COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

The officially declared mission of the BSC was to act as liaison between U.S.and British security services, ostensibly to protect British war supplies flowingfrom America. 200 To this end, the Security Division oversaw industrial and transportationsecurity issues and became actively involved in exchanging informationon suspected saboteurs and subversives with the FBI, the MID, and ONI, assistingthose organizations in their counterintelligence and security functions. 201Cooperation with Hoover was especially important during the first year of theBSC’s existence as both the War and Navy departments were wary of coordinatingwith the British on anything other than security arrangements, lest they violatethe intent of the neutrality laws. Hoover enjoyed this special relationship withStephenson as it allowed him to pass intelligence information to the MID andONI, intelligence information he could use to advantage in the bureaucratic battlesthat were waged among the components of U.S. intelligence. 202The unofficial mission of the BSC consisted of numerous covert activitiesdesigned for the collection of intelligence and special operations intended toinfluence the U.S. to enter the war. These activities included the organization ofpro-interventionist movements in the U.S., “the direction of subversive propagandafrom American sources to Europe and the Far East,” and the targeting ofprominent isolationists and isolationist organizations using psychological operations.203 While these activities and the liaison with Hoover may have had someindirect influence on the attitude of the Navy Department toward cooperationwith the British, the BSC’s assistance in the area of counterintelligence was significantand probably served to positively dispose members of the naval establishmentfamiliar with them toward a closer relationship with the UK. Early in thewar, it was a common belief that the Nazi’s victories were largely the result ofFifth Column activities. For example, Bradley Smith cites the fact that in all of1939 there were only 1,600 reports of sabotage submitted to the FBI yet, on a singleday after the fall of France in May 1940, there were 2,400 reports made. 204These beliefs were reinforced, in the minds of senior U.S. leaders, by reportsfrom overseas, which stated without equivocation that the German sweep throughEurope was more the result of German propaganda, sabotage, and covert operationsthan any marked superiority of the German military and its tactics. 205After the defeat of France, ONI was even more eager to coordinate with BSCon security matters. The BSC actively sought opportunities to cultivate ONI’s200BSC, Secret History, xxx-xxxi.201 BSC, Secret History, 241-243.202 BSC, Secret History, 3-5.203 Aldrich, 99-100; BSC, Secret History, xxxi-xxxii.204 Smith, Ultra-Magic Deals, 9-10.205 Alan Goodrich Kirk, CAPT, USN, Letter to Rear Admiral Walter S. Anderson, USN, Directorof Naval Intelligence, 14 May 1940, Kirk Papers.59