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The next day the colonel
and I met with Col Patrick, the OSI commander and a couple of his special
agents, Kokawski and Meredith. After we’d described my concerns, their
consensus was that my suspicions were “pretty shaky.” To appease me, they
suggested that maybe a low key search of the vault would give us something more
to go on. Agent Kokawski thought that if we found Lt Bird’s fingerprints
inside the vault or on records he wasn’t cleared for, it might justify a more
formal investigation.
Even allowing these guys
into the area was a problem since they weren’t cleared for the information
either. But Col Adams was able to grant emergency access to the vault and
limited access to the material for the purpose of the investigation. I was the
individual who would escort them and monitor their activities. We set it up in
the middle of the night. I arrived early to make sure none of our people were
working overtime and to sign the two agents into the area. Once inside, they
dusted inside the vault, the desk, the file cabinets, the handles, and they
dusted the target folders that I identified as new including some of the
material inside them. They finished up in about two hours and took away a
representative group of fingerprints. I gave them the names and serial numbers
of all our people authorized to be inside the area and work with the target
folders. And, of course, I gave them Lt Bird’s full name and serial number.
These guys had the authority to pull anybody’s military records and look at
all our personal information including our fingerprints.
The target revision
continued for several more days. Lt Bird stayed on his good behavior, working on
the more low level intelligence jobs in the office. I never saw him speak to Sgt
McElroy again. Things were looking so routine that I was beginning to doubt my
earlier suspicions.
But one morning as the
review was winding down, Col Adams called me into his office. After I closed the
door behind me, he said, “I just got a call from Col Patrick. He wants me to
come to his office this afternoon. I want you to go with me.”
“Did he say what it’s
about?” I asked. “Did they find anything?”
“He wouldn’t say over
the phone,” said Col Adams. “I suspect that means they did. We’ll find out
for sure at two.”
The two special agents,
Kokawski and Meredith, were in Col Patrick’s office when we arrived. After we
shook hands all around, Col Patrick said, “We found your Lt Bird’s
fingerprints all over the desk in your vault, on the file cabinets, and on every
one of the target folders you identified, plus most of the records inside them.
You need to tell us what that means.”
“Lt Bird has no
authorization to be inside the vault at all,” said Col Adams. “And he
isn’t cleared for any of the information in the target folders. So the very
least we have is a major security violation.”
“Maybe the bigger
question ,” said Col Patrick, “is how did Lt Bird get into the vault and
why.”
“I’d guess that Sgt
McElroy let him in,” I said, “but I have no idea why.”
“Maybe we should ask
him,” said Special Agent Meredith.
“You’re right,” said
Col Adams slowly, “but I think we should do it discreetly. Sgt McElroy has
been in the Air Force a long time and has served honorably until now. I don’t
want to cast any doubt on him till we know for sure.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Agent
Kokawski. “We can do that. Why don’t you send him down here tomorrow
morning, tell him it’s something routine about his security clearance. Tell
him to ask for me. No, tell him to ask for Meredith, people always screw my name
up. How’s that sound?”
Col Adams looked at me
with a question mark on his face. I shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Sgt
McElroy will be here tomorrow morning.” He turned to Col Patrick, “You’ll
let us know what you find out?”
“Of course,” said
Patrick. “I’ll call you.”
The next morning I watched
McElroy leave the office early, a little after eight. He returned a little after
ten and went straight to his desk. He gave no sign that anything significant had
happened.
Shortly after McElroy
returned, Col Adams walked out of this office, motioned for me to follow him,
and left the area. When I caught up, he told me Col Patrick had already called
him and asked us to come to his office. Kokawski and Meredith were there when we
arrived. Patrick motioned to them and Meredith said, “Sgt McElroy didn’t
tell us anything. He said he has no idea how Bird’s prints got in the vault.
No matter what we did, no matter what approach we used, he didn’t change his
statement at all. We tried to engage him in conversation hoping he’d slip up a
little just talking. He didn’t bite. It was like he was in another place, and
whatever was happening here had nothing to do with him. Toughest guy I’ve ever
questioned—ever.”
Suddenly it came to me.
“Oh, crap,” I said. “The guy taught SERE for three years. No wonder he
didn’t crack. This was right down his alley. He probably felt like he was back
in the classroom again.”
“What’s SERE?” asked
Kokawski.
“Survival, evasion,
resistance, and escape,” I said. “Resistance to enemy interrogation is a big
part of the course, and Sgt McElroy taught it. If I had remembered that earlier,
I’d have known we wouldn’t get anything out of him.”
“So what do we do
now?” asked Col Patrick. “Question Lt Bird?”
“You think McElroy has
warned Bird?” Col Adams asked nobody in particular, looking from me to the two
agents.
“We told him not to tell
anybody about our questions, especially Lt Bird,” said Meredith. “Don’t
know what effect that will have; but if we find out he warned Bird, that will
tell us something.”
“So do we question
Bird?” asked Col Patrick again. “Has he had this SERE training?”
“I don’t know,” said
Col Adams, “but he’s a young guy so he should be an easier target than Sgt
McElroy.” He looked at me, “What do you think, Sgt Duncan?”
I shook my head. “What
I’d really like to do is give Sgt McElroy a chance to salvage something out of
this. Up to now, he’s done a good job for us and a good job for the Air Force
as far as we know. Can I just talk to him NCO to NCO and see if I can get him to
tell me what’s going on?”
Col Adams looked at Col
Patrick, “Anything wrong with that?” he asked. “Sgt Duncan’s been in
Intelligence for almost 20 years. He’s been through SERE training and has also
taught some parts of it. He might have a good chance to get McElroy to open
up.”
The OSI people were
reluctant to have anybody else question McElroy; but since we really didn’t
know how serious the situation was, they finally agreed to let me try. The
caveat was that I’d notify them as soon as I determined it was indeed serious.
I told myself it could just be an overanxious young officer trying to further
his career, and a sympathetic NCO trying to help him out. But I didn’t really
believe that.
When I got back to the
shop, Sgt McElroy was signed out to lunch. I wondered idly whether he’d come
back, but I had no serious doubts. Sure enough, on the dot at one o’clock, he
walked back through the front office heading to his desk back by the vault. I
fell in behind him. “Mac,” I said, “I want to talk to you in here.” I
motioned toward the vault which would give us a little privacy.
McElroy preceded me into
the vault and sat down at the desk. “What’s up Sgt Duncan?” he asked.
I sat down across from him
and got right to the point. “Look,” I said, “I know the OSI talked to you
this morning, and I have an idea of what it’s about. What I know and they
don’t know is that you and Lt Bird have been kind of chummy lately, ever since
the target revision began. Also, something else I think you already know is that
I caught Bird in here in the middle of the night sitting at your desk with some
targeting papers that belonged to you. Frankly, from what I’ve seen, the only
logical explanation as to how Bird’s fingerprints got inside the vault and all
over the target folders is that you let him in here. Either you let him in or
you gave him the combination. Which is it?”
He didn’t bite for me
either. “Like I told the OSI, Sgt Duncan, I have no idea how or even if Lt
Bird got into the vault.” He leveled his coolest, most innocent gaze at me.
“I could accept the OSI’s questions,” he said. “They don’t know me
from Adam. But it hurts to learn that you don’t trust me either. I thought you
and I were comrades in arms.”
I stared right back at
him. “You really need to cut the bullshit now, Mac. I know and you know that
you’ve got something going on with Lt Bird. Frankly, that surprises me because
you’re one of the sharpest NCO’s I’ve ever known, and he’s one of the
most useless officers I’ve ever met. How’d you get hooked up with this guy,
and what in the hell are you two up to?”
“Same answer, Sgt
Duncan. I don’t even believe Lt Bird has been in my vault; and if he has, I
don’t know how. I think it’s going to take more than your seeing us talking
a couple of times to prove anything different.”
“You know, Mac,” I
said, “the OSI wanted to question Bird right away after they got nothing out
of you. I talked them into letting me talk to you first. I believe—and you
need to think about this seriously—I believe that Bird’s going to spill his
guts when they talk to him. He’ll probably be scared shitless just at the idea
that the OSI is questioning him. And he doesn’t have the strength of character
that you have. He’ll probably try his damndest to convince them that it was
all your fault, whatever it is. What are you going to do then?”
“The beauty of it is
that I don’t need to do anything,” he said. “They’ll need more than the
word of a scared little shavetail to pin anything on me.”
“Those words,“ I said,
“appear to be some kind of an admission that something is going on.”
“I’m not admitting
anything, Sgt Duncan.”
“So this is what it’s
come to, huh, Mac?” I said. “You were a great NCO, a credit to the Air Force—hell, a credit to your whole country. Now you’re involved in something so
bad you’re even afraid to talk about it. How bad is it, Mac? What’s it going
to do to you? Get you reprimanded? Busted? Kicked out of the service?
Leavenworth? What?”
He looked at me
dispassionately but a little sadly. “It’s not going to do anything to me,
Sgt Duncan, because I haven’t done anything,” he said.
“If you think about it
analytically, like us intel types have been trained to do, you’ll realize that
you can’t maintain that lie,” I said. “Bird will tell the OSI what’s
going on, and that will give them the ammunition to use against you. It just
bugs the hell out of me that that worthless little shit is probably going to
save his ass while you’re giving yours up.” I shook my head violently.
“No, dammit,” I said. “This isn’t right. It just is not right. You were
in Vietnam, weren’t you?”
“Everybody was in
Vietnam,” he said.
“Bird wasn’t,” I
said. “You were with the Air Commandoes, weren’t you?”
He nodded again, “You
know damned well I was with the Air Commandoes.”
“You were a Forward Air
Controller, too, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was a FAC,
too.”
“You were dodging
bullets and hopping over land mines to get supplies and equipment to people who
needed them to survive. You had the Viet Cong breathing down your neck while you
guided in aircraft to save the lives of friendlies under attack. You watched
buddies die and you saw women and children gunned down and blown up. You put
your life on the line to save other people. You took a vow to never leave anyone
behind. You took a vow to give your life for your fellow GI and for your
country. You took a vow to serve your country to the best of your ability.” I
snapped my head toward Sgt McElroy and stared straight into his eyes. He lowered
his eyes to the desk. “I think you’re violating that vow right now. I
don’t know exactly how and I sure as hell don’t know why; but you’re
suddenly willing to give up all you fought for and all you stood for. For what,
Mac, for what? What is the cost of your honor? What is so damned important that
you’d give up everything you believe in?”
Sgt McElroy slowly raised
his head and again looked into my eyes. His eyes were misty. “Nothing,” he
said quietly. “Nothing is that important.” He took a deep breath, licked his
lips, slumped back in his chair, and said, “Lt. Bird is selling target
intelligence to the East Germans. And I’ve been helping him.”
My tirade had left me
drained and exhausted, but this disclosure almost knocked me off my chair. I had
feared the worst, but I hadn’t expected the worst. And this was the worst.
Sgt McElroy continued,
“Lt Bird has copies of all the new target materials we’ve built for the
revision, and he’s going to deliver them to his contact tomorrow morning in
Langendorf. He’s taking a train out of Landstuhl tonight at nine.”
I grabbed the phone on the
desk and punched Col Adams’ intercom number. When he picked up, I said,
“Colonel, I need you in the vault right now.” He was there before I could
hang up the phone. When he heard Sgt McElroy’s story, he called Col Patrick.
Then he called the Security Police to take McElroy into custody. Col Patrick
agreed that Col Adams and I could be present at the Landstuhl Bahnhof ostensibly
to identify Lt Bird when they picked him up.
Around 8:30 that evening,
we arrived at the bahnhof in two unmarked vehicles. Col Patrick, Col Adams, and
I were in one, and two Security Policemen were in the other. Their back seat was
reserved for Lt Bird. I immediately spotted him at the far end of the platform.
He was dressed in civilian clothes and had a briefcase in his hand. “That’s
him,” I said to Col Patrick, and he waved the policemen toward Bird. They
arrested him without any resistance even though they found a .45 caliber pistol
in his waistband. As they led Bird back up the platform in handcuffs, I snapped
up the sharpest salute I could manage and held it until he passed me. I hoped it
would be the last he would ever receive.
It turned out that the
cost of Sgt McElroy’s honor was $25,000, but he believed his mother’s life
depended on that amount. His family in the states had suffered some financial
losses at the same time that his mother came down with pancreatic cancer. They
believed that she would not be able to get medical treatment if they were not
able to pay cash for it. These problems made McElroy vulnerable to Bird’s
proposition.
Bird had been randomly
approached by an East German intelligence agent in a local bar. That happened a
lot more than people realize. In this instance, they certainly picked the right
man. Bird’s motivation was strictly greed.
As I had suspected, Bird
sang like a bird when the OSI started questioning him. Because of that, the
German authorities were able to apprehend the agent who had contacted him. The
Air Force was also able to negotiate a deal with both Bird and McElroy which
kept the details of the case from becoming public knowledge. Since we caught it
before the material was turned over, no real damage was done. The authorities
believed that we didn’t need something like that to come out at that
particular time in our history. Bird did some jail time, a couple of years, I
think, not nearly as much as he deserved in my opinion. Sgt McElroy was forced
out of the service which brought a sad end to an otherwise honorable career.
As I
said in the beginning, I don’t know if they’ve declassified this case yet or
not. Information is supposed to be classified on its own merits. I think the
powers that be kicked this one up a notch or two just to be sure it would not
come to the public’s attention. They may still be thinking that way. So please
keep everything I’ve told you under your hat. I certainly don’t need to be
going to Leavenworth at my age.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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