I pushed him hard, and he finally told me he had specific orders from @ very close to heaven’ and that he simply couldn’t tell me anything more.”
“The orders came from me,” Roosevelt said.
“Not George Marshall.” Donovan’s surprise registered on his face.
“Jimmy Whittaker is being given every comfort and the best of medical attention.
He was a very sick young man on the edge of physical collapse. He was forty-five pounds underweight. His teeth were about to fall out of his mouth, and he had, I have been informed, three kinds of intestinal parasites.”
“Why can’t he talk to Barbara-or me, for that matter-on the telephone?”
“You know what happened in the apartment, Bill,” the President said.
“Canidy told me,” Donovan said.
“I think Douglas MacArthur might have done the same thing. It doesn’t mean that he’s crazy.”
“I’m the President,” Roosevelt said. “And you were playing the role of Uncle Franklin,” Donovan said. “In Jimmy’s condition, I can see where the two roles might be blurred in his mind.”
“That’s Eleanor’s argument,” Roosevelt said.
“George Marshall argues-after taking into consideration that Jimmy probably knows what MacArthur wrote-that keeping him at Knox is the prudent thing to do.”
“What did MacArthur write?” Donovan said. “You don’t know?”
Roosevelt said.
“I’m a little surprised.”
“I only intercept enemy mail, Mr. President,” Donovan said. “Touche, Bill,” Roosevelt said.
“General Marshall thought you might be-what shall I say?-more efficient.”
“And according to Canidy, Jim Whittaker said he had no idea what the letter said.”
“Then far be it from me to violate Douglas MacArthur’s confidence, the President said.
“Suffice it to say that when I showed Douglas’s letter to George, he wanted MacArthur to be given the chance to resign. And if he didn’t, George wanted me to court-martial him.”
“It was that bad?” Donovan asked. “One of the kinder things Douglas said was that he has had no reason to reconsider his opinion that George Marshall is only marginally fit to command a regiment, and that giving him the authority I have seen fit to give him borders on an impeachable offense. Oh, how the Chicago Tribune would love to have that letter.”
“And because George Marshall thinks Jimmy Whittaker may know THE SECRET WARRIORS M ST the contents of that letter, you intend to hold him incommunicado indefinitely?” Donovan asked. “You obviously don’t think that’s necessary?”
“For one thing, it presumes-and this presumes he knows what the letter said, and I don’t think he does-that the moment he has the chance, he would rush to Colonel McCormick with it. But really, Franklin, I don’t think he’d do that to you-not as an officer, and certainly not as a friend.”
“Marshall believes that Mac Arthur, in his usual MacHiavellian way, hopes Jimmy would do just that.”
“Bologna!” Donovan said. “Eleanor’s word, exactly,” the President said.
“All right, Bill, tell me what you would do.”
“Assign him to me,” Donovan said. “And what would you do with him?”
“He’s entitled to a thirty-day home leave,” Donovan said.
“I’d give it to him-at Summer Place in Deal. Canidy’s going to be there, and he’s privy to much of this anyway. I can tell him enough more to make sure that Jimmy doesn’t do anything to embarrass George Marshall.”
“George would argue that Jimmy requires psychiatric care,” Roosevelt said. George is saying Jimmy’s crazy?” Donovan snapped.
“I don’t think he’s mad. I think he was under a terrible strain. And besides, I don’t think he’s the only officer who would like to do to George Marshall what he did.”
“You don’t think his actually doing it raises the question of his mental health?” Roosevelt asked. “He’s as sane as you or I,” Donovan said.
“Christ, Franklin, you’ve got Putzi von Hanfstaengel,’ a certified Nazi, in the Hotel Washington, and you have him for dinner here. How can you keep that boy under what amounts to arrest?”
“Putzi is an ex-Nazi,” the President said coldly.
“And you know, Bill, how valuable he’s been to us.”
“Ernst “Putzi” von Hanfstaengel, a classmate and close friend of Roosevelt at Harvard, was one of the early aristocratic supporters of Hider and the Nazi party Later, his disillusionment with Nazism became known to Heinrich Himmler, who ordered von Hanfstaengel murdered. He learned of the plot and managed to escape ‘with his family through Spain. Roosevelt established him in an apartment in the Hotel Washington, where von Hanfstaengel spent the war offering his knowledge of the Nazi inner circle to Roosevelt and the several intelligence services.