PART 2:FROM MAJOR JORDAN'S DAIRIES:WE MOVE TO MONTANA,THE BLACK SUITCASES,MY ALASKA REPORT

CHAPTER THREE 

We Move to Montana 

It was the coldest weather in 25 years when the route was mapped out. First of all, Major General Follette Bradley flew experimentally by way of the old gold-field airstrips of Canada. With the Russians he scratched out a route from Great Falls through Fairbanks, Alaska and across Siberia to Kuibyshev and Moscow. It is the coldest airway in the world across the Yukon to Alaska and through the “Pole of Cold” in Siberia, but it worked. 

Colonel (then Captain) Gardner, our trouble-shooter at Newark, was one of the first to go ahead to Montana. Then Lieutenant Thomas J. Cockrell arrived at Great Falls in charge of an advance cadre to make arrangements for the housing and quartering of troops of the 7th Ferrying Group of the Air Transport Command, which was moving from Seattle.

Gore Field was at that time known as the Municipal Airport of Great Falls. Although it had been selected as the home of the 7th, actual construction of barracks and accommodations had not been started. 

The Great Falls Civic Center was therefore selected as a temporary home, with headquarters, barracks, mess-hall and other facilities combined under the roof of the huge municipal structure. The Ice Arena was also used as a combination barracks and mess-hall and temporary headquarters were established in the office of Mayor Ed Shields and the offices of other city officials.

For nearly four months, the Civic Center remained the home of the 7th Ferrying Group, while contractors rushed construction of the barracks, hangars and other buildings which were to make up the post on Gore Field.

The group completed its move up to Gore Hill early in November, 1942. The 7th Group continued to supervise all stations and operations along the Northwest Route until November 17, 1942, when the Alaskan Wing of the Air Transport Command was established to take over the operations of the route to the north through Canada to Fairbanks, where hundreds of Russian pilots were waiting to take over.

Major Alexander Cohn arrived from Spokane to establish the 34th Sub Depot for the Air Service Command. It was this depot that supervised the mountain of air freight that originated from all over the United States and poured into the funnel of this end of the Pipeline. 

Colonel Gardner arranged for my transfer from Newark to Great Falls. My orders designated me as “United Nations Representative.” Few people realize that although the United Nations Organization was not set up in San Francisco until September, 1945, the name “United Nations” was being used in the Lend-Lease organization as early as 1942, as in my original orders to Newark.[Now do you catch this people,this is where they made their move on our country,first order of business for their purposes:a strong Soviet Union D.C.] 

For the record, I want to quote my orders to Great Falls, with one phrase italicized. One reason for this is that in 1949 the New York Times printed the following statement of a “spokesman” for the United Nations: 

“Jordan never worked for the United Nations.”[And the cover up begins DC] 

I thereupon took the original copy of my orders in person to the Times, explained that this was an Army designation as early as 1942, and asked them in fairness to run a correction (which they did not do), since I never claimed to have “worked for the United Nations” and their story left the impression that I was lying. Here are my orders, with the original Army abbreviations: [Times and Washington Post,papers of the 'official narrative forever DC]

Army Air Forces 

Headquarters, 34th Sub Depot 

Air Service Command 

Office of the Commanding Officer 

Capt GEORGE R. JORDAN, 0468248, AC, having reported for duty this sta per Par1, SO No. 50, A.A.F, A.S.C, Hq New York Air Serv Post Area Comd, Newark Airport, N.J., dated 2 January 43, is hereby asgd United Nations Representative, 34th Sub Depot, Great Falls, Montana, effective this date. 

By order of 

Lt. Colonel MEREDITH.

These official orders activating my post were preceded on January first by a Presidential directive. This directive was addressed to the Commanding Generals of the Air Transport, Material, and Air Service Commands, through Colonel H. Ray Paige, Chief, International Section, Air Staff, who worked directly under General Arnold. 

This directive gave first priority for the planes passing through our station, even over the planes of the United States Air Force! It was extremely important in all my work. I quote the crucial first paragraph:[FDR in all his communist glory DC]

ARMY AIR FORCES 

HEADQUARTERS 

WASHINGTON 

January 1, 1943 

MEMORANDUM FOR THE COMMANDING GENERAL, 

AIR SERVICE COMMAND: 

Subject: Movement of Russian Airplanes. 

1. The president has directed that “airplanes be delivered in accordance with protocol schedules by the most expeditious means.” To implement these directives, the modification, equipment and movement of Russian planes have been given first priority, even over planes for U.S. Army Air Forces… 

By Command of Lieutenant General ARNOLD, 

Richard H. Ballard 

Colonel, G.S.C. 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

A-4 

The following story illustrates the importance of “first priority” and indicates how few people, even in the armed services, were aware of it. One day a flying Colonel arrived at Great Falls and asked for clearance to Fairbanks, Alaska. He was told that his plane could not leave for the four days it would take to comply with the winterization orders enabling his plane to fly the cold route. He immediately demanded sufficient mechanics to do the job in a few hours.

I pointed out that this would require mechanics who were working on Russian planes. “I know I’m just an Air Force Colonel,” he muttered, “and I hate to discommode Uncle Joe, but I’m afraid, Captain, that this American plane will have to take precedence over the Russian planes.”

It isn’t often that a Captain can contradict a Colonel. When I showed him the foregoing directive and he read the words, “the President has directed,” and “first priority,” he was positively speechless.

We suggested that he could borrow some mechanics from Pocatello (Idaho) and Ogden (Utah) to facilitate the winterization of his plane. But he went around with a puzzled look, muttering “First priority! I’ll be damned.”

He asked me whether many Air Force pilots knew about this. I told him that they found it out when they hit Great Falls and tried to enter the Pipeline.

To complete my dossier there was an order from the headquarters of the Air Service Command which outlined my duties in detail. I think it important enough to quote in full: 

ARMY AIR FORCES HEADQUARTERS 

AIR SERVICE COMMAND 

PATTERSON FIELD 

FAIRFIELD, OHIO 

1-7-43

SUBJECT: Duties in Connection 

With Movement of Russian Airplanes. 

TO: Commanding Officer 34th Sub Depot 

Great Falls Municipal Airport 

Great Falls, Montana

1. In connection with the movement of aircraft to U.S.S.R. through your station, it is directed that you appoint an officer who will be charged with the following duties:

a. Inspect aircraft upon arrival, to determine 

(1) Condition 

(2) Status of regular equipment

b. Install special flight equipment as requested by Russia. 

c. Receive and store special flight equipment furnished for this movement.

d. Report any shortages of regular equipment to United Nations Branch, Overseas Section, and take necessary action to have them supplied.

e. Furnish United Nations Branch, Overseas Section, with daily report covering arrivals and departure of these aircraft and status of those held on field. 

f. Coordinate activities of Air Service Command, Air Transport Command and Material Command which affect this entire movement of aircraft.

g. Receive and transmit messages and requisitions from Fairbanks.

h. Coordinate and expedite air freight movements for U.S.S.R. from Great Falls and Edmonton.

2. It is recommended that Captain Jordan who was recently assigned to your station be appointed for this purpose. 

By Command of 

Major General FRANK:

A/C.P. Kane, Col. C.C.

For LESTER T. MILLER 

BRIGADIER GENERAL, U.S.A. 

Chief, Supply Division

The temperatures were ranging from zero to 70 degrees below zero along the route where the williwaws blow between Great Falls and Fairbanks. The williwaws don’t get down as far as Gore Field, but gales up to 110 miles an hour moved one pilot to say, “If we used a 500-pound bomb as a windsock, it would blow around too much.” Despite the cold, the Engineer Corps were rebuilding the old Canadian gold-field airstrips and were getting the airway really started as a Pipeline.

The Russian staff had moved from Newark, to Great Falls, with Colonel Kotikov still at their head. By this time I was on a very friendly personal basis with the Colonel. As human beings, we got on very well together. From the viewpoint of the usual Russian behavior toward Americans, it could even be said that we were on intimate terms.

Colonel Gardner decided that it would expedite matters if I took a trip to Fairbanks, visiting the various airports en route to familiarize myself with conditions and with the Russian personnel.

I was to return and report back to Colonel Winters and Colonel Doty in Dayton the type of accessories that were needed to expedite the deliveries of the cannon-firing F-39 Airacobras, the small fighting planes that were being flown by contact pilots to Ladd Field, Fairbanks. The medium bombers and the transports could, of course, be flown by instrument pilots.

The Russians nicknamed the Bell Airacobras the Cobrastochkas (“dear little cobras”), and reported that they were able to perform successfully all sorts of vertical maneuvers, particularly the chandelle, and held a very definite advantage over the Messerschmitt 109. If bought in lots of one thousand, the Airacobras cost U.S. taxpayers only $85,465.45 each.

On February first, 1943, I departed from Great Falls for Fairbanks. 

CHAPTER FOUR 

How My Alaskan Report 

Helped the Russians 

On the day of my departure, Colonel Kotikov came down to the runway to see me off. He saw my “Gaffney” boots, lined with sheepskin, and looked horrified. “You Americans know nothing about cold,” he muttered, hustling me into a car.

We raced to his quarters, and he insisted on lending me his own Russian boots made of felt with leather soles. Unlike sheepskin, felt never gets damp from perspiration. It also balloons down in a spread, making it possible to walk on snow without breaking through. I had good reason to be grateful to the Colonel for the boots.

As we drove back to the plane, Colonel Kotikov informed me with a pleasant grin that his wife was on her way from Russia to join him at Great Falls. It had been my experience that only the favored few could get their wives to join them from the Soviet Union; I had more reason than ever to consider that I was working with an important member of the Russian hierarchy.

Incidentally, Mrs. Kotikov arrived at Great Falls after my return from Fairbanks. She was the most seasick person I have ever seen, and it took all the efforts of most of our medical staff to bring her back to normalcy.

But it wasn’t the sea voyage from Vladivostok which caused her illness. It was the land voyage, Mrs. Kotikov told us, across Siberia by camel caravan! She assured us that a rocking boat was infinitely preferable to a swaying camel. Since she spoke some English, and quickly learned to use a typewriter, she became Kotikov’s secretary, office manager, and general assistant. 

My flight from Great Falls to Fairbanks – about 1,926 miles – took six days! I kept a day-by-day record of the nightmarish trip, much of it penciled in the air. Also, it was my habit to write once a week to my mother, and some of my letters have helped me to piece out the record quite fully. The first three days of the trip, the easiest leg, brought us to Watson Lake. Here are some diary entries: 

Tuesday, Feb. 2 – Landed at Edmonton, first stop. Weather foggy, but up above the clouds we saw the Rockies and a gorgeous sunset against the mountains. Many Canadian fliers and planes.

Wednesday, Feb. 3 – Covered very mountainous country at 10,000 feet. Lots of clouds and storm patches. Arrived Grand Prairie O.K. Then fort St. John. Very rugged looking ahead. Arrived at Fort Nelson 3:45 P.M. Too overcast to go on. Went to Hudson Bay trading post. Saw a trapper with frozen whiskers who had come 70 miles through the bush by dogsled.

On Thursday we arrived at Watson Lake, getting down just in time to avoid the very bad snowstorm which had started. During the afternoon and night of the next day thirteen men perished, and February 5, 1943 became known as “Black Friday” on the American arm of the Pipeline. Everyone aboard the C-49 transport piloted by Colonel Mensinger was lost.

I had met Colonel Mensinger that Friday morning at Watson Lake. We were all blizzard-bound – about 30 pilots with the weather closed on the north by a frost-bank 10,000 feet high. The outdoor temperature was 35 to 50 degrees below zero. The runway was a strip of solid ice, between furrows of snow.

That day the sun rose at 10:15 A.M. and set around four o’clock in the afternoon. At midday our pilot, Captain Arthur C. Rush, and I struggled across the field to the weather station. We were protected by three suits of winter underwear, fur lined flying jackets, special gloves, chamois face masks and three pairs of heavy socks inside our boots.

At the weather shack we found an officer who introduced himself as Colonel Mensinger. Of slight figure and medium stature, he was well on the way to fifty years. He was intelligent and courteous, but he grew indignant as messages began crackling off earphones inside the depot.

“Just listen!” he exclaimed. “All we need to know about weather is coming through from naval stations in the Aleutians and submarines far out at sea. But we can’t understand a word of it. Men are dying because it isn’t protocol for the Navy to share its code with the Army.” He said he had jotted down a notebook full of memorandum on weather intelligence, our worst bottleneck. When he got to Edmonton, he would prepare a “broadside of a report.”

Just then it was announced on the loudspeaker that Colonel Mensinger, who was flying south, could go, if he wanted to take a chance; but that Captain Rush and I, who were northbound, had to stay. The Colonel said he would face the risk. For the sake of American lives, he felt that his report could not wait. As we shook hands, he complimented me on the work being done at Great Falls.

Rush and I were tramping off to lunch when we heard his motors start. The plane dashed along the runway in a spume of ice chips kicked up by the grippers in the tires. Thus Colonel Mensinger, with his ten companions and his notes on weather service reform, vanished into oblivion. His body was not found until five years later. 

This was my diary entry for the next day:

Saturday, Feb. 6 – Temperature 35 below. Slept last night in sleeping bag. Huskie dog under my bed had nightmare, howled and upset bed. In evening saw old movie, “King of Alcatraz.” Played poker with the boys; won a little. Two of our best pursuit pilots sprained ankles, first time on skis; no more skiing allowed. Magnificent Northern Lights. After sunset beautiful glow in black night from sun below horizon – very strange. Three wolves ran across lake, must be very hungry to come that close. Colonel Mensinger’s plane and another plane reported lost… Others went up, looked for fires or signals. Nothing seen.

On Monday our enforced stay at Watson Lake ended, but we were in for a much greater ordeal. We began the six-hour flight from Watson Lake to Fairbanks by crossing an area that became known as “the Million Dollar Valley,” because planes worth more than that sum were lost there. It was the 220-mile run from Watson Lake to Whitehorse, the next airfield to the north. We went up to 14,000 feet to break out of the frost-bank. It had been 54 below zero when we left the ground. At nearly three miles up we estimated the temperature at 70.

Then our heater froze! We knew we were in for it. This is what I later wrote from Fairbanks to my mother:

That trip from Watson Lake was a horror. I never knew a person could be so cold. I nearly lost a couple of toes, and my heels are still sore. My nostrils cracked when I breathed and the corners of my mouth hurt like a toothache. I shut my eyes because the eyeballs pained so. My shaving brush froze and the hairs dropped off – just like my eyelashes. I ate forty lumps of sugar and lots of candy bars. Your socks were a big help. The pilot couldn’t see out of the window because of his breath freezing on the pane. So we flew by instruments until the end, when we used lighter fluid to wash a hole to land by…

When our plane put down in Fairbanks, the first person aboard was a Russian girl of middle height, a mechanic, with a flat Slavic face and with the shoulders and torso of a wrestler. She took one look at me and screamed.

I was told later that my mouth resembled icy slush. My nose and cheekbones were covered with frost and my eyes were staring like glass. I couldn’t stand erect, because my knees were bent as if crippled with rheumatism. So were my elbows. I was almost insensible. After all, I was forty-five years old, and couldn’t take it like pilots in their twenties. 

Without inhibitions, the generous girl seized my head with her brawny arms and hugged it to her warm bosom. She held it there until I could feel “pins and needles,” which showed that the tissues were warming back to life. Then she helped me into her “Bug” – a midget car with tractors for snow-work – and sped across the field to the Russian operations office.

I was stripped down to shorts and plunged into a tub of cold water, which to my body seemed hot. Cups of cold water were poured over my head and shoulders by Russian men and girls. One of them brought vodka in a paper cup and grinned at me: “Russian medicine!” 

As I sipped it gratefully, my mind began to work again. Through the window I saw our plane, which had been towed across the field. An air hose, blowing out the heater pipe, hurled chunks of ice against the building. Then there was a roar of engines, and the C-47, which Captain Rush had landed only a few minutes earlier, was off for Siberia with a Soviet crew.

Suddenly the Russians, including a Colonel or so, dropped everything and stood at attention. Over my shoulder, for the first time, I saw the slight, elegant figure of a man about forty years old and weighing 125 pounds. His hair was black, and his dark, ascetic face could have been that of a holy recluse.

When he addressed me, the voice was soft and gentle. He spoke in cultivated English: “I’m sorry you had such a hard trip,” he murmured. I gave him a wet hand. He ordered the Russians to heat cloths on the steam radiator and put them against my neck. At his direction, they rubbed me down with rough towels until I thought the skin would come off. Finally he said that if I felt well enough he would like me to be his guest at dinner. I accepted, and he departed.

I asked who he was. The answer was one of the names most dreaded by Russians in America – that of the Lend-Lease spy chief for the Soviet Purchasing Commission, Alexei A. Anisimov.

At Fairbanks you do everything underground, and don’t come by except to fly. Shops, restaurants, quarters – they all made a marvelous underground city. The underground part of the airport was in the shape of a circular tunnel five miles long and nine feet in diameter, connected by stairways with heated offices and hangars above. At this time the new Alcan highway was not yet through, and was not expected until the spring. Everything had to be brought into Fairbanks by plane or boat. The airport was known as Ladd Field.

There were seldom fewer than 150 Soviet pilots at Ladd field, and sometimes there were as many as 600. They were older and hardier than our boys, and nearly all were combat veterans. The deadly Siberian lane was considered a great honor by these pilots, and it was held out to them as a reward for courage and for wounds in action.

While I was there, one of these pilots landed an Airacobra on the apron instead of the runway, and drove it weaving among other craft parked along the plaza. The operations officer, Captain Frederick J. Kane, took him to task. The flier answered rudely: “I got eight Nazi planes. How many you got?”

As I entered the Officer’s Mess, in response to Mr. Anisimov’s invitation, I noticed that the Americans kept apart on the other side of the dining-hall, where women were not allowed. The Russians, on the other hand, were sitting with their wives, and with girl translators. I looked for my host, but could not spot him. Suddenly the Russians stopped eating, thrust their hands under the tables, and sat at attention. Mr. Anisimov had entered.

He greeted me cordially. As we sat down at his table, the silence in the room persisted. It was not until he picked up his knife and fork that the Russians shifted from “attention” to “at ease.” He acted as if this procedure were the most natural thing in the world, and undoubtedly it was, for him.

At that dinner I sealed my subsequent fate in the Army, the final outcome of which was not to occur until fifteen months later. Data that Mr. Anisimov gave me, verified by my personal inspection, formed the basis of the Alaskan report which I made on my return to Great Falls. This report touched off a drastic reorganization in the Northwest area. It also brought upon me the wrath of Colonel Dale V. Gaffney, commander of Ladd Air Field and chief of the Cold Weather Testing Unit at Fairbanks, who was Anisimov’s bête noire.

a person or thing that one particularly dislikes.

In the big shake-up which my report subsequently sparked, the Russian movement was transferred to the A.A.P’s Alaskan Brigadier General and became my commanding officer. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of a friend who called me from Wright Field as soon as he read my Alaskan report. “It’s nice to have met you,” he said. “I’ll see you in civilian life sometime. Don’t you know you’ve cut your own throat?”

My official jugular had 15 months to go as I sat at the dinner table with Mr. Anisimov and he outlined his complaints. Colonel Gaffney, he charged, was taking all the good mechanics for his weather operations when it was obvious that the very best ones should be servicing Russian planes for the 6,000-mile hop across Asia. The Alaska Defense Force was snatching Russian supplies for its own needs in Alaska and the Aleutians. Equipment for both Alaska and Russia, mixed in utter confusion, lay stretched for miles in heaps buried under snow, along the bank of the Tanana River.

As the last point was difficult to credit, I borrowed a heated truck the next day, and made morning and afternoon trips along the riverside. It was 50 below zero, so cold that I could work only twenty minute at a time before returning to the truck to warm up; the task would have been impossible without Colonel Kotikov’s boots. On the morning tour I was accompanied by my Lend-Lease opposite number at Ladd Field, Captain Robert P. Mortimer. 

Captain Mortimer originated a suggestion that delighted the Russians. It came in a letter addressed to me in Great Falls some days later: “Do you think you could put any cargo, say four or five hundred pounds, in each of the A-20's and B-25's that are coming up here?” Thereafter we loaded 250 pounds of freight on every B-25 and 320 pounds on every A-20. Since they could make the run to Moscow in two-thirds of the time needed by transport craft, Colonel Kotikov used the bombers for triple-A priority shipments.

Captain Mortimer told me that a building previously used for storing Russian goods had been taken from him by the Alaska Defense Force, and that all materials reaching Fairbanks had been combined in one giant pool. There was no inventory, and he was having trouble locating supplies scheduled for Russia. A quotation from my Alaskan report speaks for itself:

We drove about five miles through woods along a tortuous road. I found the supply pool not in buildings and segregated to bins, but strung along the river bank in man different piles. Some were under tarpaulins and all were under much snow. We got out several times, probed the snow away with sticks and looked at the boxes.

We saw many generators, complete Mobile Depot units, complete instrument shops in crates, unwrapped tires of different sizes and thousands of boxes of aircraft parts buried so deep in snow that it was difficult to know whether we were scraping the true bottom…

By actual count, I saw nearly a hundred boxed Pratt-Whitney and other type motors covered with snow along this river front… In one case we found a mimeograph machine, for which Captain Mortimer said he had been trying several months to get an order through… There seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of boxes of Air Corps spare parts, tools, dies, belly tanks, tires, pioneer equipment and wheel assemblies…

A sergeant (my driver) told me that in the spring this river always overflows its banks for a quarter of a mile on either side. It is a most dangerous situation because many suppliers will surely sink out of sight in the moist tundra, if they are not actually inundated by the freshet when the ice breaks.

Including my list of recommendations, the report was eight pages long. As a tribute to Colonel Mensinger, I urged that naval weather codes be made available to Air Forces radio operators. I included three Russian requests, in behalf of speed, which were granted: de-icer boots were removed from all planes; camera installations were stripped from Airacobras; and tow-target equipment was omitted from B-25 bombers. The Russians explained that they had plenty of real Nazi targets to practice on.

Among other things, it was recommended that each air station should have a first echelon repair shop, and spare supplies of tires, tubes, generators and radio sets; that Russian materials be isolated in a building of their own at Fairbanks; and that facilities and personnel at Gore Field be enlarged to cope with the mounting operations.

On Wednesday, February 10th, our return-trip plane arrived from the Russian front. It was a C-47, thoroughly pounded and badly in need of repairs. It had no heater. Captain Rush looked it over and said, “I hope it hangs together long enough to get us home.” We started the engines and finally took off. I had exchanged farewells with Mr. Anisimov that morning. 

We flew to 14,000 feet and soon everything on the plane was frozen. An orange in my pocket became as hard as a rock. We had on board ten pilots and crewmen who had delivered Soviet planes at Ladd Field and were returning to Great Falls for another consignment.

It was colder and colder. Some time later, looking out from the sleeping bag into which I had crawled with all clothes on, I was amazed to see the crew chief, Sergeant O’Hare, holding the blaze of a blow-torch against his foot. He said he could feel nothing. I told him he would burn off his toes and be crippled for life. He said he knew it, but anything was better than freezing to death. I put out the torch and rubbed his feet with a crash towel. When circulation was restored, he did the same for me.

We managed to get to Fort Nelson, where a safe landing was made and where we had a good dinner of caribou steak. We were all ready to take off again when a snowstorm arose, so we decided to stay over in the comfortable log cabins. In the morning it was 33 below zero and it was with the greatest difficulty that we coaxed the motors to start, warming them up from 6 A.M. to 9 A.M.

When we were 150 miles from Edmonton, the fuel pressure of the right engine began an ominous drop! We got ready to heave everything overboard except U.S. mail and Russian dispatches and diplomatic pouches from Moscow. I tore out the radio operator’s table, wrenched off the toilet seat, disposed of every loose object in sight. Poor Captain Heide, who had been two years in Nome and was on his first return trip to the U.S., watched as I dragged his steamer trunk to the door.

The gauge dropped from 20 to 6. I adjusted my parachute and opened the door. At 3 we would fling everything overboard and bail out, leaving Captain Rush to try a belly landing with one engine. Then the pressure began rising. When it got to 10 we breathed a big sigh, shook hands and sat down again. By this time Edmonton was in sight. Were we glad to get down!

After lunch we set out on the last lap to Great Falls. Just as we took off, I saw gasoline pouring over my window. The tank cap on the left wing had been put back loose, and was swept off by the slipstream. The whole side of the plane was being drenched. I ran and told the pilot, who said: “Boys, all we can do is pray that we don’t have any sparks from that left engine.”

We tightened parachutes and flattened noses against the windows looking for sparks, as Captain Rush wheeled around to land. Seconds seemed like hours. I looked down on Edmonton and wondered in what part of the town I would land if I had to jump. 

The pilot skillfully banked the motor to keep sparks away from the gasoline spray, and throttled the left engine the moment our wheels touched the ground We radioed the control tower, and a jeep dashed up with a new cap. We not only screwed it on, we wired it down. By then we were looking at another sunset, and flew homeward by the light of the stars.

It was around midnight of Friday, February 12th, when we got back to Great Falls. All my life I had heard of the “Frozen North.” Now I knew what a terror it is.

On the morning of February 17 I laid my Alaskan report before Colonel Meredith, a rugged veteran who had been trained at West Point. He read it  through with minute care, word by word. Then he demanded incredulously: “You want me to endorse this?” I answered yes; the report was what I sent to Fairbanks to get.

“I thought you wanted to be a Major,” he said. “Evidently you’ve given up all hope of promotion.” But instead of handing the papers back, he called a stenographer to take a memo for Lieutenant Colonel P. I. Doty, chief of the United Nations Branch, Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio.

At that moment I admired more than ever the type of officer developed by the U.S. Military Academy. Colonel Meredith was a close friend of Gaffney, but this is what he dictated: “The attached report of Captain Jordan has been read and carefully noted. It is strongly recommended that constructive action based on findings in the attached report… be inaugurated immediately.”

At the next rating of officers, which took place every three months, Colonel Meredith jumped me from “excellent” to “superior.” When I came up for promotion, he sent a letter which I treasure. He wrote that he believed the “thoroughness and forcefulness” I had displayed were “strong” factors in expediting the movement of United Nations airplanes through Great Falls”; and that my “tact and understanding had contributed materially to excellent relations with the Russian representatives.”

As for my Alaskan report, Colonel Gardner told me that Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose A. Winters, executive officer of the United Nations Branch at Wright Field, had ordered a couple of hundred mimeographs of my report put in circulation. But Colonel Gardner warned me that from now on I would be a “marked man.” He observed that Pratt-Whitney motors cost the taxpayers $25,000 each and he added: “You would be the one to go out in the snow and dig them up!”

Inspectors began to rush to Fairbanks by the plane load. They started with first lieutenants and captains. As their reports went back, confirming mine, the rank ascended to majors and lieutenant colonels. Arriving at last was a full colonel named Hugh J. Knerr, who afterwards became a major general. He was chief of the Headquarters Air Service Command at Fairfield, and had been empowered to settle the matter once and for all. 

Colonel d’Arce announced that my report was “raising the roof,” and that Colonel Gaffney had been summoned to Washington by the Chief of Staff of the Army Air Forces, Major General E. Stratemeyer. Gaffney wanted to see me when he passed through Great Falls. Colonel d’Arce continued, I was eligible for some leave, and if I liked he would get orders cut for me to go to Seattle or San Francisco. My reply was that I wouldn’t run away.

He left us alone when Colonel Gaffney arrived. I had never seen him before. He was a giant of a man, with a square, massive head and the superstructure of a Babe Ruth. He slammed his fist on the desk and roared: “You’ve certainly raised hell! What right had you to come into my post and make a report without consulting me?”

I explained that while I was in Fairbanks he was absent on a flight to photograph mountains; I had discharged my military duty by reporting to Lieutenant Colonel Raymond F.F. Kitchingman, commander of the 384th Supply Squadron which handled shipments to Russia. I quoted Mr. Anisimov as declaring that he had protested repeatedly to Colonel Gaffney without result. 

“I’m going to Washington,” shouted the Colonel, “to try and undo the damage you’ve done. I’m giving you a last chance to retract!”

I said the report was true and I wouldn’t take back a line. I remembered the six words which Sergeant Cook had once assured me would stop any brass hat in his tracks. What I had done, I told Colonel Gaffney, was “for the good of the service.” He was too furious to speak, and dismissed me with a fling of the arm.

At least I could point to these results of my Alaskan report:

The navy’s code was thrown open to wireless operators on the Pipeline’s American leg.

There were personnel changes made at Ladd Field, one of which was a new supply officer for the 384th Squadron.

Consignments for Russia were separated from those of the Alaskan Defense Force.

Adequate storage housing was ordered.

The Russian operation was now recognized as paramount at Great Falls. It was shifted to the town’s largest air installation (from which a bomber training center had removed overseas), known as “East Base.” 

CHAPTER FIVE

The Black Suitcases

After my return to Great Falls I began to realize an important fact: while we were a pipeline to Russia, Russia was also a pipeline to us.

One really disturbing fact which brought this home to me was that the entry of Soviet personnel into the United States was completely uncontrolled. Planes were arriving regularly from Moscow with unidentified Russians aboard. I would see them jump off planes, hop over fences, and run for taxicabs. They seemed to know in advance exactly where they were headed, and how to get there. It was an ideal set-up for planting spies in this country, with false identities, for use during and after the war. * 
*Major General Follette Bradley, USAF (Ret.), winner of the Distinguished Service Medal for his pioneering of the Alsib Pipeline, wrote in the New York times on Aug. 31, 1951: “Of my own personal knowledge I know that beginning early in 1942 Russian civilian and military agents were in our country in large numbers.

It is hard to believe, but in 1943 there was no censorship set-up at Great Falls. An inspector more than 70 years old, named Randolph K. Hardy, did double work for the Treasury Department in customs and immigration. His office, in the city, was four miles from the airfield. He played the organ in a local church, and I was often told he was practicing and could not be interrupted. I took it on myself to provide him with telephone, typewriter, desk, file cabinet, stenographer, interpreter and staff car.

Finally I was driven to put up a large sign over my own office door, with the legend in Russian and English: “Customs Office – Report Here.” When Mr. Hardy was not present I got into the habit of demanding passports myself and jotting down names and particulars. It was not my job, but the list in my diary of Russians operating in this country began to swell by leaps and bounds. In the end I had the 418 names mentioned earlier in this book.

Despite my private worries, my relations with Colonel Kotikov were excellent. I was doing all that I could do to expedite Russian shipments; my directives were clear, and I was following them to the best of my ability.

Colonel Kotikov was well aware that a Major could do more expediting than a Captain. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn that Kotikov had painstakingly dictated in English the following letter to Colonel Gitzinger: 

ARMY AIR FORCES 

34th Sub-Depot 

United Nations Unit 

Great Falls, Montana 

March 8, 1943. 

Lt. Col. C.H. Gitzinger, 
Third National Building, 
Dayton, Ohio.

Dear Colonel Gitzinger:

Captain Jordan work any day here is always with the same people, Sub-Depot Engineering Officer, Major Boaz; 7th Ferrying Group Base Engineering Officer, Major Lawrence; Alaskan Wing Control and Engineering Office, Major Taylor; Sub-Depot Executive Officer, Major O’Neill; and Base Supply Officer, Major Ramsey.

He is much hindered in his good work by under rank with these officers who he asks for things all time. I ask you to recommend him for equal rank to help Russian movement here. 

A.N. KOTIKOV 
Col., U.S.S.R. Representative

When my promotion finally came through, the gold oak leaves were pinned on my shoulder by Colonel Kotikov. This occasion was photographed and the picture is reproduced elsewhere in this book.

Now two other occurrences began troubling me. The first was the unusual number of black patent-leather suitcases, bound with white window sash cord and sealed with red wax, which were coming through on the route to Moscow. The second was the burglary of morphine ampuls from half of the 500 first-aid kits in our Gore Field warehouse.

The first black suitcases, six in number, were in charge of a Russian officer and I passed them without question upon his declaration that they were “personal luggage.” But the units mounted to ten, twenty and thirty and at last to standard batches of fifty which weighed almost two tons and consumed the cargo allotment of an entire plane. The officers were replaced by armed couriers, traveling in pairs, and the excuse for avoiding inspection was changed from “personal luggage” to “diplomatic immunity.” Here were tons of materials proceeding to the Soviet Union, and I had no idea what they were. If interrogated, I should have to plead ignorance. I began pursuing Colonel Kotikov with queries and protests. He answered with one eternal refrain. The suitcases were of “highest diplomatic character.” I retorted that they were not being sent by the Soviet Embassy but the Soviet Government Publishing Commission in Washington. He asserted that, whatever the origin, they were covered by diplomatic immunity.

But I am sure he knew that one of these days I would try to search the containers.

They had grown to such importance in the eyes of the Russians that they asked for a locked room. The only door in the warehouse with a lock was that to the compartment in which the first-aid packets were kept. I put it at Colonel Kotikov’s disposal. The couriers took turn about. First one and then the other slept on top of the suitcases, while his companion stood guard. Perhaps unjustly, I suspected them of stealing our morphine. They were the only persons left in the storeroom without witnesses.

At four o’clock one cold afternoon in March, 1943, Colonel Kotikov said to me: “I want you dinner tonight.” Then he doubled the surprise by whisking from his ulster pockets two slender bottles with long, sloping necks. “Vodka!” The invitation was accepted with pleasure and also curiosity. For almost a year now I had associated with Colonel Kotikov and his staff, but I had never dined with them. As a matter of routine they lunched with us at the Officers’ Club. But at night they disappeared, wandering off by themselves to other restaurants or the dining-room of the Rainbow Hotel, where they were quartered. So far as I knew, this was the first time they had bidden an American to an evening repast. It reminded me of my meal with Mr. Anisimov, who had wanted something from me.

At the Officers’ Club we had noticed that the Russians were extremely absent-minded about picking up bar checks. These oversights were costing us around $80 monthly, and we decided to remedy the situation. In the club were several slot-machines, for which the Russians had a passion. We decided to “set aside” one machine to cover their libations. Thanks to the one armed mechanical bandit, we contrived after all to make them settle for their liquor. 

Now, of a sudden, they asked me to dinner and were offering vodka, free, as an allurement. I could not help wondering why. Acting on a hunch, I excused myself from riding to town with Colonel Kotikov in his Pontiac. I decided I would take my staff car, which had a soldier driver; in case of need, I preferred to have mobility. I was directed to join the party at seven o’clock at a restaurant in Great Falls know as “Carolina Pines.”

There was not much time, so I hastened to ask our maintenance chief whether the Russians were planning any flights. He answered yes; they had a C-47 staged on the line, preparing to go. It was being warmed up with Nelson heaters – large canvas bags, fed with hot air, which were made to slip over motors and propellers. (Winter temperatures at the airfield could be as severe as at Fairbanks, ranging from 20 to 70 degrees below zero. Oil would sometimes freeze as hard as stone, and two to four hours were required to thaw out an engine.)

The Russians wielded a high hand at the airbase, but I had one power they respected. Though Lend-Lease planes were delivered to them at Great Falls, they were flown by American pilots as far as Fairbanks. No American pilot could leave without clearance, and I had authority to ground any plane at any time. In my absence, permission was given by the flight Officer of the Day. I called the control tower, gave the telephone number of the restaurant, and issued a positive order that no cargo plane was to be cleared for Russia except by myself.

Occupied by these thoughts, I drove to “Carolina Pines.” It was on the second floor of a big frame structure, with an outside stairway like a fire escape. The gathering consisted of five Russians and a single American, myself. Colonel Kotikov acted as host, and among the guests was Colonel G.E. Tsvetkov, head of the fighter-pursuit division of the Soviet Purchasing Commission.

When Colonel Kotikov produced his vodka bottles, I decided it would be only civil, in this minute corner of Russia, to do as the Russians did. I am practically a total abstainer; my yearly ration would average no more than one bottle of Scotch. Lucky for me, the vodka supply was limited. Small wine glasses were handed about, instead of the usual goblets.

Our host offered the first pledge “to the great Stalin.” We tossed the liquid fire into our throats, and I imitated the others by holding my glass upside down, at arm’s length. The refill was instantaneous, and the second toast was to “Novikov.” I asked who he was. “The great Field Marshal A. Novikov,” I was told. “Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army Air Forces.” The third name was “Pokryshkin.” I had never heard of him either, and fond he was Colonel Alexander Pokryshkin, Soviet ace, with 48 German planes to his credit.

Since the Russians had failed to do so, I made bold at this point to suggest a toast to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was drunk with a will. So as the second pledge, in honor of my chief, General Henry H. Arnold, Commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces. With the vodka under our belts, we moved to chairs about the table. But at 8:30 o’clock when we were two-thirds finished, the waitress handed me a message in pencil. It notified me to call the control tower at once.

At a public telephone, in the corridor, I learned that the C-47 had warmed up and that a couple of newly arrived couriers were demanding clearance. Without returning to the dining-room, I threw on my great-coat, scuffled down the stairs and ordered the driver to race full speed for the hangars, four miles away.

It was mid-winter in Great Falls. Snow was deep on the ground, and stars glittered frostily in a crystal sky. The temperature that night was about 20 degrees below zero.

As we neared the Lend-Lease plane there loomed up, in its open door, the figure of a burly, barrel-chested Russian. His back was propped against one jamb of the portal. An arm and a leg were stretched across the opposite side. I clambered up and he tried to stop me by pushing hard with his stomach. I pushed back, ducked under his arm, and stood inside the cabin.

It was dimly lighted by a solitary electric bulb in the dome. Faintly visible was an expanse of black suitcases, with white ropes and seals of crimson wax. On top of them, reclining on one elbow on a blanket, was a second Russian, slimmer than the first, who sprang to his feet as I entered. They were mature men, in the forties, and wore beneath leather jackets the inevitable blue suits of Russian civilians. Under each coat, from a shoulder holster, protruded the butt of a pistol.

It had been no more than a guess that a fresh installment of suitcases might be due. My first thought was: “Another bunch of those damn things!” The second was that if I was ever going to open them up, now was as good a time as any. With signs I made the Russians understand what I intended to do.  
Promptly they went insane. They danced. They pushed at me with their hands and shrieked over and over the one English word they appeared to know. It was “deeplomateek!” I brushed them aside and took from my pocket a metal handle containing a safety razor blade which I carry in preference to a pocket knife.

Sensing its purpose, the lean courier flung himself face down on the suitcase, with arms and legs out-spanned to shield as much as possible with his body. I dragged one of the containers from under him, and he leaped up again as I started to saw through the first cord. At this sight their antics and shouts redoubled.

While opening the third suitcase, I had a mental flash that brought sweat to my forehead. The Russians were half made with fury and terror. They were on both sides of me, in front and behind. Supposing, in desperation, one of them shot me in the back? There would be no American witness, and my death could be passed off as “a deplorable accident.”

I called to a Yank soldier who was on patrol duty thirty feet away. He crunched over through the snow. Bending down from the plane, I asked whether he had had combat experience. He answered that he had, in the South Pacific. I stooped lower and murmured:

”I’m going to open more of this baggage. I want you to watch these two Russians. Both are armed. I don’t expect any trouble. But if one of them aims a gun at me, I want you to let him have it first. Understand?” 

After a moment’s thought, he looked me in the eye and said, “Sir, is that an order?” I replied that it was an order. He clicked the bolt of his rifle to snap a cartridge into the chamber and brought the weapon to ready. He was tall enough for his head to clear the door sill. The muzzle was pushed forward to command the interior.

One courier jumped from the plane and sprinted for the hangars, where there were telephones. The other, his face contorted as if to keep from crying, began reknotting the cords I had severed. There was little trouble getting into the suitcases because the Russians had bought the cheapest on the market. They had no locks, but only pairs of clasps. All were consigned to the same address. The entry on the bill of lading read: “Director, Institute of Technical and Economic Information, 47 Chkalovskaya, Moscow 120, U.S.S.R.”

I decided to attempt only a spot check – one suitcase, say, in every three. I examined perhaps eighteen of fifty. Otherwise the search was fairly thorough, as I was looking for morphine. (Incidentally, none was found.) The light was so weak that it was impossible to decipher text without using a flash lamp. I had to take off my gloves, and my fingers grew numb with cold.

Using one knee as a desk, I jotted notes with a pencil on two long envelopes that happened to be in my pocket. There was usually one entry, or phrase of description, for each suitcase inspected. These scrawls were gathered within the next few days into a memorandum, after which I discarded the envelopes. A page of the memorandum is reproduced in this book on pages 80, 81.

The first thing I unearthed made me snort with disgust. It was a ponderous tome on the art of shipping four-legged animals. Was this the kind of twaddle American pilots were risking their lives to carry? But in the back I found a series of tables listing railroad mileages from almost any point in the United States to any other.

Neatly packed with the volume were scores of road maps, of the sort available at filling stations to all comers. But I made a note that they were “marked strangely.” Taken together, they furnished a country-wide chart, with names and places, of American industrial plants. For example, Pittsburgh entries included “Westinghouse” and “Blaw-Knox.”

The next suitcase to be opened was crammed with material assembled in America by the official Soviet news organ, the Tass Telegraph Agency. A third was devoted to Russia’s government-owned Amtorg Trading Corporation of New York. One yielded a collection of maps of the Panama Canal Commission, with markings to show strategic spots in the Canal Zone and distances to islands and ports within a 1,000-mile radius.

Another was filled with documents relating to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, one of the most “sensitive” areas in the war effort. Judging by their contents, various suitcases could have been labeled under the heads of machine tools, oil refineries, blast furnaces, steel foundries, mining, coal, concrete, and the like. Other folders were stuffed with naval and shipping intelligence. There seemed to be hundreds of commercial catalogs and scientific magazines.

I noted that there were letters from Yakov M. Lomakin. Afterwards, as Soviet Consul General in New York, he played a part in the Mme. Kasenkina “leap for freedom” incident which forced him to quit the country. There were also sheafs of information about Mexico, Argentina and Cuba.

There were groups of documents which, on the evidence of stationery, had been contributed by Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and State. All such papers had been trimmed close to the text, with white margins removed. I decided this was done either to save weight, or to remove “Secret,” “Confidential” or “Restricted” stamps that might have halted a shipment, or for both reasons.

I distinctly remember five or six State Department folders, bound with stout rubber bands. Clipped to each was a tab. The first read: “From Sayre.” I took down the words because it ran through my head that someone of that name had recently been High Commissioner to the Philippines.

Then I copied the legend: “From Hiss.” * I had never heard of Alger Hiss, and made the entry because the folder bearing his name happened to be second in the pile. It contained hundreds of Photostats of what seemed to be military reports. There was a third name which I did not copy but which stuck in my mind because it was the same as that of my dentist. The tab read: “From Geiger.” I did not list and cannot remember the names on other State Department folders.
* In my Fulton Lewis broadcasts it was decided to use the designations “Mr. X” and “Mr. Y” for Sayre and Hiss, since the trial of Alger Hiss was then in progress and mention of his name might have prejudiced it.

From the radio transcript of Dec. 2, 1949: 

“LEWIS: Now careful, don’t mention any name… One folder said ‘From X’ and the other said ‘From Y’. And Mr. X and Mr. Y were well known State Department officials, one of them particularly prominent in the news?

JORDAN: That’s right.”

In one was an account by an American Army officer of a tour in the Near East. I read it hurriedly. Turkey and Iran were among the countries he had reviewed, unconsciously, for the Kremlin’s enlightenment. Glancing through the document, I found passages dealing with Soviet military strength in and about this area.

Bewildering, to say the least, was the discovery of voluminous copies of reports which American attaches in Moscow had forwarded trustfully, in diplomatic pouches, to their superiors in Washington. I asked myself what these officers would think if they knew their most secret dispatches were being returned to the Soviet capital, for perusal by the very individuals whom they had discussed and possibly denounced.

A suitcase opened midway in the search appeared to contain nothing but engineering and scientific treatises. They bristled with formulae, calculations and professional jargon. I was about to close the case and pass on when my eye was caught by a specimen of stationery such as I had never before seen.

Its letterhead was a magic incantation: “The White House, Washington.” As a prospective owner of an 80-acre tract alone the shore of Washington State, I was impressed by the lordly omission of the capitals, “D.C.” Under the flashlight I studied this paper with attention. It was a brief note, of two sheets, in a script which was not level but sloped upward to the right. The name to which it was addressed, “Mikoyan,” was wholly new to me. (By questioning Colonel Kotikov later, I learned that A.I. Mikoyan at the moment was Russia’s No. 3 man, after Premier Stalin and Foreign Commissar Molotov. He was Commissar of Foreign Trade and Soviet bass of Lend-Lease.)

A salutation, “My dear Mr. Minister,” led to a few sentences of stock courtesies. One passage, of eleven words, in the top line of the second page, impressed me enough to merit a scribble on my envelope. That excerpt ran thus: “ – had a hell of a time getting these away from Groves.”

The last two words should not be taken as referring to Major General Leslie R. Groves himself. What that meant, probably, was “from the Groves organization.” The commander of the Manhattan Engineer District, later the Manhattan Project, was almost unique in the Washington hierarchy for his dislike and suspicion of Russia.

I shall tell here, for the first time, that the verb before “hell” was preceded by a name, which stood at the end of the last line of the opening sheet. Its initial was either a capital “O” or “C” (since it was slightly open at the top), after which came four or five characters that rushed away in half-legible flourish. After pouring over it minutely, I came to the conclusion that the word had to be either “Oscar” if the initial letter was an “O”, or “Carrie” if the initial letter was a “C.” The full quotation would therefore read: “Oscar (or Carrie) had a hell of a time getting these away from Groves.”

The first thing I had done, on finding the White House note, was to flip over the page to look for a signature. I penciled it on my envelope as “H.H.” This may not have been an exact transcription. In any case, my intention is clear. It was to chronicle, on the spot, my identification of the author as Harry Hopkins. It was general usage at Great Falls or elsewhere to refer to him as “Harry Hopkins,” without the middle initial. * 
*President Roosevelt, incidentally, adopted the same abbreviation as mine in December, 1941. The President’s notation, in his own handwriting, was as follows: “H.H – Speed up! FDR.” A reproduction of this note can be seen on page 400 of the Robert Sherwood book.

At the time of this episode I was as unaware as anyone could be of Oak Ridge, the Manhattan District and its chief, General Groves. The enterprise has been celebrated as “the best guarded secret in history.” It as superlatively hush-hush, to the extreme that Army officers in the “know” were forbidden to mention it over their private telephones inside the Pentagon.

General Groves has testified that his office would have refused to send any document to the White House, without authority from himself, even if it was requested personally by the President. I am certain that this is true, and I have never asserted anything to the contrary with respect to General Groves.

I admire General Groves very much and I think that his testimony at the Congressional hearing was one of the impressive things that occurred there. The fact that he testified that he had never met Hopkins or even spoken to him seemed to convince some people that I was lying, but of course for Hopkins to write that “Oscar had a hell of a time getting these away from Groves” in no way implies that Hopkins knew about Groves.

General Groves did confirm in the following testimony that pressure was definitely felt in his organization even though he would not specify its source. 

Mr. Harrison: You said there was a great deal of pressure on Lend-Lease to ship uranium to Russia. Can you tell us who exerted the pressure?

General Groves: No; I can’t tell you who exerted the pressure on Lend-Lease. Of course it could have been internal pressure. At any rate, we saw every evidence of that pressure, and I believe your files of the Lend-Lease diaries will show how they repeatedly came back. It was evident from reading the diaries that we didn’t want this material shipped, yet they kept coming back and coming back…

I believe it is fair to say that… (General Wesson’s) subordinates were fully aware that we did not want this material to be shipped abroad, and this continual pressure to ship it was certainly coming from somewhere. Either it was coming internally, from ambitious souls, or it was coming externally.

I am sure if you would check on the pressure on officers handling all supplies of a military nature during the war, you will find the pressure to give to Russia everything that could be given was not limited to atomic matters.

There was one incident that occurred later. I was reminded this morning by one of my former people of how delighted we were when we managed to get some materials away from the Russians. It was a major accomplishment. And the only thing we got away from them was time. We were very anxious, in connection with the gaseous diffusion plant, to get certain equipment. If it had not been obtained, that plant would have been delayed in its completion. The Russians had a plant on the way. Of course when I say they had it, you know who paid for it. That plant, some of it was boxed on the dock when we got it, and I still remember the difficulties we had in getting it.

One of the agreements we had to make was that we would replace the equipment, and use all our priorities necessary to get it replaced quickly… That particular plant was oil-refinery equipment, and in my opinion was purely postwar Russian supply, as you know much of it was. I give you that as an example of what people interested in supplying American troops had to contend with during the war. 

Where that influence came from, you can guess as well as I can. It was certainly prevalent in Washington, and it was prevalent throughout the country, and the only spot I know of that was distinctly anti-Russian at an early period was the Manhattan Project. And we were – there was never any doubt about it from sometime along about October 1942[1]

In short, it seems as clear as daylight that if anyone did try to get anything away from General Groves or his organization, he would really have had “a hell of a time”!

“From the outset, extraordinary secrecy and security measures have surrounded the project,” declared Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, in commenting on the first military use of the atom bomb. “This was personally ordered by President Roosevelt.” Mr. Roosevelt’s orders, he innocently added, “have been strictly complied with.” [2]

Yet Russians with whom I worked side by side at Great Falls knew about the A-bomb at least as early as March, 1943 and General Groves had reason to distrust the Russians in October 1942! In common with almost all Americans, I got the first hint of the existence of the atom bomb from the news of Hiroshima, which was revealed on August 6, 1945 by President Truman.

In a later chapter I recount my futile visit to Washington in January, 1944 to bring to the attention of the highest authorities what seemed to be to be a treacherous violations of security in the Pipeline. I got exactly nowhere in the State Department or elsewhere. It was not until I head the announcement of the atomic blast in Russia on September 23, 1949, that I finally had the good fortune of meeting Senator Bridges and Fulton Lewis – but more of that later.

It was after eleven o’clock and my checking job was virtually done, when Colonel Kotikov burst into the cabin of the plane. He wanted to know by whose authority I was committing this outrage and bellowed that he would have me removed. I answered that I was performing my duty, and just to show how things stood, opened two or three extra suitcases in his presence. I left the C-47 and with a nod of thanks dismissed my sentinel. As I crossed the field toward the barracks, Colonel Kotikov fell in beside me.

No doubt he reflected that he was in no position to force an issue. He may also have realized that I understood the gravity of almost nothing I had seen. All that mattered to him was getting the suitcases off to Moscow. Anxiously he inquired what I intended to do.

If I had known what I do today, I should have grounded the transport, but in the end it went on its way to Russia.

Colonel Kotikov asked me to open no more suitcases until instructions came from the War Department. He said he hoped he would not have to get me transferred. I expected to be fired, and went so far as to pack my gear. But I received no communications from the War Department, and gathered at last that Colonel Kotikov had made no complaint. Perhaps, I began to think, he did not dare.

I reported to Colonel George F. O’Neill, security officer of the 34th SubDepot at Gore Field, about the fifty suitcases I had examined. He was interested enough to pass the story on to his superior officer in Spokane. There was no reply, even after Colonel O’Neill made a second attempt.

Apparently it was not considered good form to cast reflections on the integrity of our ally.

SOURCES 
CHAPTER FIVE The Black Suitcases
1. Hearings Regarding Shipments of Atomic Materials to the Soviet Union during World War II, House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, (U.S. Government Printing Office, testimony of General Groves, Dec. 7, 1949), pp. 947-50. 
2. On Active Service in Peace and War, Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, (Harper, 1947).