The President's Daily Brief - October 10th, 2022. Columbus Day Brief.

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Today is Columbus Day. I sure hope you’re spending it in celebration, maybe some rest too.  Regardless, today we are going to remind ourselves of the incredible story of Douglas Seymour MacKiernan. It’s part of the series I like to do on holidays, to highlight my brothers and sisters at the CIA who have died in line of duty — I want to share their lives and their sacrifice. And Douglas Seymour MacKiernan, what an example of that.  For decades no one knew his story. And that’s not surprising, he worked undercover. But this morning we should talk about him. Because it’s an extraordinary story, not only for the time in which he lived but for us too. Because the enemy that he faced — Communist China — is the same one that we face today. So come with me on this journey, one that starts in Mexico City, onward to Massachusetts, then ends on a patch of frozen ground in China, just a few feet shy of what would have been Doug MacKiernan’s freedom. All that, plus what Doug’s life means for America now, on this special edition of the President’s Daily Brief. We’ll be right back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's October 10th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA Officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. Today is Columbus Day. I sure hope you're spending it in celebration, maybe some rest too. Regardless, today we are going to remind ourselves of the incredible story of Douglas Seymour McKiernan. It's part of the series that I like to do on holidays to highlight my brothers and sisters at the CIA who have died in the line of duty. I want to share their lives and their sacrifice. And Douglas Seymour McCiernan, man, what an example of that. For decades, no one knew his story. And that's not surprising he worked undercover. But this morning, we should talk about it because it is an extraordinary story. And not only for the

time in which he lived, but frankly, for all of us too today. Because the enemy that he faced, communist China, is the same one that we face today. So come with you. me on this journey, one that starts in Mexico City, marches onward to Massachusetts, and then ends on a patch of frozen ground in China, just a few feet shy of what would have been Doug McKearinen's freedom. All that, plus what Doug's life means for us, for America right now. On this special edition of the president's Daily Brief, we'll be right back. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th,

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Bro, Skycoin, way better than Plymouth. Points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. His name is Douglas Seymour McCurnan. And he's the very first CIA officer to die in the line of duty. For decades, no one knew his story. That's not surprising. He worked undercover. The U.S. kept his life and his mission secret for many, many years. But this morning, we should talk about him, because it's an extraordinary story, not only for the time in which he lived, but for us too. The enemy that he faced, Communist China, is the same one that we face today. And it's there in China where he is still buried,

somewhere, hidden under a pile of rocks near what used to be the border between China and then free Tibet. So come with me on this journey, one that starts in Mexico. Mexico City, onward to Massachusetts, and then ends on a patch of frozen ground in China, just a few feet shy of what would have been Doug McKearnan's freedom. That and more up next on this special Memorial Day edition of the President's Daily Brief. Douglas Seymour McKearinen, what a man. He was born in April of 1913. He was the eldest, actually, of five brothers. His dad was a businessman who worked in Mexico City. From a young age, Doug just loved adventure, and languages was one of the ways that he went about exploring.

By the age of eight, listen to this. He had learned English, French, Spanish, and German, four languages, age of eight. So his family eventually leaves Mexico City for Stoughton, Massachusetts. That's where his dad had grown up or nearby. As Doug grew up, it was very clear that he had three gifts. Language, as you know, shooting. He was one hell of a shot with his Remington. and science. It turns out that he was incredibly bright. But the one thing that he was not good at,

unfortunately, was school. I mean, he got along well enough, but he hated the structure of it. It felt confining and rigid. But incredibly, he managed to get into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is then and now an incredible school. But he lasted only one year, because he couldn't get into the routine of being a student. His professors, though, saw his talent, and he saw his talent, so they hired him as a research assistant. And so in that job, his 20s clipped by. He got married, he had a daughter, but he didn't particularly like married life much. It felt confining. And then World War II came along. He became an army man, and they used his talents for creating and cracking codes. He spent part of his army years stateside, but a good chunk of it was actually abroad

in northwestern China. He lived in a town that we now call Arumchi. You may have heard, you may have heard of this town before, because if you've ever heard about the modern Chinese government operating concentration camps of the U.Ger people, it's in this area where he went. At any rate, he would intercept Chinese and Russian weather transmissions and then relay those to the U.S. military, and in turn, those would be used to schedule B-29 bombing runs over Japanese occupied territory. During Doug's first time in China, it was in that city of Arumche, well, it was a no-man's It was cold, it was windy, isolated, very dangerous, lots of bands of thieves and warring tribes around. And not surprisingly, basically nobody was interested on going there.

Well, nobody but Doug, because that's the kind of place and adventure that a man like Doug wants. So after the war, he came home. He was unhappy, but he saw a job back in Arunshi, allegedly working for the State Department. He applied and he got it. but that job it seems was a cover you see when when people work for the CIA sometimes they have to work under cover that helps an officer deny where they actually work and what they actually do and they give them something less alerting well for Doug that was serving as a state department official and so he went back to a roomche in june of 1947 now there was a lot happening in china in 1947 there was this unsteady

alliance between two different factions, the nationalists and the communists who were led by Mao Zedong, and they would be engaged in a civil war for years. The CIA and the State Department were both watching this fight very closely, and they needed eyes and ears throughout China to know what was going on exactly, and to see what the Soviet Union might be up to, especially in that northwestern border area. That was of particular interest because there were rumors of very rich mineral deposits. The idea or the fear was that the Soviet Union might invade it to snag those minerals, all while the nationalists and the communists were busy distracted with their fighting. And that's exactly where Doug ended up, right in the middle of it.

His official title was the vice consul of the U.S. consulate. He had a very nice life, at least at first. He rented a super big 10-bedroom home inside the old city, which was completely walled around him. He bought a horse, and he spent his free time riding. and hunting or sometimes just exploring. Now, Doug's exact duties are a little bit vague, as one might expect, but we know, for instance, that he buried scientific instruments

that measured what minerals were in the ground. We also know that he befriended a local Kazakh fighter, a fellow named Wussman Bator. This was a tribal leader, basically, and he shared Doug's hatred of the communists who were trying to take over China. The precise relationship between Doug and Wussman remains classified, But we can probably assume that it involved some degree of arming and training Wussman's fighters.

Now, as all that was happening, Doug was a busy man. Well, a pretty young journalist came into town. Peggy was her name. Doug hadn't seen his wife or child back in the United States in many years. They had fallen out of love, it seems, some time before. So he divorced his then-wife and courted Peggy instead. Later, they married, and she bore him twins. Regardless, a little over a year or so after Doug first arrived, the State Department ordered that all dependents, that included Peggy and the kids, they had to go back to the United States because things were getting really nasty in China.

There was the Civil War, and it was raging. So now here's something interesting. In December of 1948, the intelligence community in this country thought that the communists, led by Mao Zedong, would probably sort of chill out for a while, consolidate their victories in that winter of 19. and then maybe in the spring or the summer they might rise back up again or more likely form a unity government with their rivals. But the intel community was absolutely and completely wrong. Mao kept attacking and he kept winning. Now none of that was surprising to Doug and that's probably why he continued to work so closely with his Kazakh friend, Wussman, to build a rebel force to keep Mao from full control of China. But as he prepared with

his friend, Wussman, he also prepared for himself and the worst. He knew that if China fell completely to the communists, it would be very hard for him to get out of the country. And so he mapped out escape routes. He designed different plans using a book of the star alignments in the local area because he anticipated that he would have to travel at night. And then he used a local guidebook on the topography of the area because so much of it was unknown even to the CIA. And then he had a special Jeep that he had shipped in, and to the amusement of his wife, he grew a long beard to blend in. It might sound familiar to some of my friends who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless, on July 29th of 1949, the U.S. Secretary of State ordered a total withdrawal of the

embassy in Beijing and all the consulates spread around the country. So Doug and his colleagues began shutting down in Arumchi and lots of secret equipment and papers to destroy. And about a month later, on August 24th, Doug cabled Washington, D.C., and said that the consulate was in fact closed, but some sensitive equipment still remained. He offered to stay behind, to burn it or destroy it, while his colleagues left. That proved to be a very important decision for Doug and his family and for the nation. Because a week later, Doug cabled back in once more, saying that while he had been able to destroy almost everything, his planned escape routes were closed. There were too many communists running around, or because of all the chaos, there were way

too many bandits on the loose that would leave him dead. And so that left him with one very, very bad option. He could flee south across one of the most forbidding deserts in all the world, and then he'd have to cross into the Himalayas, where he'd seek refuge first in Tibet and then eventually into India. Now, if that sounds audacious, imagine how impossible this is. idea was back in 1949. There were no secret planes or helicopters to pick him up. He just had his own creative thinking, and that of his crew. One was a fellow named Frank Bessack. He was a former paratrooper who just happened to wander into Arumchi about a couple of weeks before the evacuation began, or at least that's the official story. There were also three Russians, all of whom

hated the communists and enjoyed working with Doug. There was one fellow who was a little bit older than two others, the youngest of which was only 20. So Doug made a plan to get all five of them out, and all with the help of his old Kazakh warlord buddy, Wussman. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talk about the escape of Doug and his men from China, plus a parting message for us all on what his life meant then and frankly still means today. We'll be right back. Welcome back, folks, to this special Columbus Day edition of the PDB. We are talking this morning about the incredible life of Douglas Seymour McCyrton. We started off in Mexico City, then to Massachusetts, and now we are in China.

Doug and his men need to get out. The communists are on the hunt. So, here is what happened next. The idea was that Wussman and his clan would help provide Doug and the other men escort, and then eventually safe passage to this very small area east of town. And once there, Doug and the guys could get to. get some animals, some special Kazakh horses mostly, to then cross the desert. And then if, if they made it across the desert, they'd have to find a new set of horses or camels, and they'd find

them with local nomads. At that point, they would use the fresh supplies and horses and camels to trek into the Himalayas. Now, unfortunately, by that time, it would be winter. So before they left, they would have to settle down with the nomads until the passes opened up. But they couldn't stay for too long. The Chinese would be after them. Now, as you can imagine, this plan involved lots of big challenges. One of them was gold. You see, Doug was going to have to bring a whole bunch of that stuff to buy off the nomads. But the gold itself would be pretty heavy, and you're going to have to pack that gold across the desert. And so that was it. There was the plan. Doug and the men would escape town, meet up with the tribe of Wussman, then ride across 1,000 miles of deserts. And so, that was it.

desert, give or take, and then cross into the Himalayas. I think that that qualifies as a mission impossible movie, by the way. And so, there you have it. There's the escape plan. Get out of town without being discovered, then meet up with Wassman's tribal clan, get the horses right across a thousand miles of desert, give or take, and then find some new horses and camels with some new nomad friends and cross into the Himalayas. I think that that plan sounds pretty impossible, mission impossible movie more or less. At any rate, they kicked off their plan one night in early October of 1949. Doug and Bessack the paratrooper left the city of Arunchi and they actually made it past the checkpoints unscathed. And then they rendezvoused with their three Russian buddies

who actually had to climb over the walls of the city and then scamper out to them. Well, the five then made it safely to the Kazakh escorts, the clan, and then got themselves to a hunker down spot east of town. After collecting themselves a little bit, and who can imagine that they would need a bit of a breather, they headed into the desert, 1,000 miles to cross on foot and horseback. Now, by this date, mid-October of 1949, Chairman Mao was officially in control of the Chinese government, and Doug and his friends were firmly in enemy territory. As they walked and they rode the horses, journaled everything that he saw, from wild animals to isolated pockets of water. He documented all this with exquisite detail because he was focused on trying to help future CIA operations in the

region. Now, what's interesting is that Doug had a very special radio on him. He could send and receive signals all the way back to Washington, D.C., even from no man's land in China. And so he did. He confirmed with them exactly where he was at and what he was saying. After about a month of trekking across the desert, they saw a group of nomads. And it was a good sign. It meant that they had made it to the edges of the desert, and they had made it alive. Now, just as he had planned, Doug traded all that heavy gold that he had packed for new provisions and some new special horses and very tough camels, all of which were better suited for the remaining desert that they had to cross and then into the Himalayas. Now, I want to remind you of something here. Not only did Doug and his

company of men have to walk through the desert, was also uphill. The area with the nomads, that was around 9,800 feet above sea level. And that's a gain of about 7,000 feet since leaving the city of Arumchi. At any rate, as they got higher, the months further into the winter, conditions were worsening. There were a lot of cold nights, and a lot of wind, and a lot of snow. So by the 1st of December, they could go no further. Doug settled in, he paid the local nomad, a whole bunch of gold, and they stayed through the winter. For four months, the team waited out blizzards and boredom, but then the spring of 1950 finally arrived. Mountains were barely passable, but you have to remember that the Chinese were on

Doug's tail, and Doug knew this. And so he left, well, a little bit too early for Tibet, all in hopes that he could get through the Himalayas before the Chinese caught up. And so they climbed. Doug wrote in his journal that they had reached 16,000 feet at one point. The wind was 50 to 70, miles an hour. They really struggled to see because of the snow blindness. Oxygen was incredibly thin. And so to conserve breath, they used hand signals or one-word statements. But they kept marching on and no special equipment, just tenacity of spirit. And as they climbed, they encountered an occasional nomad which would help them keep them on the right path. But it was a curious thing. Doug noted in his journal that the path was often marked by these pyramid-like piles of stones.

When he eventually asked what these things were, a nomad explained that they were burial plots. The ground was too frozen to dig. At any rate, at some point in April, he was able to get out messages to Washington, D.C. with his special radio. He said he was alive, so were the other guys, and that he estimated within a few weeks he would be at the border with Tibet. He asked D.C. to tell the Tibetan government that he said, he was a good guy and that he'd be showing up soon and to grant him safe passage into their country.

Because remember, Tibet and China were not one at this point, and Tibet did not want to be part of China. Now, D.C. confirmed that they got Doug's message and would relay his request immediately. So, a couple weeks later, on April 29th of 1950, Doug looked through his binoculars and he saw something beautiful. It was a Tibetan border camp. Folks, he made it. but there was a problem Doug knew that the message from DC might not have made its way to the border guards remember they didn't have phones or emails

messages were sent overland by human courier and that meant that the Tibetan guards might think that he and his men were not the good guys but thieves or communist Chinese sympathizers and if that is what they believed Doug and his men would be shot dead so Doug decided on a plan he would walk out first alone initially and then followed by Bessack, the paratrooper. Now, he knew that the first man held the most risk,

but he also knew that as a CIA officer, it was his risk to take. So the other three men, by the way, they would stay behind with the camels and the camp and wait for the safety signal to join. So Doug leaves first, and he approaches waving a white flag. The Tibetans see him, and they send out a girl to greet him to investigate. Unfortunately, neither Doug nor the girl could speak a language that they both understood.

So instead, they just smiled at each other, and the girl left. So he waited a while, Doug. No movement from the Tibetans. And so as daylight was becoming dark, he decided to bring the camp to where he was. Again, those three men and the camels, all in plain sight of the Tibetans. As the team and Doug were setting up the tent,

six Tibetan border guards on horseback appeared. Shots ring out, Doug and his men started waving the white flags again desperation, even as more shots were being fired. And then, incredibly, the gunfire stopped. No one had been hit. So Doug, good peace of mind, ordered one of his men to offer up gifts, some raisins, tobacco, clothing. But as he did, the Tibetans grabbed the man, Bessac, and all the gifts, and then they rode off with him tied up. So that left Doug with a pretty impossible situation, because it was clear that word from D.C. had not reached,

the border guards. And whatever he was doing wasn't working. This was a man who knew so many languages but had no ability to communicate with him. And most importantly, he knew that another attack was imminent. And so Doug made a last ditch attempt. He and the remaining three men would raise their hands up into the sky and walk very, very slowly towards the Tibetan post, again with white flags tied to their hands. At first, it worked. The border guards just watched them, and the four men were walking with each step very deliberate and very cautious. They started about 400, 500 yards out. Eventually, that turned into 100 yards, and then 75, and then 50.

And then shots rang out. Doug pleaded for them to stop, and he was waving his hands, waving the flag, and then someone heard another final shot. Of the four men, one managed to dive behind a boulder. He was shot, but he was alive. The other three men died. One of those men who died was Douglas Seymour McKiernan. The three men laid there for a time. The Tibetans were not aware of who they were dealing with, obviously.

And for whatever particular reason, the Tibetan guards, I'm sorry to say, decapitated all three men, plus a camel for good measure. But as these Tibetans inspected the bodies, the belongings, it became clear that neither Doug nor his men were marauders or communists. They were fleeing the bad guys, but it was too late. The two men who lived, Basak and one of the Russians, they were given medical attention and an escort to the Tibetan capital. But before they left, they buried their friends under a pile of rocks

that would become the same type of guideposts that they had passed on their way through the Himalayas. There's one final cruel twist to this story. As Bezhak and the Russian made their way to the Tibetan capital, they encountered a second group of Tibetans. They were government officials. They were on their way to tell the border guards that Doug and his crew would be there soon, and that they should be received with kindness.

It was a message that was five days too late. Once the Tibetan government learned of what they had done accidentally, they offered the two surviving men the opportunity to execute the Border Patrol guards, or at least their leader anyway, that's an act of justice, but the men declined. The State Department and the CIA obviously learned of the horrible news, and then, of course, they informed Doug's widow Peggy, along with his first wife and child. And Peggy had two young kids to care for, the twins, and her ask was for a job to care for them, and she was given one.

It was the job of vice-consul, just like her husband, but in Lahore, Pakistan. The U.S. government never acknowledged Doug's affiliation with the CIA or his intelligence activities in China. They wanted to protect their relationship with the Kazakh rebels, to include that chief that I had mentioned earlier, the one who had given Doug the horses and the safe passage out of town. But a year after Doug was killed, Wussman was executed by Chairman Mao's forces in front of tens of thousands of people. The rebellion was crushed. Doug's body has never been recovered. Both it and his grave of stones are somewhere along the Tibetan border to this day. And so he rests in the Himalayas in the same place he fell in April of 1950.

Before I leave you this morning, a final thought about Doug, but also about us. Doug chose a professional life that he knew was risky, but he did it because he loved his country and he hated communism. And I'll tell you, as I was, watched the news these past few years, I've sometimes wondered how many Dougs we have left. I wonder how much of the spirit of Doug McKearnan thrives in today's America. You know, I wonder if he were alive, if he would recognize what his country has become. What has made me think about him and this is our relationship with China. But we know that they collaborate with Mexican cartels to ship fentanyl onto our streets.

I briefed you on that. It's killed over 100,000 Americans, in fact, just in the last year. We also know that China's been stealing our trade secrets and the jobs that come with them. Billions of dollars lost every year, millions of jobs stolen. And apologies for making this political, but we have a man in the White House who says that the communist in Beijing, quote, aren't bad folks, folks. All the while, his son Hunter made millions of dollars in shady business deals with Chinese communist officials. And so I think of Doug McKearnan, and I wonder what he'd say if he could see us now.

Just something to think about. Thank you all for listening and for remembering the words that Doug and so many at the CIA have lived by and died upholding. They're the creed of every good spy and every smart American. They're from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know truth and the truth shall make you free. Good day.