Donald Nichols (spy)

For persons of a similar name, see Donald Nichols (disambiguation).

Donald Nichols
Born(1923-02-18)18 February 1923
Hackensack, New Jersey, U.S.
Died2 June 1992(1992-06-02) (aged 69)
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S.
Allegiance United States
Service / branch United States Air Force
RankMajor
Commands6004th Air Intelligence Service Squadron
Battles / warsWorld War II
Korean War
AwardsDistinguished Service Cross
Silver Star

Donald Nichols (18 February 1923 – 2 June 1992) was a United States Air Force intelligence officer who played a hidden but pivotal role in the Korean War. He and his spies found most of the North Korean targets destroyed by U.S. bombing during the war.[1] Nichols also warned his superiors far in advance that North Korea was planning the surprise invasion that started the war, although his many warnings were ignored.[2] In the first months of the war, Nichols and his men broke North Korean battle codes, which helped U.S. forces survive the invasion, halt the enemy's momentum, and destroy most of the North's army.[3] Nichols created the Air Force's first covert intelligence unit, Detachment 2 of the 6004th Air Intelligence Service Squadron, which he commanded during most of the Korean War.[4] His intelligence outfit, sometimes known as "Nick," saved American lives by going behind enemy lines to find vulnerabilities in Soviet tanks and MiG fighter jets.[5] His intelligence achievements won him the Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross.

An extraordinary element of Nichols's 11-year tenure as a spy in South Korea (from 1946 to 1957), was his close personal relationship with South Korean President Syngman Rhee. Nichols was just 23 when he met the 71-year-old Rhee, but the inexperienced American spy (a 7th grade dropout) and the worldly Korean politician (a master's degree from Harvard, a doctorate from Princeton) found each other useful. Rhee used Nichols to transmit intelligence leaks to senior U.S. commanders, which helped speed Rhee's rise to power in South Korea, and Nichols boasted to his superiors that in Rhee he had cultivated a uniquely powerful and well-informed source in Seoul.[6]

There was a dark side, though, to Nichols's long run as a spy commander in Korea, as well as to his postwar life in Florida, where he repeatedly committed sexual crimes involving young boys.[7] His friendship with Rhee and his collaboration with the South Korean security apparatus immersed Nichols in a brutal world of anticommunist purges, where he witnessed torture, beheadings, and the mass shootings of thousands of South Korean who were perceived as enemies of Rhee's government.[8] Nichols did not report these atrocities to his superiors, and his senior intelligence clerk, Sergeant Serbando Torres, later said that "slaughtering all these people...didn't seem to bother him that much." Nichols himself participated in atrocities, including throwing POWs off of helicopters.[9][10]

As the creator and commander of his own spy unit, Nichols had near-complete autonomy from the Air Force command structure. For many years, he reported only to Air Force General Earle E. Partridge, who was in charge of the air war in Korea.[11] The lack of supervision gave Nichols freedom to indulge his sexual interest in young Korean airmen, who were periodically brought to him in the evenings at his spy base outside of Seoul.[12] His spy command also gave Nichols unsupervised access to large amounts of cash, which he used to pay off agents and some of which he later brought back to the United States, where he kept tens of thousands of dollars in cash in his brother's freezer in Florida.[13]

The intelligence career of Nichols came to a secretive and tragic end in 1957, when the Air Force suddenly relieved him of his command, removed him from Korea, and sent him to psychiatric wards at U.S. military hospitals, first in Tachikawa, Japan, and then at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.[14] His military service record indicated no history of mental illness, and Air Force colleagues said he showed no such symptoms, but Air Force doctors quickly diagnosed Nichols as a "deteriorating schizophrenic."[15] He was given large doses of Thorazine and then forced to undergo at least 14 rounds of electroshock.[16] Nichols later told relatives "that the government wanted to erase his brain—because he knew too much."[17]

Nichols was forced to retire from the military on a medical disability in 1962.[18] He was later charged in Florida with repeated sexual assaults on young boys and pleaded nolo contendere in 1987 to two felony counts of lewd behavior in the presence of a child.[19] He died in the psychiatric ward of a veteran's hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he had gone in lieu of imprisonment in Florida as a sexual predator.[20] He was inducted into the Air Commando Hall of Fame in 1981. Nichols wrote an autobiography, How Many Times Can I Die?, that is notable for exaggerating his achievements and omitting key elements in his life. A biography entitled King of Spies was published in 2017 by Blaine Harden, author of two earlier books about North Korea.

  1. ^ Futrell, p. 502.
  2. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 48-56.
  3. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 81-92.
  4. ^ Harden (2017), p. 99.
  5. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 65-76, 99-102.
  6. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 31-47.
  7. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 174-191.
  8. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 39-41, 77-80.
  9. ^ Harden (2017), p. 80.
  10. ^ "The Korean War: Barbarism Unleashed". Peace History. Retrieved 2024-01-07.
  11. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 107-108.
  12. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 104,152.
  13. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 150-151, 180.
  14. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 146-169.
  15. ^ Harden (2017), p162.
  16. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 162-165.
  17. ^ Harden (2017), p. 165.
  18. ^ Harden (2017), pp. 167-168.
  19. ^ Harden (2017), p. 189.
  20. ^ Harden (2017), p. 188-191.