Part I of the review of this book by Joseph E. Persico was about how FDR prepared the country for war, and how he reacted to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This posting will focus on Roosevelt’s use of intelligence and intelligence services, and some of the impacts on the events of World War II.  Vincent Astor had become a friend and confidant of FDR after his crippling attack of polio. Astor and a group of wealthy friends had formed an organization to secretly collect gossip and informal intelligence that they called “The Room.”  One member was Kermit Roosevelt, the man who would engineer the CIA overthrow of the legitimate government of Iran in the early 1950’s.  Astor had done some amateur sleuthing in the Pacific for Roosevelt after FDR had become President, but the German attack of Poland brought Astor and The Room closer to FDR.  The group of adventure-seeking dilettantes reconstituted themselves as “The Club,” and began to increase their activities through various international banks.  This group appealed to FDR’s natural attraction to “cloak and dagger” intrigue.  FDR is characterized in the latter pages of the book as wanting to be like a secret agent who was “…a burglar with morals.”  He preferred to work with human sources over signals intelligence, or “humint” over “signit” in the shorthand of the trade.

Much of the book is about the various U.S. intelligence gathering services that seemed to spend almost as much effort trying to discredit the other organizations as they did trying to steal secrets from other countries.  Much of the in-fighting involved Bill “Wild Bill” Donovan. FDR had written a note in June 1941 authorizing a military central intelligence service with Donovan as the “coordinator of information,” or COI.  The organization was renamed Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.  It was the latest of 136 “emergency agencies” that FDR created.  However, this one began almost immediately to create friction with the other military intelligence agencies and J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Joseph Kennedy, Ambassador to Britain also wasn’t a fan of Donovan.  He was asked to help Donovan establish operations in England, and he “…greeted this news with the enthusiasm of someone handed a dead rat.”  Donovan recruited a network of agents from a broad spectrum of personalities.  His payroll included people such as Julia Child and three men who would later head the CIA. Many or most had no training in the arts of intelligence gathering. Donovan with FDR’s permission knowingly and willingly employed Communists. He explained that, “I’d put Stalin on the OSS payroll if I thought it would defeat Hitler. One observer commented that the New York Times was faster, better informed, more objective, and available at a much lower cost. The OSS would eventually work to support both the Nationalist and Communist Chinese and Ho Chi Minh in Viet Nam. The Vatican was a valuable source of information to the OSS, because they had emissaries in all countries.

Much of the intelligence successes for the allies came from the code breakers. The British were able to break the German Enigma messages with help from Poles who had escaped to Britain. Arlington Hall broke the Japanese code, which they called “Magic.” One example of what they learned included battle plans which allowed the U.S. Navy to ambush and defeat the Japanese navy at Midway.  Admiral Nimitz said Midway was “…essentially a victory of intelligence.”  A message was decoded about Admiral Yamamoto’s travel plans, and American planes intercepted him and his escorts and shot him out of the sky.  Japan’s ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima dutifully filed reports that were decoded by Magic.  His reports allowed tracking and sinking U-boats and provided valuable information about the effects of allied bombing on both Tokyo and V-1 and V-2 production facilities in Germany.  General Marshall commented Oshima was the primary source of information about Hitler’s plans and intentions.  The Chicago Tribune’s publisher, Colonel Robert McCormick (who was called “the greatest mind of the 14th century”), was an ardent critic of FDR.  The Tribune published two articles that clearly indicated the Americans had broken the Japanese code. There was public and Congressional outcry, but somehow the Japanese missed it all and didn’t change their code.

It was in keeping with Roosevelt’s personality that he enjoyed the conflict between the myriad of intelligence services, all of which knew pieces of what was going on.  Only Roosevelt knew it all.  There will be another part of this review focusing on Roosevelt’s personality to be published later.