Roosevelt. They were to see Stephenson at the Rockefeller Center, and discuss with him, and American naval officers, the security of American ports.
Ian ‘introduced Godfrey to the Morgan banking clan’, as Andrew Lycett succinctly puts it. Together they went to the fashionable 21 Club. They read the news that HMS Hood had been sunk by the destroyer Bismarck . A couple of days later, the Bismarck was sunk. New York suddenly seemed rather unreal.
Fleming had discussed Donovan’s plans and needed time to write his blueprint; Godfrey wanted to confront Hoover of the FBI in Washington. Smithers was already there and by-passing the naval attaché, whose assistant he was, to gather secret intelligence about the Japanese and send it back to London.
Ian later told Ivar Bryce that when he got to Washington he was ‘locked in a room with pen and paper’. He produced a précis and a full seventy-page document:
… a detailed blueprint of the British service, using a century’s experience of its aims, its methods and its security. It was a tour de force of organising and administrative ability, and demonstrated what I believe was Ian’s greatest strength … For clearly expressed, practical, administrative talent, with no detail omitted, and no conceivable eventuality forgotten, he had no equal.
Godfrey saw that Americans liked Fleming, so he left him behind in Washington with a brief to do a lot of socialising and produce ‘clear and practical’ memoirs for Donovan. He told Ian to emphasise the all-round vision required of the ideal intelligence officer, and the need to get your staff lined up before you opened shop. And of course he had to keep his collaboration with Donovan quiet. If Donovan should be seen as a British stooge, Roosevelt would never get the idea past Congress
Roosevelt gave Donovan some seed money, and Donovan gave Fleming a .38 Colt service revolver inscribed ‘for special services’. But Pearl Harbor had yet to happen and the Office for Strategic Services would not officially exist – or Donovan serve as its head – for another year.
Bryce, meanwhile, was still in South America under orders from Stephenson. Stephenson feared that the Germans could too easily invade Brazil from Senegal, across the South Atlantic. He was unconvinced that any South American government was fervently committed to freedom and democracy. Several Latin countries harboured Nazi cells. Mail to and from Europe was generally offloaded in the Caribbean and censored by the British (Conrad O’Brien Ffrench was in charge in Trinidad) before being sent on. The one regular, un-monitored channel of communication was a weekly plane from Dakar, Senegal, to Recife, Brazil, where it refuelled for the return journey. Stephenson wanted this service put out of action, which was easy enough if there was no fuel in Recife. Bryce tricked a friendly old caretaker at the airfield into allowing him to slip through to the fuel store, where he planted a bomb and left. The entire supply went up in a sheet of flame.
Bryce also ‘doodled’ a map of what a Nazi South America would look like. Both he and his boss saw its potential as propaganda. They happened to know that Germans in Cuba maintained radio contact with U-boats in the Caribbean. They even knew where the German base was. They passed on that information to the FBI, but not before they’d planted a map there, forged by experts, very like the one Bryce had made. It added to the drip-feed of propaganda but still failed to undermine Middle America’s opposition to war.
In June 1941 the Soviet Union came in on the Allied side. Ian wanted to be sent to Moscow, but the leader of the British military mission there wouldn’t have him at any price. In his view, Fleming was gullible, a nuisance, and spoiled.
There is one odd postscript to Fleming’s blueprint for the OSS. In July 1975 The Times claimed in its obituary of Dick Ellis (later suspected of having been a double agent) that Ellis
Ian ‘introduced Godfrey to the Morgan banking clan’, as Andrew Lycett succinctly puts it. Together they went to the fashionable 21 Club. They read the news that HMS Hood had been sunk by the destroyer Bismarck . A couple of days later, the Bismarck was sunk. New York suddenly seemed rather unreal.
Fleming had discussed Donovan’s plans and needed time to write his blueprint; Godfrey wanted to confront Hoover of the FBI in Washington. Smithers was already there and by-passing the naval attaché, whose assistant he was, to gather secret intelligence about the Japanese and send it back to London.
Ian later told Ivar Bryce that when he got to Washington he was ‘locked in a room with pen and paper’. He produced a précis and a full seventy-page document:
… a detailed blueprint of the British service, using a century’s experience of its aims, its methods and its security. It was a tour de force of organising and administrative ability, and demonstrated what I believe was Ian’s greatest strength … For clearly expressed, practical, administrative talent, with no detail omitted, and no conceivable eventuality forgotten, he had no equal.
Godfrey saw that Americans liked Fleming, so he left him behind in Washington with a brief to do a lot of socialising and produce ‘clear and practical’ memoirs for Donovan. He told Ian to emphasise the all-round vision required of the ideal intelligence officer, and the need to get your staff lined up before you opened shop. And of course he had to keep his collaboration with Donovan quiet. If Donovan should be seen as a British stooge, Roosevelt would never get the idea past Congress
Roosevelt gave Donovan some seed money, and Donovan gave Fleming a .38 Colt service revolver inscribed ‘for special services’. But Pearl Harbor had yet to happen and the Office for Strategic Services would not officially exist – or Donovan serve as its head – for another year.
Bryce, meanwhile, was still in South America under orders from Stephenson. Stephenson feared that the Germans could too easily invade Brazil from Senegal, across the South Atlantic. He was unconvinced that any South American government was fervently committed to freedom and democracy. Several Latin countries harboured Nazi cells. Mail to and from Europe was generally offloaded in the Caribbean and censored by the British (Conrad O’Brien Ffrench was in charge in Trinidad) before being sent on. The one regular, un-monitored channel of communication was a weekly plane from Dakar, Senegal, to Recife, Brazil, where it refuelled for the return journey. Stephenson wanted this service put out of action, which was easy enough if there was no fuel in Recife. Bryce tricked a friendly old caretaker at the airfield into allowing him to slip through to the fuel store, where he planted a bomb and left. The entire supply went up in a sheet of flame.
Bryce also ‘doodled’ a map of what a Nazi South America would look like. Both he and his boss saw its potential as propaganda. They happened to know that Germans in Cuba maintained radio contact with U-boats in the Caribbean. They even knew where the German base was. They passed on that information to the FBI, but not before they’d planted a map there, forged by experts, very like the one Bryce had made. It added to the drip-feed of propaganda but still failed to undermine Middle America’s opposition to war.
In June 1941 the Soviet Union came in on the Allied side. Ian wanted to be sent to Moscow, but the leader of the British military mission there wouldn’t have him at any price. In his view, Fleming was gullible, a nuisance, and spoiled.
There is one odd postscript to Fleming’s blueprint for the OSS. In July 1975 The Times claimed in its obituary of Dick Ellis (later suspected of having been a double agent) that Ellis
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