Eisenhower's Spy Read online

  Smith was notorious for his abrupt, quick and exacting, no-nonsense manner, a reputation that was perhaps unfair. He also had represented Eisenhower in give-and-take missions requiring a sensitive, diplomatic touch. Smith was involved in negotiating the armistice between Italy and the Allies, which he signed on behalf of Eisenhower. In 1944, he, Smith, also negotiated successfully for food and fuel aid to be sent through German lines for the cold and starving Dutch civilian population and opened discussions for the peaceful and complete German capitulation to the First Canadian Army in the Netherlands.

  In such positions, General “Beetle” Smith had been in all the newspapers day to day, inspiring one of the soldiers who had served under him in Italy, a Kansan named Mort Cooper, to coin a nickname for a buck private in a comic series named “Beetle Bailey.” After the shooting war ended, Smith served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1948. Smith and Buchanan had met once in Italy as officers of the United States Army. Buchanan would have said that he had met the man, respected him, but did not know him personally.

  “Perhaps I am very much mistaken,” Mike Edelstein said to Buchanan one cool autumn evening in 1950 as they walked to their cars in the parking lot in Langley. The evening was shortly after Hillenkoetter was out and Smith was in at the top desk in the CIA. “But things are going to change around here, Tom,” Edelstein said. “The Beetle was Ike’s hatchet man in Europe. He controlled who received access to Ike and he did Ike’s dirty work for him. If Ike needed to have someone punched in the jaw, Smith did it for him. Beetle allowed Eisenhower to stay above the fray, give whiskey and cigarettes off the records, have chats with the press in the evening, and never say a damn thing of importance. Remember that?”

  “I remember,” said Buchanan. “I always liked Eisenhower, though.”

  They arrived at Edelstein’s white Plymouth. The interior of the auto, Buchanan noticed, was pristine: not a scrap of paper visible, not even a pair of sunglasses for driving.

  “Of course, you do, Tom. You’re one of the smart guys who love this country, put his balls on the firing line with the other infantrymen, and survived the war. That’s why you and I talk. Listen, may I be blunt?”

  “You usually are, so go ahead.”

  “It does not take a genius to deduce that Uncle Roscoe’s transgression here was being too passive,” Edelstein said. “We took in information, sure, but we did not analyze it and act on it, much less react. Beetle is an action guy. An ass-kicker. He just spent two years in Moscow and he knows who the enemy is: the Reds. He’s willing to be a mean son of a bitch if he has to be. You don’t win a war without men like that and we’re in another war these days.”

  “So what do you foresee?”

  “I see knives in backs, exploding beds in hotel rooms, and bags of glorious unofficial cash in oodles of unmarked bags circulating in some dark corners of the world. I see treachery, unholy alliances, and subversion. I see noisy anti-American voices of leaders in small, hot countries having their throats cut at three AM as they sleep. I prognosticate unmarked graves, garrotes, nooses, bodies plunging from balconies, and chemicals that are as yet undiscovered. That’s how we’ll need to operate, Tom. And you know what? I am all for it, I’m all aboard for what needs to be done, and you should be, too.”

  Chapter 4

  Washington, D.C. – August 3, 1950

  The truth was if FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Harry Truman had not sent Special Agent Thomas Buchanan on a special assignment in 1949 and 1950, Buchanan’s life, as well as his career in American law enforcement, would have continued along a much more prosaic trajectory. He would never have reunited with the woman he loved, probably would never have visited Spain or Cuba, and most certainly would never have come to personally know any subsequent President of the United States. But such things are clear only after the fact. And the prevailing facts of Tom Buchanan’s life during an extraordinarily hot summer of 1950 were threefold and as straightforward as a punch to the gut.

  First and foremost: Buchanan had moved from the FBI over to the fledgling CIA in August of 1950 where he acted unofficially as the eyes and ears of Harry Truman. Mr. Truman was by now an unpopular, lame-duck president who had no desire to run again for the highest office in the land. Truman was one of the few men who had served as President who had never wanted nor sought the job. It was thrust upon him by the death of Franklin Roosevelt half a decade earlier.

  Second, and of most importance to him: Buchanan had married the woman he had known as a teenager. Ann Garrett. She was the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia family that had become embroiled in a spy scandal. Their surprise reunion and second romance was a story in and of itself. They had married in July of 1950. Their marriage was an excellent one: solid, built on love, mutual respect, and consideration of each other. Yet for reasons that Buchanan still didn’t understand himself, privately, secretly, he still nurtured insecurities about her.

  He had lost her once, when they were much younger, before the war. She had had a horrid first marriage to an abusive husband who was a film producer. She had had a brief career on the stage in New York and a more successful one in films. Even now, in her thirties, Ann turned the heads of men. He had a nickname for her, one they shared and which she thought was both flattering and funny. “Flypaper.”

  She drew men the way flypaper drew flies. Maybe that was the root of his insecurity with her, he sometimes speculated. No matter how good he was in his own job, no matter how much he loved her, no matter how many times she told him that she loved him, there was always this nagging fear: namely, that someday in a complicated present or future place, a man so damned interesting, wealthy, interesting and handsome would step forth, snap his magic fingers, and steal his wife from him.

  Flypaper. Once when they had lain together in bed late on a Sunday morning, he had revealed his fear to her.

  “You borrow trouble,” she answered. “You worry about things you needn’t worry about,” she said.

  “I know that, kid,” he said. “Of course, I do.”

  Kid. He had called her that since they were teenagers growing up. They were nearly the same age, yet he had affectionately resurrected the name and used it when he wanted to emphasize a point.

  “You’re the man I love,” she said. “That’s not going to change.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  Then third, and most immediate: while Tom Buchanan was well-liked at the CIA and did his job well, there was a strange paradox to working at the CIA. For a place and agency that was officially the keeper of America’s highest secrets, it was impossible to keep any secret pertaining to one’s doings. Or so it seemed. Hence, the rumors were rampant through the new building in Langley that Tom Buchanan was a little too friendly with some important people at the White House. One in particular. Namely, Mr. Truman.

  Buchanan had had a great war record in Europe. As time passed in the CIA that first autumn, he showed a certain diligence for analyzing the political problems and challenges of postwar Europe. He was given several analytical assignments regarding Europe and how the Marshall Plan was being applied.

  Yet cliques were developing within the spy agency. People who were being paid to be analytical and inquisitive were innately suspicious. Maybe everyone might breathe a little easier if Tom Buchanan were somewhere else. Not outside the agency actually, just somewhere else.

  One day, the new Director of the CIA, D/CIA Smith, sent one of his personnel officers, Craig Gilmartin, to Buchanan’s office on the west side of the new building. Buchanan looked up late on a Monday afternoon in August to see Gilmartin standing at his door with his arms folded. Gilmartin wore a white shirt, glasses, and a striped tie. The men knew each other. They were friendly acquaintances, if not friends.

  “I have a question,” Gilmartin said when Buchanan looked up.

  “You walked all the way over here to ask it?”

  “Yep.”

  Buchanan leaned back at his desk.
“Well, we’ll see if I have an answer,” he said. “You might as well come in, sit down, and ask it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gilmartin was brisk and blunt. “How many languages do you know? Your personnel file says you’re conversant in French, Italian, and Russian.”

  “The file is correct,” Buchanan said, leaning back behind his desk. “Plus English, of course.”

  “So how do you come by speaking four languages?” Gilmartin asked. “Most of our American agents have trouble enough with English.”

  “French, school and university,” Buchanan explained. “Italian from being in the trenches and Italy during Operation Torch during the war. Russian from dealing with the black market and Soviet officers in Berlin in 1945.” A pause, then he added, “Russian’s my weakest,” he said. “It’s a tough language. Slavic as opposed to Romance. Different alphabet. I only had a few months - ”

  Gilmartin interrupted. “No Spanish?” he asked.

  “I have basic knowledge,” Buchanan said. “The vocabulary has the same Latin roots as French and Italian. The grammar is remarkably similar.”

  “Any working experience?”

  “Some in France after the war.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I worked with some French soldiers who had roots in Spain. Their families fled when Franco came to power in 1939.”

  “So were they French or Spanish?”

  “French but of Spanish origins. There were hundreds of thousands of them. They learned Spanish as children, then French when they fled the country.”

  “And you got on okay with them?”

  “They liked me. They even gave me a Spanish edition of Don Quixote.”

  “Was that because they liked you or hated you?”

  “I’m still not sure,” said Buchanan. “But I did attempt to read it. I got halfway through.”

  “That’s farther than I got and I tried it in English. Why didn’t you finish the book?”

  “The war ended. I had to leave it behind when I shipped home.”

  “Interesting. So you understand Spanish politics, too?”

  “Where is this going, Craig?”

  “General Smith is impressed with your CV and the way you can analyze national politics around the globe. There are twenty-one countries in the world that speak Spanish, nineteen in this hemisphere. Do you and your wife like to travel?”

  “Depends on where to. We also like hot and cold running water and not being shot at.”

  “I’ll broach it a different way, Tom. There are people in this office who might like to see you travel. Would you consider it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The Director is one of the aforementioned people.”

  A silence. “Should I be flattered or insulted?”

  “Both,” said Gilmartin. “But work it to your advantage. Don’t take it the wrong way.”

  “You know what?” Buchanan answered. “I don’t.”

  The truth was that one way or another the Truman Presidency was coming to an end. Buchanan already had his eye open for foreign assignments. Additionally, the political fireworks in Washington, mostly personified by Senator Joe McCarthy, were increasingly repugnant.

  At the same time, there were decreasing amounts of intelligence to report to the Truman White House. Buchanan could see his mission here - official and otherwise - coming to an end. The smart money in the capital had it that after being out of power since 1929, the Republicans would win the Presidency this year. The conservative isolationist Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, grandson of America’s only three-hundred-pound President, was the party’s favorite. There was some whispering that Dwight Eisenhower, the popular former General, might be talked into running. But no one knew which party he belonged to.

  Political reporters had questioned Eisenhower repeatedly on the subject but the General always stated that he did not belong to any party. He was a professional military man and did not feel that professional soldiers should be in politics. Ike’s disclaimer satisfied everyone and no one.

  “Here’s another way to look at it, Tom,” Gilmartin said. “The Agency is offering you six weeks of intensive language study. By your admission, you already have a head start in Spanish. Consider it a way to burnish your office credentials. Are you on any hot cases right now?”

  “They don’t give me anything that’s hot. I’m not quite a pariah, but I’m almost one.”

  “Well, there you go. You turn over whatever you’re working on to Frank Ellis and Mike Edelstein down the hall, take a six-week break, learn the language of matadors and burritos, come back, and see what gets offered to you. Make your own decision then.”

  Buchanan started to think about it. The more he examined it, the product for Mr. Truman was almost nil these days.

  “If it’s a factor at all, most of the language teachers are female. You might find yourself working evenings. They got some hot South Americans over there at the State Department. You should see the boobs on some of those girls”

  “Not a factor. I’m married and wish to remain so.”

  “Lucky man, you are. Jesus must like you.”

  “I came back from the war, didn’t I? Maybe He does.”

  “Maybe someone else does, too,” Gilmartin said. “Like General Smith. Take a look at these files. Start reading now and keep going overnight until you’re finished. This is a fast track assignment, Tom, and you would need to be on duty by late September 1 in a new location. Don’t say anything about the contents to anyone, including your beautiful wife. You have a conversation with an outside consultant tomorrow morning at ten AM at Washington’s second-best address. The consultant is advising General Smith on this and other operations. Be there, okay?”

  “’Outside consultant’? ‘Second-best address?’”

  “Yeah. If you can’t figure that much out, you shouldn’t be working here.”

  “Don’t worry. I got it,” Buchanan said with confidence.

  “Good. That’s all I can tell you right now. Just show up in the hotel lobby. It would be a good idea. Have a good afternoon and evening.”

  Gilmartin laid the two folders on Buchanan’s desk and was out the door before Buchanan could react. Buchanan knew he would not have answered any questions anyway. So it hardly mattered.

  An hour later, Buchanan broke the seal on the file and slid three reports onto his desk, totaling fifty pages. It did not take long for Buchanan to see where they were intending to send him.

  Spain, said the first page of the top document. It was the only word on the page, as bold as an official announcement. The word served as a title and, to Buchanan’s eye, might just as easily served as a warning or an invitation. Maybe both.

  The next page was an assortment of warning labels about anyone unauthorized reading it, as if that would deter anyone who truly was unauthorized. There was a small box requiring his initials and the date. He had gone down this road before, more times than he cared to count. He initialed the box and dated it.

  A bit of Spanish jumped into his mind from a few years back as he flipped to the next page. It was a line he had always been struck by and thus had memorized as his own small mind game. It was the opening line of the most famous book in the Spanish language.

  En un lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo, de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor…

  Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember…

  Then he was jarred by some text of more professional immediacy.

  Potential Postwar Policy Reassessment and Recruitment of Assets

  Buchanan glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. He and Ann were planning to meet at Cora’s Restaurant, the little Italian place they loved, for dinner. He began to read. They had arranged to meet there at seven. He always booked on the late side in case something came up late in the afternoon. Like this.

  Well, so be i
t. He could get a few hours in. He set in to read.

  The Agency’s briefing books always started with background.

  The Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco had declared Spain a monarchy in 1947 but did not designate a monarch. The monarchy had been vacant or in exile since 1931 with the first republic and the abdication of the weak and unpopular King Alfonso.

  The Spanish Civil War had begun in 1936 and lasted until 1939. For three years the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco, and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fought against the Republican side. The latter was supported by the Soviet Union, Mexico, and International Brigades, including thousands of volunteers from the United States. The civil war was viciously fought and there were many atrocities committed by all sides. Pro-Communist troops went into churches and raped and murdered nuns. They hung priests. Pro-Franco troops were known to pull Socialist families out of their homes and execute them in the streets. The war claimed the lives of more than half a million people. Another half million Spaniards fled to France, the United States, or the hispanohablante countries of Central and South America or the Caribbean.

  In 1939, General Franco’s army closed in on Madrid, routed the Nationalists, ordered thousands of them executed, and claimed a costly, bloody victory. His remaining domestic enemies fled the country, went underground, or were shot.

  Then came World War Two. The state as established under Franco was nominally neutral in the Second World War, although sympathetic to the Axis. Yet, it was a contradictory place.

  “Although Franco and Spain under his rule have adopted some trappings of fascism,” the briefing memo maintained, “El Caudillo, as Franco wishes to be called, and Spain under his rule, are not strictly fascist. The few consistent points in Franco's governance are Spanish nationalism, authoritarianism, Catholicism, anti-Freemasonry, and anti-communism.”