On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett

North Vietnamese were
        overwhelmingly negative.
        During 1970 Perot used less spectacular methods. Small communities all over
        the United States were encouraged to set up their own POW campaigns. They
        raised funds to send people to Paris to badger the North Vietnamese
        delegation there. They organized telethons, and built replicas of the cages
        in which some of the POWs lived. They sent so many protest letters to Hanoi
        that the North Vietnamese postal system collapsed under the strain. Perot
        stumped the country, giving speeches anywhere he was invited. He met with
        North Vietnamese diplomats in Laos, taking with him lists of their
        prisoners held in the south, mail from them, and film of their living
        conditions. He also took a Gallup associate with him, and together they
        went over the results of the poll with the North Vietnamese.
        Some or all of it worked. The treatment of American POWs improved, mail and
        parcels began to get through to them, and the North Vietnamese started to
        release names. Most importantly, the prisoners heard of the campaign-from
        newly captured Amencan soldiers,---and the news boosted their morale
        enormously.
        Eight years later, driving to Denver in the snow, Perot recalled another
        consequence of the campaign; a consequence that had then seemed no more
        than mildly irritating, but could now be important and valuable. Publicity
        for the POWs had meant, inevitably, publicity for Ross Perot. He had become
        nationally known. He would be remembered in the corridors of powerand
        especially in the Pentagon. That Washington monitoring committee had
        included Admiral Tom Moorer, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
        Alexander Haig, then assistant to Kissinger and now the commander in chief
        of NATO forces; William Sullivan, then a Deputy Assistant Secretary of
        State and now U.S. Ambassador to Iran; and Kissinger himself.
        These people would help Perot get inside the government, find out what was
        happening, and promote help fast. He would call Richard Helms, who had in
        the past been both head of the CIA
        ON WINGS OF EAGLES 55
     
    and U.S. Ambassador to Tehran. He would call Kermit Roosevelt, son of Teddy,
    who had been involved in the CIA coup that put the Shah back on the throne
    in 1953 ...
    But what if none of this works? he thought.
    It was his habit to think more than one step ahead.
    What if the Carter administration could not or would not help?
    Then, he thought, I'm going to break them out of jail.
        How would we go about something like that? We've never done anything like
        it. Where would we start? Who could help us?
        He thought of EDS executives Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez and his
        secretary Sally Walther, who had been key organizers of the POW campaign:
        making complex arrangements halfway across the world by phone was meat and
        drink to them, but ... a prison break? And who would staff the mission?
        Since 1968 EDS's recruiters had given priority to Vietnam veterans--a pol-
        icy begun for patriotic reasons and continued when Perot found that the
        vets often made first-class businessmen-but the men who had once been lean,
        fit, highly trained soldiers were now overweight, out-of-condition computer
        executives, more comfortable with a telephone than with a rifle. And who
        would plan and lead the raid?
        Finding the best man for the job was Perot's specialty. Although he was one
        of the most successful self-made men in the history of American capitalism,
        he was not the world's greatest computer expert, or the world's greatest
        salesman, or even the world's greatest business administrator. He did just
        one