King of Spies Read online

  “Mr. Nichols refused to agree”: FEAF Intel History, part IV, July 1948 to June 1950, 82–94; excerpts in Balchen report note cards, part 1, IRIS 1031199, AFHRA.

  attached to the Korean: See endnote on page 219 for explanation of how Nichols came to be attached to KMAG.

  burned in 1951: Letter to Willoughby from Gordon W. Prague, December 11, 1952, 5. MacArthur Archives, RG-23, box 9, folder 4.

  ambassador’s written response: Letter to Willoughby from Muccio, May 16, 1950, op. cit. A similar letter from Colonel W. H. S. Wright, chief of staff of KMAG, was written to Willoughby on May 17, 1950. It is at AFHRA in the same file and it also says that Nichols was much too useful to be transferred out of Korea. This letter was declassified at the author’s request on October 15, 2015.

  He had not been privy: Partridge, AF oral history interview, April 25, 1974, IRIS 01019869, 572–75, AFHRA.

  he met Ambassador Muccio: Ibid.

  “incautious with his own life”: David J. Gurney, “General Earle E. Partridge, USAF: Airpower Leadership in a Limited War” (thesis at School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL, June 1998, 72). The biographical details in this section come from Gurney’s thesis, which is based on four oral history interviews with Partridge conducted by the air force between 1966 and 1977.

  Like Nichols, Partridge had no: Ibid.

  “If the powers say bomb”: Ibid., 62.

  “illegal as a three dollar bill”: Partridge, AF oral history interview, 1977, IRIS 1028633, K239.0512-111, 63–64, AFHRA.

  “you know zero”: Ibid., 51.

  an intercepted message: Schnabel, 63n9; author interview with Torres, who said he typed this report in the spring of 1950.

  “preparing to invade South Korea”: Eighteen of these reports are part of a group of documents in the FEAF Intel History, vol. 5, July 1948 to June 1950, 720.600, AFHRA, that were declassified at the author’s request on October 15, 2015.

  “Some ass at General MacArthur’s”: Nichols, 123.

  Nichols exaggerated his accomplishments: A history that Nichols apparently wrote of his own air force unit “has throughout a distinctly self-aggrandizing tone.” Hagerty, 104, 132n33.

  he was no better than army: Peter G. Knight, “MacArthur’s Eyes” (PhD diss., Ohio State, 2006), 66.

  “it was suppressed by somebody”: Partridge, AF oral history interview, 1974, 567.

  indeed a major intelligence failure: CIA, Baptism by Fire, 10.

  Truman was embarrassed: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 4: Dark Star

  his agitation turned to anger: Hagerty, 104.

  an afternoon round of golf: Partridge, Korean diary, vol. 1, June–October 1950, 22, IRIS 126018, AFHRA.

  “Had I known”: Partridge, AF oral history interview, 1974, 572.

  “If Washington only will not”: John Allison, Ambassador from the Prairie (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 129.

  “a grinning nincompoop”: Steven Casey, Selling the Korean War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 36.

  “must be corrected”: Partridge diary, vol. 1, 34–35.

  left its personnel files: Edwards, Korean War Almanac, 42.

  “legend to the South Korean”: Stratemeyer to USAF headquarters, op. cit.

  “start the victorious march”: The president of the Republic of Korea (Rhee) to President Truman, July 19, 1950, FRUS, vol. VII, 1950, 429–30, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d326.

  white sheet tied: Hagerty, 104.

  “units immediately sought safety”: Nichols, 127.

  “I was a loner”: Ibid., 126.

  Nichols was not a loner: The Bronze Star citation from the air force says Torres “distinguished himself by meritorious service in the conduct of his duties between the period of 25 June to 1 August 1950 as assistant” to Nichols. It also says that Torres “elected” to stay in an area that was “constantly endangered.”

  “we better skedaddle”: Author interview with Torres.

  “I was the only American”: Nichols, 127.

  He was not the only: Author interview with Torres and with Frank Winslow, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps who was with a KMAG group in Seoul on June 27–28 trying to find a way across the river. Winslow interviewed in Bellingham, WA, April 17, 2016.

  Nichols did not get wet: Torres’s version of the river crossing is supported by a letter he wrote on February 26, 1951, to air force headquarters in Tokyo. The letter certifies that Torres was aware that Nichols had lost his CIC identification badge while crossing the Han, apparently during the jostling that occurred while boarding the boat. A copy of the letter was sent to the author by Torres.

  B-29s bombed Seoul’s railway station: Futrell, U.S. Air Force in Korea, 29.

  “most ground information”: Lieutenant Colonel O’Wighton D. Simpson, “Fifth AF Intelligence at Beginning of Korean War,” interview, December 1950, K-768.1504A-27, supp. doc. 17, AFHRA.

  Nichols had “performed the impossible”: Stratemeyer diary, 197.

  Nichols snuck back into Suwon: Stratemeyer cable, 2; Futrell, U.S. Air Force in Korea, 34.

  Nichols volunteered to fly: Nichols’s military service record, part 4, 45.

  “a highly successful strike”: Ibid., 38.

  Soldier’s Medal for heroism: Ibid., 46.

  won a Purple Heart: The Purple Heart was awarded to Nichols on July 31, 1950, by Partridge “for wounds received in action against an enemy on 23 July.” The order for the medal is in Nichols’s military service record, part 4, 46; the battlefield action is described in a September, 27, 1950, cable that Stratemeyer sent to USAF headquarters in Washington to justify the rapid promotions of Nichols. See Stratemeyer cable, 2, op. cit.

  “largely instrumental for the many”: Nichols’s military service record, “Award of the Silver Star,” citation, part 4, 52.

  forces struggled to stop them: Blair, 172.

  “aware of the extreme danger”: Nichols’s military service record, “Award of the Silver Star” citation, part 4, 52.

  “morale of our troops went up”: Nichols, 129.

  attacks with rockets and napalm: Millett, The War for Korea, 1950–1951: They Came from the North (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 230.

  “reading documents inside the tank”: Yoon Il-gyun, Korea-U.S. Joint Espionage Secrets—6006th Unit (Paju City, South Korea: KSI Publishing, 2005), 15–18.

  “performance recognized by decoration”: Nichols’s military service record, part 3, 18.

  he requested the complete text: Ibid., part 4, 1.

  “cannot ever be sold”: Nichols’s will, Hernando County Courthouse, Brooksville, FL, June 30, 1992, 5.

  “I saw young Americans turn”: Higgins quoted in Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Touchstone, 1987), 81.

  losing 58,000 men: Roy E. Appleman, United States Army in the Korean War: South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, June–November 1950 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1992), 262–64.

  invasion as an excuse: See reporting by AP journalists Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang, “Summer of Terror,” July 4, 2008, http://apjjf.org/-Charles-J.-Hanley/2827/article.html. Much of this is detailed at length in reports of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  MacArthur was informed: “The Political Adviser in Japan (Sebald) to the Secretary of State,” Tokyo, December 19, 1950, FRUS, 795.00/12, telegram, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d1072.

  no attempt to alert: Author interview with Torres, who was working for Nichols as his clerk at the time of the massacre and would have been asked to type up any report about it.

  “I witnessed SK forces executing”: Nichols to Torres, January 2, 1969. In this letter, Nichols asked Torres for help in research for his life story and asked hi
m for details about their time together, including Nichols’s attendance at the massacre in Taejon.

  calling them a “fabrication”: In 1950, the U.S. Embassy in London denounced stories by Alan Winnington, a reporter for the British Communist Daily Worker who entered Taejon with North Korean forces. He wrote that the killings occurred over several days, with between 3,000 and 4,000 victims buried in shallow graves. He wrote, too, that witnesses said that U.S. officers in jeeps “supervised the butchery.” See Hanley and Chang report for AP reports; also, AP has an online multimedia project about the Taejon massacre at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/korea_masskillings/index.html?SITE=AP.

  “North Koreans had perpetrated”: Appleman, 587.

  military officers witnessed the killing: Lieutenant Colonel Bob E. Edwards, “Execution of Political Prisoners in Korea,” Report No. R-189-50, Records of the Army Staff, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff (G-2) Intelligence, Collections and Dissemination Division, Document Library Branch, Army Intelligence Document Files, 1950–55, RG-319, box 4622, NACP. Also, author interview with Winslow, the army photographer who said that he was invited to watch the Taejon massacre but declined because he said he had seen and photographed a killing in April that Nichols attended and did not want to see another one.

  reports from the CIA: In a memo to Truman, the director of the CIA said South Korean police in Taejon were executing suspected Communists “in an effort to both eliminate a potential 5th column and to take revenge. . . .” Memorandum from CIA director R. H. Hillenkoetter to Truman, July 3, 1950, Truman Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman, president’s secretary’s files, NLT 78-60, http://www.foia.cia.gov/document/specialcollectionkoreanwarintelligencememos1948-19501950-07-12pdf. An army intelligence cable titled “Execution of Political Prisoners in Korea” says that the killing of “1800 political prisoners at Taejon, requiring three days” was part of “some rather bloody executions by South Korean Police since the war started.” The author of this cable, which included eighteen graphic photographs of bodies in ditches and South Korean shooters, was Lieutenant Colonel Bob E. Edwards, the same U.S. Embassy military attaché who three months earlier had been with Nichols at the killing of thirty-nine prisoners near Seoul. Edwards blamed the Taejon killing and other atrocities that summer on Rhee’s government, writing that “orders for the executions undoubtedly came from top level. . . .” Edwards memo on Taejon, op. cit.

  they were afraid to talk: Hanley and Chang, op. cit.

  “still alive and squirming”: 2007 Report on Executions, 237, quoted in Jager, Brothers at War, 95, 507n98.

  “mercy shot was not administered”: Sergeant Frank Pierce, “Shooting of Prisoners of War by South Korean Military Police,” August 11, 1950, NACP, http://www.545thmpassn.com/Korea.htm.

  Muccio met with Syngman Rhee: Muccio to General Walker, August 25, 1950, RG-84, Korea-Seoul Embassy, 1950–56, box 1, NACP.

  “I wouldn’t have these terrible”: Nichols, 128.

  “it didn’t seem to bother him”: Author interview with Torres.

  CHAPTER 5: Code Break Bully

  no longer an acceptable strategy: See Blair, 34–35, 186–87; Edwin P. Hoyt, The Pusan Perimeter (New York: Stein and Day, 1984), 107.

  “we will die fighting together”: Appleman, South to the Naktong, 208.

  “die where you are”: Ibid.

  unable to control their fear: Millett, They Came from the North, 224.

  “exhausted, dispirited, and bitter”: T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 157.

  frequent outbreaks of fighting: Stanley Sandler, ed., The Korean War: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), 325.

  cryptographer for Kim Il Sung: Hop Harriger, “A Historical Study of the Air Force Security Service and Korea: June 1950 to October 1952,” U.S. Air Force Security Service, October 2, 1952, 23, 34; author interview with Torres.

  had ignored North Korea: Jill Frahm, “SIGINT and the Pusan Perimeter,” National Security Agency, 2000, https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/korean-war/sigint-and-pusan-perimeter.shtml.

  one self-taught Korean linguist: Patrick D. Weadon, “SIGNET and COMSET Help Save the Day at Pusan,” National Security Agency, 2000, https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/korean-war/sigint-comsec-save-day.shtml; Thomas R. Johnson, “American Cryptology During the Korean War: Opening the Door a Crack,” Studies in Intelligence 45, no. 3 (2001).

  Americans were helpless: Johnson.

  he made it safely: Statement from Cho in Harriger, 8–11.

  “This I could not refuse”: Ibid., 12.

  took Walker out on battlefield: Partridge diary, July 28 and 31, 1950.

  same table with Cho’s men: Harriger, 12.

  Murray “didn’t have the Korean”: Simpson, op cit.

  “Murray’s mission became entangled”: Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book I: The Struggle for Centralization, 1945–1960 (National Security Agency, 1995), 42. Declassified in 2007.

  “a severe jurisdictional battle ensued”: Ibid.

  “Lt. Murray is proceeding to Korea”: Harriger, 20.

  again ordered Murray out: Johnson.

  “struggle for empire” that Nichols: Harriger, 23.

  “came out with each shovelful”: Appleman, 208.

  “time is running out”: “Crisis in Korea,” New York Times, July 31, 1950.

  “straight and hard for Pusan”: Appleman, 247.

  In his hurry to invade: Critique of Kim’s war tactics is based on author interviews with Joseph S. Bermudez, chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis Inc. Using classified and open source information, Bermudez studied North Korea for more than thirty years.

  more than fifteen thousand sorties: Millett, They Came from the North, 230.

  “no prize for being almost”: Fehrenbach, 187.

  “amazing, utterly amazing”: Woolnough’s oral history, quoted in Matthew Aid, The Secret Sentry (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 8, 325n8.

  “secretly dreams about”: Ibid., 27.

  severe shortage of Korean: John Milmore, #1 Code Break Boy (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2002), 42; Aid, The Secret Sentry, 27.

  decoded information that Nichols: Simpson, op. cit.

  “appears to have been”: Johnson, “Opening the Door a Crack: American Cryptology During the Korean War,” CIA, 2001, http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversations/44/2001-01-01 pdf.

  “his untiring efforts”: Stratemeyer memo to air force headquarters, op. cit.

  Nichols received the country’s: The South Korean Order of Military Merit, second class, was awarded to Nichols on August 21, 1951, by Syngman Rhee. In listing reasons for the award, the first was: “He obtained and decoded enemy’s communication messages by establishing a communication center and provided information to the UN Forces.”

  Nichols found forty-eight agents: Yoonjung Seo interview with Kim Bok-dong, translator for Nichols, Seoul, July 14, 2015.

  “One Korean agent had”: Hagerty, 105.

  “discard all their clothing”: Ibid.

  “Koreans were sent to die”: Author interview with Lee Kang-hwa, Seoul, November 5, 2015.

  “probably morally reprehensible”: Robert Burns, “CIA Calls Spying in Korean War ‘Reprehensible,’” AP, April 4, 2000.

  “I strenuously oppose this move”: See Stratemeyer, 126; Partridge diaries, 68, 78, 81, 111, 114.

  CHAPTER 6: Any Means Necessary

  Kim Il Sung was confused: Shen Zhihau, “Sino-North Korean Conflict and Its Resolution During the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 14/15 (Fall 2003–Spring 2004), 11.

  “extremely unfavorable conditions”: Evgeniy P. Bajanov and Natalia B
ajanova, “Korean Conflict, 1950–1953: The Most Mysterious War of the 20th Century—Based on Secret Soviet Archives” (unpublished manuscript, CWIHP, Wilson Center, Washington, DC), 77.

  “a scarcity of strategic targets”: A. Timothy Warnock, ed., The USAF in Korea: A Chronology 1950–1953 (Washington, DC: Air Force Historical Research Agency, 2000), 18.

  “We came out prepared”: Major General Emmett O’Donnell, “Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the USAF in the Korean Campaign,” November 29, 1950, IRIS 00472436, K168.041-1, vol. 6, part 2, AFHRA.

  found seventy thousand: The South Korean Order of Military Merit, second class, was awarded to Nichols on August 21, 1951, by Syngman Rhee. In listing reasons for the award, the second was: “He seized about 70,000 enemy air force related documents including information on air base and supply storage locations so they could be bombed.”

  tried to intercept Chinese radio: Larry Tart, Freedom Through Vigilance: History of U.S. Air Force Security Service (Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2010), 3:1236.

  “such action is not probable”: CIA, Baptism by Fire, 13.

  The agency told Truman: Ibid.

  “They had created a fantasy”: Hastings, The Korean War, 129–30.

  “because of MacArthur’s personality”: Quoted in Aid, The Secret Sentry, 32, 328n31, citing Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, oral history interview with General M. B. Ridgway, April 18, 1984, 20–21, DoD FOIA Reading Room, Pentagon, Washington, DC.

  “number-one pain”: Author interview with Sidney Rittenberg, an American who translated for Mao, in Gig Harbor, WA, September 10, 2013.

  “extremely childish” military mind: Shen, 12.

  Nichols stole portraits: Author interview with Torres.

  “red, revolving, overstuffed chair”: Dille, 46; theft of Kim Il Sung’s chair by Nichols also mentioned in Tart, Freedom Through Vigilance, 1236.

  Muccio blamed it on Willoughby: Partridge diary, December 16, 1950.

  “all get on the same”: Futrell, “USAF Intelligence in the Korean War,” op. cit.