The Irregulars

by Jennet Conant

  Ogilvy, like most of his BSC colleagues, counted himself as extremely fortunate to be working for Stephenson, whom he regarded as a man of “extraordinary fertility” and “one of the most effective operators in the long history of the Secret Service,” in a class with such legends as Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s cunning spymaster, and Blinker Hall, director of Naval Intelligence in World War I, famous for intercepting the Zimmermann telegram, which had helped draw America into that conflict. Stephenson always seemed several steps ahead of everyone. Legend had it that a few days before Pearl Harbor, he sent a coded telegram to the London office that a Japanese attack was imminent. As the Foreign Office was not in possession of any corroborating reports from the embassy, they queried his source. Stephenson telegraphed his trademark terse reply: “The President of the United States.”

  Despite all the demands of the job, the BSC chief always listened to what his young subordinate had to say with interest, “a sympathetic grin flickering at the corner of his mouth.” He was “quiet, ruthless, and loyal,” and Ogilvy “stood in awe of his sagacity.” He was only ever disappointed in his boss on one score—that Stephenson failed to fully exploit Ogilvy’s expertise in public opinion. A fantastic self-promoter, Ogilvy talked endlessly about what he thought polling could do for the British war effort and was relentless in trying to find ways to apply Gallup’s methods to secret intelligence. He argued that his findings could be used to Britain’s advantage in guiding foreign policy, with the results of polls, secretly taken in other countries, used to shed light on the best way to settle internal political problems and determine what kinds of Allied propaganda would be most effective. During the summer of 1943, he set down his ideas in a detailed technical report, entitled “A Plan for Predetermining the Results of Plebiscites, Predicting the Reactions of People to the Impact of Projected Events, and Applying the Gallup Technique to Other Fields of Secret Intelligence.” After reviewing it, Stephenson obliged his aide by forwarding the report both to the British Embassy in Washington and to SIS headquarters in London, where it reportedly got a lukewarm reception and languished in a filing cabinet for the rest of the war.* Ogilvy always looked back on it as a lost opportunity.

  On Stephenson’s orders, Ogilvy concentrated on analyzing the current state of American public opinion toward Britain. He conducted a series of polls that showed that the defeats Britain suffered at the start of 1942 had a damaging effect on public attitudes toward both Britain and the Roosevelt administration. In mid-February 1942, 63 percent of Americans believed that the British were doing all they could to win the war, but just three weeks later, after a string of crushing military losses had been reported in the press, this figure had fallen to 49 percent, the lowest point since the beginning of the war. Moreover, his samplings showed that the public had lost confidence in their own government: one out of three Americans believed that the Roosevelt administration was not doing enough to win a decisive victory over the enemy.

  Ogilvy’s findings confirmed Stephenson’s worst fears. After Pearl Harbor he had cautioned Britons against a false sense of relief now that America was fighting at their side. Although he had largely accomplished what he had set out to do when he first came to New York, culminating in his role in the creation of the OSS, Stephenson had learned not to trust in the constancy of the American people. The Japanese had blasted U.S. neutrality to smithereens, but the country’s new belligerent spirit had subsided as the Allies suffered setbacks and the war turned into a fight without a quick ending. While Britain no longer had to worry about winning sympathy for its cause, pro-German interests and American isolationism remained a problem. A few isolationist factions had become even more extreme, but their tone was so off-putting that they were on the verge of self-destructing, with very little help from the BSC. Lindbergh had begun demonizing the Jews as a powerful mob in cahoots with the British and Roosevelt in “pressing this country toward war,” and his increasingly paranoid message left people cold. But the anti-Roosevelt forces railing against the president were as vitriolic as ever. While the BSC’s mission had changed over the years, and the scope of its activities was not nearly what it had been, Stephenson remained convinced that British propaganda efforts were still required to make sure Roosevelt remained in office and to ensure British participation in formulating wartime policies as well as in the crucial postwar planning.

  Meanwhile the British were facing the final critical stage of the war, and needed to be sure of their American ally’s support. By the close of 1943, however, there was growing friction between the countries on a number of fronts. At the Allied summit in Tehran in November, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had sat around a big, round oak conference table for three days getting nowhere. Roosevelt and Stalin stood united on the subject of establishing a real second front, and in the end Churchill had no choice but to give them what they wanted, and it was agreed that Operation Overlord, code name for the Normandy invasion, would be launched on May 1. The British were increasingly nervous about the close relationship developing between America and Russia. America was weighing various courses of action, and at the British embassy in Washington there was a feeling that the crowded events of the past few months had jostled opinions in the wrong direction. On December 5, Marsh sent Wallace the following “British Intelligence Item”—presumably supplied by Dahl—noting that it was important only insofar as it went to Downing Street and Churchill “the night it was spoken”:

  The top diplomatic reporter for Downing Street has just returned from a swing of the country. He says: “Americans are uninterested in this war except as their personal affairs interest them. They want the war over and Roosevelt out, and want to get back to the peace time living basis with their families intact. They are job conscious but the rest of the post-war and world peace business has not gotten into their being. Your Pearl Harbor wasn’t big enough. Our Dunkirk and London bombing woke us up. America is still playing and big-headedly proud of itself with bad information and little enthusiasm. You are too far away and provincial to get the point.

  While the weather in Washington had cooled, events remained very hot. When Marsh headed down to Texas for a two-week vacation, he kept in close touch with Dahl by telegram, saying that he hoped to see him before Christmas, and he put in an order for one of Disney’s gremlin dolls as a present for little Diana, “a mother in black hat, white gloves, white shoes.” He had sent chocolate, ham, and other goodies to his poor mother and sisters in ration-starved England. Teasing Dahl that his last wire was “hopelessly vague” and “the work of an immature writer,” Marsh told him that he was expected at Longlea for the holidays, adding that while he understood that the wing commander’s “knowledge of geography is obscure, I humor him by saying Virginia is not a long way off and he ought to find his way that far.”

  DIRTY WORK

  But many a king on a first-class throne,

  If he wants to call his crown his own,

  Must manage somehow to get through

  More dirty work than I ever do.

  —W.S. GILBERT, The Pirates of Penzance quoted in David Ogilvy’s memoir.

  THE NEW YEAR did not get off to a good start. Dahl found himself in the doghouse again and was once more given his marching papers. It seemed the air chief marshal had not gone quietly. He had continued to agitate for Dahl’s removal, and after Halifax had repeatedly ignored his recommendations for a change, he had gone over the ambassador’s head and arranged another transfer, this time in the form of “Orders from Military Air” out of London. He reportedly did it quietly, while Beaverbrook was away in South Africa and his staff was too busy to take notice. The military orders meant that the ambassador’s hands were effectively tied, so that even if he could be persuaded to show mercy, it would be too little too late. Moreover, as Dahl explained to Marsh, who had been down south most of December, it placed him in the awkward position of looking like a coward if he refused the wartime reassignment. Marsh once again turned to the vice pres
ident for help. “Probably this matter is not on the Portal [Sir Charles, commander in chief of the RAF] nor on the Churchill level,” Marsh wrote Wallace on January 28, 1944, apologizing for the precipitate nature of his appeal, but he hastened to explain that Dahl might be “transferred from America within a very few weeks.” He added that Dahl had decided “not to protest” the move, “although I am sure he wants to do his maximum on post war Air for Britain.”

  Realizing that the situation required extreme delicacy, Marsh devoted several pages of his letter to the vice president to demonstrating the critical nature of Dahl’s role at the embassy and enumerating the many reasons he should remain in place. “It would be a considerable loss to American and British air accord post war if Dahl left without putting his maximum weight on the American constructed Air Base set up,” Marsh began. “Undoubtedly Dahl, although a disabled flyer under thirty, is the purest and best brain on the British post war line up in this country. He has worked consistently at it. The British Air Marshall attached to Washington has many other duties. Dahl’s immediate superior at the Embassy is ill and the position itself has undergone two or three changes.” Marsh argued that it would be highly advantageous to keep Dahl involved in the negotiations: “Strange as it may seem, this young man has a vision of international communication in a peace time world involving sea and air travel, which is probably further ahead than anyone’s in either British or American Government. Before he is checked out, someone should get him to put his stuff on paper.”

  In case Wallace missed his drift, Marsh proceeded to spell out a course of action that the vice president could pursue to stave off their friend’s departure: “You might tell [the] proper person that you consider Dahl a very intelligent young man; that you generally check through him for accuracy of fact and viewpoint, on editorials pertaining to British matters. You understand that he is going abroad and you would like to know what other Britisher in America you can look to for accuracy and cooperation.”

  Anticipating the worst, Dahl wrote home that he might well be returning sooner than expected, explaining that he had asked to be “relieved.” That may have been as much as he felt he could put in a letter, or as much as any wayward son ever wants to admit to his mother. In any case, he spent sleepless nights worrying, waiting for the boom to be lowered. Finally on March 10, word came from the Air Ministry that his tour of duty was over and that “every body has appreciated the good work you have put in as Assistant Air Attaché.” Stephenson managed to secure his transfer to the BSC, and he was soon back in business.

  Dahl quickly recovered his equilibrium. When he next met with Wallace at Marsh’s home, he reciprocated by supplying the vice president with a full report on what the British saw as some of the preliminary stumbling blocks in the aviation talks. Dahl told Wallace that Beaverbrook and Eden were very disturbed about the American machinations with regard to postwar air and suspected that the Americans were trying to sew up the exclusive rights to air traffic in a number of South American countries. Pan American Airways had been secretly contracted by the U.S. military to build a number of airports in South America, and in addition to being handsomely compensated, they had the exclusive right to use the airfields and installations after the war—which, roughly speaking, was the reversion of $38 million worth of work. Dahl argued that it was important that the United States and Britain not get into a postwar air rights battle, but advised Wallace that he thought Britain could beat America at this game, though it was in everyone’s interests to keep things on a cooperative basis.

  Dahl also told the vice president that Halifax had been to see Berle at the State Department and had also called on Cordell Hull and the president. According to Halifax, Roosevelt had blamed the bottleneck on Bennett Champ Clark, a Democrat from Missouri, who was head of the Senate subcommittee that had been appointed to look into the question of whether American foreign aviation after the war should be in the hands of a monopoly company—that is, Pan Am—or divided among a number of companies, the more traditional form of regulated competition. An advisory committee on aviation had already submitted the view—with one vote dissenting—that foreign aviation rights should be apportioned among a select number of airlines, granting each a zone in which it could be dominant. The committee, in a subsequent report, had also warned of the growing conflict between Pan Am and sixteen other commercial airlines that favored free competition.

  Armed with Dahl’s report, Wallace phoned Berle the following day and passed on Dahl’s intelligence without mentioning him by name. Berle agreed the problem was in the Senate, though he did not criticize Clark, whose wife had recently died after a long illness. “Berle said he was just as anxious to have conversations with the British on post-war air as the British themselves,” Wallace noted in his diary. “Berle said he would welcome anything I could do to hasten the Senate hearings along. I then remembered that Dahl quoted Halifax to the effect that the President had said it would be good tactics to let Bennett Clark have his hearings before the British and Americans got too far in their negotiations. Berle says that some of the big American companies are disposed to think they can go ahead and handle the post-war situation more or less by themselves no matter what the British do. Berle thinks this attitude is bad.”

  During this period, Wallace’s diary shows that on several occasions he forwarded Dahl’s intelligence to interested parties in government as well as to the president. A brief unsigned memo, concerning the British ambassador’s March visit to Moscow, during which Halifax met with Stalin and broached the subject of the British position on Poland, reports: “Stalin was very angry. He made no comment except to grunt repeatedly.” Beneath this Wallace noted in pencil, “I passed the above which came through Dahl on to the President who had confirmatory evidence of his own.”

  Dahl continued to closely monitor the vice president’s political fortunes. As the election year got under way, Marsh was increasingly inserting himself into the campaign. He regularly took his own informal polls by sounding out newspaper editors around the country, and he provided his own prognoses and recommendations in the form of an endless cascade of notes, letters, memos, and reports. Marsh was frustrated that he could not turn to his old friend Lyndon Johnson for insight and advice, but he knew he had been bitterly disappointed when Roosevelt passed over Rayburn for Wallace back in 1940. At the time Johnson had expressed disbelief that the president would select a man regarded by many as “an ex-republican with little political savvy and a reputation for mysticism.”

  Johnson, who had lost a hotly contested bid for the Senate in a special election in the summer of 1941, following the death of Morris Shepherd, the senior senator from Texas, had returned to the House and dedicated himself to the war effort. He had also devoted himself to working for Rayburn, who still had ambitions for the vice presidency and as Speaker of the House had a vast majority of congressmen favoring his elevation. Marsh was livid. He told Johnson that there was only a slight chance for the Roosevelt-Rayburn ticket. “The real fact,” Marsh fumed, “is that Rayburn has neither the brain nor moral stamina to lead this country should he be called to the presidency and Roosevelt knows it.” Even Johnson had privately conceded as much after a few drinks, telling Marsh, “I think I can say definitely that only Wallace could lose the nomination, as certainly the President will be for him.”

  As he had once done for Johnson, Marsh sent Wallace pep talks and inspirational notes on the campaign trail: “So as you go west and then swing back to Lincoln’s tomb, I feel with great confidence that you are in the spirit of the thing to be done,” he wrote. “I firmly feel you are a Crusader in the finest sense. I sense that you are an advance writer in the new religion of economic democracy.”

  Marsh did not restrict himself to campaign advice and frequently weighed in on British and U.S. foreign policy, penning furious memos on the shortcomings of American diplomacy. “It is most disquieting that our State Department apparently does not know the score,” Marsh scolded in early 1944.
“South America is primarily the job of our own State Department. Today we are getting most of our real information from British Intelligence and most of our policy direction from men who accept the governments of the United nations of the western world as spiritually democratic. Meanwhile, the road to fascism in South America is being made increasingly easy. Nationalism is growing under fascist over-lords. The common people south of the Rio Grande are confused and rapidly losing faith in the words of Roosevelt, Hull, Wallace and Welles.” Dahl, who still regularly joined the two men for five o’ clock cocktails, would do his best to egg Marsh on during these arguments with an eye to passing along the vice president’s responses later.

  By early 1944, London, and the prime minister in particular, were keenly interested in the progress of the presidential election. By using Ogilvy’s method of analysis and drawing on the intelligence gathered by Dahl and other BSC agents, Stephenson kept them supplied with regular and reliable forecasts of the outcome. In the first week of February, Stephenson gave London a heads-up and reported that “Roosevelt has undertaken to the Party that he will jettison Wallace as vice-presidential candidate.”* Stephenson was naturally quite pleased when Ogilvy’s old employer, Gallup, began playing an unexpectedly prominent role in the election process, with his opinion polls replacing gambling odds as the best way to get a fix on the bandwagon vote. Stephenson was in an excellent position to keep London informed on this new development seeing as he already had an inside man.