“Everyone knows that the OSS is now history. When that happened, as you all know, the Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS was transferred to the State Department and everything else to the War Department, with orders to shut everything down as quickly as possible.
“There was an exception to this otherwise blanket order. The President ordered the War Department to continue certain OSS operations which he considered necessary in the national interest.
“The Strategic Services Unit under Brigadier General John Magruder”—Souers pointed to one of the one-stars at the table—“was established under the assistant chief of staff, Intelligence, and assumed responsibility for certain of these operations, the ones that could not be turned off like a lightbulb.
“About the most important, and most secret, of these operations has been variously known as Operation Gehlen, Operation Ost, and is now, or will shortly be, the South German Industrial Development Organization.
“Most of you know something about General Gehlen turning over to the OSS, specifically to Colonel Mattingly of OSS Forward”—he turned and pointed to Mattingly—“all the files and assets of Abwehr Ost, said assets including agents in place in the Kremlin and the names of NKGB agents who had infiltrated the Manhattan Project.
“What only a few of you know—and I really hope only a few—is the price General Gehlen asked, and we paid and are paying, for General Gehlen’s cooperation.”
He stopped and looked at Eisenhower.
“You’re on a spot, aren’t you, Admiral Souers?” Eisenhower asked.
He took a drag on his cigarette and then slowly exhaled the smoke through thoughtfully pursed lips.
“Okay,” Ike finally said. “And I offer this with the caveat that I’m prepared to deny it under oath, with both hands on a Bible. When Allen Dulles came to me and told me what Gehlen wanted, I knew I didn’t have the authority to give him what he wanted. So I went to the one man who had that authority, he heard me out, and then said, ‘Go ahead.’”
Cronley’s eyes slowly scanned the room.
Everybody knew he meant President Truman.
I wonder why he didn’t just say it?
“Thank you, sir,” Souers said, and then continued: “The price Gehlen demanded was the protection of his men, and their families—including those of his men who were Nazis—from the Soviets. We met that price, and are continuing to meet it.
“We hid—are hiding—some of Gehlen’s people in a former monastery in Bavaria and have moved some of them to Argentina.” He turned and looked at Colonel Schumann. “That’s the secret within the secret of Operation Ost. Some people, including the secretary of the Treasury, the Soviets themselves, the FBI, and Colonel Schumann, got wind of it somehow, and started looking into the operation. Schumann almost got shot when he got too close.
“That’s why you’re here today, Colonel. The rumor is true, Colonel. But from today your mission is to protect that secret, not make it known to all those people who with very good reason are furious that we’re protecting some very despicable people.
“It has been debated at the highest level whether the intelligence we have already received and will receive in the future is worth the price we have to pay for it. The commander in chief has concluded it is.
“Now, what are we doing here? What’s the purpose of this meeting?
“On January first, 1946, or shortly thereafter—in other words, two months from now—President Truman will establish by Presidential Finding an organization to be called the Central Intelligence Group. Congressional authority for the CIG will follow as quickly as that can be accomplished. It is the President’s intention to send my name to the Senate for confirmation as director of the CIG.
“In the interim, the President has given me responsibility for running what’s left of the OSS, and what has been transferred to the War Department until CIG is up and running.
“The CIG will be a peacetime version of the OSS. It will take over such things, including covert operations, such as Operation Ost.
“When the President told me of his plans, he said that one of his greatest concerns was the security of Operation Ost in the next two months. During, in other words, the final shutting down of the OSS and the transfer of General Magruder’s Strategic Services Unit in the Pentagon to the CIG.
“The very next day, the President asked me to represent him at the funeral services of a young woman killed in a tragic automobile accident. Her husband, whom the President knows and admires, is an officer serving overseas who could not return for the interment.”
“The President told me about your wife, Captain Cronley,” General Eisenhower said. “I’m very sorry, son.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I wonder if you’d feel so kindly toward me if you knew that when you flashed by that Town and Country station wagon on your way here, I was in it, not remembering my dead bride, but wondering how I could get into Mrs. Colonel Schumann’s pants.
“When I got to Texas,” Souers went on, “I found Colonel Frade there. The . . . deceased . . . young woman, I learned, was his cousin and he had flown up from Buenos Aires for the funeral. General Donovan had told me specifically that I should not be surprised at anything Colonel Frade did.
“So I called President Truman and told him Frade was in Texas and did the President want to see him about the next sixty-day problem before Frade returned to Argentina?
“The President replied that while he would be happy to meet with Colonel Frade, he thought it would be best to have a meeting with all the concerned parties, that he didn’t have to participate, and that, because most of the concerned parties were in Germany, the meeting should be held there—here—and as soon as possible.
“I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And here we all are.”