British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945

In 1940 Winston Churchill dispatched a Canadian industrialist to New York with an extraordinary mission in a neutral country: to set up a secret spy network across both North and South America to cripple and confound Nazi propaganda and to fan the flames of pro-war sentiment. Sir William Stephenson (of A Man Called Intrepid fame) set up shop in Rockefeller Center to build a vast intelligence network-the British Security Coordination-the full story of which is now told for the first time. Operating on still-neutral soil, Stephenson's people soon launched an astonishing bagful of dirty tricks: they unmasked Axis spies, intercepted enemy communications, slipped beautiful female spies into the Vichy and Italian embassies in Washington, infiltrated labor unions, and spread British propaganda using U.S. radio stations and such prominent journalists as Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson. The complete report-commissioned at the end of the war and written by Roald Dahl and Gilbert Highet, among others-has been kept secret until now.