W.E.B. Griffin - Victory and Honor

“At the risk of repeating myself, Milt, this Mormon pal of yours is very good,” Clete said as he handed another page of the letter to Dorotea.

“At the risk of repeating myself, never underestimate the FBI. Read on—you’re almost through.” The question now becomes, “What’s going to happen to the Gehlen assets?” Compounding this question, “Especially since the OSS is about to go out of existence?”This brings us to your mission, Milt, my old friend, something we would have considered a fantasy, if we ever considered it at all, in our days at the Academy.You are to get to Mr. Dulles, obviously through Frade, and convince him first that if we know what he’s been up to, eventually, sooner or later, probably later, but inevitably, so will the Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, and the State Department.And when that happens—and/or when the OSS is incorporated into one of the above on its dissolution—the Gehlen data and personnel will be compromised.This doesn’t even get into what will happen to Mr. Dulles or Lieutenant Colonel Frade when their activities become known. The Director is sure they have considered at length all the many unpleasant scenarios of what will happen to them.The obvious place to put the Gehlen assets is with the Bureau.For that matter, the obvious thing to do with the OSS on its dissolution is to incorporate it into the Bureau, but that’s a subject that can be dealt with later.The Director would like Mr. Dulles to consider that the Director is far better equipped to refuse to divulge the sources of his information than Mr. Dulles is. And more importantly, the Director is better equipped than anyone else to keep them from falling into the hands of the Soviets.The Director is willing—more precisely, eager—to meet with Mr. Dulles or Lieutenant Colonel Frade at any place of their choosing to discuss this personally.Obviously, the less about this matter committed to paper, the better. Your reports on this matter will be relayed verbally to Bureau special agents visiting the Embassy in Buenos Aires covertly as diplomatic couriers, et cetera, who will identify themselves to you by introducing the phrase “loose cannon” into their conversation.In consideration of the above, old buddy, when you’ve read this several times, you’d better put a match to it.Looking forward to seeing you soon, Fellow Gangbuster.Best,

Frade looked at Leibermann, sighed audibly, then said, “Milt, you didn’t have to show us this letter; you could have just come out here and told me Donovan wants to meet with Dulles. So far as that goes, there must be a ‘legal attaché’ in Bern who could have gone to Dulles directly. What’s going on?”

“Multiple question,” Leibermann said. “Where to start? Let me start by saying that Clyde Holmes and I are not old buddies. And that I think he thinks I’m even more stupid than is the case. Which sort of annoys me. That promotion is bullshit. I don’t suppose you know how the FBI works?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Well, for one thing, they don’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to civil service rules.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, just about everybody is a special agent, except for a favored few like inspectors and the directors. Special Agents in Charge are what it sounds like. But that’s a position title, not a rank. They get extra money—how much depending on the circumstances, which are determined by the assistant directors. A SAC in charge of an office with fifty agents gets paid more than a SAC in an office with five—as long as they hold that office. If they screw up, they are reassigned to another office as a special agent and get paid as a special agent with so many years of service.”

“And if they don’t screw up?

“Then they’re transferred from being a SAC of a five-man office to being SAC of one with, say, fifteen agents. That raises their pay. Knowing that they can get transferred at the whim of a deputy director upward, or downward, tends to keep people in line. You getting the picture?”

“I always thought the FBI was like the post office, cradle-to-grave security under civil service rules. How does the FBI get out from under the civil service?”

“First of all, no one complains. In large measure, the FBI system is basically fair; it rewards good work and punishes bad. Second, if some special agent decides he has been treated unfairly and goes to the Civil Service Commission, the investigator is shown pictures of him with some hooker and the suggestion is made that they will not be shown to his wife because he is known to be a friend of the FBI. Getting the picture?”

“I’m shocked. Really shocked. I’ve always thought of the FBI as Boy Scouts with guns.”

“A great many of them fit that description, Clete.”

“What you’re saying is that if your buddy found out you didn’t tell them the whole truth, you would have stopped being the SAC here and become . . .”

“A special agent in the Bullfrog Falls, Kansas, office, with a corresponding reduction in pay. Which would also have happened if my old buddy even knew I had been talking to you. And which will happen, I strongly suspect, however this thing turns out. I will be transferred to the Bullfrog, Kansas, office and encouraged to take my well-earned retirement. Retired special agents, like dead men, tell no tales.”

“Jesus, Milt!” Stein said.

“So, why are you here?” Frade asked.

Leibermann held up his hand and moved it back and forth.

Frade looked at him curiously.

“I’m waving the flag,” Leibermann said. “The last refuge of the scoundrel.”

“Explain that.”

“There’s a lot in Holmes’s letter that I agree with. Especially the threat the Russians pose. I don’t like them any more than I like the Germans. Even with what we hear about German concentration camps, the Russians have probably killed more Jews over the years.”

“My father used to say that,” Stein said softly. “When the Germans started in on the Jews, he said, ‘Germany is getting to be no better than Russia.’”

“I think the Russians have to be stopped, and it looks to me as if the only people who understand that, and are in a position to do anything about it, are J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles.”

He waved his hand again.

“So, Clete, that explains why I’m here. Questions for you. Are you willing to go to Dulles with this?”

“Of course.”

“The first thing Dulles is going to think—correctly—is that Hoover, in addition to wanting everything Dulles has gotten, or is going to get from Gehlen, wants to take over the OSS. How’s he going to react to that?”

“I dunno,” Clete said. “Why doesn’t Hoover just make a play to take over the OSS himself? If they’re going to shut it down, the FBI would seem to me a logical place to put it.”

“I don’t think you understand that the reason the Army and the Navy want to take over the OSS is because that when it’s in their tent, they can really kill it. They don’t want it ever to come back. The OSS, running loose, has been a nightmare for them.”

“But Hoover doesn’t think it would be?”

“Hoover, rightly or wrongly, believes he could control it. And he thinks it would be useful. The Army and the Navy believe—I think they’re wrong—that they could have done whatever the OSS has done, and done it more efficiently, and under the wise thumb of the chief of staff and/or the chief of naval operations.”

“I don’t know when I’ll see Dulles again,” Clete said. “And I can’t go to Washington—he’s in Washington—because I have to go to Germany tomorrow. When I get there, I’ll get word to him that I’d like to see him. That’s the best I can do right now.”