On Wings of Eagles (15 page)

    It happened in 1971. Coburn had been with EDS less than two years. He was

    a recruiter, working in New York City. Scott was bom that year at a little

    Catholic hospital. It was a normal birth and, at first, Scott appeared to

    be a normal, healthy baby.

    The day after he was bom, when Coburn went to visit, Liz said Scott had not

    been brought in for his feeding that Morning. At the time Coburn took no

    notice. A few minutes later a woman came in and said: "Here are the

    pictures of your baby."

    "I don't remember any pictures being taken," Liz said. The woman showed her

    the photographs. "No, that's not my baby."

88 Ken Follett

    The woman looked confused for a moment, then said: "Oh! That's right, yours

    is the one that's got the problem."

It was the first Coburn and Liz had heard of any problem.

    Coburn went to see the day-old Scott, and had a terrible shock. The baby

    was in an oxygen tent, gasping for air, and as blue as a pair of jeans. The

    doctors were in consultation about him.

    Liz became almost hysterical, and Coburn called their family doctor and

    asked him to come to the hospital. Then he waited.

    Something wasn't stacking up right. What kind of a hospital was it where

    they didn't tell you your newborn baby was dying? Coburn became distraught.

    He called Dallas and asked for his boss, Gary Griggs. "Gary, I don't know

    why I'm calling you, but I don't know what to do." And he explained.

"Hold the phone," said Griggs

A moment later there was an unfamiliar voice on the line. 'Jay? 11

    'Yes.

"This is Ross Perot."

    Coburn had met Perot two or three times, but had never worked directly for

    him. Coburn wondered whether Perot even remembered what he looked like; EDS

    had more than a thousand employees at that time.

"Hello, Ross."

    "Now, Jay, I need some information." Perot started asking questions: What

    was the address of the hospital? What were the doctors' names? What was

    their diagnosis? As he answered, Coburn was thinking bemusedly: does Perot

    even know who I am?

    "Hold on a minute, Jay." There was a short silence. "I'm going to connect

    you with Dr. Urschel, a close friend of mine and a leading cardiac surgeon

    here in Dallas." A moment later Coburn was answering more questions from

    the doctor.

    "Don't you do a thing," Urschel finished. "I'm going to talk to the doctors

    on that staff. You just stay by the phone so we can get back in touch with

    you."

"Yes, sir," said Coburn dazedly.

    Perot came back on the line. "Did you get all that? How's Liz doing?"

Coburn thought: How the hell does he know my wife's name?

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 89

"Not too well," Coburn answered. "Her doctor's here and he's given her some

sedation . - - "

    While Perot was soothing Coburn, Dr. Urschel was animating the hospital

    staff. He persuaded them to move Scott to New York University Medical

    Center. Minutes later, Scott and Coburn were in an ambulance on the way to

    the city.

They got stuck in a traffic jam in the Midtown Tunnel.

    Coburn got out of the ambulance, ran more than a mile to the toll gate, and

    persuaded an official to hold up all lanes of traffic except the one the

    ambulance was in.

    When they reached New York University Medical Center there were ten or

    fifteen people waiting outside for them. Among them was the leading

    cardiovascular surgeon on the East Coast, who had been flown in from Boston

    in the time it had taken the ambulance to reach Manhattan.

    As baby Scott was rushed inside, Coburn handed over the envelope of X rays

    he had brought from the other hospital. A woman doctor glanced at them.

    "Where are the rest?"

"That's all," Coburn replied.

"That's all they took?"

    New X rays revealed that, as well as a hole in the heart, Scott had

    pneumonia. When the pneumonia was treated, the heart condition came under

    control.

    And Scott survived. He turned into a soccer-playing, treeclimbing,

    creek-wading, thoroughly healthy little boy. And Coburn began to understand

    the way people felt about Ross Perot.

    Perot's single-mindedness, his ability to focus narrowly on one thing and

    shut out distractions until he got the job done, had its disagreeable side.

    He could wound people. A day or two after Paul and Bill were arrested, he

    had walked into an office where Coburn was talking on the phone to Lloyd

    Briggs in Tehran. It had sounded to Perot as though Coburn was giving

    instructions, and Perot believed strongly that people in the head office

    should not give orders to those out there on the battlefield who knew the

    situation best. He had given Coburn a merciless telling-off in front of a

    room full of people.

    Perot had other blind spots. When Coburn had worked in recruiting, each

    year the company had named someone "Recruiter of the Year. " The names of

    the winners were engraved on a plaque. The list went back years, and in

    time some of the winners left the company. When that happened Perot wanted

    to erase their names from the plaque. Coburn thought that was

90 Ken Folleu

weird. So the guy left the company--w what? He had been Recruiter of the

Year, one year, and why try to change history? It was almost as if Perot

took it as a personal insult that someone should want to work elsewhere.

    Perot's faults were of a piece with his virtues. His peculiar attitude

    toward people who left the company was the obverse of his intense loyalty

    to his employees. His occasional unfeeling harshness was just part of the

    incredible energy and determination without which he would never have

    created EDS. Coburn found it easy to forgive Perot's shortcomings.

He had only to look at Scott.

-hft. Perot?" Sally called. "It's Henry Kissinger."

    Perot's heart missed a beat. Could Kissinger and Zahedi have done it in the

    last twenty-four hours? Or was he calling to say he had faded?

"Ross Perot."

"Hold the line for Henry Kissinger, please."

    A moment later Perot heard the familiar guttural accent. "Hello, Ross?"

"Yes." Perot held his breath.

    "I have been assured that your men will be released tomorrow at ten A.M.,

    Tehran time."

    Perot let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. "Dr. Kissinger, that's

    just about the best news I've heard since I don't know when. I can't thank

    you enough."

    "The details are to be finalized today by U.S. Embassy officials and the

    Iranian Foreign Ministry, but this is a formality: I have been advised that

    your men will be released."

:'It's just great. We sure appreciate your help."

'You're welcome."

It was nine-thirty in the morning in Tehran, midnight in Dallas. Perot sat

in his office, waiting. Most of his colleagues had gone home, to sleep in a

bed for a change, happy in the knowledge that by the time they woke up, Paul

and Bill would be fkee. Perot was staying at the office to see it through to

the end.

    In Tehran, Lloyd Briggs was at the Bucharest office, and one of the hanian

    employees was outside the jail. As soon as Paul and Bill appeared, the

    Iranian would call Bucharest and Briggs would call Perot.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 91

    Now that the crisis was almost over, Perot had time to wonder where he had

    gone wrong. One mistake occurred to him immediately. When he had decided,

    on December 4, to evacuate all his staff from Iran, he had not been

    determined enough and he had let others drag their feet and raise

    objections until it was too late.

    But the big mistake had been doing business in Iran in the first place.

    With hindsight he could see that. At the time, he had agreed with his

    marketing people--and with many other American businessmen--that oil-rich,

    stable, Westem-oriented Iran presented excellent opportunities. He had not

    perceived the strains beneath the surface, he knew nothing about the

    AyatoUah Khomeini, and he had not foreseen that one day there would be a

    President naive enough to try to impose American beliefs and standards on

    a Middle Eastern country.

    He looked at his watch. It was half past midnight. Paul and Bill should be

    walking out of that jail right now.

    Kissinger's good news had been confirmed by a phone call from David Newsom,

    Cy Vance's deputy at the State Department. And Paul and Bill were getting

    out not a moment too soon. The news from Iran had been bad again today.

    Bakhtiar, the Shah's new Prime Minister, had been rejected by the National

    Front, the party that was now seen as the moderate opposition. The Shah had

    announced that he might take a vacation. William Sullivan, the American

    Ambassador, had advised the dependents of all Americans working in Iran to

    go home, and the embassies of Canada and Britain had followed suit. But the

    strike had closed the airport, and hundreds of women and children were

    stranded. However, Paul and Bill would not be stranded. Perot had had good

    friends at the Pentagon ever since the POW campaign: Paul and Bill would be

    flown out on a U.S. Air Forcejet.

    At one o'clock Perot called Tehran. There was no news. Well, he thought,

    everyone says the Iranians have no sense of time.

    The irony of this whole thing was that EDS had never paid bribes, in Iran

    or anywhere else. Perot hated the idea of bribery. EDS's code of conduct

    was set out in a twelve-page booklet given to every new employee. Perot had

    written it himself. "Be aware that federal law and the laws of most states

    prohibit giving anything of value to a goverm-nent official with the intent

    to influence any official act ... Since the absence of such intent might be

    difficult to prove, neither money nor anything of value should be given to

    a federal, state, or foreign government official

92 Ken FoUeu

... A determination that a payment or practice is not forbidden by law does

not conclude the analysis . . . It is always appropriate to make further

inquiry into the ethics ... Could you do business in complete trust with

someone who acts the way you do? The answer must be YES. - The last page of

the booklet was a form that the employee had to sip, acknowledging that he

had received and read the code.

    When EDS first went to Iran, Perot's puritan principles had been reinforced

    by the Lockheed scandal. Daniel J. Haughton, chairman of the Lockheed

    Aircraft Corporation, had admitted to a Senate committee that Lockheed

    routinely paid millions of dollars in bribes to sell its planes abroad. His

    testimony had been an embarrassing performance that dispsted Perot:

    wriggling on his seat, Haughton had told the committee that the payments

    were not bribes but "kickbacks. - Subsequently the Foreign Corrupt

    Practices Act made it an offense under U.S. law to pay bribes in foreign

    countries.

    Perot had called in lawyer Tom Luce and made him personally responsible for

    ensuring that EDS never paid bribes. During the negotiation of the Ministry

    of Health contract in Iran, Luce had offended not a few EDS executives by

    the thoroughness and persistence with which he had cross-examined them

    about the propriety of their dealings.

    Perot was not hungry for business. He was already making millions. He did

    not need to expand abroad. If you have to pay bribes to do business there,

    he had said, why, we just won't do business there.

    His business principles were deeply ingrained. His ancestors were Frenchmen

    who came to New Orleans and set up trading posts along the Red River. His

    father, Gabriel Ross Perot, had been a cotton broker. The trade was

    seasonal, and Ross Senior had spent a lot of time with his son, often

    talking about business. "There's no point in buying cotton from a farmer

    once, - he would say. "You have to beat him fairly, earn his trust, and

    develop a relationship with him, so that he'll be happy to sell you his

    cotton year after year. Then you're doing business.

Bribery just did not fit in there.

    At one-thirty Perot called the EDS office in Tehran again. SUB there was no

    news. "Call the jail, or send somebody down there," he said. "Find out when

    they're getting out."

He was beginning to feel uneasy.

What will I do if this doesn't work out? he thought. If I put up

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 93

the bail, I'll have spent thirteen million dollars and still Paul and Bill

will be forbidden to leave Iran. Other ways of getting them out using the

legal system came up against the obstacle raised by the Iranian lawyers-4hat

the case was political, which seemed to mean that Paul's and Bill's