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FS: So I'm rocking along, I got another promotion in there right after that. About a year later an interesting thing happened. A man by the name of A.B. Thomas, who was the Deputy Auditor General, the number two man and the top civilian with the audit organization in Washington, D.C., came out to Los Angeles. And I thought he was making a staff visit, just a routine thing. Next morning, my boss says, "Mr. Thomas wants to talk to you." So I said, "What?" Well, it turns out he says, "Frank, we have a special job for you in Washington, D.C." I said, "What?" And he says, "Well, we have this special assignment, and we'd like for you to transfer to our Washington, D.C. office. And I'm thinking, "Why me? This is a world-wide organization." But June and I, I talked with her and decided, why not? So we transferred to Washington without knowing anybody there other than a couple of folks that I had met along the way.

TI: And about what year was this? What year was this?

FS: This was '63.

TI: How long has you been married to June?

FS: June and I were married in 1953 when I finished college. And so I'm the only one in the family, being the youngest of six, that was venturing out like that. But my mom and dad were saying, "Go, take every opportunity you can." So June and I transferred to Washington in 1963. That was really quite an experience. But as I look back on my career, I go into Washington like that, not knowing anybody. But interesting thing that happened, about two years later, I had this call one day from this same Jake Gardiner who was running that project. He had since been promoted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and he was now the top audit guy for the DoD. And he said, "Frank, I need to talk to you urgently. Can you come see me in the morning?" So we met, and what it was was he told me that there was some fraud and irregularities that happened in the office of the Secretary of Defense. And what it involved was what we call "funny money," or special money for handling intelligence operations. Up to that time, intelligence activities were off limits for audits, they just were not audited. But when that fraud case happened, the Secretary of Defense said, "No more," and Jake Gardiner got the orders to get all the intelligence functions audited. And Jake Gardiner calls me, and he's asking me to start this. And I thought, "Wow, why is he asking me?" But that, it turns out, was (another) key break in my career. In order to start those audits, I was getting high level briefings at the National Security Agency by admirals and generals, at the CIA, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, in the bowels of the Pentagon by the people handling intelligence. And people were getting to know me as much as I was trying to get to know them.

TI: The amazing thing, too, is they were probably afraid of you. Even though you were young and starting out, because I just think about organizations going through audits, it's kind of the report card, right, that you're going to...

FS: Yeah. And they knew that Secretary McNamara was hundred percent behind me. Now, the interesting thing is, at that time, I didn't know anything about the intelligence activities, but I had to really study hard to get that thing started from scratch. And I put a lot of long hours in that, and I remember the first report that I issued, I scrubbed that thing backwards and forwards, because I remember my mom always saying, "Don't ever give them the opportunity to criticize your work." And this was very crucial at that time. And you know, the interesting thing is, when I was preparing that first report, I gave, Jake Gardiner was my boss, he was head of the DoD audits at the time. I gave him the draft and held my breath. About two hours later, just before lunch, he came into my office and he said, "Frank, that's one of the best reports I've ever seen in my life." And I thought, whew, I was so relieved. But that report not only went from my boss to the Secretary of Defense, but I found out later, to the key committees of the Congress. It was that kind of thing that got me visibility that I could not have gotten anyplace else. Those are some of the key breaks in my career that really helped me along.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.