The Corps had a—maybe unwritten—policy that if you were reduced in grade, you were transferred, and that had seen them sent to Japan, where he had been a junior intelligence officer on the staff of the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers.
There, after a year or so, things had really gone wrong. He had come across what he believed to be compelling evidence that the North Koreans were going to invade the south. He'd worked long and hard to put it down on paper, and then turned it in to the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters.
First, he got a "well done."
Then the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, called him back in and said, in effect, (1) "McCoy, you have never written an intelligence analysis of any kind regarding North Korean intentions, and certainly not one that had concluded 'war is inevitable,' " and (2) "Start packing. The Marine Corps has no further need of your services as a commissioned officer, and you will be separated from the Naval Service 1 July 1950. It will be determined later at what enlisted grade you may reenlist in the service if you desire to do so."
So far as Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, was concerned, McCoy's "war is coming" analysis no longer existed. Worse, it never had. All copies, McCoy was informed, had been destroyed.
McCoy found out why:
Major General Charles A. Willoughby, the Supreme Commander's intelligence officer, had just informed General MacArthur that there was absolutely no indication that the North Koreans had hostile intentions, and in any event their armed forces were incapable of doing anything more than causing mischief along the 38th Parallel. He did not want his judgment questioned by a lowly Marine captain.
When he had told Ernie he was getting the boot, Ernie had told him she wouldn't mind being a sergeant's wife.
He had realized then that it was his turn to make a few sacrifices.
What the hell, I might even like selling toothpaste and deodorant for American Personal Pharmaceuticals.
Once he had made that decision, there was one more decision to make, a big one. The Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, was wrong. All of the copies of McCoy's analysis had not been destroyed. He had his own copy of his analysis, his last draft before he had typed the whole thing over again before turning it in. He could not bring himself to either forget it or burn it.
After thinking hard and long, and fully aware that doing so could—probably would—see him facing a court-martial, he had given his draft copy of his analysis to Fleming Pickering.
Pickering was no longer a brigadier general and had no security clearance, and the Office of Strategic Services in which they had served in World War II no longer even existed. But he figured that Pickering could probably get the document into the hands of somebody who should have his information.
Whistling in the wind, he had told himself that the Corps might have a hard time court-martialing a civilian for the unlawful disclosure of a Top Secret document that wasn't supposed to ever have existed.
On his final, delay-en-route leave before reporting to Camp Pendleton for separation, he had been offered a civilian job he thought he might even really like, helping to develop an island off the coast of South Carolina as a retirement area.
It was the idea of Colonel Ed Banning, USMC, who was about to retire himself. Zimmerman, then stationed at Parris Island, had been enlisted in the project. He, like McCoy, had worked for Banning throughout World War II. As he and Ernie drove across the country to California, the idea of working with Colonel Banning and Ernie sounded like a hell of a better way than spending his life selling toothpaste and deodorant.
Orders were waiting for him when he reported into Camp Pendleton the night of 1 July 1950, but not the Thank you for your service, and don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out ones he expected, which would have ordered him to his home of official record.
Eight hours after reporting into Camp Pendleton—early the next morning— he had found himself sitting in the backseat of an Air Force F-94 taking off from Naval Air Station Miramar. He was traveling on orders bearing the code of the highest priority in the Armed Forces: DP. It stood for "By Direction of the President."
In Washington, he found out what had happened to the analysis he couldn't bring himself to burn.
Pickering had taken it to Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencoetter, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had taken the place of the OSS. Hillencoetter had told Fleming Pickering that he didn't believe the analysis, but— Pickering had come to his office accompanied by Senator Richardson K. Fowler, and Pickering had been the Assistant Director of the OSS for Asia—he said he would look into it.
Before that could happen, the North Koreans invaded South Korea.
When President Harry S Truman had demanded of Admiral Hillencoetter, in effect, "You mean to tell me you had absolutely no idea the North Koreans were going to do this?" the admiral had replied that there was one thing, and told him that the World War II Director of the OSS for Asia, the shipping magnate Fleming Pickering, had come to his office with Senator Fowler carrying an analysis written by a Marine captain predicting the North Korean invasion was inevitable.
The President had had some trouble getting Pickering on the telephone in the penthouse of the Foster San Franciscan Hotel on Nob Hill.
When the operator said, "General Pickering, please, the President is calling," it had been difficult to convince Mrs. Patricia Pickering that it wasn't one of her husband's drinking buddies thinking he was clever.
But eventually the President got through, and shortly thereafter—after a cross-country flight in an F-94—Pickering found himself facing the President of the United States in the Foster Lafayette hotel suite of his friend, and Truman's bitter political enemy, Senator Richardson K. Fowler, Republican of California.
After first demanding of the President that he give his word that no harm would come to Captain McCoy for his having turned his analysis over to him, Pickering told the President as much as he knew.
When he had finished, the President said, in effect, "I gave you my word because I wanted to, not because I had to."
Then he picked up the telephone, asked to be connected with the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and when, in less than sixty seconds, that officer came on the line, said, "This is the President, General. I understand you're acquainted with Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMC Reserve?"
There was a very short pause while the Commandant said, "Yes, sir."
'Please cause the necessary orders to be issued calling the general to active service for an indefinite period, effective immediately, and further placing him on duty with the Central Intelligence Agency," Truman ordered. "It won't be necessary to notify him; he's with me now."
The President had hung up and then turned to General Pickering.
"So far as this Captain McCoy is concerned, I've ordered that he be brought here as soon as he can be located. I want to see him myself."
Within days, Brigadier General Pickering, Captain McCoy, and Master Gunner Zimmerman were on a plane for Tokyo. The President had told Admiral Hillencoetter it was pretty obvious to him that a very good way to find out what had gone wrong with CIA intelligence-gathering procedures in the Far East—and to make sure the situation was corrected—was to send the man who'd run Far Eastern Operations for the OSS during World War II back over there.
General Pickering was named Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia.
This time Ernie had not sat dutifully and docilely at home while her husband went to war. They had been in Tokyo only a few days when there was a message saying Mrs. Kenneth McCoy would arrive in Tokyo aboard Trans-Global Airways Flight 4344 at ten the next morning.