It was getting to that point in the evening that I wanted to think about navigating back to Big Pink from Willow. Mac was nursing his second beer, happy to be out and about and encircled by admirers. Liz-with-an-S kept filling up my glass.
“Who is in charge of ONI now?” asked the Admiral. “I want to know who to call to see if we can get my 28 hours of oral history reviewed and declassified.”
“Who’s on first,” growled Jim from his customary place at the apex of the Amen Corner.
The intelligence professionals conferred around him, as he scowled and finished another Bud. We thought we identified a person we might call in the morning to put some pressure on, and then the nice blond lady from ONI suggested that Mac might like to see the Pentagon again now that it has been reconstructed, blown up, and reconstructed again.
“I would like that,” he said.
“We can even show you the D.O.C. Cook remote delivery facility.”
“Heck, I knew Doc when he was a man and not a loading dock. Hell of a guy. He was the Mayor of the Pentagon, and got a chance to comment on virtually every directive or instruction that affected his building. He got a chop on the DNI establishment, too.”
“I remember when they stripped me of my Pentagon access badge,” I said. “It was a long walk down to the Third Corridor exit with an “escort required’ badge that I had to give to the guard. That is a cold feeling after having worked there for eight years of my life.”
“Easy come, easy go,” said Jim.
“We’ll get you in,” said the girls from ONI in unison.
“I can push the wheelchair,” I said to Mac, and he smiled broadly.
“You may not need to,” he said. “I have been feeling so good that I went back to work at Arlington Hospital last weekend. First time in a year. “
“Way cool, Sir. You are radiating vitality these days. It is great to see. What do you do at the hospital?”
“Oh, a little of this and that. We write summaries of upcoming activities and public affairs stuff. I had a three hour interview with the Public Affairs Officer at Joint Base Henderson Hall-Myer about our Alzheimer’s Support Group. She was going to put an article in the Penta-Gram.”
“Oh, the free rag?”
“It gets around.”
“You sure helped me get through some strange times with Dad. It was very strange, but your perspective made me know we were not alone in this thing.”
“You are definitely not. But as we were saying, Rufus Taylor established the Naval Intelligence Dining In when he was director, and the tradition continued every year after that until 2008. The one you went to the other night might be the re-emergence of a gradn tradition.”
“Mike Rindskopf relived Rufus as the DNI, and he continued the tradition, right?”
“Sure did. Rufus got a third star and then went up to CIA to be the Deputy Director.”
So, Rufus was DNI, and then he was sent up relieve that blabby Vernon Walters.” Mac sat up straight. “Walters. That reminds me of another interesting guy. Walter Lionel Pforzheimer.” He stopped to spell out the last name for me, something he does to ensure that I don’t stray too far afield. I finished one napkin of notes and started another.
“Who was he?”
“The Chief of the library at CIA. He was a legend. He loved his country, he loved his books, he loved his Yale; he loved his Agency; and he loved his extended intellectual and blood family. He had a place at the Watergate- one of the two-story units. It was completely filled with books about the intelligence community worldwide. Top to bottom. It was amazing.”
“Running a classified library in the days before the internet is a glimpse into a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” I said.
“Yes, his passion for books was remarkable. Walter’s generation of Yale men were different than the ones you know now, the ones who head for Wall Street as fast as they can get there. Walter’s generation knew about service. He liked to quote Wendell Willkie’s phrase that “America is the Land of the Free because it is also the Home of the Brave.”
“I have never heard of him,” I said.
“You probably wouldn’t have. No reason. But Walter was there at the very beginning. Hew had been Air Corps during the war, and afterwards was recruited for the Central Intelligence Group, the CIG, successor to the OSS and precursor to the CIA.”
In fact, he helped craft the CIA charter. But what he loved was books. I was at his place one time and he showed me something I still will never forget.”
“What was that?” I asked, sipping from the glass that Liz-S would not quite let me get to the bottom of, something very much like these chats.
“It was a document from the first President, actually signed by George Washington when he was commanding the Continental Army in the field in 1777. It was handwritten, and I held it in my own hands.” The Admiral looked, up, quoting from memory: “The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.” That was the first thing he collected.”
“That is amazing,” I said. Mac nodded.
“From there, Walter’s library just grew and grew. He was lucky to combine his passion with his profession. In 1956, Allen Dulles created the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection, with Walter as its first curator. He stayed there for eighteen years, and was still there when I retired from the Navy and went to work up there. The library had grown to more than 20,000 books.”
“Then he retired?” Mac nodded. “But he is still a force in the intelligence community, since he basically established the terms of reference for how we study the business. Every course taught in the CIA training syllabus owes something to Walter.”
“Sounds like the most famous guy I have never heard of,” I said.
“Well,” said Mac. “You have now,” and he finished his second beer.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsococotra.com