Jennet Conant - The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

T HIS BOOK IS An attempt to reconstruct, as accurately as possible, the infamous exploits of a group of spies who served with the secret intelligence organization known as British Security Coordination (BSC), which set up shop in America during World War II and remains one of the most controversial, and probably one of the most successful, covert action campaigns in the annals of espionage. The relentless duplicity of the BSC agents is not without precedentruses de guerre have been part of a long tradition in warfare that dates as far back as the Trojan horse, if not earlierbut until Winston Churchill dispatched William Stephenson, aka Intrepid, to America as part of his plan to prod the country into action, no one had ever dared to mount such a large shadow force to wage war by means of sabotage, propaganda, and political subversion. As director of the BSC, Stephenson, according to the organizations official history, was empowered to do all that was not being done and could not be done by overt means to assure aid for Britain and counter the enemys plans in the Western Hemisphere.

By the spring of 1942, when Roald Dahl, a dashing young RAF pilot, arrived in Washington as an assistant air attach at the British Embassy, the BSCs vast network of spies was already in place and had established a remarkably effective propaganda machine that rallied American public opinion behind active support of England. Dahl would soon be caught up in the complex web of intrigue masterminded by Stephenson, the legendary Canadian spymaster, who outmaneuvered the FBI and State Department and managed to create an elaborate clandestine organization whose purpose was to weaken the isolationist forces in America and influence U.S. policy in favor of Britain.

Tall, handsome, and intelligent, Dahl had all the makings of an ideal operative. A courageous officer wounded in battle, smashing looking in his dress uniform, he was everything England could have asked for as a romantic representative of that imperiled island. He was also arrogant, idiosyncratic, and incorrigible, and probably the last person anyone would have considered reliable enough to be trusted with anything secret. Above all, however, Dahl was a survivor. When he got into trouble, he was shrewd enough to make himself useful to British intelligence, providing them with gossipy items that proved he had a nose for scandal and the writers ear for damning detail. Already attached to the British Air Mission in Washington, he came equipped with the perfect cover story, and his easy wit and conspicuous charm guaranteed him entre to the drawing roomsand bedroomsof the rich and powerful.

Dahl quickly infiltrated the upper reaches of Washington society and government, ingratiating himself with influential wartime leaders from Henry Wallace to Henry Morgenthau, captivating the heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, and seducing the glamorous congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce. Encouraged by his superiors to cultivate friendships with important American publishers, Dahl became so close to the Texas newspaper tycoon Charles Marsh that he was virtually adopted into the family. As a result of his burgeoning fame as a writer, he was recommended to the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and before long was a regular guest at the White House, as well as at the presidential retreat, Hyde Park. All the while he was rubbing shoulders with the American elite, Dahl was reporting to his contacts at the BSC on everything he heard and saw.

Dahl and colorful coconspiratorsincluding Nol Coward, Ian Fleming, David Ogilvy, and Ivar Brycewere all rank amateurs, recruited for their clever minds and connections rather than any real experience in the trade of spying. These Baker Street Irregulars, as they were dubbed in honor of the mischievous street urchins who aided the famous literary sleuth Sherlock Holmes, were Churchills underground army in America, an invisible fortress that would help forestall the enemy and help England secure victory. They planted propaganda in American newspapers, radio stations, and wire services; co-opted leading columnists from Drew Pearson to Walter Lippmann and Walter Winchell; harassed prominent isolationists and antiNew Dealers; exposed Nazi sympathizers and fifth columnists; and plotted against corporations that were working against British interests.

While it may not have been the most honorable way to fight a war, Churchill was convinced he had no alternativehis countrys very existence was at stake. By the winter of 1940, England faced an entrenched enemy and stood on the brink of collapse. The Nazis were sweeping across Europe and preparing to invade. Britains only hope of survival hinged on Americas assistance, and Churchillwith the tacit permission of President Roosevelt, who was privately in favor of intervention despite the overwhelming public oppositioninstructed the BSC to do everything possible to drag their reluctant ally into the war against Germany.

The BSC succeeded not only in mystifying and misdirecting its political enemies but also in manipulating the policies of its greatest wartime ally in favor of England, changing the course of the United States forever. By pushing Roosevelt to create a transatlantic intelligence alliance in the form of the OSS, to be headed by Londons man in Washington William Wild Bill Donovan, Stephenson effectively made the U.S. intelligence service the willing handmaiden of the British. Not surprisingly, this episode of history, which lay the foundation for the CIA, comes in many versions, with Stephenson and the BSC cast either as heroes or as villains depending on the authors ties to either the American or British intelligence establishments and the degree of moral discomfort with their devious activities and methods. Because of the outrageous lengths to which Stephenson and his dirty tricks squad resorted in their efforts to confound and defeat the Nazisan end that, no matter how noble, did not necessarily justify the meansthe BSC became an embarrassment to both America and England, charged with having a sinister influence on foreign affairs and immeasurably complicating relations between the two countries in the years to come.