by Howard Blum
At the time, Betty had little interest in Marion’s biography, even if it would have revealed a life as exotic in its way as her own, and that they both, although US citizens, had first attracted the attention of British intelligence because of their marriages to Englishmen. All Betty glumly knew was that each week she’d go to the trouble of flying—the train was too slow for restless Betty—up to New York, making the contact time to the minute, and then have nothing to report. Her debriefings were pathetically short. She’d spend the rest of the afternoon shopping, returning home to Washington loaded down with parcels and frustration. It was no comfort to Betty that Pepper, with by-the-book caution, was feeling out his agent, taking and then retaking her measure before turning her loose.
When Marion finally informed Betty of her first assignment, it was a genuine disappointment. Marion tried to make the mission sound like a risky cloak-and-dagger op: Betty was “to detect and uncover a female agent from a neutral country who was on her way to Britain to make pacifist propaganda for the Nazis.” But Betty knew it was just a routine piece of watcher’s work—keep a steady eye on the subject and report. Still eager for anything, she jumped at the chance.
Betty was the model operative. She followed the woman—her name long forgotten, and still redacted from the public official histories—around New York for several days. A stealthy, unobtrusive observer, Betty was never spotted. The typed reports she delivered to Marion demonstrated equally impressive tradecraft: she described the target’s movements in detail, and precisely identified all her contacts.
The reports provided the British authorities in Bermuda with the evidence they needed. When the Spanish steamer Marqués de Comillas docked in Nassau, the target was marched off at gunpoint on suspicions of being an enemy agent. She would be interned for the remainder of the war.
And the agent code-named Cynthia had proved that she was ready to take on larger missions.
THE LETTER MIGHT JUST AS well have been written by a beleaguered relative confessing to a rich relation that he was down on his luck and would be mighty grateful for a helping hand. That the besieged correspondent was the British prime minister and the recipient was the president of the United States only made the plea more poignant.
The top-secret letter arrived at the White House on December 9, 1940, and it opened with a harrowing inventory of the beating Britain was taking—manufacturing plants destroyed by the Blitz, ships sunk by German submarines, empty warehouses once filled with munitions and arms. Then, after having so sadly set the stage, the prime minister confessed that the nation’s future prospects, its chance to get on its feet and fight back, were jeopardized by an inconvenient reality—the treasury was nearly empty. “The moment approaches,” Churchill wrote plaintively, “where we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies.”
Roosevelt received the letter with great sympathy. In his generous heart he felt that Britain must hold on, and that America would soon come to its senses and realize that the only moral course was to join the fight against Hitler. Yet in his politician’s head, he knew that his hands were effectively tied. Even the president of the United States could not force pragmatic bankers to lend vast sums of money to a foundering nation with no convincing guarantees of repayment. Nor did he have the authority to order Congress to make outright gifts of war matériel to the British. He read and reread Churchill’s note, only to keep returning to the same dispiriting conclusion. He had no choice but to turn the supplicant down.
Yet Churchill’s plea for help remained on his mind. And after weeks of earnest mulling, the president stumbled onto a plan. With a breezy yet somewhat disingenuous geniality, he described his solution to Britain’s desperate situation as if it were comparable to one neighbor lending a garden hose to another to save his burning house. “What do I do in such a crisis?” the president asked with rhetorical drama at a press conference. “I don’t say, ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.’ I don’t want the $15. I just want my garden hose back after the fire is over.”
Of course, FDR’s solution would involve a lot more than an inexpensive garden hose. It would potentially supply hundreds of millions of dollars of war matériel. But the underlying principle, in the president’s mind at least, was identical: the United States would send Britain bulging armories of weapons and munitions without charge. Then, after the fire was put out, Britain would either return what it had borrowed or pay up.
But while the president’s “lend-lease plan,” as it quickly became known, had a righteous and appealing simplicity in his own mind, convincing a fiercely isolationist Congress to go along with it was another matter. Arming Britain, a largely Republican coalition of noninterventionist senators argued, would put the United States one step closer to fighting in a faraway war that was not America’s problem. Refuting the president’s logic, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio offered his own folksy analogy: “Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don’t want it back.”
The Service’s spymasters, men who had taken to working in an underground bunker to escape the Blitz, knew only too well the danger Britain faced. The fires burning in London would be only the prelude to a greater conflagration if Hitler followed through on his plan to invade the island. The BSC was ordered to do whatever it could to nudge Congress toward the right decision. The covert manipulation of the levers of democracy in a neutral foreign country—a nation they hoped would eventually come onboard as a fighting ally—was never an issue. With so much at stake, it was no time to be squeamish.
When Betty appeared for the next meeting with her controller, she was given the names of two of the most vocal and powerful opponents in the US Senate to the passage of the Lend-Lease Act—Democrat Thomas Connally of Texas and Republican Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. Her assignment: Turn their minds and hearts around and get them to support the bill.
THOMAS CONNALLY WAS A VAIN man with many opinions and few doubts. He was proud of his silver hair and kept it long so that it flowed over his collar like a lion’s mane. A bit of a dandy, he wore custom-tailored suits and shirts that required pearl studs rather than ordinary buttons. He was chauffeured around Washington in a limousine provided by his wealthy second wife, the widow of another US senator from Texas, Morris Sheppard. The press called him “flamboyant,” and he took the appraisal as fulsome praise. And as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he was the Democrat’s chief spokesman on foreign policy.
He was dead set against the Lend-Lease Act. It was a matter of principle, one, in fact, of many deeply held and unwavering personal credos. He felt that sending arms and munitions to Britain would start a courtship that would ultimately end in a disastrous marriage: American troops would wind up fighting in Europe. And that would be just plain wrong.
Connally’s worldview was summed up in a tale he told as he stumped across Texas in his reelection campaign. He had enlisted in both the Spanish-American War and World War I, but was never deployed overseas. “I’ve been in more wars and fought less than any living man,” he joked with a self-deprecating humor time after time on the campaign trail. Now he wanted to ensure that a new generation of American boys would, same as him, not have to fight.
Betty, who always did her homework, knew that Connolly would be a hard target. Everything was working against her. He was firmly set in his ways; relished a good debate, especially if it put him head to head against the president; and, most discouraging of all, he apparently loved his wife. Still, she made it her business to get invited to a dinner party where she knew, thanks to Cora’s idle chatter, that Connally would be a guest.
Radiant, glowing with a bubbly charm, she approached the senator. Within moments they were locked in conversation, Betty’s eyes fixed on her prey with her usual deliberate attention. In her mind she was already plotting her next move. But Connally was too shrewd.
“You’re an American turned British,” he said with happy superiority. “I gue
ss that means you’re going to try to get us into the war. You’re wasting your time, my dear—come over here and sit on my knee instead.”
Betty would gladly have sat on his knee, at the very least, if it would’ve done any good. But she knew he was right; she was wasting her time. So instead she turned her attention to Senator Vandenberg.
Vandenberg, although a Michigan Republican, shared many of the same qualities as his Senate colleague from Texas. He was vain; “the only senator who can strut sitting down,” was how one reporter described him. And he was adamantly opposed to the Lend-Lease Act. He had been active on the Nye Committee, which had investigated the munitions industry’s profiteering in World War I, and he now looked back on America’s involvement in that conflict as “a mistake.” The country’s entanglement in another European war would be, he insisted, an even greater error.
Yet there was one defining, and perhaps even crucial, difference between the two senators: Vandenberg was, famously, a womanizer. He was already carrying on with the wife of a British diplomat, Mitzi Sims; the joke making the rounds across Washington was that he’d become “the senator from Mitzi-gan.” Betty decided that she should try to join the queue.
Vandenberg had known her mother for years, and one evening when Cora appeared at Vandenberg’s house for cocktails, Betty came too. Cora was mystified by Betty’s sudden desire to tag along, but she had long ago given up trying to understand her daughter.
Betty made it a point to spend most of her time talking to the senator, standing very close. The next time she met Vandenberg, she left her mother home.
There were other subsequent encounters with the senator. With great, if not typical, discretion, she refused to give Hyde any details of what went on between them. Yet she proudly pointed out that Vandenberg had stood on the Senate floor and announced his change of heart: he was voting for the Lend-Lease Act. “If we do not lead, some other great and powerful nation will capitalize on our failure,” he proclaimed with a convert’s ardor.
The bill was passed in March 1941. And Betty had done, she always felt, her small part for the cause.
Yet by the time the Senate vote was taken, Betty had already plunged into another urgent, and slippery, operation.
Chapter 37
THERE IS AN ART TO making a martini; it was, Betty liked to say, the only thing of any value that she’d learned from her mother. The technique passed on by Cora put great emphasis on making sure the gin was not “bruised” in the stirring; the last thing you wanted, mother had gravely counseled daughter, was to do anything to dilute the drink’s kick. Over the years Betty had taken this maternal wisdom to heart. She proudly served up a very powerful martini.
Icy glass in her outstretched hand, she offered one of her expert cocktails to her controller as soon as he walked in the door of her O Street house. It was a chilly evening in February 1941, and Pepper had popped down to Washington, as he did a couple of times each month, to touch base with his new operative. There was no real agenda. The primary purpose of these meets, as any good case officer knew, was simply to hold the agent’s hand for a heartening hour or so, letting him know that, though he might be alone in the field, headquarters had not forgotten about him. He wanted Betty to understand that while Marion conducted many of the debriefings in New York, he was still her handler, the man both running and watching over her. At the same time, Pepper would be reassuring himself too; it’s always valuable to take a fieldman’s temperature from time to time, to get a sense if he’s jumping at shadows or simply being prudently cautious.
Betty and Pepper had been sitting across from one another in her living room for a while on that wintry night. The conversation had meandered easily, and Betty, who could always talk to anyone, had kept up her end. She treated Pepper warmly, but with a certain distance; he was her controller, after all. And the martinis had done their job to keep things comfortable, too. Before she knew it, the pitcher was nearly empty.
She had risen from the sofa to mix a new batch when, as if it were nothing more than a stray thought, Pepper asked, “I suppose you don’t know anyone in the Italian embassy here?”
“Well, I used to,” Betty said as she twisted open the cap on the bottle of gin. “In fact, I once had quite an admirer there. I was a schoolgirl.”
Betty continued mixing the drinks with meticulous attention. As she went at it, she thought about mentioning that she’d been a teenager and he was thirty years her senior, and that he would travel all the way up to Massachusetts just to have tea with her. But she stopped herself; it sounded a bit preposterous, maybe even unseemly. Instead, she merely added, “He used to work in the naval attaché’s office. His name was Alberto Lais.”
Pepper jumped to his feet. “Alberto Lais!” he repeated. He was clearly excited; it was as if he could suddenly see Cynthia’s next operation unfolding in his mind. “Why, he’s the very man we are anxious to get hold of! He is an admiral now and he is the Italian naval attaché.”
Betty brought the drinks over, and they began to plot.
WHY HAD ALBERTO LAIS, THE director of naval intelligence in Rome for the past three years, been transferred to Washington as the naval attaché? The story the Italians had circulated was that he was a ranking naval flag officer—ammiraglio di divisione, officially—and it was only fitting that their Washington naval attaché wear an admiral’s stripes. But Stephenson and his team at the BSC, as well as the wise men on Broadway, had other suspicions: once a spook, always a spook. If the Italians were sending the man who had been head of naval espionage to America, it wasn’t merely so that he could attend diplomatic receptions. Despite the cover, he’d be running Mussolini’s intelligence networks in America.
That theory alone would have stamped Lais as a priority target. As soon as Lais arrived to take his new post, there were deskmen in the Rockefeller Center offices telling Stephenson that he should put teams of watchers and pavement artists on the admiral, and tap his home phone for good measure. The BSC needed to learn what he was really up to. Then abruptly any speculative interest in Lais took on a new operational importance.
In the late winter of 1940, a flash cable was received by Intrepid from SIS/London: the Admiralty “urgently” required the Italian naval cipher, a copy of which was known to be in the possession of the Italian naval attaché in Washington.
The cable did not bother to explain why the ciphers were immediately needed; it was not necessary. Even from his office in New York, Stephenson was aware of the dismal battle condition of the Royal Navy. Its ships, particularly in the Mediterranean, were spread perilously thin. If the Italian navy attacked in strength, it could very well result in a debacle. Having the ciphers—the ability to decode the enemy’s messages and learn their intentions in advance—would allow the undersize Royal Navy forces to fight with a distinct strategic advantage. The power of such knowledge could not be overestimated. It could keep the British fleet afloat.
And now Pepper had learned that the BSC ran an agent with a longtime connection to Admiral Lais, the very mystery man—part-time diplomat, full-time spy?—who held the keys that would unlock many vital secrets. That night as the martinis flowed, he gave Betty her orders: Get close to Lais, get the ciphers, and, for king and country, do whatever you must do to accomplish the mission.
Of course, said Betty.
A younger Alberto Lais, when first appointed director of Naval Intelligence in the Italian Ministry of Marine.
Churchill Archives Center, Papers of Harford Montgomery Hyde, HYDE 02 011
ALTHOUGH HER HEAD WAS STILL foggy from the pitchers of martinis, early the next morning Betty called the Italian embassy. She identified herself as “an old friend” who wished to speak to Admiral Lais.
“Who is it?” he asked politely when he came to the phone.
“It’s your Golden Girl,” Betty merrily answered, at once trying to spin her web. “I’m here in Washington and would like to see you.”
The line went silent; for a moment Betty wonder
ed if the connection had been broken. When at last the admiral spoke, it was in a clipped, harsh tone she had never before heard him use.
“No,” he said, the single world uttered as emphatically as a door slammed shut. “I am afraid that is impossible. Maybe it will be possible when peace comes, but not now. Arrivederci!”
Before she could say a word, Betty heard the phone go dead. Her mission was over before it had even started.
OVER THE NEXT UNSTEADY DAYS Betty lived in that particular circle of operational hell reserved for those agents whose high hopes and big plans have suddenly come crashing down. At first she had tried to plot ways to approach Lais, to engineer an “accidental” meet. But even as she played out those schemes in her mind—in a city like Washington where diplomatic receptions filled the calendar, there would be plenty of opportunities—she knew it would be futile.
Her only hope for success would be to get Lais alone, to rekindle what he had felt years ago for his “Golden Girl.” She needed to make it clear to him that the teenager had abandoned her childish ways. A fully grown woman, she’d be interested in sharing more than a cup of tea and a slice of chocolate cake. But Betty could not imagine how a public encounter would allow her to move things along in this manipulative way.
Fortunately, as things worked out, Betty was not the only one suffering. The admiral apparently was experiencing his own bout of frustration. He knew his duty, but Betty’s call must have triggered its own powerful demands. Did his head fill with previously dormant memories? Was his imagination racing? Whatever the deciding factor, later that week he ignored all the sound reasons that had counseled restraint and he called his old friend.