It was a challenging day, with the conclusion being the finale of the World Series- the Cubbies finally breaking the 108-year-jinx and taking the World Series. It was a classic event, going all seven games and a nail-biter to the very end. My great thanks to both the Cubs and the Indians for making some traditional sense out of things just as the Republic seems to be shambling toward the abyss regardless of the choice we exercise next Tuesday.

That is one of the reasons I went back to the biography project of Admiral Showers. He was a man of integrity, a figure from a distant era that typified honor, sacrifice and integrity. At random, I delved into his time doing the Damage Assessment on the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) by the North Koreans. It all fits together now, of course. The Russians started getting the codes to our enciphered radio links from that cretin John Walker in 1968, and naturally it would have been useful to also have the actual radios to help them decode all our message traffic. Seen from that side, it all makes perfect sense.

That is still an emotional topic in some circles, though as that generation fades away, it has become less urgent. But for the record, Pueblo remains a United States Ship and is our property, and I think we should have sunk it when the NORKS moved it from Wonsan harbor on the east coast of the Peninsula all the way around the ROK to become People’s Museum Number 5 in the capital of Pyongyang.

I have no idea why we cater to the DPRK. It is quite baffling, particularly since they did not have nuclear weapons back then and we could have smacked them a good one. Oh well, some things are best left to the grown-ups. Those mythical beings were around not so long ago, and of course, Mac Showers was an exemplar of the breed.

My intent had been to capture the interviews I did with Mac and produce them as a full-length book. And then, after just three interviews (and just like always), I got off track. Just as Mac and I used to do when talking about how we all came to be in the here and now.

This stream of stories is intended to take us from the dramatic accounts of life as a serving officer in the center of things during the Pacific War, ranging through Mac’s early Cold War days in London and Naples, his time as an instructor at the Naval Intelligence School at Anacostia, and back to war as the Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer (Eddie Layton’s old job for Husband Kimmel and Chester Nimitz) and the ramp-up to the war in Southeast Asia. It all exists, and was checked for accuracy by Mac himself after I typed up the notes I took on the bar napkins at Willow.

Rex was the favorite of now-Chief of Naval Operations Bud Zumwalt to be his Director of Naval Intelligence, and was on a tear to purge all flag officers who had been senior to him prior to his accession to the top Navy Job. Mac had nowhere to go except retirement, but that started his career at the CIA as a civilian, specializing in damage control from the embarrassing disclosures created by the Pike and Church committees in Congress.

And then his third career as a caregiver and lecturer on coping with loved ones stricken by dementia and prostate cancer. He was an amazing man.

He left us in 2012, and it took some time to get over his passing. It is time to get it out. But of course I had to stumble into one of the mysteries of Mac’s long career. Not secret stuff- there are some events that I will not touch on directly because I don’t need any interaction with the authorities at this late date, and we agreed that matters still classified about his career would remain so. But there are some things that are just mysteries, and that is what the somewhat cryptic reference to CDR John “Jack” Graf, the only Naval intelligence officer still listed as “Missing in Action, Presumed Killed in Action.”

I am convinced that Jack Graf was part of the Charm School cadre- the POWs known to be alive and in captivity- who were never returned to us when the wr ended. There are rumors that some were sent to the Soviet Union, and others to places as exotic as Cuba for refined interrogation. I have ruminated on that before, but chose not to go down that shadowy path. There is a book there, which would have to be fiction, since I do not have the rest of my life poking at shadows that might well poke back.

No one rational wants to talk about it, since there are Government and Family partisans who have been locked in emotional and bitter battles since the war ended and the remaining captives came home. One can quickly get into UFO country on this, and the Government does not want to admit culpability.

Hell, we are still facing obstruction of justice (still) on the Pearl Harbor attack, for goodness sake. The gatekeepers are still on watch. They had almost four years to vacuum the records in preparation for the second Pearl harbor tribunal in Congress that followed the end of the war. Eddie Layton was summoned back from Hawaii to testify- that was Mac’s first time as the (acting) Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer, though not the last. They were very thorough in purging the files to protect some powerful people. I know that because a pal has been attempting to get the ONI records of the British Section, and what do you know- there are none. Zero.

The whereabouts of all those cubic feet of files is…well, a mystery. I am sure they are in a place that is very, very safe.

I was with Mac (for sure) and Historian Dave (I think) when I advanced my theory about Jack Graf’s ultimate end based on what I learned in working with Rex on his case. Mac thought the concept had merit and met known fact. The turning point was why Rex, the former Zumwalt N2 at Naval Forces Vietnam, was in Saigon to meet Mac and DIA Director Bennet the year after he had transferred back to DC from the war. Mac had a binder with all his orders, including the travel claim for that trip and he showed it to me to confirm the dates. The evidence that something strange had occurred was incontrovertible. What exactly it was remains unknown. Rex had passed from this world before I could ask him the reason for his presence back in the RVN, or for the real motivation for his life’s last crusade about honoring the memory of Jack Graf.

My Left Cost Attorney was the naval intelligence liaison officer (NILO) at the far western town of Ha Tien in the Mekong Delta, hard on the Cambodian border, and he was there when the secret war erupted to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Administration at the time did not want to talk about it, and there were all sorts of strange things that went along with an undeclared war. He wrote me this morning:

“This episode still bugs me, Vic. We’ve spoken before and you know I believe Jack was not killed but sent back to Russia or East Germany to be sweated about the satellite stuff that he knew. My suspicions are reinforced by the stories all the VNs told the POW recovery team looking for Jack’s body later on– the stories about his death were too perfectly identical. And a NILO encountered at an interstate gas station the Army pilot of their BirdDog that was shot down and who survived. He panicked and said he could not talk about it, and left the station.

And don’t forget, the Russians already had all the codes from the Walker brothers since ~1967, then the crypto gear from the North Korean seizure of Pueblo in 1968. They also had an intercept station at Kep CB about 8 miles north of Ha Tien where I was NILO, reading all the codes from our comsta aboard the LST anchored off Ha Tien. So it wouldn’t surprise me that they were also reading the satellite traffic after sweating Jack. And worst of all, after they were finished with Jack they couldn’t very well let him go but had to eliminate him so no one would get wind of the compromised satellite system.

Anyway, that is still my strongest suspicion. I wonder if an audit of military or mission failures could work backward to confirm whether the Sovs got the satellite technology and data from Jack? You know, any blown missions or such? Any detail they might have had from our satellites or their own copy-cat satellites using our technology that would confirm they had the information?”

The Attorney left the Service after his combat tour, and did other things with his life. But some of it still haunts him. He walked through the Soviet spaces on the Cambodian island the Russians used to monitor American military activity along the border before they evacuated, and they may have taken Jack with them back to Moscow.

It was not until I looked in my library that I saw where they might have been able to tip off their Vietnamese allies about a lucrative intelligence target. In his book “Flying Black Ponies,” Kit Lavel describes Jack’s adventurous tour, which matches the description of the lovely “Agent 99” (I have a picture of her with Jack at the beach- cute lady). That Jack was not targeted by the enemy- and enemy spies- is absurd. I think that the VC/NVA knew all about Jack’s special interests:

I have heard from a source who saw them that the interrogation notes revealed just about everything. Jack had no choice- they could break anyone with enough time. Another story that has no end.

I do know why there was official silence about Jack for so long, and why Rex felt he had to tell the story.

I think it was a major Navy screw-up in the assignments process that put him in harm’s way with really sensitive stuff between his ears. A former Director of Naval Intelligence told me that when he was assigned to the Naval Investigative Service office in Saigon, his clearances restricted his movements to the capital, where the possibility of capture were minimized.

Jack should never have been out there. Rex knew that for a fact, and Mac knew it, too. They were not personally responsible, and really it was Jack who should never have volunteered for that duty. But Jack Graf was a Terry-and-the-pirates kind of sailor, and he loved the mission and the action. That is how mysteries happen, I suppose. And really big mistakes that would be embarrassing if they saw the light of day.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com