“Oh,” MacArthur said, and then he laughed. “Franklin Roosevelt is truly Machiavellian, isn’t he? Sending you to me, to plead Donovan’s case? You’ve had serious trouble with Mr. Donovan, have you not, Fleming?”
How the hell does he know I can’t stand the sonofabitch? Or about my trouble with him?
“And were you dispatched to see Admiral Nimitz, with the same mission?”
“No, Sir. I saw Admiral Nimitz, but not about Mr. Donovan.”
“How to deal with Mr. Donovan is just one item on a long list about which Admiral Nimitz and I are in total agreement,” MacArthur said. “We are agreed to ignore him, in the hope that he will go away. Neither of us can see where any possible good he or his people can do us can possibly be worth the trouble he or his people are likely to cause.”
“Mr. Donovan is held in high esteem by the President, General.”
“Is he? And that’s why he sent you, of all people, to plead his case? The word-and certainly no disrespect to the Commander-in-Chief is intended-is Machiavellian. ”
MacArthur shook his head, smiling, and took a healthy sip of his drink.
“You may report to the President, General, that you brought the matter of the OSS to my attention, and I assured you that I have every intention of offering the OSS every possible support from the limited assets available to SWPOA.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“As a friend, Fleming, I will tell you that I have a guerrilla operation going in the Philippines. I have high hopes for it, and a high regard for the men there who daily face death. I have no intention… no intention… of having Wild Bill Donovan get his nose under that tent!”
He looked at Pickering, as if expecting an argument. When there was none, he went on.
“I understand your people carried off the Buka operation splendidly, without a hitch,” he said.
“It went well, Sir. I just saw the two men we took out.”
“They should be decorated. Have you thought about that?”
“No, Sir,” Pickering confessed, somewhat embarrassed. “I have not.”
“Recognition of valor is important, Fleming,” MacArthur said. “I have found it interesting, in my career, that I have the most difficulty convincing of that truth those men who have been highly decorated themselves. You, apparently, are a case in point.”
The subject of Bill Donovan’s people, obviously, is now closed.
“It may well be,” MacArthur went on, “that many people who have been given high awards, myself included, feel that they were not justified.”
A swinging door opened.
“General,” MacArthur’s Filipino steward announced, “luncheon is served.”
MacArthur turned to Pickering and said, smiling broadly, “Just in time. I was about to violate my rule that one drink at lunch is enough. Shall we go in?”
[THREE]
=TOP SECRET=
Eyes Only – The Secretary of the Navy
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAV
Brisbane, Australia
Saturday 17 October 1942
Dear Frank:
I arrived here without incident from Pearl Harbor. Presumably, Major Ed Banning is by now in Washington and you have had a chance to hear what he had to say, and to have had a look at the photographs and film.
Within an hour of what I thought was my unheralded arrival, I was summoned to a private-really private, only El Supremo and me-luncheon. He also had a skewed idea why I was sent here. He thought I was supposed to make peace between him and Admiral Nimitz. He assured me that he and Nimitz are great pals, which I think, after talking with Nimitz at Pearl Harbor, is almost true.
When I brought up Donovan’s OSS people, a wall came down. He tells me he has no intention of letting “Donovan get his camel’s nose under the tent” and volunteered that Nimitz feels the same way. (I didn’t even mention Donovan to Nimitz.) I also suspect this is true. I will keep trying, of course, both because I consider myself under orders to do so, and because I think that MacA is wrong and Donovan’s people would be very useful, but I don’t think I will be successful.
The best information here, which I presume you will also have seen by now, is that the Japanese will launch their attack tomorrow.