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An Inpost of Empire:
For a while during the early 1970's I worked for my father, part-time, while I researched and worked up a dissertation for a graduate degree. He occupied a suite of two offices, with shared anteroom and file closet, in the Washington Building downtown, at the corner of 15th Street and New York Avenue, NW, across from the Treasury Department. Since leaving the only law firm he had ever joined in 1953, and except for his brief shining one and only term in the U.S. Congress (1959-1960), he had been a sole practitioner, though doing business as Foley & Foley Law Offices, nominal D.C. branch of his father and brother's law office in Wabasha, Minnesota. Occasionally, however, he sublet the second office to a succession of other lawyers. While I helped him out I occupied the second office.
I answered the phone while he was out in the Court of Claims law library or auditing the pension and health and welfare contributions of truck companies. The second time, over a few weeks, I got a call for something called the International Academic Research Organization (or Council, or whatever), I mentioned to him that we had gotten the same wrong number call twice. I was surprised when he said "that outfit used to be here" but it had gone out of business long ago. He said he should have the phone company remove the listing but hadn't got around to it. I knew he represented several small businesses that had come and gone over the years, so thought no more about it until, some months later, the third call came. Again from a student inquiring diffidently about summer job openings.
That's when, after repeating that the outfit had gone out of business long ago, my father fell oddly silent, swiveling in his chair in his shirtsleeves, green visor shading his blue eyes, and, reaching for his pipe, told me to close the door and sit down.
I closed the inner office door and sat down on the green leatherette davenport with its overstuffed cushions and cracks much criss-crossed with Day-Glo green electric tape. His office is worth describing, although irrelevant to his disclosure. On one wall hung a samurai sword, taken from a dead Japanese officer, which he'd bought from another soldier in the Philippines in 1945; also a shellacked painting of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral; also an emplaqued copy of his Antietam Battlefield Preservation Bill that was signed into law; and many other things among the many shelved volumes of Fed. 2nd and Am. Jur. In one corner of the office stood a highly-polished hand-carved oak newel post from a late 19th century hotel in Gunnison, Colorado, complete with scantily-clad pewter maiden posily twisting her arms and hands into little light fixtures.
Finger curled on pipestem, he puffed and swivelled.
"They used to be here, but they went out of business back in '66, '67."
"O.K."
"You remember when there was a scandal about the National Students' Association, or whatever it's called?"
"Rings a bell vaguely."
"It came out it was a CIA front."
"That sounds familiar."
"Turned out there were a lot of little think tank-type organizations that were CIA fronts."
"Yes?"
"International Academic Research Organization was one of them. Shut down right away."
"A CIA front!"
"A letter drop. Place to send mail. I could even say 'safe house.'" With a laugh. "Remember N— M—?" One of the succession of lawyers who rented the second office — rented it much longer than the others, but now retired.
"He had only one client — the CIA."
"Yeah?"
"He handled legal work for them. Every now and then someone would come into the office to see him. Undercover agents, with false identities. Had to pick up papers for new false identities, that sort of thing. I remember one guy — I came in one afternoon — one guy was actually changing his clothes in here. He'd actually been wearing a trench coat."
"So you're saying N— M— worked for the CIA."
He nodded, with a puff. The green visor strap bunched up his curly hair like an untrimmed hedge.
It was actually as much a shock as a surprise to hear that N— M— had worked for the CIA, even apart from what he was doing in my father's second office. He had such a nice, receding personality; that's the only way I can put it. Thin once-blond hair on top, a shy but everpresent smile, and a voice that barely spoke. I knew he had problems with his two teenage boys, whom I could not imagine him dealing with, given his personality. CIA!
So finally I asked.
"Why here?"
He puffed and swiveled.
"Back when I was Judge of Orphans Court, we once had a very interesting case. A man died overseas, in a place where he was not officially supposed to be. CIA people came in because his estate had to be probated under an assumed name. Very top secret. They came to me, maybe because I had served in the Army. I was happy to cooperate — patriotic duty — cloak and dagger — fighting the Cold War from my bench in Rockville."
His lips bared the teeth clenching his pipe. I didn't take the bait, but listened.
"So they came back with another case or two over my four years on the bench. Also to my law office with other business. They paid me — not a lot, but it always came in handy."
"Paid you for your work on the probate cases?"
"No. Other business."
"What kind of business?"
Shook his head.
"Little things."
"Like what kind of little things?"
Shook his head.
"Even while you were in Congress?"
"They didn't pay me while I was in Congress. But somebody would drop by now and then, brief me on things that didn't get into the papers, keep me informed.
"What things?"
Shook his head.
"And then when the good voters of the Sixth District returned me to the private practice of law, they came by again. And there were new ways to perform a patriotic duty."
"Like give an office to N— M—."
"Not give. They paid their share of the rent. But, yes, that was one."
"And other ways?"
Another head-shake.
"This is just between you and me. Don't mention this to anybody else."
"Does Mom know?"
"Of course. But your sisters don't. And nobody else has to, either."
"Can I ask approximately how much the CIA paid you over the years?"
"You can ask, but I won't tell. Not a lot of money, but it came in handy. I'd report it on my 1040 as miscellaneous income."
I had that to ponder, among the other thoughts racing through my brain. I knew from Mom, but not from him, that it had been very hard to pay bills after the re-election defeat. Not till I handled his estate decades later was I able to see in black-and-white how much his income dropped from 1960 to 1961. Then in 1962 he started to pay my college tuition. One thought was how much had the CIA paid for my college education? Even if none of it went to the bursar's office, it obviously reimbursed dollars that did. In a very tiny way, for the first time I could appreciate how Pip feels in Great Expectations when he discovers that his mysterious benefactor is the criminal, Abel Magwitch. How can he repudiate Magwitch? Does he quit all his advances and go back to being the poor orphan? Do I cease thinking what I think of what the CIA has done to the rest of the world?
Not that my thoughts would make any difference to the CIA, but that, of course, is not the point.
As the Personal Rep of his estate, after he died (on Veterans Day!) in 2001, I went through the old 1040s my father had kept since World War II. Only in the worksheets were Misc. Fees noted. None, of course, is labeled CIA, in fact until 1962 none are labeled at all. For 1955 through 1958, before Congress, the Misc. Fees columns show a lot of $25, $35, every now and then a $125 or $250, once even a $3425. Only two recurring notations arrest my attention, both $600, for 1957 and 1958. The one for 1958 is listed in two different columns: the Misc. Fees and again in an adding-up of all the separate income totals. That makes the $600 particularly intriguing. There are no $600s for either 1959 or 1960, the years of the 86th Congress, when he said he was not paid; then in 1962 there's an $875. (There is no income breakdown for 1961.) Was he paid in installments or in a lump sum? Did the payments increase with inflation? In both 1962 and 1963 there are several $150 and $125 fees listed with a G beside them. G for Government, i.e. CIA? Impossible to tell. No consistency, no pattern. The only conclusion that can be made, I think, is that whatever "not-a-lot" he was paid (besides rent-sharing on the second office) was indeed not more than a stipend. Probably, by one accounting, every penny went right back to the Federal Government as income tax payments; but, of course, they freed an equal amount of income for other expenses. His real pay, I suspect, given the way he talked, and refused to talk, about the whole business, was the secret pleasure of patriotic adventure in the international shadow-world of spies. Extending his non-combatant (Quartermaster Corps) adventure in the U.S. Army in the Pacific War into further non-combatant adventures in the Cold War.
What in fact did he do for the CIA to earn his stipend?
"Why not tell the phone company to drop International Academic Research Organization?"
"I don't want to."
"It's misleading. The calls I get are all from kids looking for summer jobs."
"It's my defiance. Of the times."
We sat on opposite sides of the Vietnam War. He said a little more, but that sums it up.
And I can keep a secret. I told my wife that night, but never told my sisters or anyone else as long as my father lived. After his death (my mother predeceased him by two years), my sisters and I were going through the boxes and boxes of letters they had left behind, most of them his to her, and some hers to him, before and after their wedding, and while he was in the Pacific. But I also came upon a small collection of very different kinds of letters, including reports of a kind obviously not written by him, but about him, in a style I had read enough books about the Kennedy assassination to recognize. I thought this was now a fine time to open my sisters' eyes about a part of our father's life they knew nothing — and for that matter I really knew nothing — about.
But they were not surprised. They were delighted to read along with me. Mom had told them years ago.
I take certain liberties, however, to avoid embarrassment or worse for the peculiar subject of the reports and any relations. I change not only names but pseudonyms, and efface any reference that would clearly identify any foreign country. I take the names I use from popular fiction of one sort or another. Suffice it to say that the primary country involved, which I will call by the exotic 19th century name "Graustark" (from a once-popular, now forgotten eponymous novel by George Barr McCutcheon), was a small country of concern to the Oval Office, for which the CIA by charter works directly — and it bordered a larger country of even larger concern to the Oval Office.
(The first communication is a browned photostat whose letterhead and date have been scissored out. The internal evidence, however, makes clear it is the first document in the, let's call it, Dossier; and that the missing letterhead is identical to the letterhead of the sixth document in the Dossier.)
The Greater Freensville Research Foundation was established in mid-1934 for the purpose of sponsoring worthy individuals in their studies of history and foreign affairs. Our financial support originated with persons of wealth who have an interest in these academic fields, and possessed a desire to further the education of promising students. The Society does not solicit contributions, engage in business of any kind nor perform commercial research or related undertakings.
On behalf of Mr. Frammis, I wish to thank you for the interest you have shown and I trust that the foregoing information answers your inquiry.
Respectfully yours,
Donald Martin
1. CHAPZOD is authorized (without expenditure of additional funds) to represent (without further referral) the Foundation in making a decision in HUMPHREY/2's case.
CASPAR GUGGENSLOCKER
That's all there is. I too am left in suspense. Did Fraulein Guggenslocker enjoy her Thanksgiving holiday on Long Island? Did she get back safely? Did she graduate? Did she learn to speak and understand English as well as, obviously, she was able to write it? It is tempting to answer the question, What did he do? with a tabloidal:
BABYSAT a BRAT for the CIA! Maybe. Frankly I feel Fraulein Guggenslocker's complaint is honest: her father wants her to do one thing, she wants to do another. Exactly my own teenage complaint — and everyone else's. Plus going home might prove dangerous, however "heartsick" she looks back. Not exactly cloak-and-dagger — but for this reason all the more revealing (if not surprising) about how imperial intelligence services operate with small client countries. And I could call it pittance patriotism for the nickels and dimes my father was paid. But I also know he would have done it for nothing. The nickels and dimes "came in handy" — certainly the 50-50 split on office rent, which helped more than a little. He had never been in combat in World War II, not excepting two air raids in the Philippines, and a kamikaze attack while on convoy, where he watched the ship in front of him, or behind him, in any case the nearest ship, get blown in two and sunk. But, as he would say, like many another veteran, he "never fired a shot in anger." He ran a truck company in the Quartermaster Corps. He served for a time in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He was ordered to witness, in New Guinea, the mass hanging of six Negro troops court-martialed for raping a white nurse. He'd seen a great deal of death in the War — "the bodies in the bushes" — from a passing Jeep. He was not a warrior, but he'd done his bit, and loved to remember every minute of it. In the Cold War against Communism he'd do his bit, too, as Congressman but also, in secret, for a longer tour as a more or less passive asset of the CIA — the way the Cold Warriors calculated he could serve them most effectively. He would have done it for nothing. And he kept his secrets — more more than less — took them to the grave. Yet inadvertently left behind this incomplete Dossier ... for his heirs' entertainment. Would he be pleased to have his little secret service revealed after death? Of course not. How long would his displeasure last, how deep would it go? No telling. Would he enjoy the flame-in-the-cheek notoriety his uncovering would bring? Of course. Would he loosen up and share some of the untold secrets? No. Those he would continue to keep under the rose. Why should his son and Personal Rep disclose this much? This is a story of growing up in a suburb of the Cold War. There is so much in that history that will never be made known to civilians -- probably not even to the seventh generation. But as much as is known should be told to illuminate that much more of the history of the era, however incidental. Not the whole truth, but a bit more of it. Incidental; hardly insignificant. Around the same time I discovered the provenance of the "International Academic Research Organization," another acquaintance of mine hinted broadly that he had, at one time, been a contract player with "the Farm." But would say no more. My father's revelation gave me reason to wonder just how many gentlemen of the Washington suburbs, not officially employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, or any other U.S. intelligence agency, have performed services, from time to time, which earned them a number in a little black book, or database, of Cold War assets. Surprising — yet why, in Cold War America, should anyone be surprised?
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JR Foley is also the author of "night patrol" in FlashPøint #5,
"The Short Happy Life of Lee Harvey Oswald" in FlashPøint #6,
"Lost in Mudlin" in FlashPøint #7,
"Down as Up, Out as In:
Ron Sukenick Remembers Ron Sukenick" &
"A Visit to Szoborpark" in FlashPøint #8, and
"The Too Many Deaths of Danny C." in FlashPøint #9;
"OUR FRIEND THE ATOM: Walt Disney and the Atomic Bomb" in FlashPøint #10,;
and "MUSEOMOUND of TARA: The Discovery of Wake Rites" in FlashPøint #12.
