Culpeper author pens book about espionage in America, “Cocktails with the Admiral”
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the local paper- the one we call the “Clarion-Bugle” in jest- regarding the recent publication of “Cocktails With the Admiral.” Author Allison Brophy Champion has the same approach to the book that we did at Socotra House Publications. “History should have footnotes, but also be told by those who lived it.” With the impending 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway, it is fun to contrast the views of figures like Churchill on its significance with those of our pal Mac, at the corner of whose desk at Station HYPO the ploy was hatched to trick the Japanese into revealing the target of their planned attack in the Pacific. And determine the fate of their Nation in a global conflict.
– Vic
· Allison Brophy Champion1 of 6
Admiral Mac Showers (right) with a petty officer from JICPAC, the joint intelligence center he used to command.
· Allison Brophy Champion
It might take a code breaker to decipher numerous intelligence insider references contained in local author Vic Socotra’s newest, readable tale of military secrets and intrigue, “Cocktails With the Admiral.”
Subtitled “Drinks, Espionage and the History of the American Century,” the 337-page book by Socotra, aka J.R. Reddig, CAPT, USN-Retired, who lives in Culpeper County, recalls his 15-year relationship with Adm. Mac Showers (1919-2012), a World War II-era codebreaker.
Politics and Prose of Washington, D.C. is the publisher for this print edition, available at politics-prose.com/book/9781624293955
With his own Cold War intelligence background spanning more than half-a-century, Reddig, aka Socotra, writes with humor, candor and realism, not shying from criticizing the system. He highlights history and the intelligence heroes and traitors, often hidden, behind those decisive moments.
The setting for the meetings between Rear Admiral Donald McCollister “Mac” Showers, from Iowa, and the author was the old Willow Bar in Arlington, now closed.
There’s talk of mixed drinks and a cast of characters of regulars, savory pork spring rolls from the bar, named servers, bottles of Bud beer, nameless faces and people, the news of the day, beltway hustle-bustle.
In between, Socotra weaves his own story with Mac’s narrative, together spanning numerous wars around the globe, the atom bomb, presidents, generals and foreign leaders alike.
The topic of his book is espionage in the American Century, said Socotra, former editor of a quarterly publication for Naval Intelligence Professionals, in an email to the Star-Exponent
“I was a career Spook with 27 years’ government service and a couple decades as Beltway Bandit, or what we preferred to call, Parkway Patriots,” he stated.
VicSocotra.com, a self-described purveyor of glib words to the world, is a self-published prolific writer with at least seven novels through a small home press here in Culpeper. Socotra maintains an active blog as well.
He befriended Adm. Showers in the early 2000s during his stint as an editor of the naval publication.
Socotra occasionally took shots at Gen. MacArthur’s reputation due to his grandfather being one of the Doughboys expelled from Washington during the Depression.
Mac called to complain.
“I was surprised to get a call from one of our retired Admirals for violating a rule he had on his staff in the Pacific War: ‘Don’t disparage Doug.’ Apparently doing so caused too much trouble. The Admiral turned out to be Mac Showers, who became one of my best friends. He was in his early 80s then, and we spent a regular weekly meeting working through some of the events in which he participated,” Socotra wrote in the email.
Among the most captivating stories of the admiral’s long naval career were from his early days working under Adm. Nimitz in a basement office deciphering Japanese code after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“It was just OPINTEL,” Mac said in one of many interviews with Socotra about the acronym representing the system they used to decipher numerically coded messages from the enemy. It was brute force analysis supported by cross indexing and a massive filing system, the admiral allowed.
In other words, code breaking involved a fusion of methodologies and an all-source approach to integrate communications intercept that incorporated code breaking, photographic, open source information, topographic, hydrographic and human intelligence all cooked up by the Combat Intelligence Unit in the basement of building one in the shipyard in Pearl, the book states.
“No one told us how to do it. We did it as a matter of vital necessity to try to win a war,” Mac said for the book.
“The riddle was wrapped in an enigma, as is common,” Socotra writes of Pearl Harbor.
“The Big Surprise on Dec. 7 was naturally a shock…Washington would not admit that it was the bitter rivalry between Army and Navy, and within the Navy itself that exacerbated the blind spot that permitted the Japanese to land a near knock-out blow on the Pacific Fleet,” he writes.
The new book contains an image of ‘The Bomb Plot’—a decrypted message Sept. 24, 1941, marked ‘Strictly Secret,’ from Tokyo to the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu ordering daily surveillance of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor. It should have been a warning but was missed.
The author frequently capitalizes certain words and terms, presumably for emphasis, a pattern throughout “Cocktails With Admiral.”
The book hints at myriad inside cypher system references, hundreds of historic suggestions and facts, observations on current events and an entire alphabet of acronyms designating secret government functions and offices.
For example, COMINT, FRUMEL, USCINCPAC, CINCNELM, HYPO, PARPRO and NAVINTCOM.
The book is not chronological and it reads like an ongoing conversation—between Mac and the author, the author and himself and the author and the reader.
Mac and the other codebreakers provided Adm. Nimitz with enough information to enable him and his forces to defeat the Japanese in the battle of Midway, leading to the surrender of the Japanese forces, the Midway Miracle, describes Socotra.
“Then his team members came up with the idea that let us figure out the target of the last big Japanese offensive at Midway. After that, we went on the attack and never looked back. Oklahoma and Arizona were still on the bottom of the harbor…Her rusting hulk is still bleeding drops of fuel into Pearl’s placid waters…still bleeding just like she did when we worked in the basement of the Admin Building.”
“Jap Fleet Smashed by 2 U.S. Carriers Sunk at Midway Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea,” Chicago Tribune reported June 7, 1942, states the new book, containing photographs and copies of original documents.
“With Mac, it was as fresh as if it happened yesterday. The years fall away, and you can feel the presence of others, dead now, crowd around holding glasses of whiskey and nodding. The Admiral is their emissary, their guide between the worlds,” Socotra writes.
The Japanese changed its codebook following all the publicity from Midway, he writes. A few months later, the Marines landed blindly at Guadalcanal. How many died as a result of internal intelligence wars? Socotra asks.
“Those are bold statements, I know, and the heavy secrecy that wrapped the ULTRA program enabled those who won the staff war and lost a Fleet on Dec. 7 to pin their mistakes on others.”
Creation of “Cocktails with the Admiral,” aka the Mac Showers Project, spanned three decades, the author said, noting 2022 is the 10th anniversary of the admiral’s passing and 80th anniversary of “the epic naval battle off Midway Atoll on which he cut his analytic teeth.” Mac saw all the episodes compiled in this book and approved them, the author said.
“I lived and worked in buildings that survived the Day of Infamy,” Socotra writes in the book.
“I found myself happy to have been a drinking buddy and tipsy Boswell to Mac Showers, the last living member of the JN-25 code breakers at Station HYPO in Pearl.
“My stories were sincere, but never intended to be documentary history. I always liked to get to the loopy aspects of history—like, what was the party like at the quarters of chief code breaker Joe Rochefort after the amazing results of the Battle of Midway became known? (Answer: it was a good one).”
With plenty of cocktails.
abrophy@starexponent.com