but that is gone. Serbian peasants love the rough language and resentment politics of Milosevic but the intellectuals and city dwellers can’t stand him.”
“I know you two have faith that the old Communist power structure in Eastern Europe, will overcome the dissidents, once again. But I think there will be a separatist war in Yugoslavia and I think it will be soon,” I added.
“Well, you guessed right about our position. We think Milosevic or some other strong man will suppress this thing before it goes too far. The people are sheep,” Alexander said. “But your analysis is cogent and we will weigh your evidence and conclusions carefully. What about the rest of Eastern Europe and Czechoslovakia, in particular?”
“Eastern Europe is embroiled in crisis generally. The false economies, propped up by Russian oil, and Eastern European coal have faltered. Unemployment has worsened. Experiments with market economies have hurt many. People want out from the Soviet sphere.”
“Unemployment, particularly for the young is way too high,” I continued. “Inflation is robbing people of their purchasing power. Companies that should be dead and buried are kept alive by fanciful five-year plans. But they aren’t producing anything, or at least anything useful.”
“Czechoslovakia is a case in point,” I added. “Their story is tragic. Before communism, they were the leader in optics and machining in the world, and a major contributor to the advancement of science. That’s why conquering them was so important to Hitler. Their car, the Tata, was the most advanced automobile in the world.
“The old Czech factories, now make things of such low quality that they can’t find a market in the West. It’s said that these companies pretend to pay people and the people pretend to work.
“On the other hand, there is a new and profitable economy. Tourists have found Czechoslovakia. They’ve discovered the quaint villages, the unmolested castles, and the charming countryside. They’re pouring in. With the tourist boomlet comes western youth culture and abundant hard currency, much of it not reported as income. The young see the government as a costly nuisance.”
“Young Czech men have long hair and beards, even those who would normally be conscripted to the army. The young women are wearing long dresses and wear their hair long as hippy women did in the ’60s. I could smell marijuana all over the city. I don’t see the new Czechs reverting.”
“The teachers I met from Poland are not interested in resolving their differences with Moscow or with their dying government. They only talk of the Pope and Walesa.
I had the sense that the Hungarians are behaving like children in a classroom, who notice the teacher has left the room. They’re misbehaving, while watching the door with one wary eye, fearing the teacher’s return, but they are enjoying misbehaving.”
“This particular virus has not seemed to have reached Bulgaria, or Romania. I can’t say what’s going on in East Germany. We don’t have any schools there. The western students in east Berlin go to the JFK school in West Germany”
“Again, what’s your view of where this is going?” Alexander asked.
“My view hasn’t changed. Russia cannot suppress this. They are going to have enough to do holding their own country together. It would be like asking a weak grandmother on her last days in a cancer ward to bring order to a fractious family. I think we’ll soon have open rebellion and an upsurge in democratic reforms.”
The conversation continued for hours quite amicably. I don’t think any of us changed our position. I drove back to work. And got on with my day. This was a busy season for me. I liked thinking about these broader issues, but schooling was what I did, and I felt it was my greatest opportunity to make a worthwhile contribution, especially after that lunch.
I was puzzled that these key advisors could not see what I saw, and why they kept coming back to me for advice. They didn’t like what they heard from me.
The race to finish the work on the Owego accreditation visit was on. The New York State representative to the team was selected. The State had to review a School District every 10 years to ensure compliance with state regulations. Based on this review, the school district would be reregistered for another ten years. Typically, the State sent out a mountain of forms which was primarily a checklist. Were we an Equal Opportunity Employer? Did we offer Special Education Services in compliance with State law? Did we have a record of immunization for all of our students? The State rep would then sample our records to ensure our compliance and recertify us.
I never heard of any district failing recertification. The representative from the State Education Department would add dubious value to the accreditation effort. However, I thought I could show the State a better way to assess a school district. I also thought whoever came might catch the vitality of this effort, jump in, and have more fun, rather than sitting in our records room for four days. I thought by corrupting this state functionary, we could raise our profile in the State Education Department, and possibly cause a change in their process.
They selected an assistant commissioner to be our inspector. This was good. It was usually a drone from the nameless bowels of the State.
The Middle States sent their A team. There were high school, middle school, and elementary teams. The Middle States accredits schools, not systems. There were even two teams at the elementary level. One for each elementary school. Altogether, the teams consisted of four principals, one superintendent, an assistant superintendent, 12 teachers, and a representative from the State Education Department. It was a bigger team than most, but I don’t know whether Middle states had ever done all of the schools in a system in a K-12 accreditation effort before. The result would be four accredited schools, one high school, one middle school, and two elementary schools.
I had canceled all appointments in preparation for the visit. But the team primarily wanted to talk to specific people in the schools to find out if what we said about ourselves was true, and to seek evidence of our claims in classrooms, among students, and from teachers, students and parents.
I had a few accreditation team members stop in, but primarily, I caught up with my reading and fretted.
Reading the New York Times that week, I learned that Slobodan Milosevic was elected President of Serbia. He was now a member of the Collective Presidency. I sent him a congratulatory letter, which went unacknowledged. I feared for the future of Yugoslavia. With this frequently drunk Serbian nationalist in desperate need of affirmation as president. It was a bad day for world history.
The United States had never put quite such a bozo in our President’s chair, but we came close and probably would match this level of international disgrace someday.
The success of the visit was a bit overwhelming. The exit report was made in the auditorium. The entire visiting team stayed for the report. It was presented by the chair. We filled every seat in the auditorium. All 7 members of our Board of Education were there. Our local weekly newspaper sent a reporter. The reporter from the regional daily was there. All of our Administrators were present. Hundreds of teachers attended. Many secretaries, Janitors, and other employees filled the seats and lined the back of the room. The PTA and booster clubs sent representatives. Usually, this report was done to a very small group, out of fear that the visit might have failed. I was more eager to have all of those who had worked on it know how our work was viewed by our assessors.
The chair of the visiting team made it clear that the team admired what we had done. He spoke glowingly of our commitment to our mission and the obvious community support, and excellence achieved by our students through outstanding teaching and learning. It was clear by the subtext; we would be accredited next December at the annual meeting of the accreditation committee.
We all got back to work. I made it a point to thank everyone for their hard work. Weeks later the commissioner brought me to Albany to discuss the assessment of school districts and school registration reviews. He lavished praise on our effort to squeeze some life into that dry process, but nothing would change, and the roast beef in the cold sandwich was tough.
The effort brought recognition for the district and me. My board president nominated me for the annual Superintendent of the Year Competition. I became the New York Superintendent of the Year and was put forward in the national competition. We were given awards from the state and national School Public Relations Association, I was awarded the Golden Achievement Award by the National School Public Relations Association. The Executive Educator magazine selected me as one of the top 100 School executives in North America.
I loved the School District in Owego. It was a good match for me, but I have real difficulty keeping my vanity in check. I was developing a wanderlust. Couldn’t I get one of those high-paying jobs, in one of those elite school districts, where you never had to struggle for resources?
It seemed to me that struggling for money, both personally and professionally, was my biggest problem in life. The solution seemed clear. I wasn’t hunting for a new job. Liam still had to finish high school. But I wanted to be more alert to possibilities. I knew I thought out of the box. I made change happen where ever I went.
As a turnaround guy, I wanted a district with one or more big problems. The more prominent the problem the better. So, while knowing that I needed to stay in Owego for at least two more years, I began to look for older superintendents, nearing retirement, who ran wealthy, high profile, high paying districts, that met my criteria. When these older superintendents were ready for retirement, I was ready to go there. And I hoped the districts would be rich enough to support my reform efforts and my drive for personal comfort.
There were sweet possibilities. Presently, however, I worked in a working-class district. One of the great parts was people liked when you showed up. And show up, I did. They liked grit and integrity. They understood that things take time. I liked fixing the problems that the other people, who had sat in my chair before me, had made.
I was now in this chair long enough that I found myself fixing some of the problems I had created. That was not as much fun.
Chapter 49: Jim moves up in the Agency
I was reading the New York times this lazy Sunday morning. School was out for the summer, and I had played tennis early since this was to be a hot day. In the back of the national news section of the paper was a small story with a picture of Alexander. It read, “Davis Braxton was appointed director of operations of the CIA on Friday.”
Davis Braxton, what a laugh, I thought. I knew that bastard was operating under a false name!
Now Jim was in the money. Not only did he have Larry Eagleburger to protect him and advance his cause, but the head of his division would be his pal, Alexander. Oops, Davis.
President George H.W. Bush had been CIA director under Gerald Ford. He oversaw the initial appointment of Braxton (Alexander) when he, himself, was CIA Director. Bush took over in a time that the Agency was under fire for allowing itself to be used for extra-legal and political purposes under Nixon. It is of note that several of the Watergate burglars were “former” CIA agents.
I expect that the word “former” was also a ruse. They were in the agency. This was, in my view, evidence of the agency playing a rogue role in domestic politics. It may have been a kind of freebooting effort, by a rogue force, within the agency to protect American values. Or, the effort could come from the top. That is what Bush was supposed to clear out. He claimed he did, and the press certainly bought that message.
Bush, at the time, was praised for bringing integrity to the one agency that the public cannot supervise. No one, including congress, can be sure they know what happens inside the nation’s secret service.
Bush had a role in the Reagan Iran-Contra mess. Reagan violated a law forbidding the US to sell weapons to Iran. We had stopped selling Iran weapons because they took our diplomats as hostages. The Reagan Iran-Contra crew also violated a law forbidding our involvement with the right-wing militia in Nicaragua by using the money obtained by selling arms to Iran to support the Contras. The result was Iran’s strength in a war with Iraq using our superior weapons. Iran’s star rose in the Middle East. Iraq grew increasingly repressive and angry. While in Nicaragua, the right-wing forces of the Sandinistas, that we supported, became repressive and deadly.
Now Bush had just appointed Alexander to head the operations division of the CIA!
During the school year, I worked between 60 and 80 hours a week. I got to the office after exercise by 9:00 a.m. and worked until 5:30 p.m. That was my day job. I went home for dinner, and nearly every night I had a board meeting, a PTA meeting, a speech to give to some group or another, a game or performance to attend, or some job-related civic duty. Weekends could and did find me at school events. So, in the summer I tried, often successfully, to get out before 5:00 p.m., and usually, the only evening meetings were with the Board of Ed. We had a relaxed dress code in the summer at work, as well.
I had just settled in, after tennis, one morning when Jim called. He was coming North from DC for a vacation in New York. Could he visit Friday afternoon through Sunday morning? I checked my calendar and put him on hold while I double-checked with Barbara, my secretary, and made a quick call on the other line, to check with Linda. I picked up his line again.
“That works well. Linda is eager to see you all. Liam has been asking when we would get a chance to see Jim Jr. again. What time will you be getting in?”
“Sometime after 2:00 p.m., if that works,” Jim suggested.
“Done.”
“Great. We’ll see you then. I have some great news to share about my job.”
“See you then,” I said.
I took Friday off. I had a hard time using my vacation time because school obligations did not always adjust to meet my need to relax. So, one way I found to use my vacation was to take Fridays off in the summer, and I wanted to help Linda get ready for the visit. I always tried to do the grocery shopping. I could and did sometimes clean and do yard work and cook.
The time in the summer was restorative and Fridays were a big part of it. This Friday was no different. At 2:00 p.m. on Friday, on the money, Jim’s shiny new Mercedes rolled into our driveway. Linda embraced everyone. Linda had an abundance of affection that was sometimes hidden under the pressures of the daily grind. At times like this, her warmth poured out of her. Visitors to our house always felt loved. That was part of why we were a haven for troubled kids.
Liam and Jim Junior helped deposit the guest’s baggage in their rooms, and the boys pushed our canoe into the Susquehanna River just behind the house. Their conversation was, I am sure, filled with the adventures populating their teen-aged imaginations. They were Juniors in high school now and were physically grown men. Liam grew to be a stocky 6’4” giant. Jim, a wiry 5’11”.
Linda and Pat went to the kitchen, which was cantilevered off the back of the house, and overlooked the river. We had a couch and a big upholstered chair there that encouraged intimate conversations. Jim and I grabbed a beverage and sat on the front porch enjoying the front row seat to the 19th-century town.
“Alexander,” he began…
“Jim, I saw it in the Times. His picture was in with the appointment announcement. I know his name is not Alexander.”
“We all have to do that from time to time,” Jim said. “An asset might tell a story about someone who they met in the course of agency business. If we use a false name, it makes it hard for a reporter or a Congressman to chase the story down. When the story is checked out, there would be no one who worked for the agency by that name. It is nearly standard practice.”
“So is Jim your name?”
“For those of us, whose cover includes their families, like a diplomat serving overseas, we always use our real names. Our wives and kids could blow our cover otherwise. Pat and Jim Jr. think I report to the State Department every day. Calls from there get switched to my desk at Langley
