“The bad news is that the end of any war is a dangerous time. Some argue that it can be more dangerous than during the war, because on the losing side there can be breaks in chains of command and in discipline, and lawful orders can either be lost in the chaos or be outright ignored—or both. Nor is it unusual among those on the losing side for there to be instances of every man for himself. I’ll get more into that in a moment.
“While Germany has surrendered, the fact is the war is not over for us. You won’t be sent to the Pacific. But you won’t be going home, either, because you’re needed here. And concerning that, the other bad news—there’s so much of it I hardly know where to begin—is that the OSS shortly will cease to exist.”
That announcement caused a sudden anxious energy in the quincho . Some of the Turtles suddenly sat upright, causing the wooden legs of their seating to screech across the tile floor. Others blurted a mix of “What?” and “I’ll be damned!”
Clete Frade popped to his feet and extended his right arm over his head, the palm of his hand out. “Hold it down. Let Mr. Dulles continue.”
There then came some audible sighs, but the room turned quiet again. Frade returned to his seat.
Dulles went on: “Believe me, I don’t like it any better than you men. But I’m afraid that we—the OSS—had it coming. Let me go off on that tangent. I’m sure you will all be shocked to hear that the Army, the Navy, the State Department, and the FBI have never liked the OSS. They’ve had to put up with us because the OSS enjoyed the protection of President Roosevelt. The OSS was his idea. The moment Roosevelt died the pressure on President Truman to disband us began. It increased with the German surrender. It isn’t a question of whether the OSS will be shut down, but when.
“So far as the OSS in Argentina is concerned, organizationally Team Turtle is de jure subordinate to the OSS station chief, Colonel Richmond C. Flowers, USA, who is the military attaché at our embassy in Buenos Aires.
“De facto, Team Turtle is directly subordinate to Colonel Graham and, to a lesser degree, myself. While Majors Ashton and Pelosi, who have been accredited to the embassy, are de jure subordinate to Colonel Flowers, de facto Colonel Flowers has been told that he does not have either the authority to tell them what to do or the ability to question them as to what they are doing.
“In a manner of speaking, Flowers is Marshall’s man in the OSS. His allegiance is to General Marshall, not to General Donovan. You understand, of course, that when I refer to the chief of staff of the Army, I am not referring to General George Catlett Marshall personally, but to one or more of his subordinates who know his desires and will try hard to satisfy them. That would include his deputy chief of staff or someone even lower on that chain of command. Or—almost certainly—the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, and others lower on that chain of command.
“Everyone still with me? If there are questions, please ask them. Because what I’m about to tell you concerns not only some of your fine work being completely destroyed, but also what you may well face in the very near future.”
He paused and looked around the room.
There were more than a few expressions of curiosity. But no questions.
“Okay,” Dulles said with a nod, then went on: “Shortly after Colonel Flowers was named OSS station chief for Argentina and told that he had no control over Team Turtle, he complained to General Marshall that, because of all the things Team Turtle was doing, he had nothing to do. Marshall—or, as I said before, one of his loyal underlings—complained to General Donovan. In an attempt to spread oil upon the troubled waters, Donovan threw Marshall a bone.”
He paused, then said with a smile, “How’s that for a masterful double cliché?”
That got him chuckles, and Master Sergeant William Ferris applauded and called, “Hear! Hear!”
Dulles then said: “That bone being the care and maintenance of the files Team Turtle had been keeping that listed or else, which banks and which safety-deposit boxes in all the money and precious stones, et cetera, resided that Herr Doktor Goebbels and other National Socialist officials had been sending to Argentina to fund their Operation Phoenix. The release of the intel was done, I must say, over Colonel Frade’s most strenuous objections. But when ordered by General Donovan to turn over said files to Colonel Flowers, Colonel Frade dutifully did so.”
“How’s that for a masterful stupid decision?” Frade asked bitterly.
“You had no choice, Clete,” Dulles said evenly. “It was an order.”
“I could have given Flowers half of the files, a quarter of them,” Frade argued. “He wouldn’t have known the difference, and we would have had at least some of that money and those valuables left to grab. But, no, I gave the bastard everything we had on Phoenix.”
“As you were ordered to do,” Dulles repeated, and then stopped. “I am about to talk out of the other side of my mouth on the subject of obeying orders. When Colonel Flowers made an unwise decision vis-à-vis those files—”
“‘Unwise decision’?” Frade parroted. “How about a masterful double stupid decision?”
Dulles smiled at him.
“If you like,” Dulles said, “I will rephrase: When Colonel Flowers, to ensure those files would not fall into the wrong hands, made his masterful double stupid decision to take the files out of the embassy and place them in the safe in his home, he thus unwittingly permitted parties unknown—”
“Otherwise known as el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón,” Frade interrupted again.
“—to gain surreptitious access to them and photograph them, thus permitting the holders of the various bank accounts and safety-deposit boxes to move the assets elsewhere before they could be seized by the Argentine government on Germany’s unconditional surrender.
“On learning that there were no assets to be seized, Colonel Flowers suspected that Colonel Frade had not only intentionally given him false data when ordered to turn over the files to him but had given the bona fide data to, quote, some of his Argentine friends, close quote. And then reported his suspicions as fact to the assistant chief of staff for intelligence.
“Flowers, of course, had no way of knowing that, in addition to turning over the files to him, what Colonel Frade had actually done was make copies of everything and given those copies to the legal attaché of the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Milton Leibermann, and informed General Donovan that he had done so.
“Mr. Leibermann notified the FBI that he had come into possession of the files, the accuracy of which he had verified, from Colonel Frade.
“On receipt of this communication, J. Edgar Hoover called General Donovan and asked why Colonel Frade had been so obliging, inasmuch as officers of the OSS and the FBI in Argentina were forbidden to communicate with one another. General Donovan told him that Frade had been so concerned the files would be compromised once they were in the hands of Colonel Flowers that he felt justified to place a copy of them into the hands of the FBI.
“And so it came to pass, as it says so often in the Bible, that when the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, in righteous indignation, called upon General Donovan with Colonel Flowers’s suspicions vis-à-vis Colonel Frade, General Donovan was able to tell him they were unfounded. ‘General, the data Frade furnished Colonel Flowers was accurate. Ask J. Edgar Hoover, who has a copy.’
“The assistant chief of staff for intelligence apparently contacted Director Hoover, for that was the last either Donovan or the OSS heard of the matter.
“I think it reasonable to assume, however, that the assistant chief of staff for intelligence did indeed discuss the matter with Colonel Flowers. I also think it reasonable to assume that they refused to relieve Colonel Flowers for cause because that would have been tantamount to admitting the officer forced upon the OSS was grossly incompetent.