A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible True Story Of The Master Spy Who Helped Win World War Two, Stevenson - B

                      William Stephenson was born in 1896 in western Canada. In 1914, he went to war with the Royal Canadian Engineers. By the time he was 20, he was a captain and sent home "disabled for life" from mustard gas. He fudged his medical records, went back to the front as a pilot, was shot down behind enemy lines and briefly imprisoned. In postwar Britain, he built a series of multinational businesses, became very rich, and WAS part of Churchill's 'circle.' His extensive travels on the continent convinced him of Germany's intentions. In the months of the phony war, he traveled to Sweden and Norway seeking a method to interdict Sweden's supply of iron ore to Germany, and TO stop the extraction of heavy water from Norway. He was tasked by Churchill, still at the Admiralty, to brief FDR about German progress on an atomic bomb and to share the work at Bletchley Park. The president approved a link between the FBI and British Intelligence with Stephenson and Hoover as the points of contacts. When Churchill went to Downing Street, he sent Stephenson to NYC, TO establish the British Security Coordination (BSC), and prepare for the eventuality of Great Britain fighting on from the New World. Another responsibility of the man called Intrepid was to continuously brief FDR on the intercepted communications Bletchley Park was capturing. He established a satellite BSC office in Bermuda that shared Bletchley intercepts with British ships sailing from America. Another base in Canada was used to train counter intelligence operatives. Stephenson was soon working closely with Bill Donovan, legendary NY lawyer and friend of Roosevelt's. Donovan would head up the OSS when the war began, and was surreptitiously coordinating intelligence gathering with the British. In the summer of 1941, Donovan was officially made Coordinator of Information, which caused discomfort for Hoover,  the ever ambitious and zealous protector of the FBI's prerogatives. Everything Stephenson was doing in the US was illegal, and he began to share more and more with Hoover to keep him at bay.  By the end of the year, the US was at war with the Axis powers.

                         Stephenson began plotting the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, top man in the SS and the architect of the Final Solution. Key participants were trained in Canada, and Heydrich was killed in May, 1942. The OSS was officially established the same year. Inevitably, tensions arose between thee BSC, the FBI, and the OSS. Obtaining funds for British secret ops on the continent became more difficult as the US bureaucracy grew during the war. And Hoover became convinced that communist sympathizers in London were hamstringing the coordinated intelligence activities. It would be decades before the defection of Kim Philby would prove him correct. Stephenson was involved with the extraction of Niels Bohr and his son to the west. He worked on the subterfuges to confuse the Germans about the invasions of North Africa, Italy and France. With the war's end in Europe, the BSC closed up operations in America.

                      He was knighted after the war and he was the first non-American to receive the Presidential Medal of Merit. Much of his work was classified and remained unknown until many years later. This book has been criticized by some for being too adulatory. Nonetheless, I am intrigued by the degree of involvement FDR had on intelligence and operational issues in the UK before our participation in the war. Thanks to Kyle Vann for the suggestion.