T
HE raid on the Channel town of
Berck-sur-Mer in occupied France
was a welcome boost to morale
in the dark days of 1941. ‘One
party of parachutists, heavily
armed with Tommy guns and
hand grenades, overpowered the
airfield guards, rushed the control room and
seized its occupants,’ said a newspaper report
on June 18. ‘A second party attacked the
barracks and captured a number of German
pilots. Meanwhile, the third group scattered
over the airport, destroying about 30 planes.’
It was clear that the operation had been a
blinding success – fast, efficient and with
no casualties.
But there was one key detail missing from
the coverage of the raid, which found its way
to Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the
United States: the Berck-sur-Mer operation
was a complete fabrication.
Every convincing morsel of information
had been invented in New York by MI6, Brit-
ain’s foreign intelligence service, as part of
the largest state-sponsored campaign of prop-
aganda ever run.
Its mastermind, Sir William Stephenson,
employed the finest minds –
including the dashing young
fighter pilot Roald Dahl and
the future creator of James
for the US to fight the Nazis.
Stephenson, who arrived in New
York on June 21, 1940, played a
vital role in this shift.
He was 43, small in stature, but
with a quiet intensity. He had grown
up in poverty in Winnipeg, Canada,
before serving heroically in the
First World War with the Canadian
Expeditionary Force and then with
the Royal Flying Corps. He was
awarded the Military Cross, the
Croix de Guerre and the Distin-
guished Flying Cross.
Later, he settled down in London,
where he made a fortune develop-
ing and selling radio sets.
My grandparents, who were also
Canadians in London, met him in
the 1930s and were regular guests
at Stephenson’s tiny weekend cot-
tage in Buckinghamshire.
There, in September 1938, he
saved my three-year-old father’s
life by pulling him out of his pond.
My grandparents would not haveknown it, but Stephenson was
already being drawn into the world
of secret intelligence.
His business interests gave him a
network of contacts throughout
Europe, and in the run-up to war
he agreed to share the information
they provided with MI6.
Then, in 1940, he was asked to go
to America and meet the head of
the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
Stephenson’s task was to open
up a channel of communication
with the FBI. As it turned out, the
two men warmed to each other so
well that it was decided Stephen-
son – who would later acquire the
nickname Intrepid – should run
all MI6 operations in the US.
It was becoming increasingly
clear in Westminster and White-
hall that with much of Europe
falling to the Nazis, we were
becoming more dependent than
ever on supplies from the
United States. Furthermore,
there was a growing concern
that without the backing of the
American people, the flow of US
supplies might slow down or stop,
and that this could leave Britain
unable to fight.
There needed to be a campaign of
influence to boost the British cause
in America. Why not give the job to
the new MI6 man in New York?ON ApRIL 23, 1941, a woman strode
down the middle of New York’s
Eighth Avenue towards a crowd
of men. She was carrying a sign
calling for the United States to
enter the war. Just behind her
came a like-minded crowd, several
thousand strong.
In front of them, blocking their
way, were 15,000 supporters of
America First, the anti-war organi-
sation backed by Charles Lind-
bergh, the aviation pioneer who
had been the first person to fly
solo across the Atlantic.
The charismatic Lindbergh was
about to make one of his many
tub-thumping speeches against USentry into the war at the Manhattan
Center. His reasoning, widely
shared in America, was based on
isolationism – the principle that
the US should stay out of all for-
eign wars unless they spread to
the Americas.
At the time, very few Americans
saw their country as a superpower.
Fewer still in this nation of immi-
grants from across Europe saw
Britain as a natural ally.
However, president Roosevelt
understood the risk Hitler posed.
He knew the American public was
overwhelmingly opposed to war,but came up with increasingly
creative ways of helping the Brit-
ish war effort, including Lend-
Lease, in which the Allies were
supplied with food, warships and
other weaponry in return for
leases on army and naval bases in
Allied territory.
Outside the Manhattan Center, a
huge crowd gathered. Some were
pro-Nazi far-Right activists. Others
were America First isolationists
shouting ‘We want Lindy!’ before
singing The Star-Spangled Banner.
The female protester pressed
on, undaunted by shouts of ‘Get out
of here or we’ll kill you!’ One man
ran at her and punched her in the
face, knocking her to the ground.
Then it began. Both sides ripped
into each other. The street became
a violent blur.
In the background, Lindbergh’s
speech was broadcast over the
loudspeakers, but the protesters
had done their job. Reports in
the next day’s papers focused onthe violence, with most articles also
listing the different interventionist
groups involved in the march and
what they had to say about Lind-
bergh and America First.
Some of the activists used very
similar language, almost as if
they were reading from the same
script. As it happened, some of
them were.
Stephenson had instructed Brit-
ish agents to infiltrate the Ameri-
can pressure groups, pushing for
intervention in the war.
These agents were to influence
these groups from the inside, and
to secretly co-ordinate them so they
attacked the same targets at the
same time – including asking
awkward questions in the press
about Lindbergh’s links to Berlin.
The agents would also ensure that
the pro-war activists were never
short of money.
With a new sense of purpose
and vitality, the campaign to join
the war had been galvanised.BY JUNE 1941, Stephenson had
also set up an office dedicated to
spreading false, distorted or inac-
curate stories.
His fake news factory was so big
and so busy, releasing an average
of 20 different stories a day, that he
registered it as a legitimate press
agency with the cover name Brit-
ish And Overseas Features. Some
stories came from London, while
others were produced in-house.
The propaganda included reports
that the Sicilian Mafia were taking
on the Fascists; that the Germans
were running out of men; that
ersatz morphine was causing thou-
sands of deaths in the German
army; and that Nazi generals were
spying on behalf of the Soviets.
They also took a more imagina-
tive method of spreading the mes-
sage using what today would be
called ‘influencers’.
Eric Maschwitz, the British song-
writer behind the hit A Nightingale
Sang In Berkeley Square, was oneBond, Ian Fleming – with
the express aim of changing
American public opinion and
bringing the United States into
the Second World War.
‘Bill’ Stephenson was later
hailed by Fleming as one of his
inspirations for Bond. Indeed, it
was Stephenson’s very particu-
lar recipe for a gin martini
which inspired the ‘shaken not
stirred’ catchphrase.
He was also my father’s
godfather.
It is only now, with the release
of declassified British records,
that it is possible to tell the
full extent of Stephenson’s
American operation in the
months leading up to the Japa-
nese attack on pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941.
In a campaign that was dec-
ades ahead of its time, Stephen-
son recruited a secret army of
1,000 agents, analysts, journal-
ists and campaigners to feed a
steady drip of false news into the
American media.
They manipulated polls to mis-
represent public opinion, subsi-
dised protest groups to take to the
streets, produced convincing for-
geries, harassed opponents from
the America First campaign who
vowed to keep the USA out of the
conflict, and even persuaded presi-
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt to tac-
itly back the operation.
TODAY it is often forgotten that the
majority of Americans were deeply
opposed to joining the war. Shortly
after the Dunkirk evacuation in
June 1940, a poll suggested that
just eight per cent of US citizens
wanted to stand up to Germany.
Yet within 18 months there
had been a seismic shift. In late
19 41, even before the pearl Harbor
attack, more than two-thirds of
Americans had changed their
minds and decided it was now time
Allies haunted
Hitler with
horoscopes
predicting his
sudden death
The secreT persuader
44
By Henry Hemming
Fake news
MASTER MANIPULATOR: William
Stephenson’s full story can now be toldThought the dark arts of spin were
a 21st Century invention? You’re
wrong... A riveting new
book tells how the brilliant
spymaster who invented 007’s
martini used
to lure America into the war
(^) The Mail on Sunday September 1 • 2019