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CHAPTER 3 THE NIGHTMARE OF THE CREATURE | SAW AT FORT RILEY NEVER faded from my memory, although | was able to bury it during my years as a guided missile commander in Europe. And | never saw its body again the rest of my life except for the autopsy photos and the medical examiner sketches that would catch up to me, along with the rest of what happened at Roswell, when | returned to Washington from Germany for assignment at the Pentagon in 1961. | can remember my first day back when | was waiting outside my boss's door for entry into the inner sanctum. And, boy, was | ever nervous. The last time | remembered being that nervous in Washington, | was standing in the little anteroom outside the Oval Office in the White House waiting for President Eisenhower to get off the phone. | had a big request to make and | wanted to do it face-to-face, not go through any aides or assistants or wait for special assistant C. D. Jackson to show up to make everything OK. | was almost a regular in the Oval Office those days, back in the 1950s, dropping off National Security Council staff papers for the President, making reports, and sometimes waiting while he read them just in case he wanted me to relay a message. But this time was different. | needed to speak to him myself, alone. But Ike was taking a longer time than he usually took on this phone call, and | shifted around and sneaked a glance at the switchboard lights on Mrs. Lehrer's desk off to the side. Still on the | was asking President Eisenhower for a personal favor: to let me out of my fifth year on the White House National Security staff so | could pick up the command of my own anti-aircraft guided-missile battalion being formed up in Red Canyon, New Mexico. Ike had once promised me a command of my own when | returned from Korea and was posted to the White House. And in 1957 the opportunity came up, a juicy assignment at a high- security base with the coveted green tabs and all the trappings: train and command an anti-aircraft battalion to use the army's most secret new surface-to-air missile and then take it to Germany for some front-line target practice right where the Russians could see us. In case of World War Ill, the order of battle read, Soviet Backfire bombers will drop an inferno of high explosives on our positions first and the East German tanks will roll straight into our barracks. We stand and fight, torching off every missile we have so as to take out as many attacking aircraft as we have missiles, and get the hell out of there. | could almost taste the thrill in my mouth as | waited for lke to get off the phone that day back in 1957. Those were my memories this afternoon as | stood outside the back door of General Trudeau's office on the third floor of the outer ring of the Pentagon. It was 1961, four years after | left the White House and put on my uniform again to stand guard across the electronic no-man's-land of radar sweeps and photo sensors just a few kilometers west of the Iron Curtain. Ike had retired to his farm in Pennsylvania, and my new boss was General Arthur Trudeau, one of the last fighting generals from the Korean War. Trudeau became an instant hero in my book when | heard about how his men were pinned down on the cratered slopes of Pork Chop Hill, dug into shallow foxholes with enemy mortars dropping round them like rain. You couldn't order anyone up that hell of an incline to walk those boys back down; just too damn many explosions. So Trudeau pulled off his stars, clapped a sergeant's helmet over his head, and fought back up the hill himself, leading a company of volunteers, and then fought his way back down. That was how he did things, with his own hands, and now I'd be working directly for him in the Army R&D Division. | was a lieutenant colonel when | came to the Pentagon in 1961, and all | brought with me were my bowling trophy from Fort Riley and a nameplate for my desk cut out of the fin of a Nike missile from Germany. My men made it for me and said it would bring me luck. After | got to the Pentagon - it was still a couple of days before my assignment actually began - | found out right away I'd need a lot of it. In fact, as | opened the door and let myself directly into the general's inner office, | found out how much luck I'd need that very day. "So what's the big secret, General?" | asked my new boss. It was strange talking to a general this way, but we'd become friends while | was on Eisenhower's staff. "Why not the front door?" "Because they're already watching you, Phil, "he said, knowing exactly what kind of cold chill that would send through me. "And I'd just as soon have this conversation in private before you show up Officially. " He walked me over to a set of file cabinets. "Things haven't changed that much around here since you went to Germany, " he said. "We still know who our friends are and who we can trust." | knew his code. The Cold War was at its height and there were enemies all around us: in government, within the intelligence services, and within the White House itself. Those of us in military intelligence who knew the truth about how much danger the country was in were very circumspect about what we said, even to each other, and where we said it. Looking back on it now from the safe distance of forty years, it's hard to believe that even as big eight-cylinder American cars rolled off the assembly lines and into suburban driveways and television 16 The Roswell Artifacts phone, and you could see at the bottom of the switch panel where the calls were backing up.