Free Deadly Deceits by Ralph W. McGehee Page A

her money from his own pocket to tide her over until I could be contacted, but she refused. She said she was so mad that she would sit on the street corner right in front of the American Embassy and beg with her four children if she had to. Fortunately, I had by chance come to Bangkok on Agency business that day and everything straightened out before it came to that. But to make matters worse, the next day I had to send her and the children to the North on the train while I remained behind a few days on business. When I finally joined her, Norma’s greeting was not the warmest I have ever received. “If you plan to ship us off somewhere else,” she raged, as close to divorce as we’d ever been, “it had better be right back to the States.” She went on to describe three miserable days in a hotel with no shower and nothing for the children to do, with mosquitos swarming all over, lizards crawling the walls and ceilings, and huge rats scurrying on the floors.
    This experience—both the Agency’s utter disregard for the well-being of her and the children and my own cockeyed priorities of putting Agency business above my family—had left Norma enraged and totally disillusioned with the Agency. While she knew that I still had complete faith in the Agency and could not be persuaded to leave it, she was now at least insisting that I not lie to the children any longer. The Agency had done enough to her and the children, she told merepeatedly; she would not allow its ridiculous secrecy rules to sow distrust in our family.
    Now Peggy’s innocent question had brought the matter to a head. Because of all the indoctrination I had received and my gung-ho attitude, something inside me still resisted. I felt I should keep my activities secret—even from my own daughter.
    â€œDaddy, it’s embarrassing,” Peggy was saying, staring up at me. “All my friends know what their fathers do. I’m the only one who doesn’t.”
    I could feel Norma’s eyes on me. What was I going to do? If I told Peggy, I would be breaking my oath. But of course people broke that oath all the time. Everyone knew that secret information was bandied about at Agency cocktail parties as if it were a weather report. Sometimes it seemed I was the only one who played it strictly by the rules. I wondered: would it make any difference to the Agency’s mission if my children knew that I worked for it? Would it hurt the United States? I looked up at Norma, and we silently acknowledged that the time had come.
    I breathed deeply and sat both of my daughters down (the boys were still too young to understand). With the same sense of compelling seriousness that I had used in regard to crossing streets, not going with strangers, and not taking anything that belongs to others, I said, “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, which protects our country from anyone who might want to do it harm. I could not tell you before, because you were too young and would not be able to keep it a secret from your friends. But you must do just that. You must promise you will not talk to anyone but your mother and me about where I work.”
    Neither daughter seemed particularly excited about the news. They looked at me and said, “Oh.” This was not at all the response I had expected, but I thought that they probably, like myself 10 years earlier, had not the least notion of what the CIA was and did. Years later when preparing to write this book, I asked each of them what they had thought when I told them about my work. Jean said she had been quite impressed and had thought the job must be difficult and exciting because of all my flying around. Her friends who had observed this activity had pumped her, and she felt frustrated that shecould not confide in them.
    Peg said she had felt the same frustration at not being able to tell her friends. She also was curious about what specifically I did for the CIA on the