A blue and white U.S. Air Force JetStar from the special White House squadron touched down at San Isidro airbase, 9½ miles east of battle-torn Santo Domingo. In the city's rebel stronghold, one of Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deńó's leftist advisers brightened visibly at the news. "Ah," he asked eagerly, "Johnson has come?"
No. The plane merely carried a top-level, four-man presidential mission (see THE NATION). Practically everyone else was there trying to settle the month-old civil war. But in the fourth week of fighting and maneuvering, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't seem to put the Dominican Republic together again.
The battle raged on—with a rising crescendo that outdid even the first violent days of the revolt launched in the name of deposed President Juan Bosch. What hope there was for a solution came not so much from the diplomatic palaver but from military action. In an all-out attack in the northern part of the city, the suddenly resurgent loyalist forces of Brigadier General Antonio Imbert Barreras dealt a severe blow to the conglomeration of rebellious soldiers, Communist guerrillas and pro-Bosch civilians led by Colonel Caamaño.
Still Another Coalition. The upturn in Imbert's fortunes apparently caught the U.S. by surprise. When Presidential Adviser McGeorge Bundy & Co. flew south early in the week, rumors flooded Santo Domingo that his mission was to bypass Imbert and negotiate a peace with Caamaño's rebels. The U.S. position was still Constitutionalism Sí! Communism No! But the situation seemed to favor Caamaño, sitting cockily in his downtown rebel enclave, refusing to talk with Imbert and sending out snipers to shoot up the city at will. By contrast, Imbert, while he claimed to control most of the country, seemed to have little military strength behind him. Under those circumstances, and desperately striving for peace, the U.S. was prepared to offer a new "broad-based" coalition acceptable to both sides but primarily designed to mollify the non-Communists among the rebels.
The U.S. even had a man: Antonio Guzmán, 54, a prosperous planter and one of the few Dominicans with any claim to neutrality. Guzmán was known as an outspoken antiCommunist, served in Bosch's Administration as Minister of Agriculture. A few days before the Bundy mission to Santo Domingo, Guzmán was secretly flown to Washington for talks with U.S. officials, apparently passed muster, and was flown home again. On its flight to the Dominican Republic, the Bundy mission stopped in Puerto Rico and won Bosch's approval of Guzmán. Rebel Leader Caamaño also agreed to go along. But not Tony Imbert and his embattled loyalist junta.
In his Congressional Palace in the U.S.-guarded International Zone, Imbert snorted that Guzmán was "a Bosch puppet." Imbert refused point-blank to dissolve his own Government of National Reconstruction, argued vehemently that Guzmán would be tantamount to turning the country over to the Communists. Bundy and the others repeatedly pleaded with Imbert to step gracefully aside. Each time the answer was the same. "Why the hell did you bring all those troops here if you weren't going to stop Communism?"