I flew up to Chaffee as soon as I could to meet with General Drummond

I flew up to Chaffee as soon as I could to meet with General Drummond. We had a real shouting match. I was outraged that his troops hadnt stopped the Cubans after the White House had assured me the Pentagon had received Justice Department approval to do so. The general didnt flinch. He told me he took his orders from a two-star general in San Antonio, Texas, and no matter what the White House had said to me, his orders hadnt changed. Drummond was a real straight shooter,cheap montblanc pen; he was obviously telling the truth. I called Gene Eidenberg, told him what Drummond had said, and demanded an explanation. Instead I got a lecture. Eidenberg said hed been told I was overreacting and grandstanding after my disappointing primary showing. It was obvious that Gene, whom I considered a friend, didnt understand the situation, or me, as well as I had thought he did.
I was fit to be tied,http://www.rolexsubmarinerreplicausa.com/. I told him that since he obviously didnt have confidence in my judgment, he could make the next decision: You can either come down here and fix this right now, tonight, or Im going to shut the fort down. Ill put National Guardsmen at every entrance and no one will go in or out without my approval.
He was incredulous. You cant do that, he said. Its a federal facility.
That may be, I shot back, but its on a state road and I control it. Its your decision.
Eidenberg flew to Fort Smith on an air force plane that night,nike high heels. I picked him up, and before we went to the fort I took him on a tour of Barling. It was well after midnight, but down every street we drove, at every house, armed residents were on alert, sitting on their lawns, on their porches, and, in one case, on the roof. Ill never forget one lady, who looked to be in her seventies, sitting stoically in her lawn chair with her shotgun across her lap. Eidenberg was shocked by what he saw. After we finished the tour he looked at me and said, I had no idea.
After the tour, we met with General Drummond and other federal, state, and local officials for an hour or so. Then we talked to the horde of press people who had gathered. Eidenberg promised that the security problem would be fixed. Later that day, June 2, the White House said the Pentagon had received clear instructions to maintain order and keep the Cubans on the base. President Carter also acknowledged that the people of Arkansas had suffered needless anxiety and promised that no more Cubans would be sent to Fort Chaffee.
Delays with the screening process seemed to be the root cause of the turmoil, and the people doing the screening made an effort to speed it up. When I went to visit the fort not long afterward, the situation was calmer and everyone seemed to be in a better frame of mind.
While things seemed to be settling down, I was still troubled by what had happened, or hadnt, between May 28, when Eidenberg told me the army had been ordered to keep the Cubans from leaving Chaf-fee, and June 1, when they let one thousand of them escape. Either the White House hadnt told me the truth, or the Justice Department was slow in getting its legal opinion to the Pentagon, or someone in the Pentagon had defied a lawful order of the Commander in Chief. If thats what happened, it amounted to a serious breach of the Constitution. Im not sure the whole truth ever came out. As I learned when I got to Washington, after things go wrong, the willingness to take responsibility often vanishes,chanel.