SUPERSPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200040003-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 22, 1976
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Releas&l2Of1"13 : CIA-RDP88-01
iSuper'spies
A MAN CALLED INTREPID: THE SECRET
w,tn. By William Stevenson. 486
pages. Harcourt Brace foreiiwcich.
812.95. BODYGUARD OF LIES. By An-
thony Cave Brown. 947 pages. Har-
per :,& Row. $15.95. THE SPYIIAS-
TERS. By Charles Whiting. 240 pag-
es. Saturday ReviewlDutton. $8.95.
With the recent relaxation of Britain's
Official Secrets Act, a growing shelf of
books calls attention to the "secret war"
of espionage and counterintelligence
conducted during World War H, in
which the British consistently outma-
neuvered their opponents. J.C. Mas-
terman's "The Double-Cross System,"
written in 1945 but published only in
1972, explained the methods by which
German spies operating. in England
were brought under British control and
re-employed as double agents. In 1974
F.W. Winterbotham's "The Ultra Se-
cret" revealed that the British had pos-
sessed,, from the earliest days of the
war, a replica of the cipher machine
"Enigma," whose codes were believed
unbreakable by its German users. Cryp-
tologists working at Bletchley Park, 40
miles from London, were able to antici-
pate bombing raids, troop movements
and even Rommel's battle plans in. the
North African desert. With some exag-
geration, Winterbotham portrayed these
coups as "decisive" in winning the war.
Of the three newest entries on this
subject, Anthony Cave Brown's gigantic
"Bodyguard of Lies" is the most detailed
and absorbing. Though his ostensible
subject is the achievement of tactical
surprise on D Day, his book is really a
shapeless compendium of spy stories
from far and wide. Cicero, The Man Who
Never Was and Monty's Double (who
turns out to have been an incorrigible
drunk) make cameo appearances. Cave
Brown's most disturbing chapter is on
Churchill's decision to protect his "most
secret source," the Enigma machine, by
withholding his 48-hour foreknowledge
of the devastating bombing of Coventry.
Cave Brown is less clear on the disas-
trous Dieppe raid of 1942, in which more
than half the 6,000 men. were casualties.
It is at least possible that the failure was
intentional, to quench American insist-
ence on a frontal attack on the Continent
at this stage of the. war.
Debunked: Cave Brown's hero is, Sir
Stewart Menzies, head of the M.I.6 divi-
sion of British intelligence, whose career
ended in disgrace when Harold (Kim)
Philby, whom Menzies had handpicked
as his successor, defected to Moscow.
Hugh Trevor-.Roper, who served in Brit-
ish intelligence, has persuasively de-
bunked Cave Brown's estimation of
Menzies's importance and capability.
Interviewed in Charles Whiting's "The
Spymasters," Trevor-Roper describes
Itilcuzies as "a had judge of men [whol
'drew his personal advisers from a pain-
fully limited social circle ... I do not
think he ever really understood the war
in which he was engaged."
"A Man Called Intrepid" proposes
that the real head ofwartime intelligence
was a World War I Canadian flying ace
turned multimillionaire inventor, who
was Churchill's personal emissary to
enlist Franklin D. Roosevelt as an ally.
Sir William Stephenson, now living in
retirement in Bermuda, is unmentioned
in the 900 pages of "Bodyguard of Lies."
The -reader of these spy books comes to
realize that British intelligence was a
congeries of fiefdoms, each believing in
its own supremacy. Sir William, whose
code name was "Intrepid," declares that
his BSC (British Security Coordination),
which occupied two floors in Rockefeller
Center while the U.S. was still neutral,
tivas "the hub for all branches of British
intelligence." Hub or not, it was an
astonishing operation. According to this
account, the accusations of FDR's isola-
tionist flies that he intended to bring this
country into the war on Britain's side
were "yell-founded. "I'm your biggest
.undercover agent," FDR allegedly told
Intrepid, and the President knowingly
ran the risk of impeachment if his sup-
port of a British secret agency on these
shores had been discovered.
Lt e-cy-
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Flirtation: According to this book, Ste-
phenson's agency supplied FDR with
enough damaging evidence of joscpli P.
Kennedy's flirtation with the Nazis dur-
ing his ambassadorship to England to
make Kennedy back clown from his
intention of challenging FDR for the
Presidency in 1940. The BSC is further
credited with having spiked the career of
the isolationist Sen. Burton K. Wheeler.
Stephenson was responsible for the for-
mation of an American intelligence serv-
ice, the OSS, and for recommending to
Roosevelt and Churchill that Gen. Wil-
liam (Wild Bill.) Donovan, his friend
since World War I, be put in charge of it.
"A Man Called Intrepid," execrably
written by a near-namesake of its hero,
contains brief appearances by minor
spies, of whom Greta Garbo is the most
surprising and Noel Coward the most
amusing: "My celebrity value was a
wonderful cover," Coward told the au-
thor shortly before his death. "So many
career intelligence officers went around
looking terribly mysterious-long black
boots and sinister smiles ... My dis-
guise was nay own reputation as a bit of
an idiot."
Hormones: "The Spymasters," the least
substantial of these books, spends too
much of its short length on trivia-Mal-
colm Muggeridge collecting bird drop-
pings for invisible ink, it harebrained
OSS scheme, approved by Donovan, to
inject vegetables for Flitter's table with
female hormones in the hope that "his
moustache would fall off and his voice
become soprano." But Whiting deserves
respect for subscribing to no single-hero
thesis: he briefly surveys the contri-
butions of Menzies, Stephenson, the
cryptologists of Bletchley and far-flung
individual operatives. He provides a
summary overview of a subject that still
awaits its definitive historian.
-WALTER CLEMONS
S4Cy 6t- 2- /3 6 oy9v 0`-L_
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Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200040003-7