◆ SpookStack

sure that it.was wise to try to bring her to the United States. Well, I said to him on the telephone that I was afraid it was too late for that, that I believed that she had already left New Delhi. In any event, when I hung up the telephone, I asked our communicators to open up a line to1 I I I t o find out if in fact she hLd left. It turns ' out that the plane on which she was riding had developed hydraulic trouble, and had been held up at the New Delhi airport, and was scheduled to 1eave.at , ~ > 3 - . any time. So I must say that on that occasion--and this is something that I have never admitted to before, but I might as well be honest about it with history. I told them to keep the line open and to keep talking back and forth among communicators. In other words, I was using my authority as Director to tell the head of Communications downstairs to keep that line open so that the minute the plane took off I would be notified of it. And then I just stalled. In other words, rather than calling the Secretary of State back and saying "no, the plane hasn't left and we can stop it" and so forth, I just stalled because I thought he was making the wrong decision. I felt that in the circumstances it was important to get her out of India. In short, he and I disagreed and since he was not my boss--although I was bound obviously as Director to take into consideration his wishes, 20