TOP SECRET
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY
WASHINGTON
VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA
EYES ONLY BRIG GEN F. W. PICKERING, USMCR (TIME TIME TIME) 17 NOVEMBER 1942
FOLLOWING PERSONAL FROM SECNAV FOR BRIG GEN PICKERING
DEAR FLEMING:
I JUST CAME FROM A MEETING WITH ADMIRAL LEAHY AND COLONEL DONOVAN OF THE OSS IN WHICH THE SUBJECTS OF EVALUATING FERTIG’S GUERRILLA OPERATION AND ITS POTENTIAL AND OSS OPERATIONS IN MACARTHUR’S SWPOA CAME UP. I BELIEVE THE MEETING WAS HELD WITH EITHER THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PRESIDENT OR AT HIS DIRECTION.
COLONEL DONOVAN, WHOSE DETAILED KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR OPERATION CAME FROM BOTH HIS OWN SOURCES AND FROM ADMIRAL LEAHY, PROPOSED THE FOLLOWING AS A MEANS TO OVERCOME GENERAL MACARTHUR’S RELUCTANCE TO ACCEPT OSS SERVICES.
HE WILL DETAIL TWO USMC OFFICERS PRESENTLY SECONDED TO THE OSS TO MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS TO PARTICIPATE, UNDER YOUR COMMAND, IN THE MISSION TO FERTIG. DONOVAN SAYS BOTH AGENTS, A MAJOR AND A CAPTAIN, ARE HIGHLY TRAINED IN THIS SORT OF THING. HE MADE THE POINT THAT DESPITE YOUR HIGH REGARD FOR LIEUTENANT MCCOY, GIVING A YOUNG JUNIOR OFFICER THAT LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY IS ASKING A GOOD DEAL OF HIM. DONOVAN’S AGENTS WILL NOT REVEAL THEIR OSS CONNECTION UNLESS AND UNTIL THE MISSION TO FERTIG PROVES SUCCESSFUL. HAD YOU BEEN ABLE TO MAKE PROGRESS WITH MACARTHUR VIS-A-VIS SWPOA AND THE OSS AND/ OR HAD COLONEL STECKER BEEN AVAILABLE, OR SOME OTHER SENIOR OFFICER, I MIGHT HAVE DECLINED DONOVAN’S OFFER TO HELP.
ONCE I AGREED TO IT, LEAHY VOLUNTEERED TO SEND A SPECIAL CHANNEL PERSONAL TO NIMITZ GUARANTEEING A SUBMARINE WHEN AND WHERE YOU NEED IT. HAUGHTON WILL COORDINATE TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS, ETCETERA, VIS-A-VIS DONOVAN’S PEOPLE, WHO WILL REPORT TO RICKABEE TOMORROW.
BEST PERSONAL REGARDS
FRANK
END PERSONAL SECNAV TO BRIG GEN PICKERING
HAUGHTON CAPT USN ADMIN ASST TO SECNAV
TOP SECRET
Haughton read it, then glanced at his watch, crossed out TIME TIME TIME, wrote in 2110, and handed it back to Chief Hansen.
“Is he still here?”
“He was when he gave me that, Sir.”
Haughton picked up a telephone, which automatically rang a similar instrument on Secretary Knox’s desk.
“That Special Channel looks fine, Mr. Secretary,” he said when Knox picked up. “May I show it to Colonel Rickabee?”
Chief Hansen could not hear the Secretary’s reply.
“Have it sent,” Haughton ordered. “But bring that back. I’ll take care of burning it.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
Haughton reached for another of the telephones on his desk and dialed a number from memory. It was answered on the second ring.
“Liberty 7-2033.”
Although he suspected Rickabee had good reasons for ordering the telephones at the Office of Management Analysis answered in that manner, Haughton was always annoyed when he heard the recitation of the number.
“Captain Haughton for Colonel Rickabee.”
“Sorry, Sir, the Colonel is not available at this time.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, Sir, I am not permitted to give out that information.”
“Do you recognize my name?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Get in touch with Colonel Rickabee and have him call me. I’m in my office.”
“Has the Colonel your number, Sir?”
“I think he does,” Haughton said icily, and hung up.
The private line on Haughton’s desk rang not more than two minutes later.
“Captain Haughton.”
“What’s on your mind, David?” Rickabee’s dry, emotionless voice asked.
“Something’s come up. The sooner we get together, the better.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Would it be convenient for you to come here?”
“Frankly, no.”
“Well, then, where are you?”
“At the Foster Lafayette. General Pickering’s suite.”
“May I come there?”
“Of course. Banning and Sessions are with me. Will that pose any problems?”
“No. And it will probably spare you having to tell them what this is all about. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
There was a click, and then a dial tone.
Haughton held the telephone handset in his hand, staring at it in amazement and some annoyance, before placing it in its cradle.
“Colonel Fritz Rickabee, USMC,” Haughton said aloud, shaking his head, “having decided that nothing else need be said, hung up.”
He picked up the direct line to Knox’s desk, intending to ask if the Secretary required anything else of him before he left the office, but there was no answer. Secretary Knox had gone home.
He waited four or five minutes for Chief Hansen to return from the cryptography room with the original of Knox’s message, told him “Thank you, Chief, and go home,” and then folded the message in thirds and put it in his shirt pocket.
Then, feeling a little foolish, he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a Colt .380 automatic pistol, and, somewhat awkwardly, slipped it into a leather holster on his trouser’s belt.
Colonel Rickabee read Frank Knox’s Special Channel Personal to Pickering, made a wry face, which could have meant contempt or resignation, and then asked with a raised eyebrow and tilt of his head if he could give it to Banning and Sessions. Haughton gestured with a wave of his hand that he could.
Rickabee knew that something like this would inevitably happen; he had, in fact, seen it coming when the President sent Pickering back to Australia to plead Donovan’s case for the OSS to MacArthur.
Rickabee had long ago come to understand that everything in Washington was politics. This meant compromise, sometimes reasonable, sometimes not, between powerful people with different agendas, sometimes noble, sometimes not, and sometimes—as in this case—based on nothing more than personal or professional egos.
Rickabee knew Donovan, and respected him. And he was convinced that Donovan knew as well as he did that the role the Office of Strategic Services envisioned for Europe—which in Rickabee’s professional opinion was going to work—simply would not work in the Pacific.
It was relatively easy to parachute agents into France, or Norway, or any of the other countries now occupied by the Germans. Most of the agents would be natives of those countries. They would be fluent in the language, know the country, and have contacts inside the country willing to risk their lives to further the liberation of their countries. Furnished with excellent forged identity documents, an agent fluent in the language could relatively easily lose himself in a sea of other white faces.
The situation in the Pacific was different. A white face seen anywhere in territory occupied by the Japanese would stand out like a flashing lighthouse in a sea of yellow and brown faces, and would be immediately suspect. The English who had been in Singapore and Hong Kong were now in prison camps. So were the Dutch who had been in the Dutch East Indies; and, for that matter, most of the French in French Indochina—the exception being those who could prove their loyalty to Marshal Pétain’s German allied government in Vichy.
Rickabee knew the story of Captain Ralph Fralick, who had been commissioned with Fertig in the Philippines. Fralick blew up bridges, railroads, and supply depots in the face of the advancing Japanese on Luzon; and then, rather than surrender, made an incredible journey from Luzon to Hanoi in French Indochina in a fifty-foot boat. On landing in Hanoi, Fralick lined up his forty men and marched them off to report to the French authorities. Salutes were exchanged, and then the French turned Fralick and his men over to the Japanese.
For most of the people in territory now occupied by the Japanese, there would be very little profit in risking one’s life, and the lives of one’s family, to fight the Japanese . . . especially when t
he result would not be liberation from occupation, but simply the reinstallation of the British or the Dutch or the French as colonial.masters.
There was an exception to this analysis—in Intelligence, there was always an exception—and that of course was the Philippines. Most Filipinos did not hate the Americans who had been running their country since they took it away from the Spanish at the turn of the century. The Filipinos believed—because it happened to be true—that the United States really intended to give their country independence as soon as possible. The Philippine Army fought with great valor against the Japanese invaders, and when further resistance was impossible, they went with their American comrades-in-arms into prison camps.
Meanwhile, the Japanese made the same mistake in the Philippines the Germans made in Russia: They treated the native population brutally; and so they lost any chance of cooperation—or at least docile acceptance of the occupation.
Consequently, American agents sent into the Philippines would have a reasonable chance of obtaining all sorts of assistance from the Filipinos.
But getting them there was going to be a problem, and so was logistics. (Mindanao, closest to Australia, was not the hour or so’s flight time away that France and Scandinavia were from American bases in England.) Still, something could be done in the Philippines, and Donovan knew it could.
But that wasn’t Donovan’s only motive in pushing so hard to be included in Pickering’s mission to Fertig, Rickabee believed. He wanted the OSS to be involved worldwide. If the OSS was operational only in Europe, that would diminish its stature, and thus the stature of Colonel William J. Donovan.
Donovan was already engaged in a personal ego war with J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. On the one hand, Hoover claimed the FBI had sole responsibility for Intelligence and Counterintelligence in the Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, Donovan claimed the OSS had worldwide responsibility for Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and Special Operations—read sabotage and subversion. And—predictably—Roosevelt had declined to make a decision between the two of them. The result was that FBI and OSS agents in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and even Mexico spent more time fighting each other than harming the German, Italian, and Japanese “Axis.”
In Rickabee’s view, not only was Pickering being used as a pawn in this political war, but as soon as he saw the Special Channel Personal, he would know he was being used, and it would bother him a great deal.
He hoped Pickering wouldn’t do anything foolish. Certainly, Pickering wasn’t a fool, but he was naive in the ways of Washington politics.
Rickabee admired Pickering.
At first, he was willing to admit, his own ego smarted when Frank Knox named Pickering Chief of the Office of Management Analysis. Rickabee had built the organization from scratch over many years, and had run it with some skill and success. He didn’t think he needed the advice, much less the supervision, of an amateur like Pickering. He had no choice, however, but to swallow his resentment—consoling himself with the thought that Pickering’s flag officer’s rank would be useful. In rank-conscious Washington that was important. And Rickabee believed he could control Pickering.
That did not prove necessary. For Pickering immediately made it quite clear that he considered Rickabee the expert, while he himself had some experience in “a situation like this”—being in charge of someone who knew more than he did. Pickering explained how the death of his father had suddenly elevated him to the office of Chairman of the Board of Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation when he was still in his twenties.
“All of sudden, Colonel,” Pickering said, “I found myself giving orders to the Commodore of Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation’s eighty-one-ship fleet, who was not only old enough to be my father, but under whom I had sailed as a second mate.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“You’re not old enough to be my father, Colonel, but I recognize your experience and expertise. So I hope to build the same kind of relationship with you I had with the Commodore.”
It was at that moment Rickabee realized that Pickering understood the subtleties of command.
“While the responsibility for everything that happens is now mine,” Pickering went on, “I am perfectly aware that you’ve been in charge here because you are the most experienced and competent officer available. It would therefore be foolish of me to question your judgment in any but the most extraordinary circumstances.”
At the time, Rickabee wondered if Pickering meant what he was saying, or simply pouring oil on potentially troubling waters. It soon became apparent that Pickering meant what he said.
Pickering rarely questioned any of Rickabee’s decisions, and only once went against his strongly felt advice. In Rickabee’s professional judgment, the effort and the assets required to take Lieutenant Joseph L. Howard, USMC, and Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, USMCR, off Buka could not be militarily justified.
Pickering overrode that logical conclusion on what he admitted were emotional grounds: He had learned in the trenches in France as an eighteen-year-old that Marines did not leave their wounded behind. He ordered the rescue operation.
This episode taught both men something about the weaknesses of the other. Pickering learned that Rickabee was indeed, where necessary, absolutely ruthless. And Rickabee learned that despite the stars on his uniform, Pickering thought like a Marine sergeant.
The confrontation in no way diminished the respect, and the growing affection, they had begun to feel for each other. A Marine officer charged with clandestine intelligence had to be ruthless. And a Marine general officer’s heartfelt concern for the welfare of a junior officer and an enlisted man could hardly be called a character flaw.
“Am I permitted to ask what’s going on around here?” Captain Haughton asked.
The coffee table of General Pickering’s suite was covered with paper. Also covered with paper was a folding card table and something like a typewriter. After a moment he recognized it as an obsolete Device, Cryptographic, M94.
“Well, for the last half hour or so, Banning has been trying to teach Sessions how to use that thing. Sessions is taking it and some other stuff to Brisbane, where he will teach McCoy how to use it. Until we make the first physical contact with Fertig, take him a decent crypto device—which Sessions will also teach McCoy to use—we have a small communications problem: Where does Fertig think McCoy should get off the submarine? When should he get off the submarine?”
“Yeah,” Haughton said thoughtfully. “What other stuff is Sessions taking over there?”
“Banning’s been talking to a Navy psychiatrist—”
“Brilliant man,” Banning interrupted. “He certified me as sane when I came out of the Philippines.”
Haughton chuckled a little nervously, and then Rickabee surprised him.
“That’s true, that’s true,” he said, laughing. “If I’d remembered that, I’d have sent you to another one. Anyway, he’s come up with sort of a checklist, things McCoy should look for to see if Fertig might be off the rails.”
“I also talked to some people who had guerrilla, counter-guerrilla, experience in the Banana Republics,” Banning said. “They came up with some material, organizational material, McCoy’s going to offer to Fertig.”
“How are you going to handle the problem of getting McCoy . . . McCoy and the others ashore and in contact with Fertig?” Haughton asked.
“Well, in the final analysis, that’s up to McCoy. What I’m going to recommend is that shortly before we send McCoy and Zimmerman ashore, we will send Fertig a vague message saying to expect visitors—”
“You heard that the Secretary told General Holcomb to arrange that transfer?” Haughton interrupted.
Banning nodded, and went on:
“—to make contact with Fertig. When that’s done, Fertig will contact the submarine, which will be lying off shore, with a new code McCoy will have (who’ll also have a new crypto device, of course); and he can set up a place where the supplies
and gold can be off-loaded from the sub. How they’ll get out, and when, is still up in the air.”
Haughton nodded.
“Maybe these OSS people will have some ideas,” Banning said. “We get them tomorrow?”
“First thing tomorrow morning.”
“There may be some trouble getting them over there,” Rickabee said. “We laid on only one AAAAA priority, for Sessions. Now we’ll need three.”
“If you have any trouble, let me know.”
“I will,” Rickabee said.
“Who are these people? Have you got names?” Banning asked.
“Yes, I do,” Haughton said. He dug in his pocket and came up with the three-by-five card Colonel Donovan had given Secretary Knox, and which Knox had passed on to him.
“Brownlee, Major James C. III,” he read, “and Macklin, Captain Robert B.”
“What was that second name?” Banning asked, incredulously.
“Macklin, Captain Robert B.”
“I don’t believe this,” Banning said.
“You know him?”
“If it’s the same guy—and I don’t think there’s that many Marine officers around named Macklin—yeah, I know him,” Banning said. “I sent him home from China with an efficiency report, endorsed by Chesty Puller, that should have seen the sonofabitch kicked out of The Corps.”
“Tell me about him,” Rickabee said coldly.
Banning delivered a sixty-second precis of the multiple character flaws of Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC. “I wonder what moron promoted the sonofabitch,” he observed bitterly when he was finished.
Rickabee looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Captain Haughton,” he said formally, “if it is determined that the officer in question is indeed the one with whom Major Banning is familiar, it will be necessary to inform Colonel Donovan that he is unacceptable to us.”
Behind the Lines Page 28