On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Perot learned later that almost everything in this story was exaggerated. Simons played the game more than once; it generally took four men to get him out; no one ever had any broken bones. Simons was simply the kind of man about whom legends are told. He earned the loyalty of his men not by displays of bravado but by his skill as a military commander. He was a meticulous, endlessly patient planner; he was cautious--one of his catchphrases was: "That's a risk we don't have to take"; and he took pride in bringing all his men back from a mission alive.

In the Vietnam War Simons had run Operation White Star. He went to Laos with 107 men and organized twelve battalions of Mao tribesmen to fight the Vietnamese. One of the battalions defected to the other side, taking as prisoners some of Simons's Green Berets. Simons took a helicopter and landed inside the stockade where the defecting battalion was. On seeing Simons, the Laotian colonel stepped forward, stood at attention, and saluted. Simons told him to produce the prisoners immediately, or he would call an air strike and destroy the entire battalion. The colonel produced the prisoners. Simons took them away, then called the air strike anyway. Simons had come back from Laos three years later with all his 107 men. Perot had never checked out this legend--he liked it the way it was.

The second time Perot met Simons was after the war. Perot virtually took over a hotel in San Francisco and threw a weekend party for the returning prisoners of war to meet the Son Tay Raiders. It cost Perot a quarter of a million dollars, but it was a hell of a party. Nancy Reagan, Clint Eastwood, and John Wayne came. Perot would never forget the meeting between John Wayne and Bull Simons. Wayne shook Simons's hand with tears in his eyes and said: "You are the man I play in the movies."

Before the ticker-tape parade Perot asked Simons to talk to his Raiders and warn them against reacting to demonstrators. "San Francisco has had more than its share of antiwar demonstrations, " Perot said. "You didn't pick your Raiders for their charm. If one of them gets irritated he might just snap some poor devil's neck and regret it later."

Simons looked at Perot. It was Perot's first experience of The Simons Look. It made you feel as if you were the biggest fool in history. It made you wish you had not spoken. It made you wish the ground would swallow you up.

"I've already talked to them," Simons said. "There won't be a problem."

That weekend and later, Perot got to know Simons better, and saw other sides of his personality. Simons could be very charming, when he chose to be. He enchanted Perot's wife, Margot, and the children thought he was wonderful. With his men he spoke soldiers' language, using a great deal of profanity, but he was surprisingly articulate when talking at a banquet or press conference. His college major had been journalism. Some of his tastes were simple--he read westerns by the boxful, and enjoyed what his sons called "supermarket music"--but he also read a lot of nonfiction, and had a lively curiosity about all sorts of things. He could talk about antiques or history as easily as battles and weaponry.

Perot and Simons, two willful, dominating personalities, got along by giving one another plenty of room. They did not become close friends. Perot never called Simons by his first name, Art (although Margot did). Like most people, Perot never knew what Simons was thinking unless Simons chose to tell him. Perot recalled their first meeting in Fort Bragg. Before getting up to make his speech, Perot had asked Simons's wife, Lucille: "What is Colonel Simons really like?" She had replied: "Oh, he's just a great big teddy bear." Perot repeated this in his speech. The Son Tay Raiders fell apart. Simons never cracked a smile.

Perot did not know whether this impenetrable man would care to rescue two EDS executives from a Persian jail. Was Simons grateful for the San Francisco party? Perhaps. After that party Perot had financed Simons on a trip to Laos to search for MIAs--American soldiers missing in action--who had not come back with the prisoners of war. On his return from Laos, Simons had remarked to a group of EDS executives: "Perot is a hard man to say no to."

As he pulled into Denver Airport. Perot wondered whether, six years later, Simons would still find him a hard man to say no to.

But that contingency was a long way down the line. Perot was going to try everything else first.

He went into the terminal, bought a seat on the next flight to Dallas, and found a phone. He called EDS and spoke to T. J. Marquez, one of his most senior executives, who was known as T. J. rather than Tom because there were so many Toms around EDS. "I want you to go find my passport," he told T. J., "and get me a visa for Iran."

T. J. said: "Ross, I think that's the world's worst idea."