OFFICE OF THE COMMANDANT, USMC WASHINGTON, D.C. 1430 30 JUNE 1950
“The Commandant will see you now, sir,” the master gunnery sergeant said to Fleming Pickering, as he walked to the double doors of the Commandant’s office. He knocked, but didn’t wait for a reply before opening the door. “Mr. Pickering, sir.”
The Commandant was standing just inside his office.
“That’s General Pickering, Gunny,” General Clifton Cates said, in a soft southern accent. “You might want to make a note of that.”
Cates was a tall, sharply featured man with an aristocratic air about him.
“Come on in, Flem,” Cates went on. “It’s good to see you.”
“Thank you for seeing me without an appointment,” Pickering said, as he took Cates’s extended hand. He chuckled. “I was trying to decide whether or not to salute.”
“Not indoors, Flem, or while in civilian attire,” Cates said, smiling.
“I went to the officers’ sales store at Marine Barracks yesterday, to buy uniforms,” Pickering said. “No ID card; they wouldn’t sell them to me.”
Cates chuckled.
“I think the captain there thought he was dealing with a crazy old coot who thought he was a Marine general,” Pickering went on. “Later, I realized he was right.”
Cates laughed, then stepped around Pickering and opened his office door.
“Gunny,” he ordered. “General Pickering’s going to need an ID card, and while I think of it, a physical. Set it up to get him an ID card right away, and then call Bethesda and make an immediate appointment for the physical.” He paused. “But only after you get us some coffee.”
He closed the door, waved Pickering to a red leather couch, and sat down beside him.
“Frankly, I sort of hoped I would hear from you, Flem,” Cates said. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Right now, I’m just a Marine officer who’s obeying his orders and not asking questions about them.”
“I hardly know where to start, sir,” Pickering said. “This is probably the best place.”
Pickering opened his briefcase, took from it a manila envelope, and handed it to Cates.
Cates opened the envelope and started to read. His eyebrows went up and he pursed his lips.
A staff sergeant came into the office carrying a tray with two china mugs of coffee, placed it on the coffee table by the couch, and then left.
“Where’d this come from?” Cates asked, not lifting his eyes from the assessment.
“It was written by a Marine officer then on the staff of Naval Element, SCAP, in Tokyo,” Pickering said.
“McCoy, right?” Cates asked. “What do they call him? ‘Killer’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have been advised by Clyde Dawkins—you remember him from Guadalcanal? He had Marine Air Group 21.”
“Yes, sir. My son was in VMF-229 in MAG-21.”
“Clyde’s now Deputy CG at Pendleton. He sent me a TWX saying McCoy left Miramar at 0800 this morning in an Air Force two-seater fighter for here.”
“Yes, sir. I had a telephone call from Mrs. McCoy telling me that.”
“Now that I think of it, you were supposed to get a copy of the TWX,” Cates said, then went off at a tangent: “This thing isn’t signed?”
“The original was signed and submitted to MacArthur’s G-2, who ordered it destroyed,” Pickering said. “The President doesn’t want that to get out.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“I thought you should know, sir.”
Cates considered that, nodded, and said, “Thank you. That detail will go no further.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pickering said.
“But I’d like to have this.”
“I thought you should have it, sir. That’s why I asked to see you,” Pickering said, then went on: “What happened was that I was in Tokyo, went to see McCoy, and he gave me that assessment. And told me he was being involuntarily released from active duty. When I got back to the States, I went to see Admiral Hillenkoetter at the CIA, and gave it to him.”
“Things are beginning to make sense,” Cates said.
“Apparently, after the North Koreans came across the 38th parallel, Hillenkoetter told the President about the assessment. The President called me, and asked me to come here. I got here on the twenty-sixth. The President came to Senator Fowler’s apartment for breakfast, got Fowler’s assurance that the . . . rejection of the early warning would not get into the press, and then ordered me to active duty.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Pickering said. “Possibly to make sure I keep my mouth shut.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Cates said. “Out of school, there is some dissatisfaction with Hillenkoetter’s CIA. And you were a deputy director of the OSS, weren’t