During the 1950s, she served in the State Department’s Office of German Affairs where her most important accomplishment was the organization of the “Berlin Desk” at a time when the foundations were being established for the new Federal Republic of Germany and a revived West Berlin surrounded by Soviet occupied East Germany.
In honor of her contributions to the re-establishment of a democratic Germany, Eleanor Dulles received many awards, including the award of the German-American Federation in 1985 and the Benjamin Franklin Award of the Free University of Berlin this year, which, regrettably, illness prevented her from receiving personally.
Prior to her Department of State experience, Eleanor Dulles, who had been an assistant professor for a time at Bryn Mawr, served with the Social Securities Board where she was part of the team that organized President Roosevelt’s new Social Security System.
Eleanor Dulles was the sister of John Foster and Allen Dulles, but her accomplishments in the Department of State and elsewhere were the result of her own outstanding abilities and effort. Like other women in government service in mid-century, she had to confront persistent sex discrimination, prejudice against the hiring and advancement of women, and obstacles to obtaining important assignments. Eleanor Dulles overcame the limitations of her times and achieved a lifetime career of distinguished public service.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
This novel would not have been possible without reference to the following books:
Brendan consulted over four hundred books for this novel and countless websites and postings by intelligence historians. Key references include Eleanor Dulles’s own autobiography, Chances of a Lifetime; Leonard Mosley’s Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network; Townsend Hoopes’s The Devil and John Foster Dulles, and Gentleman Spy by Peter Grose, who unearthed the delicious “sharks” quote by Clover Dulles. Joe Trento’s Widows and The Secret History of the CIA were vital. John and Mark Aarons’s two provocative collaborations, Unholy Trinity and The Secret War Against the Jews aside, Burton Hersh’s The Old Boys is the one book Brendan kept returning to. Likewise John F. Pollard’s essential history of Vatican finances, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, and Haggi Eshed’s Reuven Shiloah: the Man behind the Mossad. Lipsius and Lisagor’s shrewd A Law Unto Itself, the story of Sullivan and Cromwell, is a rich source, superbly researched. Brendan’s thanks to Marion Welch, law librarian at the University of Western Ontario, and Jerry Mulcahy, the business school librarian at UWO, for their unstinting help.
SPECIAL THANKS
How the hell do two people co-write a novel? John and Brendan aren’t Nordhoff and Hall, who wrote the Bounty novels; while Brendan dramatized a story that John pitched him off the top of his head, without John’s inspired notion of directing Brendan right at Eleanor, this book would never exist. Nor without John’s remarkable voyage around the National Archives and the National Security Agency’s vaults would there be a novel about the Dulleses.
This book required a research path of some depth and breadth, simply to understand, albeit without benefit of interviews with the long dead, the complexities of the financial crimes and misdemeanors of World War II. In that respect, two colleagues led a most distinguished pack: Marc Masurovsky—friend, tireless researcher, mentor and dry Gallic wit, for whom no praise is enough. Marc, as anyone who has attempted to sift, clear-eyed, through this aspect of World War II history knows, has an eerie gift for sorting the wheat from the chaff, all the while applying a relentless intellectual rigor.
As for Burton Hersh—Brendan’s friend and patient adviser when all threatened to overwhelm him in researching and then dramatizing the story John proposed—in Burton there is a toughness about these matters which stemmed from his own soundings. Without Marc and Burton, both most gifted investigators and ruthlessly honest historians, Brendan would never have found his feet: John’s tale was too rich.
We made so many good friends in this quest for the Dulles saga, dauntless bloodhounds, all: Douglas Vaughan Jr. and Georg Hodel, whose own work in this area we trust will see the light of day soon; the inimitable James McCargar, grand old State Department intelligence hand and bon vivant; Joe Trento, whose generosity and enthusiasm runs as deep as his pedigree as heir to Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson; Professor Cees Wiebes, who helped with certain delicate inquiries about Switzerland, Sweden and the Bank for International Settlements; Prof. Michael Salter, whose delvings into Operation Sunrise and the legal issues of immunity for intelligence sources is well worth weighing; our gifted Canadian intelligence history colleague, Victor Madeira, who has a book or two in him himself, who always addressed even Brendan’s most opaque inquiries.
Also part and parcel of the nine-year grind to bring this book home: Brendan’s former producer at CBC TV’s the fifth estate, a paragon of integrity and a great friend, David Kaufman, whom we tried (and failed) to libel to the hilt in our Kauffmann; our agents, Pamela Paul and Reid Boates, who helped more than they’ll ever know; Brendan’s co-writer in his attempts at comedy, Sheila McCarthy, who unfailingly kept him positive and laughing; intelligence scholar David Alvarez, whose insights into Vatican diplomatic ciphers was a catalyst for far more; legendary Jerusalem correspondent Jay Bushinsky, a true gentleman and a delightful conversationalist, drew our attention to certain intriguing pre-war leads; the late novelist and journalist Mordecai Richler, whose brief correspondence with Brendan suggests he was Canada’s most underrated investigative reporter: the man knew stuff about the Mossad.
Anne Collins is an editorial goddess, as anyone with an eye in his head comprehends. Anne fought off the bean counters while Brendan struggled; we’d walk through walls for her. Editor Craig Pyette, our collaborator and guide in reducing a gargantuan first draft to this span, wielded a deft editorial blade. One’s eyes fail: neither Liba Berry nor John Sweet missed a trick in copy editing and proofing, respectively, for which careful scrutiny many many thanks. Special thanks to Terri Nimmo, whose cover artwork so perfectly captures what we have tried to evoke.
And last but definitely not least, thanks to the legendary John E. Taylor of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. John was at the old Archives building the day the first OSS materials arrived in 1948. An imp of a man, with a child’s love of opening the next box of declassified documents, John is literally the Rosetta stone for anyone serious about understanding the secret history of World War II. He’s immortal.
Likewise (Brendan writes) my love for my wife, Maureen Argon, and my three children, Emilia, Nikolai and Clare, who endured an absentminded dad for far too long. The next one will be short and sweet, guys: I promise.
A final note: the documentary trail of World War II, like so much of the public record since 9/11, is being eroded even as you read this. The clawback of documents once public is a national scandal. If this book moves you as reader to do anything, send the Federation of American Scientists a donation: the FAS is the bulwark against an insidious destruction of the public record, of history itself.
Brendan Howley and John Loftus
in continuing memory of
RACHEL DAVIS
1980–2004
peacekeeper
JERRY JOHNSON
1949–2005
lover of life
and
“the old spies”
especially
DAN AND ANN BENJAMIN
an American and a Brit
husband and wife
best of friends
and
the best of spies
who died too soon
BRENDAN HOWLEY is a novelist, an investigative reporter and screenwriter. He lives in Stratford, Ontario. The Witness Tree is his third novel.
JOHN LOFTUS is a former US Justice Department Nazi war crimes investigator, a whistleblowers’ attorney, an expert in intelligence matters, and author of the bestselling books The Secret War Against the Jews and Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western
Intelligence to the Soviets. He lives in Tampa, Florida.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2008
Copyright © 2007 Twinfish Productions and John Loftus
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2008. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Howley, Brendan
The witness tree : a novel / Brendan Howley & John Loftus.
eISBN: 978-0-307-36960-4
I. Loftus, John, 1950– II. Title.
PS8565.O95W58 2008 C813’.54 C2008-900448-5
All of the documents included in the text of The Witness Tree are entirely the creations of the authors and the publisher.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Act One
Chapter I: Henderson Harbor, Upstate New York November 1911
Chapter II
Chapter III: Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania October 1914
Chapter IV: Switzerland September 1917
Chapter V: France October 1917
Chapter VI: Venezuela May 1924
Chapter VII: Paris December 1926
Chapter VIII: December 1926/January 1927
Chapter IX: Henderson Harbor Midsummer 1928
Chapter X: November 1930
Act Two
Chapter XI: Berlin September 1932
Chapter XII: New York December 1932
Chapter XIII: May 1933
Chapter XIV: November 1933
Chapter XV: January 1934
Chapter XVI: March 1934
Chapter XVII: Near Dover Plains NY August 1935
Chapter XVIII: Washington, D.C. April 1936
Chapter XIX: New York May 1936
Chapter XX: June 1936
Chapter XXI: En Route to Chicago September 1936
Act Three
Chapter XXII: New York August 1938
Chapter XXIII: Sullivan County, New York State September 1938
Chapter XXIV: New York September 1938
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI: Mid-October 1938
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX: Long Island, New York December 31, 1938
Chapter XXX: Havana November 1939
Chapter XXXI: Washington, D.C./Connecticut November 1941
Chapter XXXII: Europe November 1941
Chapter XXXIII: Washington December 7, 1941
Chapter XXXIV: New York December 13, 1941
Act Four
Chapter XXXV: Bern, Switzerland January 1942
Chapter XXXVI: November 1942
Chapter XXXVII: Davos, Switzerland February 1943
Chapter XXXVIII: A Week Later
Chapter XXXIX: March 1943
Chapter XL: May 1943
Chapter XLI: Washington, D.C. July 1943
Act Five
Chapter XLII: Washington, D.C. March 1944
Chapter XLIII: Bern May 1944
Chapter XLIV: July 21, 1944
Chapter XLV: Auberjonois, France Late September 1944
Chapter XLVI: Bern October 1944
Chapter XLVII: Wiesbaden, Near Frankfurt September 1945
Chapter XLVIII: Berlin a Week Later
Act Six
Chapter XLIX: Tel Aviv June 1946
Chapter L: Eastern Austria December 1946
Chapter LI: London Spring 1947
Chapter LII: Sag Harbor, New York April 1947
Chapter LIII: Washington, D.C. May 1947
Chapter LIV: Tel Aviv September 1947
Chapter LV: Washington, D.C. October 1947
Chapter LVI: New York November 22, 1947
Chapter LVII: November 29, 1947
Chapter LVII
Chapter LIX
Postscript
A Note on Sources
About the Authors
Copyright
The Witness Tree Page 45
