Trying to shake this particular natural knowledge from my mind, I made myself a pot of coffee, found a new packet of cigarettes on the desk in my study, and sat down to look through the files given to me by Roosevelt.

The report compiled by the German War Crimes Bureau contained the most detail. But it was the British report, written by Sir Owen O’Malley, ambassador to the Polish government in exile, and prepared with the help of the Polish army, that detained me the longest. O’Malley’s exhaustive report was vividly written and included gruesome descriptions of how officers and men of the Soviet NKVD had shot the 4,500 men-in the back of the head, some with their hands tied, some with sawdust stuffed into their mouths to prevent them from crying out-before burying them in a mass grave.

Finishing the report a little after midnight, I found it impossible not to agree with O’Malley’s conclusion that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the Soviets were guilty. O’Malley’s warning to Winston Churchill that the murders in the Katyn Forest would have long-lasting “moral repercussions” seemed understated. But following my talk with the president, I reckoned that any conclusions I formed from my own investigations would have to take second place to a perception I had already formed of the president’s desire for more cordial relations between himself and the murderous, Pole-hating Joseph Stalin.

Any report on the massacre that I myself compiled could be nothing more than a formality, a way for Roosevelt to cover his ass.