Bodyguards and personal security - 2 November 1984

It must be five years ago, at least, that a consul general from a foreign country came up to call on me on some small matter, having to do, I recall, with tourists and tourism.

The title, "Consul General" is so grand that it almost spoils this story by inflating the importance of a very offhand social visit. This man was young, agreeable and admitted low down in the hierarchy of the diplomatic corps in this country. Since his own country was small, remote, unaligned and it was, it is, so far removed both in geography and in power from the big and little squabblers among the nations of the world, that you’d have assumed he could go anywhere, at any time, in personal safety.

Just as we were settling down to a drink and a friendly talk, I heard a shuffling sound in the hall outside the entrance door of my apartment. Such a sound is always followed by the closing door of the only other apartment on my floor, or by the clicking of the lift door; in other words, it signifies that our only neighbour is going in or going down. But no doors slammed and the shuffling sound persisted. It was followed by a cough or two. "I think," I said "there is somebody at the door," and I got up to investigate, "Oh that's all right," said the consul, "I should have told you, he’s my man."

His "man" was his bodyguard. And when I raised an eyebrow the consul said, in a weary way, "That's the way it is these days, I had been posted to Europe and Asia for over 20 years, and gone everywhere by myself, usually in my own car. But now, just on the daily drive to and from home, we have to have a man along. It's grotesque isn’t it, but it’s become routine."

Well, so it has, and even the people who do no more than watch television have come to count, with increasing regret down the years, the increasing precautions for human safety adopted in alarm by some Asian and African governments, and with reluctance by most of the western nations.

I think that the first shock to my innocence came almost 20 years ago when my wife and I were off for several months on a trip around the world. It was a holiday, but no inquisitive journalist ever knowingly takes a holiday, and I made no protest when, an old friend, a retired ambassador and by then, a grandee of the foreign office, said that if I was interested, Her Majesty’s official representatives would be on hand to enlighten and instruct me, as he put it, anywhere between London and Honolulu.

I no sooner, had his cordial offer by cable from London then the phone rang and it was the voice of the press officer at the White House. The president, he wanted to assure me, would like to see me at the end of the trip, and if, at the meantime, there is any help we can give you, be sure to let us know. I was afflicted by an impulse of mischief – which is not a bad impulse in a journalist. I replied, "Ah, that's very kind, but have no fear, so and so, naming the old ambassador, has been good enough to open all the doors – the British doors – all along the way." "Fine, fine," said the press officer.

I pretty well knew then what might happen next, and tapped my teeth and looked at my watch, like the starter in a foot race. Sure enough, within three minutes the phone rang again and this time, it was no press officer, it was a very recognisable voice that had never left Texas, though its owner had been in Washington, for 30 years or more. "I want you to know," it said, that we are interested in this trip, and I have told the protocol men at the state department to see to it. That our people will be looking out for you, every step of the way, God bless and keep you." Anybody who was alive and sentient 20 years ago won’t need to be told about the identity of that White House occupant who was larger than life, blew his nose with a handkerchief the size of a tablecloth, trotted towards you like a rogue elephant and greeted friend or foe, as a long-lost brother.

I put in this unforgettable episode which is not strictly relevant to what happened in Japan because, it was for me at any rate, a fascinating historical footnote to the time when world power was passing, or had passed, from Great Britain to the United States. I was surely no great figure in the world of diplomacy but old LBJ was not going to let even one roving journalist get things wrong. I mean, the word that the British in all those foreign capitals were willing to instruct me about how the world turns was enough to prompt a passing anxiety that I might be seduced by a British view of things.

So it happened that I had a very enlightening holiday. I would pay my respects to the resident British ambassador or minister or whoever, and then to the American, and what was most instructive was to see how the official attitudes of both countries have changed places. Thirty years before, if a curious journalist went abroad, he would get the official view of things from the British who were the ones with vital interest to protect around half the world.

If the journalist then wanted to learn more, to get a different, not necessarily a contradictory view, he would trot along to the Americans. They had no vital interests and the best of them – nearly always with Americans the Korea men – were observers, more than less neutrals, with no axe to grind. In 1965, it was the other way round. Now, the Americans were carrying the ball, boisterously sometimes; in many places, unwillingly. And they were beginning to pay one price of power, by having their embassies harassed by protesters in Cairo shortly before I got there, the library of the embassy had been burnt to the ground.

Very often the American story was one you’d expect to hear from the foreigner with the big stake to protect, on the other hand and very often, the resident British expert was a man who had been in the Middle East, say, for 20 or 30 years, and was able quite dispassionately to tell you that the domestic balance of power between the warring factions was nothing so simple as an overseas clash between capitalism and Communism.

Well, end of historical footnote, we’d gone the European way round, starting in London, on to the continent and then to Africa, and the Middle East and India, and so on to Japan. We came into Tokyo on a spring evening, and as the engine stopped, we heard a great soprano roar coming from the terrace of the airport building.

There must have been several thousand young people, girls mostly, a huge congregation of dolls, bobbing and squeaking, and waving little flags. I happen to know that just about then, or a little later in the evening anyway, President Johnson’s national security advisor was arriving to do a series of speeches in Tokyo. Surely these enchanting dolls were not there to greet him? They weren’t. To my shame, mild shame, I learned that on our very plane which was coming in from Hong Kong, the half-dozen or so shaggy-haired young men in tight worn jeans and cowboy boots who I’d spotted lolling around up in first class were none other than a rock band of international fame, of world-wide popularity except with me.

When we got through customs there was a car waiting for us, an official car with a tiny American flag drooping on the tip of the radiator. A minister, or somesuch, came forward to welcome us, and, as we were stowing our bags, the young Japanese of student age, came swiftly to my side. He had his arms folded with his hands inside his jacket. He bowed to me and, with the most ingratiating smile and arising inflexion said, "Mr Rostow, I believe?" I looked blank long enough for him to apologise, and retreat with more bows. "No," I said, "I am not Mr Rostow."

The minister, bundled us into the car. "That was odd," I said. "Worse than odd," said the minister, "it might have been a close call." I didn’t know what that meant, and I said nothing. A day or two later we were invited to dine with the American ambassador, a man I very much wanted to meet, famous scholar with a lifelong experience of Japan, who had followed in his father’s footsteps as one of the world’s most notable experts in the Japanese language.

It was twilight when we arrived at his house, and since it was the staffs' day off, the ambassador himself came to the door, and peered, for a second or two, round it before he opened it. He smiled, greeted us and apologised for his, maybe strange wariness. He was not in the best of health, though he didn’t say so, and had too much dignity to explain. But I learned later that several months before, on just such an evening, the staffs' day off, he had gone to the door, faced a similarly courteous student, who said simply, "Ambassador Reischauer?" "Yes." The student immediately flashed a knife and ripped it through the ambassador’s stomach.

By the way, Mr Walt Rastow did arrive on the evening of our flight but there were so many street parades and near riots in protest against his presence and threats of one sort or another, that he had to cancel most of his scheduled speeches.

Well, since then, we have seen most government and diplomatic buildings fitted up with closed-circuit television, electronic beams at airports and many public buildings. All visitors, even the most distinguished, checked at embassies and at the White House, the tourists gathered there every morning for a tour of the elegant state rooms.

I wonder how long that will go on, how many more state funerals? Outside the White House they have erected concrete barriers, secret service staff and bodyguards, greatly increased, walkie talkies carried by them everywhere. When President Reagan came into New York a few weeks ago to speak at a public dinner, the entire 22-mile route from Kennedy Airport to his midtown hotel was cleared, and the city avenues barricaded with the result – a massive traffic jam across the town on the west side that took five hours to come unstuck.

In this country, I think the assassination of President Kennedy was the turning point; abroad, the murder of the American marines in Beirut, a terrible close call for Mrs Thatcher; now, Mrs Ghandi. We are all appalled, outraged, saddened, but we are as impotent as Justice Holmes who, long ago, ruling on the first wire-tapping case to come before the Supreme Court, concluded that wire trapping is a dirty business, and he let it go at that.

The grim new stage in terrorism is the emergence of people who do not kill for money, or a cause, and then run, but who willingly give their own lives in the act. This is the new terror that governments are going to have to cope with.

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