The Hunting Trip (5 page)

“First Sergeant, sir, he's a family friend.”

“Well, he got you a Top Secret security clearance. I never saw one of the
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come through so
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quick.”

Why in the world,
Phil wondered,
would General Schwarzkopf get me a Top Secret security clearance?

And then he remembered that early in his military career he had opted for the Army Security Agency to avoid going to West Point, and that he had been then required to fill out a multi-page form wanting to know every detail of his life. The form had asked for references, and as he was hard-pressed to think of any, he had given General Schwarzkopf as one of these.

“Just as soon as you pass the Morse Test, PFC
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DELETED!!
head, you will pack your duffel bag and head for Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for Army Security Agency training,” the first sergeant said.

“The what test, First Sergeant, sir?”

“There are three requirements to get into the ASA, PFC
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Head,” his first sergeant explained. “You have to type thirty
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words a minute, hold a Top
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Secret clearance, and pass the
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Morse Test. You know, Dit
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Dot
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Dit?”

“Yes, sir, First Sergeant.”

“You got two out of
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three, and as soon as you take the Morse Test, you'll have all
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three. And then sayonara, PFC
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Head, don't let the doorknob hit you in the
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on your way out.”

Phil saw a problem concerning a military career as an Intercept Operator in the ASA. He had learned that while such personnel did in fact perform their duties indoors sitting out of the sun, snow, and rain, they did so while wearing earphones for eight hours at a stretch, day after day.

That didn't seem like much fun compared to working three half days a week and spending the rest of his duty time on the KD and skeet and trap ranges. Besides, there was a possibility, however slim, that Alexandra might become disillusioned with the nice boy from Yale she had met.

Before the
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Yalie had appeared on the scene, Phil had been tantalizingly close to achieving what was the greatest ambition of his entire seventeen years.

“First Sergeant, do I have a choice in this?”

“Indeed you do, PFC
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Head. You can get the
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out of my sight now, or delay doing so for thirty
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seconds, after which I will shove my boot so far up your
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that you'll have
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shoelaces coming out of your
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nose.”

—

After giving the subject
a great deal of thought, Phil purposefully failed the Morse Test. Failed it twice, as the tester suspected he wasn't
really trying on his first try. And then a third time when his failure came to the attention of various officers in the chain of command.

Phil saw for the first time in his life the unexpected ramifications that can occur when there is a bureaucratic misstep. This took place immediately after he failed the Morse Test for the third time.

Captain Barson Michaels, who looked kindly on Phil as a result of their time together on the skeet and trap ranges, turned to him and said, not unkindly, “What the hell are we going to do with you now, Phil?”

“Make him take the
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Morse Test once an hour until he passes the
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thing,” another officer in the room suggested.

“There has to be another option,” Captain Michaels said. “I know this young soldier, Lieutenant. He's given the test his best shot, so to speak.”

He winked at Phil, which suggested to Phil that Captain Michaels understood and sympathized with Phil's reluctance to become an ASA Intercept Operator.

“The regulation is clear,” the lieutenant argued. “Complete background investigations, which cost a
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arm and a leg, are not to be initiated until all testing has been satisfactorily completed. It's the same with the CIC. No background investigation until the soldier passes the tests. Do you want to tell the Inspector General who
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that up here?”

Phil had never heard of the CIC.

“What are the tests required for the CIC?” Captain Michaels inquired.

“Two years of college. PFC Williams has two years and two months of high school. I thought of the CIC, Captain,” the lieutenant said.

“The U.S. Army moves on a trail of paper, Lieutenant,” Captain
Michaels said. “You may wish to write that down. That suggests to me that the CIC may have clerk-typists to care for its special agents.”

“They call them CIC administrators.”

“And what does the CIC demand, education wise, of potential CIC administrators?”

The appropriate regulations were consulted. Nothing was mentioned at all about minimum educational standards for potential CIC administrators.

“Permit me, PFC Williams, to wish you all the best in your CIC career,” Captain Michaels said.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Sir, what's the CIC?”

[ SEVEN ]

The CIC Center and School

Fort Holabird

1019 Dundalk Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

0845 Monday, February 3, 1947

P
FC Williams stood at the position known as Parade Rest—feet spread, hands locked behind his back—before the desk of the company commander of Company B.

The company commander, a captain who had been sitting behind the desk when Phil had first been taken into the office by Company B's first sergeant, was now standing against the wall next to the first sergeant.

The captain had given up his chair to the major who, after the first sergeant had brought the problem at hand to the captain's attention, had brought it to the major's attention, whereupon the major had announced, “I'll be right there.”

The problem was that there was indeed a minimum educational requirement for CIC administrators, although it had not reached Fort Dix. It clearly stated that high school graduation was a prerequisite. And, as first the first sergeant and then the captain had learned—and the major was now learning—from the classified
SECRET Final Report, Williams, Philip Wallingford III, Complete Background Investigation of
—Phil's formal education had ended after two years and some months of secondary school.

“That's as far as you got in school, son, is it?” the major asked. “Got kicked out again, did you? And ran off and joined the Army? With a forged birth certificate?”

“Yes, sir,” Phil confessed.

He had visions of himself blindfolded and tied to a stake, as he waited for the firing squad to do its duty.

“We'll have to send him back, of course, sir,” the captain said to the major. “But I thought I'd better check with you first, sir.”

The major ignored him.

“Tell me, son, did you get the boot from Saint Malachi's School for academic deficiency? Or was it something else?”

“Sir, it was something else.”

“What else? Every detail of what else.”

Phil confessed to stealing the intimate undergarments of Miss Bridget O'Malley, a student of Miss Bailey's School who was visiting St. Malachi's as captain of Miss Bailey's School's Debating Team, from where they had been hung out to dry, and then hoisting them up St. Malachi's flagpole. And then cutting the rope.

“I see,” the major said. “And tell me, son, where did you get that Expert Marksman's Badge pinned to your tunic? You bought it at an Army-Navy store, to impress the girls, right?”

“No, sir. I got it from the Army.”

“You expect me to believe that in your brief military career, you have become an expert with the rifle, the pistol, and the submachine gun?”

“Yes, sir, and also the shotgun.”

The major then rummaged through Phil's records.

“I'll be a
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,” he said softly. “Very interesting,” he went on. “First Sergeant, take PFC Williams to the Education Center and see that he is administered the GED test. When it has been graded, bring him and it to my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

—

Phil had no idea
what the GED test was. On the way to the Education Center, the first sergeant told him. GED stood for General Educational Development. It had been developed to see if an individual's life experiences had given him knowledge equivalent to that of someone who had actually finished high school or gone to college for two years. If one passed the test, the Army considered that the same thing as actually having graduated from high school, or having been exposed to two years of college instruction.

Phil took the test, spending about an hour and a half with it.

“You're quitting?” the test administrator, a captain, said. “Give it another shot. You have three hours to take it. Don't give up!”

“Sir, I finished the test.”

The test administrator graded Phil's GED test.

When he had finished doing so, he said, “I'll be a
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” and then said, “Congratulations, PFC Williams, you have scored in the ninety-fifth percentile.”

Phil didn't know what that meant and confessed his ignorance.

“That means you have scored better that ninety-four percent of all others who have taken the test.”

I'll be damned,
Phil thought.

I am now the legal equivalent of a high school graduate!

He was wrong.

This was brought to everyone's attention ten minutes later when Phil was again standing at Parade Rest before a desk, this time the major's. The major barely had time to open the envelope containing the Certificate of GED Test Results when the administrator sought and was granted access to the major's office.

“What?” the major inquired.

“Sir, there's been a little mix-up,” the administrator said. “We gave PFC Williams the wrong test.”

“How wrong?”

“We gave him the college-level GED test, sir. Not the high school level.”

“According to this, he scored in the ninety-fifth percentile.”

“Yes, sir. He did. But he wasn't supposed to take that test. He'll have to be retested.”

“He scored in the ninety-fifth percentile on the college test and you want him to take the high school test? What the
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is wrong with you? Dismissed!”

The major then turned to PFC Williams.

“Welcome to the Counterintelligence Corps, son,” he said.

So that's what CIC stands for!

“Thank you, sir.”

“I think you'll like Fort Holabird,” the major went on. “There's all
sorts of things to do here. We even have a skeet team which competes against other governmental investigative agencies in the Baltimore-Washington area. The first sergeant will show you where the skeet range is on Saturday morning.”

“Sir,” the first sergeant protested, “on Saturday morning, CIC administrators in training have a barracks inspection.”

“Not if they're on the Fort Holabird Skeet Team, they don't,” the major said. “I intend to kick the
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out of the
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Naval Intelligence Team at the Sunday shoot, and I want PFC Williams to get all the practice he can. Have him there at oh-eight-hundred.”

[ EIGHT]

P
hil did like Fort Holabird.

He learned a great deal in the CIC Administrator School, including how much of a threat the Soviet Union posed to the world in general and the United States specifically, and how they did so—subjects that previously had escaped his attention.

He learned what the Counterintelligence Corps did, and, presuming he completed the training, how he would fit into the Corps.

Put simply, there were three kinds of laborers in the CIC's fields. At the very bottom of the totem pole were CIC administrators, and their major contribution was to prepare the final reports of CIC special agents and CIC analysts.

His instructors impressed upon him the cardinal rules for preparing reports: One, there were to be no strikeovers, misspellings, and
grammatical errors, and, most important, reports could contain absolutely no ambiguities.

If something can be interpreted in more than one way, it will be.

He learned there were two kinds of people senior to ordinary CIC special agents. One of these categories was supervisory special agents, and the other was CIC analysts. It got a little confusing here, as analysts could be pure analysts (that is, neither CIC agents nor supervisory special agents) or they could not.

Analysts analyzed what the agents had discovered in the course of their investigations, and reported their analysis to their superiors, aided and abetted by CIC administrators who prepared—not just typed—such analytical reports.

This was an important distinction.

Any Quartermaster Corps clerk-typist could type a report, many of them without a single strikeover, but a CIC administrator was expected not only to type a report without a single strikeover, but was also expected to inspect it for ambiguities and grammatical errors and then to seek out the author of the report and get him (or her) to fix the ambiguities and errors.

Phil suspected this might cause problems when he “got into the field” over what was and what was not really an ambiguity.