February 22, 2005 – A Spy in Our Midst

February 22, 2005 – A Spy in Our Midst

During the cruise in October 1965, two months before my trip to Tokyo with the ship’s electrician in late November, there were some strange goings on that had my roommate “A” a bit paranoid. “A” was convinced that there was someone on board collecting information about the ship’s crew and he had his own idea of who it was, though, there was no way to prove his assertion. “A” had an insatiable love of gossip. I remember conversations in our stateroom that lasted well into the night with him relaying gossip about others on board as well as gossip about his friends back home.

“A” was a disillusioned young man, whose naivety had been turned into cynicism. In one conversation, he recounted a most beautiful wedding. Picture bride and groom, two members of the church choir, both possessing gifted voices being married in one of the largest, most ornate churches in Dallas, packed with family, friends, and well-wishers. The two came together at the altar before the minister and suddenly the organist begins to play “Because you come to me,” and the two begin to sing interleaving the verses.

In another conversation, he recounts his days as a male escort in a service where he worked to help pay for college tuition. Presumably the order women he was hired out to escort were only interested in having company at social functions. Imagine his consternation at finding them desiring far more than that and were willing to pay far more for the extra. His cynicism had been transformed into a general mistrust of everyone. I suspect he might have even considered me for the spy at one time, but probably dismissed me as being too naïve.

The one “A” suspected was a young officer on the ship who seemed too much of a chameleon. “A” cited examples of the officer changing colors to blend in with the surrounding group: drinking and playing card with the merchant seaman, doing the same with the factory reps and the scientists on board. He would also gossip with the enlisted men, often engaging them individually in informal conversations the way you would hang out and talk with friends at home. He did have that ability to charm and disarm you when he engaged with you. I had an occasion to speak with him on deck during pistol practice, shooting off the stern of the ship at targets hung above the railing. It never occurred to me that the officer was doing anything more than having a chat, though he did ask a great many questions, nothing direct, but rather unfinished thoughts he left the listener to complete.

I liked him because he took an interest in what I thought. He asked about my plans to re-enlist. I told him that I wasn’t and when he pressed me as to what I would do afterwards, I told him I wanted to go back to college and get my degree. He tried to make me feel guilty that the Navy had spent two years sending me to electronics and computer schools and I would only serve a year and a half more before being discharged to inactive reserve. Most all other new recruits would have had to sign up for a six-year tour to get half that schooling. I explained that I had been ordered to all the schools I attended and extending my enlistment was never a precondition. He smiled at that and said I was a very lucky sailor. In hindsight, I was incredibly lucky.

During the conversation, he tried to get me into a discussion of the other guys on board the ship, where we went together—the bars, the women we associated with, the kind of talk sailors typically had with one another. I listed off the places I had gone with various groups. I was not part of any regular crowd that hung out together consistently, but would mingle with different ones going ashore for a night out. Everyone on board ship was teased for some peculiar trait. For me, I was known as the guy who “played the role”—dressed up in suit and tie and hung out in Tokyo more than bar crawling in Yokosuka and Yokohama with the rest of the crew. He asked where I liked to go in Tokyo and I listed the places I liked to hang out, talking about movies houses where I had seen memorable movies, book stores that sold books in English and other European languages. He knew some of the places I mentioned and we swapped experiences.

My pick for the “spy” was a big guy named “Y” who was in charge of ordering stores for the Navy detachment—someone who interacted with everyone except the merchant seaman crew. Whenever I needed parts for the Bendix G15D computer I maintained, I would requisition them from “Y” who had a work space cluttered with so many catalogs, I had no idea how he found anything, but he explained that there was an order to the clutter, pointing out a cluster of catalogs that stretched the width of an 8-foot-wide desk. The pages were bound into a metal shelf that tilted the tops of the pages 45 degrees off the desk. Starting from the left and going to the right, the bound pages listed every part for all the Navy equipment on board each associated with a standard military part number designation. He knew where I should look and I moved to that section of the bound volumes and sure enough I found tubes for the G15D, motor parts, cabinet components, circuit cards—a complete listing of all the replaceable parts of the G15D and beside each part was the military part number. “Y” had the keys to the biggest candy store in the world and all he needed was a signature from the commanding officer on board and he could get anything we wanted—talk about power.

I had dismissed “A” suspicions about a spy in our midst, but I became more cautious of what I said both aboard ship and ashore. I had completely forgotten about the whole spy-in-our-midst scare “A” had engendered in me—and himself, I’m sure—until the end of December just before we were about to begin our trip to Portland for repairs in dry dock. I had returned to the ship after a couple of days in Tokyo. The following morning, I was told by “C” the ranking chief petty officer on board that I was to make myself available for an interview at 1000 hours in the officer’s mess. There was a tension aboard ship that I could sense. Even “C” was being very careful in choosing his words and nobody was saying anything at all about what was happening in the officer’s mess.

My first reaction was panic. I had been to Tokyo and I had been in an area of the city that might have been considered off limits. The Navy knew all about homosexuality—they discharged you immediately with a medical discharge if you are determined to be gay. I was certainly not, but I had been in the gayest part of Tokyo. It scared me that someone might have told the Navy about my evening. I had not described my evening to anyone on board the ship, not even “A” or my other roommate. The only person who knew where I had been that evening was the ship’s electrician, “S”, his significant other “T”, and the high school student “X” in our bar hopping that evening. Was “X” a spy sent out to entrap unsuspecting sailors? Had “S” been interrogated and ratted me out under questioning? The two-hours between 800 and 1000 hours was the longest I could recall spending in the Navy. The countless times during my tour of duty I was ordered to hurry up and wait had only made be come to expect the treatment, not produce any way to cope with it.

When 1000 hours rolled around I entered the officer’s mess and stood at attention, my Navy white cap held in my left hand. I felt awkward not knowing whether to salute or not, but the two men in the room—attired in business suits—were in conversation when I entered. After finishing their remarks to one another, they turned to face me and asked me to stand at ease and take a seat. I said thank you sirs and did so. They began with simple questions: what was my name, my rank, what were my duties aboard the ship—by the way, are you enjoying your tour so far. The last question struck me odd and I took pains to answer it with some details. I explained that I enjoyed the ship, its crew, and the work of the ship—I found the ship’s mission interesting and rewarding.

Thereafter, the questioning got very, very specific. They asked what I had requested be ordered in the way of replacement parts for the equipment I maintained in the months I had been on board ship. I explained that I had ordered tubes and air filters for the computer I maintained. They showed me the forms I had completed to do so and I acknowledged them and my signature on each along with the signature of two others up the chain of command. They then asked me about “Y”. How well did I know him? Hardly, I replied since I had never been bar crawling with him, nor had I had much occasion to speak with him on board ship—he tended to stay to himself. The two had a way of asking the same question a different way later in the inquiry and this happened several times. I would provide the same answer worded differently because I could never remember how I had said something earlier. In reality “Y” was a man it would be hard to befriend. If I had to describe him he was big around the middle, but tall, close to six foot so he towered over me; the build of a John Candy, the mean demeanor and rugged facial features of Tommy Lee Jones and his voice was gruff and gravelly.

When the ship left port en route to Portland, “Y” was not aboard. In fact, he had not been aboard when I returned to the ship from Tokyo either. Once the crew was out to sea, the story began to unfold. The guys who interviewed us all were from Office of Naval Intelligence. “Y” had been taken into custody for something pretty serious, but no one knew exactly what. The reasons that everyone came up with ran the gamut from being a spy to grand theft. I guess, I had been wrong about “Y”. If he had been a spy he was not spying on us. “A” on the other hand seems to have been right about their being someone in our midst checking us all out.