A Man Called Intrepid

by William Stevenson

  “We had heard such cries of alarm before,” said Stephenson. “Before the Germans took Austria, the Sudetenland, Poland . . . It was the same old fear of provoking Hitler, and the same old delusion that if you placate a tyrant he’ll leave you be.”

  The hidden cause of the diplomatic uproar was the realization by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, and by the U.S. State Department that clandestine forces were making policies that might affect foreign relations—and in Canada could cause a political crisis between the French-speaking population and the rest of the country. President Roosevelt called the incident a teapot tempest. Secretly, he approved. He had made the calculated but controversial decision to recognize Vichy France because it provided a window into Nazi Europe. He had received from Stephenson a report on the new ambassador: Gaston Henry-Haye was a smalltime proNazi politician sent to Washington to serve Germany, not France. He had made a moving little speech on presenting his credentials to the President, all about French honor and French ideals. To his staff, however, he confided: “Our prime objective is to establish the fact that Britain betrayed France and is therefore the real enemy. Every means at our disposal must be used to convince American officialdom and the American public that this is true.”

  Henry-Haye began with certain advantages. “There already existed a secret police body in the United States and Canada whose duty was to report on supporters of General de Gaulle or the former French Government,” noted the BSC Papers. “These Vichy agents burgled offices and homes where they might find lists of anti-Nazis, and used every means to prevent their countrymen from helping build the secret armies. In Nazi fashion, they threatened reprisals against relatives in both German-occupied France and the Vichy zone. They shanghaied French sailors trying to join Free French forces. They met all new French arrivals in North America with threats tailored to the occasion. . . . Penetration of the Embassy itself by BSC agents helped weaken the effectiveness of this formidable Fifth Column.”

  The full extent of Vichy French activity on Nazi Germany’s behalf has been documented. Pierre Laval, the Vichy premier, was using his daughter, José, as a courier to Washington. As the wife of Count René de Chambrun, of the French Embassy, she could claim diplomatic immunity when passing through control points, which meant her bags were not searched. Such a distinction held certain advantages for her strong pro-Nazi sympathies.

  The Count had created a French Gestapo with links in Canada. In November 1940, José traveled to Port Washington, New York, where she boarded a Pan Am 314 flying boat. As the Clipper lumbered into the air, BSC signaled Bermuda that she was carrying papers inside wrappers still stamped with the old French Foreign Office identification. This economy cost Vichy dearly.

  In Bermuda, the Countess was invited to join passengers ashore while the plane refueled. British investigators extracted the packages and claimed that since they were destined for Paris, an enemy-occupied city, they must be confiscated. José, cold with anger, protested: the parcels were destined for Vichy.

  “But the Quai d’Orsay is in Paris,” said one of the control officers, displaying an envelope with the French Quai d’Orsay Foreign Office label.

  “Do you know who I am?” demanded the Countess.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “This is an outrage against diplomatic protocol. . . .”

  While the argument proceeded, the Clipper’s cargo was ransacked. The Countess de Chambrun’s diplomatic papers were opened and photographed, then replaced. The flying boat was delayed overnight. When it left the next day, she had her papers and an official apology, but Bermuda had all the evidence Stephenson needed of Vichy duplicity.

  “Laval was proposing methods by which the French people would join Germany to share the spoils, being convinced Britain was finished and American Big Business ready to work with German cartels in exploiting the vast new European markets in prospect,” said Stephenson. “Laval offered Germany the French colonies as sources of raw materials and as military bases. French industry would be geared to the Ruhr’s war machine.

  “French power and influence, thrown into the German side of the scales, could fatally damage us. Pragmatic Americans might see the second-largest fleet in Europe, the military and industrial resources, the considerable numbers of airmen and machines, and the rich colonies that stretched from Africa to Saigon as a French contribution to a German empire with which it would be wise to do business. Laval proposed that French airmen fly alongside Germans in the assaults upon Britain. The French had already carried out bombing raids against British bases at Gibraltar. Enormous reserves of gold—the bulk of the French Treasury, worth in today’s terms $150 billion—were stowed in the island of Martinique off the American coast and might be used to purchase American goods on Germany’s behalf.”

  Vichy’s commercial attractions had been presented to influential Americans, according to the reports carried by the Countess. If France joined Germany in a purely economic sense, the possibilities for American business were staggering. “In aluminum alone,” stated one of the reports, “France is the major supplier for aircraft production.”

  Laval’s daughter also carried a letter from Jean-Louis Musa, a citizen of the United States, to the most powerful German in Paris, Otto Abetz, who had been Ribbentrop’s spy there before the occupation and was now the German foreign-service representative attached to the staff of the German military authority. Abetz had been insinuated into the Paris situation to save Vichy’s pride by providing a means of negotiating on a quasi-diplomatic level, as if between equals, rather than as conqueror and victim.

  Musa was working for Abetz. One of his jobs in Washington was that of aide to Count de Chambrun. The other was director of the French Gestapo. His American citizenship enabled him to move around North America with a freedom denied the diplomat. He supervised erection of powerful transmitters on the French island of St. Pierre, supposedly as a business enterprise. A BSC investigation disclosed that he had returned to the United States just before the Nazi conquest of Paris to perform such transactions on behalf of French firms run, behind the scenes, by German cartels. He reported to Abetz on the preparation of American opinion for French entry into a “consolidated Europe,” the euphemism for a fascist union.

  The Vichy French were a formidable threat in the Western Hemisphere. Distinguished French intellectuals argued the German case cleverly and confusingly. German commercial propositions were given polish by Vichy financiers, which helped diminish American confidence in the small and shrinking British market. A sizable part of Canada’s population was French. Some already resented “fighting the war for Britain.”

  The subtle dangers were exemplified by André Maurois, one of many who turned upon their former friends. The BSC Papers put the situation bluntly: “His sojourn in the United States was distinguished for his systematic and subtle attempts to sabotage American good will toward Britain. His previous record gave him a ready-made and receptive public. He had protested his undying devotion to Britain to the Queen before his departure for America where he thereupon told all who would listen that Britain had no chance of survival whatsoever, that assisting her was tantamount to handing the Nazis those arms required for defense against Japan. He arrived in New York in the autumn of 1940 and lived lavishly at the Ritz Towers. He was later accused by de Gaulle of being a deserter and Maurois wisely decided to remain in the United States. . . . It is to be hoped that his record will not be forgotten in the years to come.”

  “A woman agent under the direction of BSC in New York accomplished the most important work that opened the way back into France and ultimately into Germany,” noted the BSC Papers. “She had a soft soothing voice which doubtless in itself inspired confidences. Her appeal to her victims was in the first place intellectual. The discovery of her physical attraction came later as an intoxicating realization.

  “The powerful hold she exercised over the worldly wise men whose secrets she sought was based on sex. But she had many other qualit
ies. She was widely travelled and understood well the psychology of Europeans. She had a keen incisive brain and was an accurate reporter. She was extremely courageous, often asking to run risks we could not allow. She was paid little more than her living expenses although her value to Britain and ultimately to her native America is incalculable. Her cover name of CYNTHIA was known to perhaps three persons at most.”

  This most exotic of lady spies, Minneapolis-born daughter of a U.S. Marine Corps major and Cora Wells, whose father was a Minnesota state senator, first attracted the close attention of Stephenson in the winter of 1937. CYNTHIA was twenty-seven and married to a British diplomat, Arthur Pack, who had been transferred to Warsaw. In the year that followed, CYNTHIA formed a series of liaisons with top-ranking members of Poland’s Foreign Service. Her husband was away a great deal and he was frequently ill. Any young wife in Poland on the eve of war was never lacking for distraction. This one could hardly fail to win lovers. She was a striking girl: bright auburn hair, large green eyes, one brow arched in challenge, a stubborn cleft in her chin, and a slender yet voluptuous figure. Polish officers who met her at parties spoke of that high-spirited American girl who found her English husband dull and boring. She was said to have shown great bravery in the Spanish Civil War, helping political refugees from both sides to escape. The gossips claimed that she required the most exquisite food and wine, followed by several hours of intense intellectual intercourse before she could be lured into bed, where she would make it all worthwhile.

  What the gossips did not suspect was that British intelligence was the chief beneficiary of her charms. She was in a position to help the understaffed SIS at a crucial moment in history. Poland’s Secret Service was preparing for a war that its politicians felt they could avoid. The future manipulators of ULTRA were looking for details of the Enigma coding machine adapted for Nazi security services. Polish engineers worked on the new Enigma models, in which the Polish Foreign Minister, Jozef Beck, was thought to be interested. Colonel Beck was on good terms with Nazis in Berlin. Beck’s confidential aide was one of CYNTHIA’s lovers.

  Following a procedure that was to become familiar, she persuaded him first to talk and later to give her documents from Beck’s office, which were copied and returned, CYNTHIA never knew the contribution they made to success in the search for the ULTRA secret. In fact, she died knowing nothing of the vast ULTRA establishment at Bletchley. She once remarked: “I discovered how easy it was to make highly trained, professionally close-mouthed patriots give away secrets in bed, and I swore to close my ears to everything confidential on our side. The greatest joy is a man and a woman together. Making love allows a discharge of all those private innermost thoughts that have accumulated. In this sudden flood, everything is released. Everything. I just never dared to learn our own secrets. . . .”

  Foreign Minister Beck’s aide took CYNTHIA with him on confidential missions to Prague and Berlin. She learned that the Polish Biuro Szyfrow (cipher bureau) had possession of some keys to German Army cryptograms. This reinforced earlier information that three Polish mathematicians in the bureau, Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski, and Mademoiselle Marian Rejewski had been working on the Heydrich-Enigmas. Some of her material doubtless duplicated details from other sources, but Stephenson always felt that she contributed a great deal to the vital statistics that were required for a machine that later, as part of the ULTRA system, became the first modern computer, nicknamed “Colossus.” Being an electronics breakthrough, it came within Stephenson’s own scientific sphere. By the time the future chief cryptologist of Bletchley flew to Warsaw for a sample of the Heydrich-Enigma, in the summer of 1939, CYNTHIA had been moved out of harm’s way. Her affairs were coming to light, and the British had to stop any investigation, however private and personal. Rumors were deliberately circulated that she had been sent back to London because the British Ambassador thought she leaked British secrets to pro-Nazi diplomats.

  Foreign affairs of a sexual nature were the rule in Europe. Her husband was attached to another woman, and was posted to South America. If he guessed that it was more on account of his wife’s usefulness than his, he never acknowledged it. The year war broke out in Europe, CYNTHIA was needed to work among pro-Nazi politicians in the Western Hemisphere. The weightiest German influence was in Chile. CYNTHIA had lived there four years as a young girl. She was fluent in Spanish and in the local dialects, as, indeed, she was fluent in German and French. David Kahn, in The Codebreakers, later said that “she reestablished contact with British intelligence on arrival in South America and shortly before the war broke out in Europe.”* In fact, she had been under Stephenson’s direction since the Enigma coup. Her complaisant husband made no secret of regarding her as useful to his own career. The British Foreign Office was never comfortable in the company of SIS, or, later, the Baker Street Irregulars, but when higher authority intervened, the dullest diplomat could find himself shuffled into an agreeable position where his other talents or connections served an unexpected purpose. So it was with Arthur Pack. He faded gracefully from the scene. The fall of France in the summer of 1940 made survival more important than saving face. CYNTHIA was told to report to New York.

  Stephenson needed someone to work on Italian and French diplomats in Washington. He had the power to bring in the best agents from anywhere, and he did. His preference was for enthusiastic amateurs. They were unlikely to be on enemy files. They were free from careerist timidity. CYNTHIA’s work in Warsaw had been brilliant. She displayed good sense in heeding a recall before she was found out—which indicated a strong feeling of confidence, since many agents are afraid of being thought afraid, and consequently take needless risks. She had a spectacular record of seductions among well-placed men, including an admiral who was now in Washington as Italian naval attaché. She could move easily in the unreal atmosphere of Washington at peace. Embassies faced each other across neutral streets while their denizens reported back to chieftains confronting each other as enemies. Cocktail parties were miniature battlefields. Dining rooms became hotbeds of intrigue. CYNTHIA was writing for British publications, she said, calling herself Elizabeth Thorpe and making no secret of her sympathies. It was known that she had left Chile in August 1940 and that her widowed mother lived in Washington. Elizabeth Thorpe was intended to lure both enemies and potential defectors.

  CYNTHIA was established in a discreet two-story house rented for her by BSC through a third party. She had chosen 3327 O Street, in fashionable Georgetown, because it combined charm and a suggestion of wealth without being manifestly beyond the means of a free-lance reporter. She had “tried finger exercises” on a few nondescript local politicians and then snared her old admirer, Admiral Alberto Lais, whom she had known in prewar Paris.

  Lais was a short, handsome, middle-aged man with a large family, diminishing hopes of making new conquests, and an expanding desire to make the best of what little time was left him. When CYNTHIA first called, reminding him of their previous friendship, he seemed alarmed. But, perhaps reacting to her persuasive, almost hypnotic voice, he called her back a few days later. He was clearly under the spell. They began meeting in secret. She told him that she was separated from her English husband and had resumed using her family name. He confided that he was the custodian of a complete set of Italian naval ciphers, and doubted Italy’s future in the Axis. She said frankly that she had close friends in U.S. Naval Intelligence and told him of plans for an Anglo-American liberation of Europe. Incredibly, Lais let her persuade him to have the cipher and code books removed for microfilming—an act for which, he was assured, the U.S. Navy would be forever grateful. Even the stolid BSC historians, participants in many of these operations, uttered a stiff cry of outrage. “It seems fantastic that a man of his experience and seniority who was by instinct, training and conviction a patriotic officer, should have been so enfeebled by passion. . . .”

  The Italian ciphers helped the British Navy outfox and eventually dominate the much superior Italian Navy in the
Mediterranean. Admiral Lais having served his purpose, CYNTHIA disposed of him; he was declared persona non grata and sent home. Details of the Italian Embassy’s direction of pro-Nazi subversive activities in U.S. ports, she gave to the FBI.

  CYNTHIA was resting one afternoon in May 1941 when the maid announced a caller. She found the visitor standing at a window in her library, staring down into O Street. He was a small man with a dry and surprisingly powerful hand-clasp. “He introduced himself as Mister Williams,” she recalled later. “He sat and watched me make the martinis. . . . I glanced at him once or twice. He had remarkable eyes that seemed to change color. I tried to make light conversation. He hardly replied. . . . His movements were all economical. He gave me an odd sense of enormous power lurking behind the polite smile. For the very first time in my life, I was not altogether self-assured in the presence of a man.

  “He had said he was ‘from the New York office.’ This put me on guard. I used to go to New York once a week. The routine never varied. I stayed at the same hotel on Madison and awaited MARION or MISTER HOWARD. They debriefed me, and gave me assignments, and acted as paymasters. They were my only contacts. So I had no way of telling who this ‘Mister Williams’ might be.

  “I was worried about agents-provocateurs. The FBI was becoming troublesome and was now trying to figure out my game. I knew nothing then about squabbles and lines of command. I didn’t want to know. It was enough to be told to deal with the two BSC contacts and—from time to time—anyone to whom they referred me.

  “It became obvious that Mister Williams was no ordinary man. He looked about forty-five, with the rugged handsomeness which is improved by a small flaw—in his case, what seemed a scar that pulled up one corner of his mouth. This gave him a lopsided grin.

  “He didn’t waste time. He referred to a couple of things I’d done, in a way that told me he must be from the New York office. He dropped a couple of remarks that indicated he knew all my background—one I remember was a reference to when Cora, my mother, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. It was a discreet little warning that I had been thoroughly investigated.