worked for the President and nobody else. Donovan had gotten away with that.
In the reincarnation of the OSS as the Central Intelligence 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 influence 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 stenographer, 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 began, “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 President 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, Senator 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. President? ”
“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 Donovan’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 objections. ”
“The Marines must have been thrilled to have some socialite 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 Division 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 moment. “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. President, ” Hillenkoetter said, “with an intelligence assessment concluding the North Koreans