Free Three Days of the Condor by James Grady Page B

leaned close to Wendy. He whispered. "And Wendy, I do mean total rest." He laughed all the way to the door. On the porch, he turned to her and slyly said, "Whom do I bill?"
    Wendy smiled shyly and handed him twenty dollars. The doctor started to speak, but Wendy cut his protest short. "He can affort it. He— we— really appreciate you coming over."
    "Hmph," snorted the doctor sarcastically, "he should. I'm late for my coffee break." He paused to look at her. "You know, he's the kind of prescription I've thought you needed for a long time." With a wave of his hand he was gone.
    By the time Wendy got upstairs, Malcolm was asleep. She quietly left the apartment. She spent the morning shopping with the list Malcolm and she had composed while waiting for the doctor. Besides filling the prescription, she bought Malcolm several pairs of underwear, socks, some shirts and pants, a jacket, and four different paperbacks, since she didn't know what he liked to read. She carted her bundles home in time to make lunch. She spent a quiet afternoon and evening, occasionally checking on her charge. She smiled all day long.
    * * *
    Supervision of America's large and sometimes cumbersome intelligence community has classically posed the problem of sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes: who guards the guardians? In addition to the internal checks existing independently in each agency, the National Security Act of 1947 created the National Security Council, a group whose composition varies with each change of presidential administration. The Council always includes the President and Vice-President and usually includes major cabinet members. The Council's basic duty is to oversee the activities of the intelligence agencies and to make policy decisions guiding those activities.
    But the members of the National Security Council are very busy men with demanding duties besides overseeing a huge intelligence network. Council members by and large do not have the time to devote to intelligence matters, so most decisions about the intelligence community are made by a smaller Council "subcommittee" known as the Special Group. Insiders often refer to the Special Group as the "54/12 Group," so called because it was created by Secret Order 54/12 early in the Eisenhower years. The 54/12 Group is virtually unknown outside the intelligence community, and even there only a handful of men are aware of its existence.
    Composition of the 54/12 Group also varies with each administration. Its membership generally includes the director of the CIA, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs or his deputy, and the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. In the Kennedy and early Johnson administrations the presidential representative and key man on the 54/12 Group was McGeorge Bundy. The other members were McCone, McNamara, Roswell Gilpatric (Deputy Secretary of Defense), and U. Alexis Johnson (Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs).
    Overseeing the American intelligence community poses problems for even a small, full-time group of professionals. One is that the overseers must depend on those they oversee for much of the information necessary for regulation. Such a situation is naturally a delicate perplexity.
    There is also the problem of fragmented authority. For example, if an American scientist spies on the country while employed by NASA, then defects to Russia and continues his spying but does it from France, which American agency is responsible for his neutralization? The FBI, since he began his activities under their jurisdiction, or the CIA, since he shifted to activities under their purview? With the possibility of bureaucratic jealousies escalating into open rivalry, such questions take on major import.
    Shortly after it was formed, the 54/12 Group tried to solve the problems of internal information and fragmented authority. The 54/12 Group established a small special security section, a section with no identity save that of staff for the