I Coulda Been a Cowboy but My Boots Didn't Fit
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For me, the trip to Chiang's funeral would have been a plum. To begin with, it would have been a thrill to fly on Air Force One, given its history. Even famous Washington media figures considered a trip on Air Force One to be a rare treat. They could telephone their friends and say: "Good morning, Walter (or David or Chet). I'm calling from Air Force One."
Even more attractive to me was the fact I wouldn't have much work to do, and I could enjoy the ambience. I would take in the ceremonies, mingle with presidents and prime ministers, but have no official statements or press conferences to worry about. Then a two-day courtesy call in Japan, our biggest export customer for farm products, and we'd be off for home.
That would be much different from other foreign trips I had taken with Secretary Butz, which seemed always to be strenuous and pressure-laden. Butz was a hard worker himself, and I followed his lead. But this trip would be different, more glamour than grind.
Dave Hume was another of my old travel companions. I had met him five years earlier in London where he was agricultural attache at the American Embassy. He later held the same position at our embassy in Tokyo, and was now the top boss over foreign programs in the Agriculture Department. He was a tall outgoing man whose casual and fun-loving air belied the competence of a career officer with long experience in diplomacy.
Chiang's funeral appealed to my sense of history. The other Allied leaders from World War II were all dead -- Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, de Gaulle, even Truman. Chiang was the last. The Generalissimo had personified China's resistance to the Japanese and then to the Chinese communists. He and his wife, her relatives and in-laws, had run Nationalist China like a family business.
As it turned out, we did not go. We did not go to Chiang's funeral. Which might make this a non-story, until you consider the reason for our change in plans. Unknown to us, our weekend mission was caught up in an old web of politics going back to the China Lobby organized during World War II to generate Washington money and influence on behalf of Nationalist China. Madame Chiang, attractive, politically savvy, the China Lobby’s madonna, slept in the White House and WE paid HER.
We were to fly out of Andrews Air Force Base on Saturday afternoon. Five hours before I was to leave my home in a Maryland suburb, Dave Hume called.
"Don, are you all packed for Taipei?" he asked.
"Just getting started," I replied.
"Well don't bother. The trip is off."
"We're not going?" I responded. "Isn't anyone going? To represent the
“The Vice President,” Dave said. “The White House changed its mind.” "Then why did they ask us? Why not Rockefeller in the first place?”
“Rockefeller didn’t want to go. He had gone to his farm in New York for the weekend and didn’t want to change his plans. He has agreed to go to Taipei now but only after the Taiwan Chinese complained that an American secretary of agriculture doesn’t carry enough rank.”
So that was it. Taiwan partisans had protested that a cabinet officer –- an agriculture secretary -- was not high enough in position to represent China's great wartime ally at Chiang's funeral. The U.S. was not giving sufficient respect to the Generalissimo's memory or to his country. Nelson Rockefeller had the rank, but the last thing he wanted to do was interrupt his weekend for a funeral on the other side of the world. But now he was going anyway.
Taiwan officials in Washington told Secretary Butz later that it was not their doing. Their government had not opposed Butz. The Secretary didn’t believe that, and for years I wondered if Madame Chiang herself might not have had a delicate hand in the matter. It was not until 2006 that I got my answer, in a new book by Laura Tyson Li entitled “Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China’s Eternal First Lady.” Ms. Li writes that the Madame knew nothing of the decision to replace Butz at her husband’s funeral. It was the intervention of Anna Chennault, widow of Claire Chennault of Flying Tigers fame in World War II.
Anna Chennault was more than your t
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About the Book
These 76 memoirs follow one of Washington's most enduring and well-traveled ghost writers through 60 countries and "what seemed like a thousand years of change." J. Don Looper begins his story in the early 1920's, a time he says had more in common with the Middle Ages than with the world we live in now. He draws on a Dust Bowl childhood and personal adventures in journalism and public affairs to illustrate "the rush to modern times" that began in the 20's. Many essays stem from cabinet-level missions abroad and staff writing for top officials in eight presidencies.
About the Author
"It was like riding shotgun," J. Don Looper says, "I was the guy on the other seat hoping the Indians did not attack and the Wells Fargo box arrived unplundered." Looper is author of a new book of memoirs, "I Coulda Been a Cowboy but My Boots Didn't Fit," which recalls a career riding alongside great events and people as ghost writer, media foil, and troubleshooter. He left a Dust Bowl childhood for a life in journalism, public affairs, and international politics. He traveled in 60 countries and wrote for newspapers as far away as Hong Kong.