Donovan brought a man named James Phinney Baxter down from Harvard to run the OCI, and he brought a number of men down from Harvard and Yale, and "the eastern seaboard boys began to take over." Both Yale and Harvard had Far Eastern departments.…
Margaret explains how, in World War I, President Wilson discovered that the US had no such thing as an intelligence service, and so began to address this issue, but the little that he did at that time had probably disappeared when WWII started. The…
Kenneth explains what the OCI or Office of the Coordinator of Information was. William Donovan was convinced that war was coming, and that the United States would get into it, and that we lacked intelligence information. We didn't know much about the…
Kenneth's most amusing experience while working at the Board of Economic Warfare happened one day when Max Ways said to him that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted someone who had expertise on elephants to come over and instruct them on the animals. He…
Kenneth acquired a royal barge from Thailand. It was dropped on his desk by a young man who had joined the Board of Economic Warfare and whose parents had died. The picture was part of his inheritance. The Landons believe it is an original painting…
Kenneth would be expected back at Earlham Collge in January for the spring semester, but then Pearl Harbor happened, and all bets were off. During that period, there was quite an interest in Kenneth among various government agencies, which tried to…
After calling on the President, Kenneth said to Donovan that his three weeks were up, and he would be leaving. Donovan still needed him, so he called President Dennis of Earlham College, and Dennis gave Kenneth a leave of absence through that first…
Kenneth only called on President Roosevelt once, he says, and he didn't say anything. Donovan did all the talking, presenting Kenneth's report. This was at the end of the three weeks. After this, Kenneth said to Donovan that his three weeks were up,…
During that initial three weeks, Kenneth had two offices, one in the Triangle Building, and one in the Library of Congress, a research office, with full facilities and the availability of the stacks. That was when he discovered all of the Thai…
Kenneth and Margaret tell about Kenneth's earliest exchanges with the government about Southeast Asia. They talked about when the Japanese could attack Thailand, why the Japanese were in Indochina and how far, if they attack Thailand, they could…
Kenneth went to work researching the questions that President Roosevelt and Col. Donovan wanted answered, and when he had his report ready, he accompanied Donovan to the President's office. Donovan had told Kenneth how he had come to seek Kenneth's…
In Washington Kenneth was given a nice big office in the Triangle Building. Kenneth was the first substantive employee of the Office of the Coordinator of Information, he says, which later became the OSS, and then the CIA. "I am regarded as one of…
Kenneth and his family were in Gull Lake vacationing when the call from Washington came in. The person was inquiring about Kenneth's knowledge of Souteast Asia and the Japanese intentions for Thailand. The caller ended by promising to send Kenneth a…
Kenneth tells of the background to his appointment at the State Department. There had been a number of inquiries before the call from Washington. Kenneth wasn't interested in most of them. He tells how Mortimer Graves, secretary of the Council of…
Kenneth finished his PhD at Chicago, tried to become a pastor, then to introduce the teaching of Eastern religions and Philosophy in a number of universities, but never succeeded in any of his attempts. One day he decided to go around Illinois, Ohio,…