(Captain “Dick” Gile, USAF, 1944, at Lavenham, East Anglia around the time of D-Day.)
I suppose it is a good thing, from a public health perspective, that they have banned smoking in bars, but the scribbling on the napkins made me want to light up a Lucky. I put down my pen and looked over at Mac, who had knocked the delicate tempura onion rings off the stack of lightly battered haddock, calamari and shrimp.
“Do you think anyone remembers D-Day?” I asked. “Midway was the biggest naval triumph since Trafalgar, and no one seems to give a rat’s butt anymore. The kids don’t even know what it was.”
“Monday will be the sixty-seven years for the landings at Normandy, sixty-nine for the anniversary of the fight off Midway Island. I expect the fact that the invasion happened in a place you can drive to from Paris makes it a little more accessible to the tourist trade,” said Mac. “Only to be expected.”
“I always think of Uncle Dick launching in his B-17 out of RAF Lavenham in East Anglia to go after the bridges behind the lines. They had to keep the panzers from reinforcing the coastal defenses, or the invasion could have been tossed back into the sea. He lost an engine on take-off but went to the target anyway.”
“There were acts of courage everywhere,” said Mac, his blue eyes looking at someplace far away I could not see. “The ability to penetrate the Axis codes was crucial to defeating the Nazis.”
Big Jim the bartender waved the bottle of Chardonnay over my tulip glass, keeping me on an even keel.
“We agreed we are not going to talk about your second career, right?”
“Yes, there are some things that are still a little sensitive after all these years.”
“Like Azorian?”
Mac shook his head. “Nope, not going to go there. But I can talk about Bronson Tweed. He was old school CIA, and the strong right arm to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms.”
“Helms was Director for longer than most, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” nodded Mac. “Mid-sixties right up to 1973. He was old school. He had been Naval Intelligence in New York City, working on the Eastern Sea Frontier plotting U-boats when a friend approached him to join the OSS’s Morale Operations Branch. They did the black propaganda. He was a Spook the rest of his life.”
“It is interesting that the Navy reservists in New York were in the middle of everything, isn’t it?”
Mac smiled. “They were their own Navy, that is for sure. They ran the Lucky Luciano connection with the Mob to keep the docks safe from Axis saboteurs.”
“In real life a lot of them were prosecutors and cops and stuff, right?”
“It was all mixed up together, and actually sort of a parallel universe.”
“They ran the scientific exploitation of the former Nazi scientists out on Long Island after the war.”
“Yes, the projects that came out of the Castle were of extraordinary value to CNO Arliegh Burke, who was creating the Nuclear Navy in the 1950s.”
I picked up the pen again. “So, after the Pueblo Damage Assessment you were Chief of Staff at DIA for two years?”
“Yes,” he said, contemplating his Virgin Mary.
“And then you retired at the end of 1972 and went to work at the F Street Building down the block from the OEOB at the Intelligence Community Staff?”
“Not at first, and that wasn’t the name. I think we were in the Original Headquarters Building at Langley. But I am going to need to back up for a minute. I was still on active duty in the fall of 1972. Bud Zumwalt was on a tear to get every admiral who had been senior to him to retire. I didn’t want to, but the CNO wanted my number to promote Rex and that is just the way it was. There was no animosity between us; Rex was his guy and that is who he wanted.”
Old Jim was signaling for additional Budweiser and Jon-no-H was contemplating his vodka and iced tea.
“It was in October of that year that I was approached by Bronson Tweedy, who was Helm’s Deputy and very much like him. He was born in London to American parents; He went to school there, and lived with a family in Germany. He arrived to start his visit the day Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He was a Princeton guys were. He had a degree in European history, and went into the advertising game at Benton and Bowles on Madison Avenue before the war. In 1942 he volunteered for naval intelligence and served in North Africa and Europe interrogating captured German U-boat crews.”
“Naval Intelligence again,” I said in wonder. “You know, there are still things that people don’t want to talk about. I was working on a story about a counterfeit ring in France in the 1950s and touched a live wire. It might have had something to do with Luciano, but I don’t know and I was smart enough not to ask.”
Mac nodded, neither confirming nor denying anything. “After the war, Bronson briefly returned to advertising before being recruited by the CIA. He served in Switzerland, and DC just as the Agency was bing formed, and was CoS in Vienna and twice in London. Then he founded the Africa Division, which was a result of Eisenhower’s dislike for Patrice Lumumba.”
“Did he have anything to do with the coup and Lumumba’s death? I remember the revelations about the rubber gloves and the lethal toothpaste they were going to slip into the Presidents bathroom. It was as cool and crazy a plot as the deadly cigars they were going o try to get Castro to smoke.”
“I assume. Lumumba did have a brilliant smile, from what I recall. He died right before John Kennedy was inaugurated, and Bronson was in Leopoldville around that time, but we never talked about the things that later came to be known as the Crown Jewels. After that, he was tapped to head the Eastern European Division. When Dick Helms was confirmed as Director in 1966, Bronson moved up to be Deputy.” Mac scowled.
“You have to remember that Dick Nixon was not a big fan of the CIA. He and National Security Advisor Kissinger looked down on the analytic capabilities of the Agency. When I was Chief of Staff at DIA, Doctor K took the surprise of the 1970 coup in Cambodia personally. There was a lot of tension between Langley and the White House.”
“Interesting,” I said. “So what was it that Bronson wanted you to do for Director Helms?”
Mac smiled and popped a piece of haddock into his mouth. “I would have to tell you about the Schlesinger report to explain that,” he said. “And that might take another happy hour at Willow.”
“Damn the bad luck,” I said, and waved at Elisabeth-with-an-S for the check.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com