The Book of Honor Read Online Free PDF

“With a sound buss for Mike and Maryrose [the twins], Cordially Clare Boothe Luce.” But nothing more came of Luce’s offer.
    Two weeks after the Luce letter arrived, on July 24, 1949, the minister-counselor of embassy in China sent a telegram to Secretary of State Dean Acheson acknowledging that it was wise to close the embassies in China. But Tihwa, he suggested, should remain open. “It seems to me Tihwa, properly staffed, could be most valuable listening post and should be retained as long as possible. Withdrawal should always be possible by some route other than China.”
    Four days later the ambassador to China disagreed and recommended the immediate evacuation of Tihwa’s personnel. The country’s collapse was certain. “Tihwa even more isolated and bloody history of Sinkiang counsels that staff be removed before breakdown of law and order become imminent. Difficulty obtaining Soviet visa makes unlikely exit via USSR in event emergency, leaving only difficult mountain route to India or Afghanistan.” On July 29 Secretary of State Acheson ordered the Tihwa embassy closed, its staff to leave “as rapidly as possible . . . while safe exit remains.”
    Bits and pieces of news were seeping out of China, all of it worrisome to Pegge Mackiernan. On August 23 she sent a telegram to the State Department: “Can you confirm NY Trib article Tihwa consulate closing and my husband coming out extremely anxious for news please telegraph collect.” The next day the State Department responded that the consulate was closed but that her husband was staying behind to dispose of U.S. property.
    The next morning Mackiernan sent a telegram to Acheson informing him that the consulate had been closed to the public and that all employees had been discharged. In his haste to depart, Tihwa’s consul, John Hall Paxton, had left everything behind. Mackiernan told Acheson he would “destroy archives, cryptographic material and motion picture films.” The only thing he would spare was a radio and enough OTPs, “one-time pads,” to communicate with Washington.
    The one-time pads were notebooks that provided a system of encryption that could be used only one time for each message. The code was known only to the recipient of the message who possessed the corresponding pad and code. OTPs were standard issue in the diplomatic corps as well as in the ranks of the CIA’s clandestine service.
    The situation deteriorated rapidly. On the morning of August 31, 1949, Mackiernan sent a telegram to Acheson reporting that many of the potential overland escape routes from Tihwa were now closed due to banditry. Corridor cities, he reported, were crowded with refugees. Food was scarce. White Russians and Chinese officials were fleeing. One hour later Mackiernan sent a second telegram: “Situation Sinkiang very grave.” Resistance to the Communist troops, he predicted, would crumble. There would be no meaningful opposition.
    While Mackiernan worked feverishly to destroy sensitive documents and to plan his own escape from Tihwa, Washington’s eyes were focused elsewhere—on the Soviet Union. At 10:36 A.M. on September 23, 1949, White House reporters were summoned by Truman’s press secretary and handed a brief statement from the president: “We have evidence,” it said, “that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.” American B-29s taking high-altitude air samples had confirmed that the Soviets had detonated a nuclear device at its Semipalatinsk testing facility. So began the arms race, as a generation of American and Soviet war planners dedicated their lives to preparing for what each government unconvincingly called “the unthinkable.”
    For the CIA, the Soviet bomb was a stinging rebuke to its intelligence apparatus. Just three days before Truman’s chilling announcement, the Agency had provided a top secret memorandum in