YOU WERE WRONG—AS YOU TOLD ME—WHEN YOU DISESTABLISHED THE OSS, AND YOUR APPOINTMENT OF ADMIRAL HILLENCOETTER TO HEAD THE CIA OBVIOUSLY HASN'T WORKED. IF MCCOY HADN'T GONE TO PICKERING AND PICKERING'S FRIENDSHIP WITH SENATOR FOWLER HADN'T GOTTEN HIM IN TO SEE HILLENCOETTER WE WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN THAT THERE WAS INTELLIGENCE SAYING THE :NORTH KOREANS WERE GOING TO ATTACK. AND THAT WOULD HAVE MEANT THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT COULD CLAIM, AND WOULD HAVE CLAIMED, THAT THIS PROVED THE CIA WAS ESSENTIALLY USELESS AND USING UP APPROPRIATIONS THAT THEY' COULD PUT TO BETTER USE.
ROOSEVELT'S AND DONOVAN'S IDEA THAT THERE SHOULD BE A CENTRAL AGENCY FOR INTELLIGENCE NOT SUBORDINATE TO ANYONE IN THE MILITARY WAS A GOOD ONE, EVEN IF THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT IMMEDIATELY PUT THEIR WAGONS IN A CIRCLE TO FIGHT THE OSS, AND HAVE ALREADY STARTED TO DO SO WITH THE CIA.
THE FIRST THING TO DO THEN IS MAKE SURE WALTER BEDELL SMITH UNDERSTANDS THAT HIS TITLE IS "MR. DIRECTOR" AND NOT "GENERAL" AND THAT HE ANSWERS TO NO ONE BUT YOU. IF HE'S TO DO A GOOD JOB, HE HAS TO BE FREE OF THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT AND ITS OLD BOY NETWORK.
THE SECOND THING TO DO IS MAKE SURE THAT INTELLIGENCE GATHERED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, BUT RIGHT NOW ESPECIALLY HERE, GOES DIRECTLY TO WASHINGTON, WHERE IT SHOULD BE EVALUATED BY SMITH AND THEN SENT TO WHOEVER MIGHT HAVE USE FOR IT. IF THAT IS DONE, THE VARIOUS COMMANDS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO IGNORE INTELLIGENCE THAT DOESN'T FIT THEIR AGENDA.
FOR ALL I KNOW, YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY STARTED SOMETHING LIKE THIS. PICKERING, YOU TOLD ME, WAS GOING TO MEET WITH SMITH. I'M SURE PICKERING TOLD HIM HOW HE THINKS IT SHOULD BE DONE, AND HE APPARENTLY DID THAT WELL ENOUGH TO HAVE COME BACK OVER HERE WITH AT LEAST SOME OF THE AUTHORITY HE NEEDS. I HAVE LEARNED THAT HE HAS RELIEVED THE CIA TOKYO STATION CHIEF, WHO WAS BOTH INCOMPETENT AND THOUGHT OF HIMSELF AS A MEMBER OF MACARTHUR'S STAFF. I DON'T KNOW THIS, BUT I SUSPECT PICKERING WILL REPLACE HIM WITH COLONEL BANNING, WHO WORKED FOR HIM IN WAR TWO AND IS HELD IN HIGH REGARD BY MCCOY AND OTHERS. AND WHO WILL WORK FOR PICKERING, THAT IS THE CIA, NOT MACARTHUR.
IN THIS LATTER CONNECTION, I AM VERY IMPRESSED WITH VANDENBURG AND VERY WORRIED THAT WILLOUGHBY WILL TRY— AND PROBABLY SUCCEED—TO GET CONTROL OF HIM. I RECOMMEND THAT YOU ORDER—AS OPPOSED TO SUGGEST—THAT HE BE PLACED ON TDY TO THE CIA AND PLACED UNDER PICKERING.
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BY NOW, HARRY, YOU MUST SENSE THAT MY POSITION IS "A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES." IT IS. YOU MUST ALSO SENSE THAT I HAVE TAKEN SIDES. I HAVE. I REALLY THINK MY USEFULNESS TO YOU HERE IS OVER, AND I RESPECTFULLY REQUEST RELIEF.
PICKERING CAN DO FOR YOU WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING, AND IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE ALL ALONG. AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF YOU ARE ENTITLED TO GET THE FACTS, AND IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE CIA IS WHERE YOU SHOULD GET THEM.
I'M GOING TO SHOW PICKERING THIS BEFORE I SEND IT, LARGELY BECAUSE I WANT HIM TO KNOW WHAT I'M TELLING YOU.
RESPECTFULLY, AND WITH BEST REGARDS TO BESS
RALPH
END PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM GENERAL HOWE
TOP SECRET/PRESIDENTIAL
Pickering raised his eyes to Howe.
"Jesus, Ralph," he said.
"Is there anything in there you disagree with?" Howe asked.
"No," Pickering said simply. "Except you wanting to leave me here to face the lions all by myself."
"I've outlived my usefulness," Howe said. "And I really think you can do anything for the President that I can."
He put out his hand for the message, and when Pickering handed it to him, he turned to Di-san. She was sitting at the keyboard of the decryption machine, her fingers flying over the keys.
As they watched, the electric typewriter section of the machine began to clatter as it typed the now decrypted message.
She waited until it had finished, then ripped the yellow paper from the machine and handed it to Howe.
"Thank you," he said, and handed her his message. "Put the correct date time block on this, please, and send it."
Di-san nodded and turned back to the keyboard.
Howe read the back-channel, then handed it to Pickering.
FROM KELLER
TO ROGERS OR JENNINGS
PASS TO GEN PICKERING ON ARRIVAL: COL HUFF CAME TO IMPERIAL LOOKING FOR HIM. HE FINALLY TOLD ME WHY. MACARTHUR HAD SENT HIM TO TELL THE GENERAL THAT MAJ PICKERING WAS TRANSFERRED FROM THE CARRIER TO THE DESTROYER MANSFIELD AT 1500. MANSFIELD IS EN ROUTE PUSAN, ETA EARLY TOMORROW. MAJ PICKERING WILL BE FLOWN IN HOSPITAL PLANE TO SASEBO, AND THEN ON TO THE NAVY HOSPITAL IN SAN DIEGO. TELL THE GENERAL I THOUGHT ERNIE AND MRS PICKERING WOULD WANT TO KNOW, AND SO I HAVE PASSED THE WORD.
"Well," Howe said, "I guess you'll want to be in Pusan when he gets there."
"I'll have Hart get us seats on the Round Robin in the morning," Pickering said.
"The Beaver's at your disposal, Flem," Howe said. "If you want, you can use that."
"I hadn't thought about that," Pickering replied. "I guess what I could do is leave early, and go to Pusan by way of Socho-Ri. Would that be possible?"
"You could also wait to go to Socho-Ri after you see your boy," Howe said. "Your call, Flem."
"Let's go see what the pilot says," Pickering said, and then had another thought. "Keller didn't mention Jeanette Priestly. I'm sure Pick's lady friend'll want to see him. She's in Wonsan, right? Maybe we could pick her up at the same time."
"I don't know if she's in Wonsan or not," Howe said. "Or, for that matter, where she is."
"Really?" His surprise showed in his voice.
"I know Dunston and McCoy were looking for her, but I never heard where they found her."
"Well, let's go find out," Pickering said. "I think Pick will be far more interested in seeing her than me."
"General," Bill Dunston said a little uncomfortably. "The first thing I did when I got the Killer's Operational Immediate was call the Press Center at Eighth Army Rear in Pusan. They told me they expected her but she hadn't arrived yet. I left word for her to call me the minute she got in."
"And she didn't call?" Pickering said.
"No, she didn't. So—maybe around suppertime—I went there myself. She had been there—they told me they had given her my message, and that she had signed on to the roster for a Gooney Bird flight to Wonsan. They said it was a long roster and she almost certainly wouldn't get out the next day, more likely the day after that. They didn't know where she was. So I called around town, and couldn't find her."
"And you left it there?" Colonel Ed Banning inquired, not pleasantly.
Dunston replied, "You don't know this lady, Banning ..."
Pickering picked up on that—"Banning," not "Colonel"—and thought, Dunstons resentment is starting to show.
". . . she's a free spirit," Dunston went on. "There's no telling where she would be. I figured maybe she arranged her own ride to Wonsan—she doesn't like waiting—and that that had happened in such a way that she didn't have time to call me. Or didn't want to."
"So you stopped looking?" Banning asked.
"What I did, Banning, was get on the horn to Wonsan, specifically to the Capital ROK Division—we have a friend there, a colonel named Pak—and asked him to look for her, to have her call me, and then I called Zimmerman at Socho-Ri. Ernie knew about the major having been picked up, and he had already started checking around for the Priestly woman. I told him to keep looking, and to give me a yell if he found her."
"And he never called, Bill?" Pickering asked.
"He never called."
"Gunner Zimmerman looked all over for her, sir," Jennings said, "and when I came here, he told me to call him and let him know where she was. I guess he figured if she wasn't in Wonsan, or anywhere on the east coast, she had to be either here or in Pusan."
"So the bottom line," Banning began unpleasantly, "is that you were ordered to find Miss Priestly, and not only haven't done so, but didn't inform anyone that you failed—"