Commander McFarlane was given less than two days to move into his new secret offices on the top floor of the Park Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue. He quickly understood the importance of his new mission and took the responsibility with enthusiasm. Besides the time consuming organizational tasks of setting up a new intelligence command that was to deal with secret counter intelligence, McFarlane was specifically assigned oversee the safety of convoys sailing out of New York. Too many Liberty ships were sinking with disturbing regularity because of enemy submarines off the coast of Maine and Canada, at times even just a few miles off Long Island. He was carefully rereading the report of the latest attack:
“The two ships were attacked simultaneously by U Boats at 1222 hours one hundred miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Both sank in twenty minutes in calm waters with fewer than one hundred survivors. A third ship was torpedoed off the coast of Greenland two hours later and sank in six minutes in icy waters with no survivors. No periscope or torpedo wakes were sighted, however.”
McFarlane carefully underlined “no periscope or…torpedo wakes” and none of the usual signs of attacking U-Boats. If the attacks didn’t come from U-Boats how so many freighters could be sinking so easily in broad daylight? Along with other top ONI officers he was convinced that some form of sabotage taking place inside New York harbor was behind these losses but there were no clues to prove that theory. It could happen during loading operations at the piers with saboteurs infiltrated among the stevedores or just before the vessels were to sail out of the port area at the start of the crossing. In any case if it was taking place within the port of New York he first thought it had to be carried out by men able to get on board and place their explosives. Even though that possibility appeared very unlikely because of the heavy security at the entrance of the docks, the careful vetting of dock workers and other additional measures that were about to be implemented. The only other possibility would be an underwater attack using frogmen, or the so-called ‘human torpedoes’ but that seemed even less plausible. It would require a large and efficient organization with a support staff of informers, spies and several exceptional divers to actually carry out the offensive.
“Fearless men” thought McFarlane that afternoon as the rain was beating against the windows of his still only partially furnished office at the Park Sheraton, “men of fanatical courage, ready to die for a cause; divers who were highly trained, professional and organized. It sounded like a difficult and unlikely combination.”
Fanatics rarely make good planners and effective warriors except possibly in suicide operations. McFarlane tried to imagine the prototype of the “Nazi” attack frogman: excellent sailors, trained to impersonate Americans like spies, psychologically prepared like athletes and trained for that kind of mission. Spies however must be level headed realists trained to obey orders and adapt to any situations; they know that they could be risking their lives and are supposed to swallow suicide capsules if they were captured. That however didn’t necessarily mean they would use them. The more accurate description would therefore be: a spy primarily who was also an expert diver operating as an underwater saboteur.
Everyone’s attention was focused on the north Atlantic where the U.S.-British partnership was being severely challenged and where American merchant and navy ships were openly defying Germany’s Kriegsmarine and its U-Boats. Incidents like the Greer and the Kearney could start a war at any moment and many people were clamoring loudly that FDR aimed at provoking Hitler into a shooting first since the majority of Americans wanted no part of another world war. McFarlane was actively recruiting personnel to handle potential German, Japanese and Italian spies and naval saboteurs. A request was posted at all ONI offices calling for speakers of foreign languages for counter intelligence duty in the Third Naval District in New York Harbor.
By December 5, 1941 with an embryonic staff in place, McFarlane was feeling confident enough to buy a ticket on the express train to Baltimore for a weekend at home in suburban Annapolis with his wife Joan and their three kids. He left word that he’d be back on Monday morning.