September 2000 Newsletter
Richard M. Nixon went to Caracas, Venezuela, as Vice President in May, 1958. In his book, Six Crises, Nixon described that experience, which he called one of the worst of his life, in some detail. But how did we ever get in a position in which the Vice President of the United States of America and his wife suffered gross indignities and actually came close to losing their lives? There are a number of explanations - one more succinct and to the point than all the others. Someone, I believe it was Lewis Hanke of Colombia University, asked former Costa Rican President Jose "Pepe" Figueres why people had stooped so low as to spit on the Vice President of the United States. Don Pepe replied, "It's simple. You can't spit on a foreign policy."
That which follows differs significantly from Nixon's Six Crises. Nixon's account was written from the perspective of a public and political figure who benefitedpolitically from the events, and my account is written from the perspective of a very junior Embassy officer who was shocked with events and fed up both with the Venezuelans and the American policies which made it so easy for the Communists to agitate so successfully against Nixon's presence.
My family and I arrived in Caracas on July 3, 1957, for our first tour in the Foreign Service. Thus, only slightly over ten months had elapsed between our arrival and the Nixon visit. Even in that very short time we saw enough to understand clearly why it had been so easy for the Communists to stir up anti-American feelings.
In mid-1957 Venezuelans were suffering under the heel of a brutal military dictator, Marcos Perez Jimenez, a pompous general to whom the Pentagon decided to award the U.S. Legion of Merit. The American Ambassador at the time was Dempster Macintosh, a successful businessman with a friend on the Republican National Committee. MacIntosh spoke not a word of Spanish but was able to hurt us anyway- giving speeches which were translated. At a time during which a colleague and I saw National Security police fire their guns through a school fence at school children who were chanting, "Down with the dictatorship," the American Ambassador was telling Venezuelans how lucky they were to be living in an economic democracy. What he really meant was that United States Steel (he was a steel magnate) had access to 17 million tons of iron ore annually and the oil companies, American, British and Dutch to three million barrels of oil a day. One American oil company, Creole Petroleum, produced half as much oil as the Soviet Union which was then the world's third largest producing country.
On New Year's Day of 1958 the Venezuelans had had enough. They revolted with support of part of the Air Force but were put down. A general strike followed within days and, once the Navy joined the rebels, Perez Jimenez fled the country in a small plane at precisely 2:09 a.m. (He flew from a small military air strip in eastern Caracas, the same field from which we shortly thereafter considered extricating Richard Nixon.) Perez Jimenez was replaced by a five man junta of military and civilians headed by Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal.
The pent up hatred towards the dictator and his Seguridad Nacional (National Security police) and its chief, Pedro Estrada, was given vent the next morning. I was a block from Seguridad headquarters when the mobs tried to storm it shortly after dawn. Panic stricken Seguridad agents began to fire on the crowds which were forced back. I saw one agent caught on the street and literally torn apart. However, the gunfire from inside was too intense for them to enter. That job fell to Army tanks which did the job effectively and the mobs were soon inside. Among the most publicized pieces of paper they found inside was a Christmas card and accompanying letter from the American Ambassador to Turkey (he had been in Venezuela) telling the head of the Security Police to "keep up the good work." Not only the Communist press played that up.
Other American moves were almost as unpopular, adding fuel to the fires of discontent. The junta decided to increase the taxes on the oil companies. Duke Haight, President of Creole Petroleum, largest of the oil companies, got word of the new tax back in Texas. He roared, "They can't do that to us!" The Venezuelan Government didn't argue one bit. It simply canceled his visa, and he couldn't get back to his oil company again. The Eisenhower administration wisely sided with the Venezuelans on that but Haight's attitude had its impact on the man in the street. Then the administration started talking about reducing oil imports from Venezuela (for domestic reasons unrelated to our Venezuelan policy) and the screams in Caracas changed from cries that we were stealing their God-given resources to cries that we were trying to ruin their economy. We couldn't win either way.
It was in this atmosphere that the Eisenhower administration decided to send Richard Nixon to Venezuela. The visit was to come at the end of a long and arduous swing through Latin America following Nixon's attendance at the inauguration of President Frondizi of Argentina.The trip may have helped Richard Nixon; it did not help the United States. For the most part it consisted of a series of confrontations which brought out the worst in many people and, surprisingly, the best in Richard Nixon.
Just days after Nixon's arrival in Caracas, Deputy Under Secretary of State Murphy told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "...the purpose of the Vice President's tour was to promote better understanding and good will between this country and our southern neighbors. They had been kind enough to extend invitations, in most cases quite insistent invitations."
Murphy's statement was not true with respect to Venezuela. The Eisenhower administration had given refuge to both the former dictator and his chief of security police and a new government was trying to get its feet on the ground and to prepare for democratic elections. The Government of Venezuela did not want Nixon to come to Venezuela at that point in history, and the American Embassy in Caracas made clear to Washington that it was not the time for Nixon to come. However, our protests were of no avail as the White House, through the State Department, told us Nixon would visit in May and instructed the Embassy in no uncertain terms to obtain the invitation within 24 hours. It did.
As Murphy told the Senate on May 19:
As the tour progressed and particularly after Peru, the increasing amount of communist inspired and directed tactics were known and reported and the increasing possibility of trouble in Venezuela was understood. It was also understood by the governments involved.
On May 14, with Nixon still besieged in Caracas, President Eisenhower told a press conference, "These things (the demonstrations) were discussed, but there was no thought given to canceling Mr. Nixon's visit to these countries."
On May 2, in a letter to my brother, I had written:
Nixon sure is having a rough time so far. We don't know how the demonstrations will develop here. The Commies are very active. We have alternative programs set up in case we get leads on demonstrations but it's impossible to anticipate everything.
Our security measures had been as adequate as we could make them. The major obstacle to our having as close to complete security as was possible came from Nixon himself. He wanted to divorce himself from the Latin American military and had ruled out our (actually the Venezuelans') having troops lining his route which covered over 17 kilometers from the airport to the city. We had gone over security arrangements in great detail with the Venezuelans. We had maps showing exactly where both uniformed police and plainclothes men would be posted - every few yards along the entire route, excluding only part of the limited access super highway running through rugged, unpopulated mountains from the airport on the coast up to the city. (By pure chance, I had kept those maps. I was too new and inexperienced bureaucratically to realize all that was going on at the time but later came to realize that the CIA and other security people were looking for a scapegoat. Had I not been able to produce proof of what had been arranged I believe I would have been blamed for what had happened, even though they had been involved all along and I was the junior officer in on the plans.)
Nixon knew full well he was going to face trouble in Caracas. The only question was how serious it would be. Deputy Under Secretary Murphy subsequently told the Senators, "Three reports of possible assassination attempts were forwarded to the Vice President and the matter was made public by the Secret Service on the eve of the Vice President's departure from Colombia for Caracas." If that weren't enough warning, he had CIA and other reports and he also had it first hand from Chuck Burrows, the Embassy's Deputy Chief of Mission, who had flown to Bogot· to accompany (and brief) the Vice President to Caracas. Burrows laid out the problem. In his book, Nixon claimed he had been misled, that security had been inadequately arranged by the Venezuelans. The root of the problem was neither the Embassy (which had suggested as strongly as it could that he not come) nor the Venezuelan security measures. The real problem was Nixon's insistence on keeping the military at arm's length in order to avoid adverse impact on the American media. He later claimed that the Venezuelan police did nothing to protect him - and he was absolutely correct. During the January revolution, less than five months before, the people had turned on all aspects of the vicious dictatorship, including the police, most of whom escaped only by burning their uniforms and disappearing from their home neighborhoods. Consequently, the police, when Nixon came, were both green and well aware of the public's attitude towards the uniforms. They weren't about to fight people in the streets. The only respected forces, the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard (but not the Army, which had stood by Perez Jimenez until the last moment) could have protected the Nixons easily if only he had let them.
With that background, the Nixon party flew into Maiquetia airport on the morning of May 13 (maybe the date was the problem?). The Vice President, in a dark blue suit, and Mrs. Nixon, in a red suit and hat, stepped from the US Air Force DC-6 with its red, white and blue propeller tips, to face the usual group of dignitaries lined up along the traditional red carpet in order of protocol. The waves and broad smiles of the Nixons quickly disappeared as they saw the hostile crowd on the balcony of the terminal and along their path. By the time they reached the bottom of the plane's steps, a very grim Vice President and lady stepped onto the tarmac, hearing anti-Nixon shouts and looking at banners reading, "Go home, Nixon," "Go away, Nixon," "Out, dog," "We won't forget Guatemala" (a reference to the ouster of the left-wing Arbenz regime in Guatemala with US assistance), etc.
At Venezuelan insistence, the motorcade was parked in front of the terminal. Consequently the Vice President's party had to walk under the balcony from which hundreds of people were spitting down on us, through the terminal and out to the front. We were spat upon all the way out to the cars and literally had to shove people aside to get the Vice President inside. We thought the worst was over. It wasn't.
The motorcade was "buzzed" by cars on the highway up to the city. Ironically, Communist propaganda had been so effective that a group (mob would be a better word) of teenage kids and their organizers attacked us as we entered the city streets. That point could have been catastrophic, and it did get bad enough that one of the Secret Service men drew his gun. Had he fired, the mob might have become incensed enough to have really gone after us. However, a decision was made to run for it directly to the American Ambassador's residence, where the Nixons holed up for the rest of their visit. American troops, drawn from the Embassy Marine guards and the US Military Mission, came to stand guard at the residence for the duration of the visit. No one knew what to expect but no attack ever materialized at the residence, a lovely home on a hilltop in a suburban neighborhood and an area too far to walk from any public transport, a key factor. Years in Latin America have convinced me that Latin revolutionaries, rioters and the like, will risk being beaten, shot, and even tortured but they will neither walk very far nor stay out in the streets and get wet if it rains. In any event, Nixon was safe for the moment.
The decision to flee to the security of the residence saved the Nixons' lives and ours. Unknown to those of us in the motorcade, several of our people waiting at the National Pantheon with the wreaths Nixon was to have laid at the tomb of Simon Bolivar, were attacked by a mob. The commander of the Venezuelan Honor Guard there called for help. When the troops moved in they picked up over two hundred Communists with Molotov cocktails. Had the motorcade of big Cadillac's turned into that area of the old city with its very narrow streets, we would have been burned to death. That mob of kids had saved us from the professionals.
Once we were settled in the residence, I went outside for some air and happened to look at the car. It was hard to believe that that black Cadillac with diplomatic license plates 63-CD had borne the Vice President of the United States. The rear windows were shattered, sputum was all over it and the windshield was just a white smear as the driver had tried to remove the spit with the wipers. It was difficult at that moment not to hate Venezuelans.
You have to give Richard Nixon credit. He and his wife had gone through a harrowing experience. Yet, shortly after arriving at the residence he held a press conference on the veranda. Col. Vernon Walters (later lieutenant general and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency) interpreted for him. He was completely composed and in control, said all the right things and handled himself magnificently. He also handled himself very well in another respect.
President Eisenhower had ordered US troops to the Caribbean. He told a White House press conference the next day:
...[the despatch of US troops to the Caribbean] is the simplest precautionary type of measure in the world. We had reports yesterday that were serious. We knew nothing of the facts. We could get no reports from the outside other than telephone calls from the Embassy [at Caracas] and, not knowing what was happening and not knowing whether the Venezuelan Government might not want some aid from us, we simply put it [the military force] at places it would be available in reasonable amounts and in bases that were well within the American zone. That was all there was to it. There was no offer made to the Venezuelans. The idea was: only in the case they would want to ask it would we even think of it.
When I wrote that last paragraph I assumed that the phone connections to which President Eisenhower referred as being the only contact with Caracas, had been the normal international commercial lines the Embassy used. I learned only in April 1984, that communications in Caracas had been disrupted when Nixon arrived. As luck would have it, some of the Air Force officers with Nixon were ham operators who had brought with them a Collins single sideband radio to pursue their hobby on the trip. Following the attack on the Vice President, they stuck an antenna out the window of their room in the Circulo Militar (the Venezuelan Officers' Club), set up a phonepatch with the Ambassador's residence, and then were able to reach a ham operator in Silver Spring, Maryland, who, in turn phone-patched into the State Department. It was via this amateur hook-up that the White House and State were kept informed of the situation until international service was restored. Who knows what would have happened if this jerry-rigged operation hadn't worked? Would Eisenhower have sent troops in to "save" his Vice President?
To Nixon's credit he immediately saw the severely adverse foreign policy ramifications and convinced Eisenhower to call off the troops. But all that is public record. What is not on the record is Nixon's triumphant return, rather some of the background on his triumphant return to the United States after the Caracas incident. The day before he was to leave Nixon got word that the White House and the State Department wanted time to prepare a reception at the Washington National Airport for him and Pat. He couldn't very well prolong his stay in Venezuela so he decided to call Governor Luis Munoz Marin in Puerto Rico to ask if he could spend a night there to give Washington the time it needed to prepare the appropriate welcoming ceremony. Nixon used the phone in the Ambassador's living room and called Munoz, saying (as best I can recall), "Luis, this is Dick Nixon. I wonder if Pat and I could spend tomorrow night with you?" There apparently was a long silence an the other end and Nixon asked, "Luis?" Munoz finally recovered and relented. He was a liberal with little love for Richard Nixon.
When the time came for Nixon to leave he came over to me and said, "Russ, this has been a difficult few days but I want you to know how much Pat and I appreciate all you've done." He said precisely what a young officer would want to hear from his Vice President, but I had the feeling that he was saying them almost automatically and without warmth.
Nixon's departure was something to behold. Our stated policy wasone of a warm abrazo for our democratic friends in Latin America and a polite handshake for the dictators and the military. Nevertheless, our prior instructions to exclude troops from around Nixon were forgotten. When Nixon left there were troops almost arm to arm on both sides of the more than 20 kilometer route from the Military Club where he lunched with the Junta (the only time he left the residence during the entire visit) to the airport. And, as Nixon states in Six Crises, he was happy to have them. The troops in the city portion of the route wore gas masks as the streets had been tear gassed to discourage any onlookers o rpotential demonstrators. What a change a couple of days can bring!
Immediate hindsight is better than the hindsight of more than a quarter century. Here is a portion of a letter I wrote to my brother the day after Nixon left Caracas, giving my immediate reaction to events:
Thought you might like an inside fill in on the Nixon visit here this week. I remember telling some of you that I was one of the two control officers assigned - consequently I was with the Vice President during his entire stay in Caracas.
We don't know yet what the US press has been saying but here is some background. I was in on all the security measures taken and they were adequate even though we didn't anticipate such a vicious attack. The police just didn't act. For instance, we have one picture at a roadblock which stopped us in the heart of town - four police motorcycles (with six more just out of the photo) were in front of the Vice President's car and two were immediately behind. The shot shows the mob attacking the car and the police making absolutely no efforts to stop them. This occurred on the way in from the airport. Upon our arrival at the Embassy (residence), all windows in his car were smashed (luckily we'd absolutely refused the open car he had insisted on) and Col.Walters, the Foreign Minister and the Vice President were showered with glass, the sides of the car were all dented, etc.
On the spur of the moment we decided to make a run for the Ambassador's residence -- we now know that if we had turned up the side street to the Pantheon (1st scheduled stop for wreath laying) Nixon would have been killed on the spot. Two of our boys, 3 Secret Service men and 2 of our Military Attaches who were waiting there were lucky to escape alive.
Don't let anyone kid you, while this was communist led and organized, thousands of other people joined in heartily. Our Latin policies have been ridiculous and some protest was expected and justified. However, this went beyond a civilized demonstration as you know.
The schedule was junked and the Nixons and some of the party, including Jinx Falkenburg, spent the entire visit at the residence. We had troops and police surrounding the place continuously and contemplated sneaking the party out to a nearby military airfield and taking a small plane to a nearby island where the VP's plane would meet them. As it turned out, the Venezuelan Army cleared a path to the Officers' Club (at many points they used tear gas to disperse crowds) where Nixon had lunch with the President. We then made a dash for the airport (9 hours ahead of schedule) under protection of tear gas, machine guns and machetes. There was maximum security, although it is a hell of a note when the Vice President of the United States has to make a run for it to get out of a country.
We had Washington on the phone almost constantly and President Eisenhower was furious - that's what caused the fact that US troops were on the way to the Caribbean to be publicized--a dreadful mistake (the announcement, not the move.)
Some good came out of this though - the administration may now believewhat we've told them about needing a new policy here and many of us gained a great respect for Mr. and Mrs. Nixon. They handled themselves magnificently and were wonderful to work with. He never should have come, but he conducted himself beautifully in spite of some rough moments. He said that the worst was watching these pigs (his words, not mine) spit in his wife's face. He got plenty, too, by the way.
The Nixon visit had passed into history but thinking back to it for a moment, it seemed to be one of those situations in which everything goes wrong.
Endnotes:
1. A veteran of World War II, Russ Olson, after a few years of teaching, entered the Foreign Service in 1956 and retired in 1982. He served in Washington rarely. His overseas posts included Caracas, San Jose, La Paz, Bogota, Montevideo, and Port Moresby.