Pickering, in other words, had all the necessary credentials that Knox required.
It is a sign of Frank Knox's considerable integrity that he actually chose Fleming Pickering for the job; for their initial encounter was not pleasant, Fleming Pickering being a notably outspoken man with very strong views indeed. They met in connection with Pickering's refusal to sell his forty-two-vessel cargo fleet to the Navy (he did sell the Navy his twelve-vessel passenger-liner fleet). During their meeting (it took place not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor), Pickering told Knox that he should have resigned after that fiasco, and they should have shot the admirals in charge.
Peace between the two was arranged by their mutual friend, Senator Richmond F. Fowler (R., Cal.), and Pickering was commissioned into the Navy as a Captain on Knox's personal staff. He left almost immediately for the Pacific, where he filed regular reports on what the Navy and Marine Corps were actually doing-as opposed to what they wanted Frank Knox to know about.
Unfettered by the restraints he would have endured had he been under the command of CINCPAC, and with a wide network of friends and acquaintances in Australia and elsewhere in the Far East, Pickering put his nose in wherever he wanted to.
Very soon after he learned of the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment, he realized its great intelligence value. And it didn't take Pickering long after that to realize that he and Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt were both just about equally contemptuous of the brass hats the Navy sent to work with the Coast watchers.
As a result, a lengthy radio message from Pickering to Navy Secretary Knox resulted in the formation of Marine Corps Special Detachment 14, Major Edward S. Banning, commanding, under the Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis (its name was purposely obfuscatory). Banning's mission was not only to get along with Commander Feldt at any cost, but to provide him with whatever personnel, material , and money Feldt felt he could use.
Shortly after he took command of Special Detachment 14, Banning was made aware of one of the great secrets of the war, a secret that Pickering was also privy to.
Navy cryptographers at Pearl Harbor had broken many (but not all) of the codes of the Imperial Japanese General Staff.
Decoded intercepts of these messages were furnished to a very few senior officers (in SWPOA, for instance, only General MacArthur and his intelligence officer, Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, got them). The operation had its own security classification: TOP SECRET-MAGIC. And the only cryptographic officer at SWPOA (South West Pacific Ocean Area) cleared to decrypt MAGIC messages was a Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT, First Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, U.S. Army. Banning joined "Pluto" Hon on the MAGIC list, as a stand-in for Pickering.
Meanwhile, Fleming Pickering and Douglas MacArthur grew friendly-bearing in mind that to call any relationship with the General "friendly" might be stretching the truth. It was MacArthur's view (and Pickering agreed with him) that the Navy was telling him (like Frank Knox) only what it wanted him to know, and only when it wanted to tell him. As a result, a radio message brought the appointment of Marine Lieutenant Colonel George F. Dailey as liaison officer between CINCPAC and SWPOA, with orders to keep MacArthur as fully briefed as possible.
Dailey had a second function... though he wasn't aware of it. A former Naval attach‚, he had the security and intelligence background that would enable him, if necessary, to replace Banning as both Commanding Officer of USMC Special Detachment 14 and as Pickering's stand-in on the MAGIC list.
Since he had no Need to Know, he was told little about the Coastwatcher Establishment and nothing whatever of MAGIC-not even of its existence.
That issue became moot when the intelligence officer of the First Marine Division was killed in the opening days of the Guadalcanal operation. Officers at Headquarters USMC Personnel, unaware of Dailey's standby role as Banning's replacement, saw only a qualified replacement for the dead First Marine G-2. And so they ordered Dailey to Guadalcanal.
And either taking care of one of their own or (in Banning's judgment) getting rid of the sonofabitch-they ordered Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell to Australia to replace Lieutenant Colonel Dailey.
By the time Mitchell arrived, Captain Pickering had gone to Guadalcanal (where he figured he would be more useful than he was in Melbourne). With Pickering's departure Banning lost his own one-man-removed access to Navy Secretary Knox.
And he also had to deal with Mitchell. Colonel Mitchell might not have been a problem except that he turned out to be what Banning considered the most dangerous of men, a stupid officer with ambition.
Soon after his arrival, Mitchell somehow learned of a priority air shipment of radio equipment Banning had ordered for Feldt from the United States. In short order he demanded to know: what the equipment was to be used for; why it was necessary to have it shipped with the highest air priority; why he had not, as Senior Marine Officer present, been consulted; what was this half-assed Coastwatcher operation all about anyway; and, since the United States was paying all the bills, why a U.S. officer was not in charge.
Banning, as politely as possible, told him he did not have the Need to Know.
That resulted in a radio message from Mitchell to CINCPAC "requesting clarification of his role vis-a-vis USMC Special Detachment 14 and the Australian Coastwatcher organization." When Pluto Hon showed this to Banning and asked what he should do about it, Banning told him to delay transmission for twenty-four hours while he considered his choices.
Banning saw two options: He could go directly to General MacArthur. Or he could send a back-channel message to the Office of Management Analysis.
On the one hand, going to MacArthur could raise more problems than it solved: MacArthur believed in the chain of command. Since colonels are de facto smarter than majors, majors do not question what colonels do.
On the other hand, back-channel messages are not filed and therefore do not have to be phrased in military-acceptable terminology:
URGENT FROM
CO USMC SPECDET 14
VIA CINCPAC MAGIC
TO MARINE OFFICE MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS
EYES ONLY COLONEL RICKABEE
MITCHELL REALLY DANGEROUS X HE WILL SEND MESSAGE CINCPAC TOMORROW REQUESTING CLARIFICATION
OF HIS ROLE VISAVIS EVERYTHING HERE X CAN YOU GET HIM OFF MY BACK X REGARDS X BANNING END
[Three]
THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1415 HOURS 31 AUGUST 1942
Senator Richmond F. Fowler (R., Cal.), was a silver-haired, erect sixty-two-year-old, Despite his attire -he wore a sleeveless undershirt and baggy seersucker trousers held up by suspenders- he still managed to look dignified when he opened the door of his apartment himself in response to an imperious knock.
Fowler occupied a six-room suite on the eighth floor of the Foster Lafayette. It was a corner suite, and so half its windows gave him an unimpeded view of the White House on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Though the suite's annual rental was not quite covered by his Senatorial salary, this was not a problem. The Senator had inherited from his father The San Francisco Courier-Herald, nine smaller newspapers, and six radio stations. And it was more or less accurately gossiped that his wife and her brother owned two square blocks of downtown San Francisco and several million acres of timberland in Washington and Oregon.
A tall, distinguished-looking man in his early forties was standing in the corridor. He was wearing a khaki uniform, shirt, trousers, and overseas cap. The U.S. Navy insignia and a silver eagle were pinned to the cap, and silver eagles were on his collar. The right armpit area of the shirt was dark with sweat. The left sleeve had been cut from the shirt at the shoulder to accommodate a heavy plaster cast which covered the arm from the shoulder to the wrist.
The two men looked at each other for a long time before Senator Fowler finally spoke.
"I am so glad to see you, you crazy sonofabitch, that I can't even be angry."
"May I come in, then?" the other man asked with gentle sarcasm.
"Are you all right, Fleming?" Fowler asked, concern coloring his voice.
"When I get out of these fucking clothes, and you get me something cold-and heavily alcoholic-I will be."
"You want to get in bed? Should I call a doctor?"
"I want a very large glass of orange juice, with ice, and a large hooker of gin," Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, said, as he walked into the sitting room of the suite. "I have been thinking about that for hours."
"Can you have alcohol?"
"Hey, I have a broken arm. That's all."
"A compound fracture of the arm," Senator Fowler said.
"Plus, I have been told, a number of other unnatural openings in the body." with his good hand Pickering started to shove an overstuffed chair across the room.
"What are you doing? Let me do that!" Fowler said and walked quickly to him.
"Right in front of the air-conditioning duct, if you please," Pickering said.