![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/060611-d-dog-215x281.jpg\" "\\"060611-d-dog\\"")
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(Captain “Dick” Gile, USAF, 1944, at Lavenham, East Anglia around the time of D-Day.)<\/p>\n
I suppose it is a good thing, from a public health perspective, that they have banned smoking in bars, but the scribbling on the napkins made me want to light up a Lucky. I put down my pen and looked over at Mac, who had knocked the delicate tempura onion rings off the stack of lightly battered haddock, calamari and shrimp.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think anyone remembers D-Day?\u201d I asked. \u201cMidway was the biggest naval triumph since Trafalgar, and no one seems to give a rat\u2019s butt anymore. The kids don\u2019t even know what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMonday will be the sixty-seven years for the landings at Normandy, sixty-nine for the anniversary of the fight off Midway Island. I expect the fact that the invasion happened in a place you can drive to from Paris makes it a little more accessible to the tourist trade,\u201d said Mac. \u201cOnly to be expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI always think of Uncle Dick launching in his B-17 out of RAF Lavenham in East Anglia to go after the bridges behind the lines. They had to keep the panzers from reinforcing the coastal defenses, or the invasion could have been tossed back into the sea. He lost an engine on take-off but went to the target anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were acts of courage everywhere,\u201d said Mac, his blue eyes looking at someplace far away I could not see. \u201cThe ability to penetrate the Axis codes was crucial to defeating the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Big Jim the bartender waved the bottle of Chardonnay over my tulip glass, keeping me on an even keel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe agreed we are not going to talk about your second career, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, there are some things that are still a little sensitive after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike Azorian?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac shook his head. \u201cNope, not going to go there. But I can talk about Bronson Tweed. He was old school CIA, and the strong right arm to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHelms was Director for longer than most, wasn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d nodded Mac. \u201cMid-sixties right up to 1973. He was old school. He had been Naval Intelligence in New York City, working on the Eastern Sea Frontier plotting U-boats when a friend approached him to join the OSS\u2019s Morale Operations Branch. They did the black propaganda. He was a Spook the rest of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is interesting that the Navy reservists in New York were in the middle of everything, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac smiled. \u201cThey were their own Navy, that is for sure. They ran the Lucky Luciano connection with the Mob to keep the docks safe from Axis saboteurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn real life a lot of them were prosecutors and cops and stuff, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all mixed up together, and actually sort of a parallel universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey ran the scientific exploitation of the former Nazi scientists out on Long Island after the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, the projects that came out of the Castle were of extraordinary value to CNO Arliegh Burke, who was creating the Nuclear Navy in the 1950s.\u201d<\/p>\n
I picked up the pen again. \u201cSo, after the Pueblo Damage Assessment you were Chief of Staff at DIA for two years?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,” he said, contemplating his Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n
“And then you retired at the end of 1972 and went to work at the F Street Building down the block from the OEOB at the Intelligence Community Staff?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot at first, and that wasn\u2019t the name. I think we were in the Original Headquarters Building at Langley. But I am going to need to back up for a minute. I was still on active duty in the fall of 1972. Bud Zumwalt was on a tear to get every admiral who had been senior to him to retire. I didn\u2019t want to, but the CNO wanted my number to promote Rex and that is just the way it was. There was no animosity between us; Rex was his guy and that is who he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Old Jim was signaling for additional Budweiser and Jon-no-H was contemplating his vodka and iced tea.<\/p>\n
“It was in October of that year that I was approached by Bronson Tweedy, who was Helm\u2019s Deputy and very much like him. He was born in London to American parents; He went to school there, and lived with a family in Germany. He arrived to start his visit the day Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He was a Princeton guys were. He had a degree in European history, and went into the advertising game at Benton and Bowles on Madison Avenue before the war. In 1942 he volunteered for naval intelligence and served in North Africa and Europe interrogating captured German U-boat crews.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNaval Intelligence again,\u201d I said in wonder. \u201cYou know, there are still things that people don\u2019t want to talk about. I was working on a story about a counterfeit ring in France in the 1950s and touched a live wire. It might have had something to do with Luciano, but I don\u2019t know and I was smart enough not to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac nodded, neither confirming nor denying anything. \u201cAfter the war, Bronson briefly returned to advertising before being recruited by the CIA. He served in Switzerland, and DC just as the Agency was bing formed, and was CoS in Vienna and twice in London. Then he founded the Africa Division, which was a result of Eisenhower\u2019s dislike for Patrice Lumumba.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid he have anything to do with the coup and Lumumba\u2019s death? I remember the revelations about the rubber gloves and the lethal toothpaste they were going to slip into the Presidents bathroom. It was as cool and crazy a plot as the deadly cigars they were going o try to get Castro to smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI assume. Lumumba did have a brilliant smile, from what I recall. He died right before John Kennedy was inaugurated, and Bronson was in Leopoldville around that time, but we never talked about the things that later came to be known as the Crown Jewels. After that, he was tapped to head the Eastern European Division. When Dick Helms was confirmed as Director in 1966, Bronson moved up to be Deputy.\u201d Mac scowled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to remember that Dick Nixon was not a big fan of the CIA. He and National Security Advisor Kissinger looked down on the analytic capabilities of the Agency. When I was Chief of Staff at DIA, Doctor K took the surprise of the 1970 coup in Cambodia personally. There was a lot of tension between Langley and the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInteresting,\u201d I said. \u201cSo what was it that Bronson wanted you to do for Director Helms?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac smiled and popped a piece of haddock into his mouth. \u201cI would have to tell you about the Schlesinger report to explain that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that might take another happy hour at Willow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDamn the bad luck,\u201d I said, and waved at Elisabeth-with-an-S for the check.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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