Then he called the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and found him at his quarters-Quarters 1-at Fort Myer. He told the Chief there was an Operational Immediate from Korea, and that he was en route to the Pentagon to have a look at it. And where would the Chief be in case it required his immediate attention?
The Chief said he was going to Freddy's retirement party at the Army and Navy, and since the G-2 was going there, he could see no point in he himself going to the Pen-tagon. Sometimes, the Operational Immediate classifica-tion was applied too easily.
By the time the G-2 reached his office, the Operational Immediate from Korea had been decrypted. He read it, and after a moment ordered his duty officer to see if he would reach the Chief, who was probably en route to the Army and Navy Club, over his car radio.
It was possible, even likely, that somewhere in the Em-bassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Albania, or elsewhere, there was a man sitting at a radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the police-type shortwave radio in the Chief's car, so the conversation was phrased accord-ingly:
"Chief, that message we were talking about? I think it might be a good idea if you had a look at it yourself."
"I'm on my way. Thank you."
In the G-2's office, twenty minutes later, the G-2 read the message and reached for the red telephone on the G-2's desk. In twenty seconds, he had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the secure line.
"Sir, I've got an Operational Immediate from Korea that I think you should have a look at right away."
"Okay."
"I think you might want to give the Secretary a heads-up, and with your permission, I'm going to do the same to mine."
"Okay. On my way. You're in your office?"
"Yes, sir."
"Meet me in the Ops Room."
"Yes, sir."
"And I'm in the car. You give the Secretary a heads-up."
"Yes, sir."
The G-2 telephoned, on the secure circuit, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army, in that order, and gave both the same message:
He had just spoken to the Chairman about an Opera-tional Immediate he had just received from Korea, and the Chairman was en route to the Ops Room to have a look at it, and had ordered him to relay that information to the Secretary.
The Secretary of the Army said he was on his way, and the Secretary of Defense said that it would take him ten minutes to shave and get dressed, and then he'd be on his way.
Before he left his home, the Secretary of Defense called the Secretary of State and said he had no idea how impor-tant it was, but there had been an Operational Immediate from Korea, and everybody was headed for the Ops Room to have a look at it, and maybe it might be a good idea for the Secretary to send somebody to the Pentagon, if not come himself.
The Secretary of Defense also called the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and on being told the Director would not be available for thirty minutes, got the Assistant Director and told him there was an Operational Immediate from Korea that he thought the Director should have a look at, and that everybody was en route to the Ops Room. The Assistant Director said he would leave word for the Direc-tor, and leave for the Ops Room himself immediately.
Less than an hour after that, having read the Operational Immediate in the Ops Room, and assessing other intelli-gence data available to the Ops Room, it was more or less unanimously agreed that the matter should be immediately brought to the attention of Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces.
The Assistant Secretary of State personally agreed that the President should be informed, but felt that he could not concur in the decision to do so until the Secretary of State had been brought up to speed on the situation and gave his concurrence.
It took another hour to get that concurrence, whereupon the White House Signal Agency was directed to put in a se-cure call to the President of the United States at his home in Independence, Missouri.
The President took the news almost stoically, and or-dered that he be kept up to date on any new developments, regardless of the hour.
The President was not surprised to hear from the Secre-tary of Defense that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. He had been so informed three hours previously by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had received a radio message from the CIA station chief in Seoul, and had immediately decided the President needed to be informed immediately, and had done so personally.
[TWO]
BLAIR HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
2205 25 JUNE 1950
"Unless someone can think of something else we can do tonight," President Harry S. Truman said, "I suggest we knock this off. I suspect we're all going to need clear heads in the morning."
The men at the conference table-the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Advisor, and several other high-ranking advisors, rose to their feet.
Although there was nothing wrong with the conference room in Blair House, it was not as large, nor as comfort-able as the conference room in the White House. If there was still a conference room across the street in the White House. In 1948, it had been discovered that the White House was literally falling down, in fact dangerous. Tru-man had made the decision to gut it to the walls and re-build everything. In June of 1950, the reconstruction was two years into what was to turn out to be a four-year process. The last time the President had looked into the White House, it was a gutted shell.
The President had cut short his vacation in Indepen-dence and flown back to Washington-in Air Force One, a four-engine Douglas DC-6 known as the Independence- early in the afternoon.
His senior advisors had been waiting for him in Blair House, the de facto temporary White House, where the Army Signal Corps had set up a teletype conference facility with General MacArthur in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo.
It was essentially a closed, state-of-the-art radio teletype circuit, where what was typed in Washington was immedi-ately both typed in Tokyo and displayed on a large screen so that everyone in the room could read it. And vice versa.
MacArthur had furnished the President what he knew- not much-about the situation in Korea, and the President had authorized MacArthur-after consultation with his staff, and through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-to send ammunition and equipment to Korea to pre-vent the loss of Seoul's Kimpo airfield to the North Kore-ans, and to provide Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft to protect the supply planes. MacArthur had also been au-thorized to do whatever he considered necessary to evacu-ate the dependents of American military and diplomatic personnel in Korea from the war zone, and to dispatch a team to Korea to assess what was happening.
Truman had also ordered the Seventh Fleet (which was split between the Philippines and Okinawa) to sail immedi-ately for the U.S. Navy Base in Sasebo, Japan, where it would pass into the control of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Far East. COMNAVFORFE was subordinate to the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, so what Truman had done was to take operational control of the Seventh Fleet from the Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) and give it to MacArthur.
Until they knew more about what was going on, there was nothing else that anyone in the room could think of to do.
Except for Admiral Hillenkoetter, the CIA Director, and he was considering his options to ask for a few minutes of the Commander-in-Chief's time-alone-when the Presi-dent seemed to be reading his mind.
"Admiral, would you stay behind a minute, please?" Truman asked.
"Yes, Mr. President," the Admiral said.
It is entirely possible, the admiral thought, that I am about to have my ass chewed for calling him when I got the Seoul station chief's radio. He didn't say anything, but it's possible the Chairman's heard a
bout it, and he would con-sider it going over his head.
The Chairman gave the admiral a strange look as he left the room, leaving him alone with the President.
In William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the OSS had technically been under the command of the Chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Donovan had paid no atten-tion to that at all, deciding that he worked for the President and nobody else. Donovan had gotten away with that.
In the reincarnation of the OSS as the Central Intelli-gence Agency, the CIA was a separate governmental agency, charged with cooperating with the Defense and State Departments, but not under their command. None of the military services, or the State Department, liked that, and they tried, in one way or another, with varying degrees of subtlety, to insinuate that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was really in charge. Hillenkoetter was, after all, an admiral detailed to the CIA, not a civilian, like J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The interesting thing, Hillenkoetter often thought, was that when I was really in the Navy, I thought the CIA really ought to be under the Joint Chiefs. A couple of months in the Agency cured me of that. The only way it can be the Central Intelligence Agency is to be independent, free of in-fluence from any quarter. Things would probably be better if they had called it the Independent Intelligence Agency.
"That'll be all, thank you," Truman said to the stenogra-pher, a Navy chief petty officer, who had been taking notes of the conference on a court reporter's machine.
The Chief left the room, closing the door after him.
"Just as a matter of curiosity, Admiral," the President be-gan, "when did you pass to the Chairman the information you gave me over the telephone?"
"My deputy took that radio, Mr. President-by then there were two more of no great significance-with him when he went to the first conference in the Ops Room."
"I didn't tell the Chairman about your call," the Presi-dent said. "I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to one-up him."
"As I understand my role, Mr. President, I report directly to you."
"Yeah," the President said. "You do." He paused. "Have you had any more radios? Even of `no great significance'?"
"My Seoul station chief believes Seoul will fall, Mr. President. He is moving his base of operations to the south."
The President nodded but said nothing.
"Mr. President, there is something else," Hillenkoetter began.
"Let's have it," the President said.
"Several weeks ago, on June eighth, Mr. President, Sen-ator Fowler asked for an appointment as soon as possible. The next morning, he came to my office with a man named Fleming Pickering."
Truman shrugged, showing the name meant nothing to him.
"And what did the head cheerleader of Eisenhower-for-President want, Admiral?" Truman asked. "The last I heard, he was not on the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee."
"The name Pickering means nothing to you, Mr. Presi-dent?"
"Not a damned thing," the President said.
"He was Deputy Director of the OSS for the Pacific in World War Two. He's quite a character."
"Never heard of him," the President said. "One of Dono-van's Oh-So-Socials?"
"Well, that, too, sir, I suppose. He owns Pacific and Far East Shipping, and he's married to the daughter of the man who owns the Foster Hotel chain."
"And that, obviously, made Donovan decide he was OSS material?"
"Mr. President, President Roosevelt commissioned Pickering a brigadier general in the Marine Corps, and named him, I have been reliably informed, Deputy Chief of the OSS for the Pacific over Mr. Donovan's strong ob-jections."
"The Marines must have been thrilled to have some so-cialite millionaire shoved down their throat as a brigadier general," Truman said.
"There was not, as I understand it, much problem with that at all, Mr. President. Not only did Pickering win the Navy Cross as a Marine enlisted man in France in World War One, but he'd gone ashore with the First Marine Divi-sion on Guadalcanal, and become-when the G-2 was killed in action-General Vandegrift's intelligence officer."
"He was a reserve officer between the wars?" Truman asked.
Hillenkoetter was aware that Captain Harry Truman had gone into the Missouri National Guard after World I, and risen to colonel.
"He was a Navy reserve captain when he went to Guadalcanal, Mr. President, working as sort of the eyes of Navy Secretary Knox. And when Secretary Knox ordered a destroyer to take him off Guadalcanal, it was attacked, her captain killed, and Pickering assumed command of the vessel, despite his own pretty serious wounds. Admiral Nimitz gave him the Silver Star for that."
"I really am tired, Admiral," Truman said after a mo-ment. "Can we get to the point of this?"
"Mr. Pickering-General Pickering-and Senator Fowler are very close, Mr. President."
"I suppose every sonofabitch in the world has one friend," Truman said.
"General Pickering had just come from Tokyo, Mr. Pres-ident," Hillenkoetter said, "with an intelligence assessment concluding the North Koreans were preparing to invade South Korea."
"How did he get an intelligence assessment like that? Whose intelligence assessment?"
"He wouldn't tell me, Mr. President, but I have every rea-son to believe that it was prepared by a Captain McCoy, who was on General Pickering's staff when they were both in the OSS."
"Another Oh-So-Social, this one a Navy captain?" "A Marine Corps captain, sir. He'd been a major and was reduced to captain after the war." v
"I don't have a thing in the world against captains," Tru-man said. "But wasn't this one out of his league? Captains usually don't prepare assessments predicting the beginning of a war."
"This one did, sir," Hillenkoetter said. "And so far, everything he's predicted has been on the money."
"Why didn't this assessment... You're telling me you knew nothing about this assessment?"
"I had never seen it before, Mr. President. And when I read it, it went counter to everything my people had devel-oped, Mr. President."
"Who did he do this assessment for?"
"Captain McCoy was assigned to Naval Element, SCAP, sir. He submitted it to his superior, who passed it on to General Willoughby, General MacArthur's G-2...."
"And?"
"According to General Pickering, General Willoughby ordered it destroyed."
"He didn't place any credence in it?"
"Apparently not, Mr. President."
"And now it turns out this captain was right on the money?"
"It looks that way, Mr. President."
"And when General Willoughby ordered this assessment destroyed, this captain gave it to General Pickering?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who brought it to you? Accompanied by Senator Fowler?"
"Yes, sir."
"Which means Senator Fowler's seen it, knows the story?'
"Yes, sir."
"Which means, if we've just gone to war, and I'm very much afraid that we have, that the story is going to get out that we should have known it was coming, because of this captain's assessment, which MacArthur ignored. My God, it'll be another Pearl Harbor scandal!"
"I'm afraid that's a real possibility, Mr. President."
"And what did you do when this assessment came to your attention?"
"I decided that it deserved further investigation, Mr. President."
"Meaning you sat on it?"
"I sent my Deputy for Asiatic Activities, David Jacobs, to Hong Kong on the next plane with orders to light fires under everybody we have over there to check it out."
"And?"
"Well, there hasn't been much time, Mr. President, but what feedback I got tended-until yesterday-to make me question the assessment."
Truman looked at him for a long moment.
"I appreciate your honesty, Admiral," he said. "Thank you."
He looked as if he was in thought, then asked, "Where is this captain now? What else has he got to
tell us that no one wants to hear?"
"That was some of the first feedback I was given, Mr. President," Hillenkoetter said. "Captain McCoy was re-turned to the United States for involuntary separation from the service."
"Kill the messenger, huh? That sounds like something Emperor MacArthur would do."
"Mr. President, General Pickering led me to believe that General MacArthur is unaware of the assessment."
"How the hell would he know that?"
"He and MacArthur are friends, Mr. President. He had dinner with the MacArthurs when he was in Tokyo."
W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire Page 15
