CHRISTMAS 20 YEARS AGO
You bought Fishers-Price, Mattel, Lionel, Barbie et al without worrying about lead content. Eight-track players were still in some use but cassettes had put 78s and 45s in the dustbin. You waited in line at phone booths; there were some cell phones and satellite phones the size of shoeboxes but big business and the US military/intelligence folks were major users.** A postage stamp cost 22 cents. Word processors were much in vogue but computers required floppies and few had active memories; the Internet era was still a few years away.
Platoon won the Academy Award in March (1986 movies were honored; the year 1987 produced Oscar winner The Last Emperor. Curiously, it didn’t make every list of major events, but the killing of CIA station chief William Buckley in Lebanon (Buckley died in 1985, but his death was not confirmed until 1987) had far reaching consequences, not just as a catalyst for Iran-Contra, arms deals the US made to free Buckley not knowing he was already dead, but for US intelligence operations around the world.* A turning point in “advise and consent” was reached when the Senate refused to confirm Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. The entertainment highlights listed by Infoplease (the lists below) fail to note the advent of thirtysomething, a show targeted on baby boomers which broke old taboos on discussions of marriage, fidelity, race, etc.
We lost Alistair MacLean, Liberace, Andy Warhol, Randolph Scott, Danny Kaye, Robert Preston, Maria von Trapp, Maxwell Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Sammy Kaye, Dick Shawn, Richard Munch, Hermione Gingold, Geraldine Page, Fred Astaire, Jackie Gleason, Richard Egan, Benson Fong, Pola Negri, Jesse Unruh, Rudolph Hess, John Huston, Lee Marvin, Lorne Greene, J Lawton Collins, Dan Rowan, Bob Fosse, Mary Astor, Emlyn Williams, Henry Ford II, Woody Herman, Jascha Heifitz,
Christmas 1987 was something of a personal watershed. Of the many adages about life in the nation’s capital, few are truer than the acknowledged but informal social and political benchmark, “when your 15 minutes are up, you’re history.” My 15 minutes expired in 1997. By contrast, in 1987, a year when I was CNN’s guest at the black tie and very prestigious Correspondents’ dinner, I had 13 invitations to Christmas parties including the Secretary of State’s semi-formal bash at the ornate Iranian Embassy (which we had seized to give State a party venue). Christmas 1997, no invitations; I was no longer chief of financial intelligence. No more costume parties at Halloween; no gift turkeys at Thanksgiving; no more first and business-class travel; no more choice seat in the reserved top-floor State dining room; no more free use of guest houses owned by US Embassies at some exquisite international watering holes; no more personal invitations to see the White House Christmas decorations (oddly enough, I still get the President’s Christmas card); no more guest lectures at Oxford, Cambridge and other universities. And, by 1997, the elegant international trade attorney who accompanied me to all those 1987 soirees and global trips in the years after was no longer hanging her Christmas stocking on my fireplace. Beautiful woman; still very close to my daughters whom she helped raise, but our relationship is as frigid as the water in the North Atlantic the night the Titanic went down.
*Old intelligence hands secured a promise from CIA Director Casey that “no stone would be left unturned” any time a CIA station chief or other ranking intelligence official was kidnapped or left behind. Most chiefs had detailed knowledge of far-flung intelligence operations, including the names of informants. Buckley’s remains were returned in a plastic bag left on a roadside leading to the Beirut airport in 1991. An operative in Viet Nam was returned in a shoe box; he was crushed by a steamroller after he was inadvertently left behind when the US evacuated Saigon. Casey, a founding father of the OSS under Wild Bill Donovan, was “old school” which left him prey to the pleadings of Oliver North and others re Iran-Contra. I happened on one occasion to draw the chair next to Casey who mumbled so softly I had trouble hearing him, but he quickly “green lighted” some actions which caused head-shaking at State. Another personality, also hard liner, was Ted Shackley, who negotiated the Iran-contra arms deal; we butted heads over the operations of Air America, the CIA air fleet which flew heroin out of Southeast Asia, and over a threatened assassination attempt. Hell of a time!
**I was in a Range Rover up on the Chinese border when the radiophone rang, and I was told by Embassy Bangkok that a call was being patched through from Washington. Before making that connection, an international operator informed me that a classified satellite would be crossing Singapore in two minutes and I would be connected to State. The eventual connection was clear as a bell. In the early 90s, I had a dinner meeting with a top aide to the ruler of Abu Dhabi who had a shoebox-sized satellite phone, over which he discussed new instructions to proceed to Seattle and buy the sheik a 747 like the one made for the US president. Impressed, I asked how one buys a 747. The Arab looked at me quizzically and replied, very naturally, “I will write Boeing a check.” $125 million – and you bet Boeing didn’t call the bank to see if the check would clear.
· Tamil guerillas ambush convoy
· USS Stark hit by Exocet missiles
· Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Washington
· Gorbachev campaigns for Glasnost and Perostroika
· Libyan troops driven out of Chad
· India invades Pakistan
NBA: Los Angeles Lakers vs. Boston Celtics Series: 4-2
NCAA Football: Miami-Fl Record: 12-0-0
Heisman Trophy: Tim Brown, notre dame, WR points: 1,442
Stanley Cup: Edmunton Oilers vs. Philadelphia Flyers Series: 4-3
Super Bowl XXI: New York Giants vs. Denver Broncos Score: 39-20
US Open Golf: Scott Simpson Score: 277 Course: Olympic Club Location: San
Francisco, CA
World Series: Minnesota Twins vs. St. Louis Cardinals Series: 4-3
1."Open Your Heart" ... Madonna
2."Livin' on a Prayer" ... Bon Jovi
3 ."Jacob's Ladder" ... Huey Lewis and the News
4."Lean on Me" ... Club Nouveau
5."Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now" ... Starship
6."I Knew You Were Waiting" ... Aretha Franklin & George Michael
7."Died in Your Arms" ... Cutting Crew
8."With or Without You" ... U2
9."You Keep Me Hangin' On" ... Kim Wilde
10."Always" ... Atlantic Starr
1. Beverly Hills Cop III
2. Dirty Dancing
3. Dragnet
4. Fatal Attraction
5. Full Metal Jacket
6. La Bamba
7. Lethal Weapon
8. The Living Daylights
9. A Nightmare on Elm Street
10. Outrageous Fortune
Fiction
1. "The Cardinal" of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy
2. "The Sands of Time" by Sidney Sheldon
3. "Zoya" by Danielle Steel
4. "The Icarus Agenda" by Robert Ludlum
5. "Alaska" by James Michener
Nonfiction
1. "The Eight-Week Cholesterol Diet" by Robert Kowalski
2. "Talking Straight" by Lee Iacocca
3. "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking
4. "Trump" by Donald Trump
5. "Gracie: A Love Story" by George Burns
Most Popular Television Shows
1. The Cosby Show (NBC)
2. Roseanne (ABC)
3. A Different World (NBC)
4. Cheers (NBC)
5. 60 Minutes (CBS)
6. The Golden Girls (NBC)
7. Who's the Boss? ( ABC)
8. Murder, She Wrote (CBS)
9. Empty Nest (NBC)
10. Anything But Love (ABC)
Chemistry
The prize was awarded jointly to: CRAM, DONALD J., U.S.A., University of
California, Los Angeles, CA, b. 1919; LEHN, JEAN-MARIE, France, University Louis
Pasteur, Strasbourg, and Collage de France, Paris, b. 1939; and PEDERSEN,
CHARLES J., U.S.A., Du Pont, Wilmington, DE, b. 1904 (in Fusan, Korea, as a
Norwegian citizen), d. 1989: "for their development and use of molecules with
structure-specific interactions of high selectivity"
Literature
BRODSKY, JOSEPH, U.S.A., b. 1940 (in Leningrad, USSR) d. 1996: "for an
all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
Peace
SANCHEZ, OSCAR ARIAS, Costa Rica, b. 1941: President of Costa Rica, initiator of
peace negotiations in Central America.
Physiology or Medicine
TONEGAWA, SUSUMU, Japan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge,
MA, U.S.A., b. 1939: "for his discovery of the genetic principle for generation
of antibody diversity"
Physics
The prize was awarded jointly to: BEDNORZ, J. GEORG, Federal Republic of
Germany, IBM Research Laboratory, Ruschlikon, Switzerland, b. 1950; and MULLER,
KARL ALEXANDER, Switzerland, IBM Research Laboratory, Ruschlikon, Switzerland,
b. 1927: "for their important breakthrough in the discovery of superconductivity
in ceramic materials"
Drama: August Wilson ... "Fences"
Fiction: Peter Taylor ... "A Summons to Memphis"
History: Bernard Bailyn ... "Voyagers to the West"
International Reporting: Michael Parks ... "Los Angeles Times"
National Reporting (2): Staff ... "Miami Herald", Staff ... "New York Times"
Public Service: "Pittsburgh Press"
Best Play: "Fences" ... August Wilson
Best Musical: "Les Miserables"
Best Actor in a play: James Earl Jones ... "Fences"
Best Actress in a play: Linda Lavin ... "Broadway Bound"
Best Actor in a musical: Robert Lindsay ... "Me and My Girl"
Best Actress in a musical: Maryann Plunkett ... "Me and My Girl"
Best Picture: "The Last Emperor"
Best Director: Bernardo Bertolucci ... "The Last Emperor"
Best Actor: Michael Douglas ... "Wall Street"
Best Actress: Cher ... "Moonstruck"
Record of the Year: "Graceland" ... Paul Simon
Song of the Year: "Somewhere Out There" ... James Horner & Barry Mann
Best Album: "The Joshua Tree" ... U2
Male Vocalist: Sting ... "Bring on the Night"
Female Vocalist: Whitney Houston ... "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves
Me)"