A Man Called Intrepid

by William Stevenson

  TRICYCLE’s high-level contacts, exotic tastes, and extravagant style provided, he thought, perfect cover. The FBI took a dim view of all this, disregarding the justification of his British defenders that he had done excellent and dangerous work, which had placed him in high regard among German intelligence chiefs. Berlin had dispatched him to the United States to build his own espionage network, complete with radio station. The FBI did set up a transmitter and worked it back to Germany, but the enemy smelled a rat and broke off contact, TRICYCLE was never allowed near it.

  This was disappointing to London. Even the British admitted later that they failed to put enough emphasis on the Pearl Harbor clues. The conversations TRICYCLE had with his Nazi contacts in Lisbon included one with a German intelligence officer who had gone to Taranto to make a report on the British attack there. “Their torpedo planes flew through a barrier of balloon cables and a massive volume of gunfire from six battleships, nine cruisers and a score of destroyers and escorts,” he confided to TRICYCLE. “The British planes were launched from a carrier and in a single blow crippled the Italian fleet. The date November 11, 1940 must go down in history as the end of the battleship era in naval warfare.”

  The major lesson of Taranto was lost on Americans and acted on by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. If the British could manage aerial torpedoes with ancient aircraft operating in the teeth of the enemy, the Japanese should have no trouble with their superior torpedo planes and carriers.

  TRICYCLE’s efforts to arouse Americans through the FBI did not get far. He had brought with him specimens of German espionage equipment, but most important of all was the questionnaire and the section headed “Naval Strong Point Pearl Harbor.” This requested:

  1. Exact details and sketch about the situation of the state wharf, of the pier installations, situations of dry dock No. 1 and of the new dry dock which is being built.

  2. Details about the submarine station (plan of situation). What land installations are in existence?

  3. Where is the station for mine search formations? How far has the dredger work progressed at the entrance and in the east and southeast lock? Depths of water?

  4. Number of anchorages?

  5. Is there a floating dock in Pearl Harbor or is the transfer of such a dock to this place intended? Special Tasks—Reports about torpedo protection nets newly introduced in the British and U.S.A. navy. How far are they already in existence in the merchant and naval fleet? Use during voyage? Average speed reduction when in use. Details of construction and others.

  This was passed along to Hoover. But when it became evident that the Director’s seeming dislike of the newcomer’s flamboyance would jeopardize mutual co-operation, Ewen Montagu flew over from London on behalf of the Twenty Committee, which took its name from the Roman numerals for 20—XX—symbolizing the double cross. He tried in vain to persuade the FBI to feed information to TRICYCLE SO that he could satisfy his German spy masters. Though a craftsman in the difficult work of misleading the enemy’s own agents, with Hoover, Montagu got nowhere.

  The chief of the Twenty Committee, long associated as student and academic with Oxford University, was Sir John Masterman, who wrote of this episode, in The Double-Cross System: “It is noticeable that TRICYCLE’s German questionnaire was more or less general or statistical, except the questions concerning Pearl Harbor which were specialised and detailed. It is therefore surely a fair deduction that the questionnaire indicated very clearly that in the event of the United States being at war, Pearl Harbor would be the first point attacked and that plans for this attack were at an advanced stage in the summer of 1941. Obviously it was for the Americans to make their appreciation and to draw their deductions from the questionnaire rather than for us to do so. Nonetheless, with our fuller knowledge of the case and of the man, we ought to have stressed its importance more than we did. With the greater experience of a few more years’ work, we should certainly have risked a snub and pointed out to our friends in the United States what the significance of the document might be; but in 1941 we were still a little chary of expressing opinions and a little mistrustful of our own judgment.”

  TRICYCLE was never accepted by the FBI. He later moved to Camp X in Canada. His German spy masters kept up a flow of instructions through other Nazi networks. Their comments were ribald as well as revelatory. He had invented for the Germans an excuse they could understand for moving to Canada: a rendezvous with a woman of unusual beauty. A signal went out from Germany that revealed how closely and intimately informed the Nazis were on individual foibles. The lady in question, they had established through their other agents, had been treated for venereal disease. They suggested that the enterprising TRICYCLE take appropriate precautions, and even offered him the drug prescription for countering infection.

  Secret-warfare chiefs strained at the leash, demanding to go over to the offensive, but they were restrained by their dependence on American material support. The U.S. regular forces, ill-prepared for war, begrudged the transfer of weapons even though there was sympathy—especially among U.S. Navy chiefs—for Britain’s plight. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner reflected this concern in a memo to Roosevelt: “Because of the tragic situation of the British Government, I do not recommend troubling them further as to our opinion on the seriousness of the situation. . . . They realize it pretty well themselves. . . .” The chief of the Maritime Commission, Admiral Emory S. Land, observed with salty brevity that “if we do not watch our step we shall find the White House enroute to England with the Washington Monument for a steering oar.”

  The Washington Monument stayed in place. President Roosevelt did, however, put to sea, and, on August 9, 1941, in a first dramatic meeting with Prime Minister Churchill was further distracted from danger in the Pacific. The leaders met on the ill-fated battleship Prince of Wales, which was sunk by Japanese torpedo-bombers exactly four months later, a few days after Pearl Harbor, and on the U.S. Navy cruiser Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Their shipboard talks led to the Atlantic Charter, which not only had the immediate effect of boosting British morale, but became a cornerstone of the future United Nations. It had no teeth, however. The President wanted nothing that would sound remotely like a treaty, for then it would have to go to the Senate, where it might founder.

  “That was how fragile Roosevelt’s position really was,” Stephenson observed. “Public-opinion polls had revealed a decrease in support for aid to Britain, despite rising expectations of war with Germany. A vast majority of Americans thought sending war material to Britain was pouring it down the sink. Europe was lost anyway.”

  In counteracting, the British stressed the poisonous effects of Nazi fifth columnists, their dupes and commercial allies. Hitler gave priority to corroding the will power of his intended victims, and subsequent frontal German assaults were merely the follow-through. The British arguments again forced the President’s attention to the dangers of subversion at home and the need to build the spirit of resistance against Nazism. “Oppressed peoples of Europe were promised sovereignty and self-government,” Stephenson wrote later. “We sought to unify resistance among those already under the Nazi yoke, and unite those still free.”

  The concrete results of the Atlantic conference were to take the form of further British help in fighting Nazi influence in the Americas. From the British viewpoint, of course, it was indeed the case that political opponents of Roosevelt were as deadly an enemy as Nazi Germany.

  Churchill cabled the War Cabinet in London:

  PRESIDENT OBVIOUSLY DETERMINED THAT THE AMERICANS SHOULD COME IN. BUT CLEARLY HE SKATES ON VERY THIN ICE IN RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS WHICH, HOWEVER, HE DOES NOT REGARD AS TRULY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COUNTRY.

  In an even franker report, so secret that it had to be divulged verbally at a closed session with his colleagues, Churchill added that “the President said he wanted war with Germany, but that he would not declare it. He would instead become more and more provocative. Mr. Roosevelt said he could look for an incident
which would justify him in opening hostilities.”

  Churchill, sailing back from the talks, had taken delight in the protection provided part of the way by U.S. destroyers. Here were the seeds of just such a provocative incident. He made a broadcast talk to the people of Europe as well as Britain, blending implication with fact, hoping to stir Hitler into another frenzy by the suggestion of Anglo-American intimacies and brotherly good will. “And so we came back,” he intoned. “Uplifted in spirit, fortified in resolve. Some American destroyers happened to be going the same way too, so we made a goodly company at sea together.”

  The mention of the American destroyers was made casually, as if this kind of happy accident could be taken for granted. The tone was part of a general air of good spirits between the two comrades. Noel Coward, waiting to go on a mission for INTREPID to South America, described the President and Prime Minister arguing over the words to one of his lyrics when “they should have been solving the world’s woes.” Such stories created an impression of common resolve and lighthearted confidence. In fact, the British felt they were getting less than Churchill had led them to expect, while American isolationists feared that secret protocols would commit the United States to more than was being admitted.

  It seemed to that other playwright observer, Robert Sherwood, that Roosevelt came away more keenly aware of the threats posed by Axis bases in the Western Hemisphere. “The President had been reminded that Hitler’s philosophy was highly unconventional,” Sherwood said later. “The Nazi leader jeered at generals who wished to behave like chivalrous knights, and all rigid military thinkers. ‘I have no use for knights,’ Hitler had written, adding: ‘I need revolutions.’ He was looking for revolutions now in South America with a view to creeping into the United States through the back door.

  “The British justifiably pressed their case and the need to prevent further Nazi encroachment in the Americas. The worst disaster to hit the whole human race had struck in Europe, and Churchill had once again reminded Roosevelt that in his small islands the defense of vital bases was in the hands of 150,000 men and women armed with pikes, maces, and grenades. With such emotional tugs, Roosevelt inevitably played down problems in the Pacific.

  “The American destroyers going Churchill’s way home meant that our Atlantic Fleet was now operating twenty-four hours a day under battle conditions.

  “Our Fleet in the Pacific was paralyzed with the obsession of neutrality.”

  And so TRICYCLE’s preview of Pearl Harbor passed into oblivion. Churchill had been too successful in distracting the President’s attention from the East and focusing it instead upon Britain’s own immediate worries.

  PART

  IV

  CRY, “HAVOC!”

  “Cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

  —Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  31

  The Roosevelt-Churchill meeting at sea four months before Pearl Harbor was their expression of hope for freedom’s future. To defend what was still left of freedom, joint intelligence operations were intensified even as the American public seemed more anxious to keep out of the war. Hoover, who had heretofore been helpful about forgetting rules that limited FBI activities in order to preserve individual rights, was now uneasy. Stephenson had to cope with this, remembering the jealous concern of Americans to protect their freedoms, while at the same time he waded through a daily flood of horror stories out of Europe’s nightmare.

  An urgent request from British Naval Intelligence presented him with a typical dilemma. London wanted immediate disruption of links between Europe and South America, which was becoming dangerously generous in aiding the enemy. From London’s viewpoint, any methods were justified provided they did not jeopardize BSC’s use of New York. Stephenson had to choose the least bloody course of action.

  The most troublesome base at the moment was Brazil, where the government was helping Nazi operations against the United States. The best solutions seemed to be either to frighten the leaders into cutting their ties with the enemy or to overthrow them. One way to accomplish either was to plant fake documents on the offending Brazilians and discredit them. Stephenson consulted his expert, the Canadian President of the Newsprint Association Charles Vining, who ran many of BSC’s operations in Canada.

  “Can you get straw pulp like this?” Stephenson asked, displaying a sheet of stationery.

  Vining held the paper to the light. “Perhaps.”

  “And the letterhead?”

  “The forgery department won’t have much difficulty.”

  “How about the typewriter?”

  Vining examined the type face. “Italian machine?”

  “Right. And ancient.”

  “We’ll have to rebuild one, with all the imperfections.” Vining handed back the paper. “This the only copy?”

  “Don’t worry.” Stephenson grinned lopsidedly. “We’ll get the original.”

  “Facilities in the United States would be greater.”

  “Not while the kid gloves are still on.”

  From Rockefeller Center a coded message went out to the British secret intelligence chief in Brazil: “We propose to convey to the Brazilian Government a letter purporting to be written by someone in authority in Italy to an executive in Brazil. Purpose is to compromise the Italian transatlantic air services which provide safe passage for enemy agents, intelligence documents and strategic materials. We would welcome details and specimen Head Office letter of the LATI airline.”

  A letter stolen from General Aurelio Liotta, president of the airline, in Rome, was duly sent by safe-hand courier. It was a specimen of his personal letterhead. A follow-up signal from Rio de Janeiro advised INTREPID that any forged letters would be best addressed to Commandante Vicenzo Coppola, the regional manager in Brazil. A fake letter was in production by late September. The notepaper was produced by Station M, using the straw pulp normally found only in Europe. The engraved letterhead of Italy’s state-owned Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane was copied by counterfeiters. A typewriter that precisely duplicated the machine in Rome had been constructed. The letter was addressed to Coppola and was “signed” by LATI’s president. It said:

  Dear Friend:

  Thank you for your letter and for the report enclosed. . . . I discussed your report immediately with our friends. They regard it as being of the highest importance. They compared it in my presence with certain information that had already been received from the Prace del Prete. The two reports coincided almost exactly. . . . It made me feel proud. . . . There can be no doubt the “little fat man” is falling into the pocket of the Americans, and that only violent action on the part of the “green gentlemen” can save the country. I understand such action has been arranged for by our respected collaborators in Berlin. . . .

  This cunning forgery appeared to be part of a fascist-inspired plot against President Getulio Vargas, the “little fat man.” The “green gentlemen” were notorious in Brazil as the revolutionary Integralists who had tried to bring down the Vargas regime. A final insult was the last line: “The Brazilians may be, as you said, a ‘nation of monkeys,’ but they are monkeys who will dance for anyone who can pull the string! Saluti fascisti. . . .”

  One of President Vargas’s sons-in-law was chief technical director of the airline. Other prominent Brazilians had an interest in its operations. Micropix of the letter were smuggled to Rio and blowups eventually leaked to Vargas’s cronies. The President flew into a rage, canceled LATI’s landing rights, and ordered Coppola’s arrest. The Commandante, one step ahead, had drawn the equivalent of a million dollars in LATI funds and was caught on his way to the Argentine border.

  At that, he was lucky. A plan to blow up one of his airliners in which he happened to be traveling, along with a cargo of industrial diamonds, was stopped by Stephenson. “I couldn’t bring myself to destroy a commercial plane. And being an airman myself, the prospect of killing the crew was anathema.”

  President Vargas, enraged by the
Italians and antagonized by the Germans, moved under the Anglo-American umbrella. This was to have far-reaching effects when the United States needed Brazil’s bases and ports for launching operations in Africa.

  The FBI later claimed, in good faith, that the coup was theirs. The forged evidence was so well planted that copies reached the U.S. Embassy in Rio independently through one of Hoover’s agents, and the documents fabricated in Canada were taken as genuine. BSC destroyed the original forgeries, and also the rebuilt Italian typewriter, which was taken apart and dropped into the lake.

  There were such strong reasons for withholding information on British operations that it was a long time before Hoover learned the facts. “The trouble at this stage,” noted the BSC Papers, “was that Americans handled some information with reckless disregard for consequences. By trumpeting successes, they tipped off the enemy.” Though this problem was being tackled by Donovan’s new intelligence agency, Hoover became increasingly agitated by BSC operations. Forged documents and their use, aimed at Nazis and governments hostile to British interests, were planned and organized in New York. Such operations might be “papered,” equipped, and executed from Canada, but they were directed from Rockefeller Center by an organization that seemed immune to precautions that American citizens properly insisted upon to prevent foreign agencies from exploiting American freedom of movement and speech. There were moral and legalistic grounds for Hoover’s objections. When he could be persuaded that some infringement of civil rights was necessary to prevent a greater danger, however, he still fell back upon the policy of maximum publicity for bureau success. The FBI had been turned into an incorruptible agency because Hoover made his agents feel part of an elite. Stephenson understood this, but it was difficult to convince London that FBI self-publicity was justifiable when the war against the Third Reich and its fifth columnists required the very antithesis of self-promotion. The price of Hoover’s support seemed high when publicity could destroy a clandestine operation. Yet the cost of Hoover’s hostility was unacceptable, too.