In the spring of 1940, as war raged in Europe, Britain launched a vast, covert foreign-intelligence operation in the United States, deploying legal and illegal techniques to subvert America's political institutions and manipulate its news media. British intelligence operatives, including American journalists in the National Press Building, worked to elect candidates who favored US intervention, defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they considered a menace to British security.
During the desperate year and a half between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor, British intelligence operated from several outposts in the National Press Building. These included a front company that produced polls engineered to influence rather than assess the opinions of the public, spied on and smeared isolationist members of Congress, and organized and supported organizations of émigrés from neutral and Nazi-occupied countries to press for American intervention. The Press Building was also home to the Washington bureau of a news agency that was subsidized by, and served the interests of, British intelligence. Complementing the efforts of those on London's payroll were a number of reporters and columnists working in the Press Building who, motivated by opposition to fascism and a desire to get the United States into the war as soon as possible, volunteered to serve as clandestine operatives for British intelligence. Scores—perhaps hundreds—of American journalists who believed that fighting fascism justified unethical and, at times, illegal behavior, cooperated with British intelligence in 1940 and ’41.
Reporters, including several in the Press Building, infused American newspapers and radio programs with fake news that had been generated in London, and ran pro-intervention lobbying organizations that secretly took directions from British intelligence. They did so because they knew that by shaping public opinion they might change the course of history. Franklin Roosevelt's ability to send food, fuel, and weapons across the Atlantic that were vital to Britain's survival, and ultimately to the security of the United States, hinged on his ability to persuade skeptical Americans and their elected representatives of the wisdom of assistance.
Given the stakes, Britain's intelligence services certainly weren't going to sit by and simply hope for the best. They targeted American public opinion aggressively and tenaciously. The scale and audacity of the British Secret Intelligence Service's (SIS) activities in the United States in the eighteen months prior to Pearl Harbor were without parallel in the history of relations between allied democracies.
British intelligence employed the full range of cloak-and-dagger techniques in America. In addition to recruiting and running espionage agents, covert weapons it unleashed on its closest ally included: forgeries, seductions, burglaries, electoral dirty tricks, physical surveillance, intercepting and reading letters, disrupting public meetings, and illegally bugging offices and tapping phones.1 Practices that are usually reserved for enemies were employed because the competition for American public opinion was at least as important to the outcome of the fight against fascism as anything that happened on a battlefield. Newspapers and radio programs were the front lines in hard-fought battles to determine whether Americans would back Britain or keep to itself, antagonize or appease Japan, or even help Germany.
American communists, fascists, and isolationists protested bitterly that Britain was manipulating the US media and secretly intervening in elections as part of a campaign to pull America into the war. These accusations, dismissed by liberal politicians and newspaper columnists as paranoid ravings, were inaccurate only in that they were understated. Even the most alarmist commentators and conspiracy mongers underestimated the depth and effectiveness of British covert activity.
The isolationists were right about one thing: While pledging to keep America's sons home, Roosevelt was doing everything he could to prepare the country to intervene in the war. British prime minister Winston Churchill was eager to lend a disguised hand. The task of persuading the president to accept secret assistance from Britain fell to William Stephenson, a Canadian businessman, World War I flying ace and former bantamweight boxer who served as the head of British intelligence in the United States.
The last thing British leaders wanted to do was antagonize or undercut Roosevelt, They knew that sending spies to a friendly country could irritate even the closest ally. Stephenson decided in the spring of 1940 to test the waters. First, he asked a mutual friend, the former heavyweight world boxing champion Gene Tunney, to arrange a meeting with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover, a master of bureaucratic knife fighting, told Stephenson that he would be pleased to cooperate with his British counterparts, but under US law any communication between an American government agency and a foreign government would have to be conducted through the State Department. This requirement could be set aside, he noted, only on the personal orders of the president. Employing the bureaucratic version of a wink and a nod, Hoover added that if Stephenson got FDR's okay, “we'll do business directly. Just myself and you. Nobody else gets in the act. Not State, not anyone.” Stephenson replied that he would secure the president's endorsement.2
To accomplish this, Stephenson sent another athletic emissary, Ernest Cuneo, to query Roosevelt. Cuneo's career had started with stints as a professional football player for the Orange (New Jersey) Tornadoes and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the sensibilities of the gridiron—intense personal friendships, loyalty to one's team, and ferocious rivalry with opponents—infused his subsequent careers as journalist, consigliere to politicians and pundits, and spook. In 1940 he was an advisor to Roosevelt, attorney for muckraking journalist Drew Pearson and the king of gossip Walter Winchell, and one of the most effective fixers in New Deal Washington.
Roosevelt told Cuneo that he favored “the closest possible marriage between the FBI and British Intelligence.”3 The president used the same expression in a separate conversation with the British ambassador, Lord Lothian. This gave Hoover the green light to work with Stephenson. Remarkably, FDR asked both Cuneo and Lothian to keep the State Department in the dark about the SIS's activities.4
Stephenson worked from a base in New York, initially as director of the British Passport Control Office, the traditional cover for the UK's SIS. When the operation became so large that it couldn't plausibly hide under the Passport Control cover, Stephenson turned to Hoover for advice. The FBI director suggested that SIS create a new entity and call it British Security Coordination (BSC). The organization's duties were as vague as its name. By mid-1941, BSC had almost a thousand employees in the United States and another two thousand in Canada, Central America, and South America, making it one of the largest foreign operations British intelligence had ever mounted.
A great deal of information about the BSC is available because Stephenson ordered his staff to write a history of its activities. The account, written in 1945, when memories were fresh, and kept secret until 1999, provides a candid picture of London's espionage and propaganda activities in America.5
The BSC history makes it clear that although most of the American reporters and editors who collaborated with BSC to create and disseminate propaganda were not on the British payroll, it isn't an exaggeration to characterize them as British agents. In fact, this is precisely how BSC thought about them. “The conduct of political warfare was entirely dependent on secrecy,” notes the BSC history. “For that reason the press and radio men with whom BSC maintained contact were comparable with subagents and the intermediaries with agents. They were thus regarded.”6 Discussing the relationship between reporters and BSC, Edmond Taylor, an American journalist, said that British intelligence agents “connived” with “Americans like myself who were willing to go out of regular (or even legal) channels to try to bend US policy towards objectives that the British, as well as the Americans in question, considered desirable.”7
One of Stephenson's most pressing objectives in 1940 was to convince Roosevelt to authorize the transfer of superannuated American destroyers to Britain. The destroyers were needed to augment Royal Navy ships that were protecting convoys in the North Atlantic. Sending them would have great symbolic significance, showing the British people that America was standing behind them.
The destroyer deal, and the larger issue of sending American weapons to Britain, was hostage to a conflict between two factions within the US government. One advocated supplying Britain weapons, food, and any other supplies it needed to fight Germany. The other, led by US ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Kennedy, deemed Britain a lost cause and advocated cutting off aid and husbanding resources that would be needed to meet the threat from Germany.
Most of Roosevelt's cabinet and the nation's military leadership supported Kennedy's view. They found it hard to believe that the twenty miles of salt water separating England from France would be an insurmountable barrier to German troops who had occupied most of continental Europe with shocking speed. Military leaders knew the United States was undermanned and completely unprepared to fight a modern war.
The BSC history draws a straight line from planting pro-British stories in the American media to Roosevelt's decision to send destroyers to London. The transfer happened, according to BSC, because Stephenson had “means at his disposal for influencing American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain. In fact, covert propaganda, one of the most potent weapons which BSC employed against the enemy, was harnessed directly to this task.”8
Two of the BSC's most enthusiastic connivers, a Chicago Daily News reporter named Edgar Ansel Mowrer and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a lawyer, World War I military hero, and friend to FDR, played leading roles in overcoming America's, and Roosevelt's, skepticism about the United Kingdom's ability to hold out against Germany.
The operation started with Stephenson suggesting to Donovan that he visit London on a fact-finding trip for the president. Roosevelt had known Donovan since they were classmates at Columbia Law School, and although Donovan was a Republican, the president trusted him.9
Donovan brought the idea to Frank Knox, secretary of the Navy, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, and one of the few enthusiastic supporters of Britain in the cabinet. Knox arranged for Donovan to pitch Roosevelt on Stephenson's idea of obtaining an independent assessment of Britain's prospects. Knox offered to provide cover for the trip by arranging for Mowrer, the most talented journalist on the Daily News staff, to accompany Donovan and by commissioning the pair to write a series of stories based on their trip. Roosevelt readily agreed.10
Mowrer had a thirst for adventure, a deep hatred for fascism, and a strong affinity for secret intelligence and espionage tradecraft. Fearless reporting from Berlin earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1933; it also gave him bragging rights as the first American reporter to be thrown out of Nazi Germany. Getting expelled by dictators became a habit. Mussolini forced Mowrer to leave Rome in 1936, and Stalin booted him out of Moscow the next year. Mowrer continued reporting on Europe's descent into barbarism from Paris, fleeing in June 1940 just ahead of the German army.11
Explaining their mission to Mowrer, Donovan told the reporter that “at Knox's request he and I were to collect and publish information on the ‘Fifth Column’ activities which had so helped the Germans in Norway, Poland, Belgium, France. What were the British and Americans doing about the problem? Beyond this, however, lay [our] real assignment—finding out for President Roosevelt the thing he most needed to know: would and could the British hold out against the Germans?”12
“Knox knew of my intimacy with members of the Churchill government,” Mowrer recalled. “As a newsman I could legitimately poke my nose into everything and ask indiscreet questions.”13
On July 15, 1940, Donovan telephoned his wife with the news that he was leaving on a secret mission of indefinite duration to a location that he could not disclose. The next day, Stephenson triumphantly cabled Sir Stewart Menzies, head of the SIS: “Colonel William J. Donovan personally representing President, left yesterday by Clipper,” the transatlantic flying boat. Donovan's dramatic exit was marred by a leak to the press. Mrs. Ruth Donovan, and anyone else who cared, learned the next day from the New York Times that her husband had traveled to London on an undisclosed mission.14
The Brits pulled out the stops for Donovan, arranging an audience with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, dinner with Churchill, briefings by Menzies, and a tour of the code-breaking campus at Bletchley Park, the crown jewel of British intelligence, as well as meetings with George Orwell and other prominent intellectuals. Everything was choreographed to showcase the determination, grit, and ingenuity of the British people, and to create the not-entirely-accurate impression that the country was well prepared to repulse an invasion.
Mowrer was given similar, if less flashy, treatment. He was appalled by the lack of military preparations for the invasion that everyone believed was coming, but this perception was outweighed in his mind by Churchill's steely determination. During his month in England, Mowrer filed only one story. The Vichy government couldn't be trusted and the only Frenchmen the United States should support were those “fighting, or ready to fight, against Nazi Germany,” he told Americans.15 Behind the scenes, Mowrer interceded on Charles de Gaulle's behalf with Churchill, urging the prime minister to recognize the prickly general as the leader of France. Before leaving London, Mowrer and Donovan agreed on their message to Roosevelt: “Britain under Churchill would not surrender either to ruthless air raids or to an invasion.”16
Having been persuaded that with enough American support Britain could hold off the Germans, and determined to do everything he could to increase the flow of weapons, food, and fuel across the Atlantic, Donovan boarded a camouflaged British flying boat on August 3. He arrived in New York the following day and was greeted by a New York Times reporter who had clearly been briefed on the mission. The paper reported that Donovan “denied he had discussed the possibility of turning over old destroyers in this country to England and he declined to discuss the war conditions in England.”17
Stephenson cabled London: “Donovan greatly impressed by visit and reception…has strongly urged our case re destroyers…is doing much to combat defeatist attitude in Washington by stating positively and convincingly that we shall win.”18
Donovan joined Roosevelt on a driving vacation across New England, spending two days touring, picnicking, and bending the president's ear about the need to support Britain.19
Mowrer made his way back to the United States in less spectacular fashion. By August he was at the Chicago Daily News office in Washington, in the Colorado Building, a block from the National Press Building. He frequented the Press Club and spoke on NBC radio's “National Press Club Forum” broadcasts. While serving as the Daily News bureau chief, Mowrer devoted all of his time and talent to overt and covert attempts to hasten United States engagement in the fight against fascism.20
Mowrer's first byline from Washington, on August 19, 1940, was shared with Donovan. An introductory note written by Knox explained that it was the beginning of a series that was being “made public by secretary of Navy Frank Knox in connection with the national defense program.” Knox wrote that it was a “most thoroughgoing survey of German ‘fifth column’ methods used in weakening resistance of possible enemies and undermining the morale of countries they propose to attack.” To maximize their impact, Knox offered the articles free to competing papers. Hundreds, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, accepted the offer, ensuring that Americans from all walks of life read them. Anyone who didn't read the stories may have heard Donovan discuss them on the first national radio broadcast featuring a speaker other than the president.21
The articles painted a wildly exaggerated picture of the effectiveness and scope of Nazi subversion, claiming that Germany spent $200 million annually on foreign propaganda, a figure that was a figment of the SIS's imagination. The critical point, which Donovan and Mowrer pounded into their readers, was that Germany's success in decimating its neighbors’ armies and occupying almost all of Europe save the British Isles was the result not of superior military strategy, technology or training. Instead, they attributed the victories to years of psychological warfare and legions of fifth columnists—threats they said had been recognized and neutralized in the United Kingdom, making it far less vulnerable than its continental neighbors.22
“No amount of genius would have accomplished what the Germans accomplished in so short a time without…the Germans abroad and sympathizers in the victim countries,” the first article in the Donovan/Mowrer series explained.23
Donovan and Mowrer made fanciful claims that Hitler, who in fact had given little thought to the United States, was plotting to use German Americans as an advance force that would help turn the United States into a “Nazi Gau,” or state. “It is safe to say that a very fair proportion of the non-refugee Germans who have become American since Hitler came to power did so with the secret intention of turning free and democratic America into ‘their’—that is, Hitler's, America,” they wrote.24
“It is conceivable that the United States possesses the finest Nazi-schooled Fifth Column in the world, one which, in case of war with Germany, could be our undoing,”25 Mowrer and Donovan told their readers. It was conceivable—but there wasn't a shred of evidence behind the assertion, which turned out to be wrong.
In early September FDR informed Congress—he did not seek its approval—that the US government had agreed to exchange American destroyers for leases on British bases in the Caribbean, a move that he called “the most important action in the reinforcement of our national defense that has been taken since the Louisiana Purchase.”26
Coming in the heat of an election campaign that hinged on the president's ability to persuade Americans that he would keep the nation out of war, the destroyers-for-bases deal, which effectively made the United States a nonbelligerent ally of Britain, was a bold step. It was particularly remarkable because more was at stake than losing an election. The legal basis for bypassing Congress was so weak that Roosevelt believed he was risking impeachment.27
Roosevelt had been emboldened to release the destroyers by reports that American public opinion had shifted over the summer, swinging from a strong belief that German domination of Europe, including Great Britain, was inevitable to a conviction that, with sufficient American assistance, Britain could hold on. BSC believed this shift was a decisive factor in Donovan's success in persuading Roosevelt to agree to the destroyers-for-bases deal—and that British propaganda, especially the Donovan/Mowrer articles, had been responsible for changing Americans’ attitudes.
Convinced that Donovan had immense influence with Roosevelt, and that he was a completely reliable friend, the British government bolstered his standing with the president. Stephenson had been maneuvering behind the scenes for months for FDR to create a centralized intelligence service and to put Donovan in charge of it. This work culminated in a meeting held at the White House at 12:30 p.m. on June 18, 1941, between Donovan, Knox, and FDR at which Donovan was put in charge of a new organization, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, and charged with overseeing all of the US government's intelligence activities. Soon after leaving the White House, Donovan briefed Stephenson on the meeting, and the next day Stephenson sent an encrypted telegram describing the conversation to Menzies.
“Bill [Donovan] saw the President today and after long discussion wherein all points were agreed he accepted the appointment,” Stephenson wrote. “He will be co-ordinator of all forms of Intelligence and will control all departments including offensive operations…” Donovan, who was given the rank of major general, reported directly to Roosevelt. “Bill accuses me of having ‘intrigued and driven’ him into appointment,” Stephenson reported. “You can imagine how relieved I am after three months of battling and jockeying for position at Washington that ‘our man’ is in a position of such importance to our efforts.”28
The office of Coordinator of Information was a British idea, according to Cuneo, who was involved in its creation. “It was conceived by Stephenson as an American solution to British problems in the Western hemisphere,” Cuneo wrote in an unpublished memoir. Stephenson had persuaded Donovan “in the interests of the common defense of Western civilization, to build an American intelligence agency which would assist him in carrying on his covert and clandestine operations in the Western hemisphere.” The Office of the Coordinator of Information was later expanded into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which formed the basis for the CIA.29
Mowrer stayed in close touch with Donovan and conducted at least one secret overseas mission for the Coordinator of Information. In August 1941, Donovan asked him to travel to East Asia on a mission similar to their trip to London. “Knox will provide a letter identifying you as his personal representative, but you will pass as a newspaper correspondent just as you did in England,” Donovan told him.30
Mowrer visited Singapore, Java, Thailand, Burma, and China. Everywhere he was told Japanese invasion was inevitable and imminent. The only disagreements were about the route: some were confident Tokyo's target was Siberia, while others told Mowrer war would come first to the Philippines and Southeast Asia. One American government official even predicted a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and a simultaneous invasion of the Philippines. Like the American military, Mowrer failed to pluck this strand from the tangle of rumor and deception that contributed to America's costly intelligence failure.31
Mowrer wasn't the only journalist who participated in BSC's multidimensional project to persuade FDR to release destroyers or its larger campaign to influence American views about the war. British intelligence also supported the activities of an informal network called the Century Group, which played a pivotal role in the destroyers-for-bases deal.32 Named after a private club in New York where it held many of its meetings, the Century Group consisted of about three dozen highly placed individuals who decided in the summer of 1940 to dedicate themselves to three goals: persuading the public to support “all aid short of war” to Britain, including the transfer of destroyers; publicly combating isolationists; and advocating government actions that would inevitably result in the United States’ joining the war.33
The Century Group's Washington operations were run by Ulric Bell, an old-school, hard-drinking newspaperman, from a Press Building suite across the hall from John Franklin Carter's office. Bell, a former National Press Club president who had been among the small group of Press Club members who guaranteed the original construction loans for the Press Building, was the Washington bureau chief for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Little of his reporting in 1940 and 1941 made it into print, and that was fine with the paper's publisher, Barry Bingham Sr. Bingham paid Bell's salary and expenses while encouraging him to work full time for the Century Group and for other pro-intervention groups with close links to British intelligence. Years later, Bingham forged a close relationship with the CIA.34
Unlike most of BSC's American operatives, Bell met directly with British intelligence officers and diplomats. He believed that American and British interests were indistinguishable and that the best way to help his own country was to work on behalf of a foreign government, including by acting as an intermediary between BSC and the White House. Bell was on friendly terms with President Roosevelt.35 He was also a close friend of FDR's press secretary, Steve Early, and of General Edwin “Pa” Watson, the president's friend and military aide, and schemed with both to nudge the president and the country closer to intervening in the war. At Bell's request, Early assigned White House typists to compile mailing lists for the Century Group based on pro-interventionist correspondence that had been sent to the White House. Bell and other leaders of the Century Group, and a larger group that it spawned, were in daily touch with Roosevelt's speech writer, Robert Sherwood.36
The White House was happy to have the Century Group pushing for intervention—as long as the president's fingerprints weren't evident. On one occasion, concerned that FDR might take offense at a planned article criticizing him for being timid in backing Britain, Bell brought the draft text to the White House and handed it to the president. Roosevelt, according to one of his advisors, “read it, and then—cocking his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle—turned to Bell. ‘If you're going to give me hell,’ he said, ‘why not use some really strong language? You know, pusillanimous isn't such a bad word.”37
Bell and other members of the Century Group operated as covert liaisons between the British government and the American press, providing leaks and disinformation generated by BSC to friendly reporters and columnists. The Century Group also conducted delicate, secret negotiations between the Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, and FDR. The connection to Willkie, who had put his election at risk by tacitly supporting FDR's efforts to prepare the United States for war, was to prove critical to getting the destroyers deal done.38
Willkie was probably unaware of the attention and resources BSC devoted to smoothing the path for him to gain the Republican nomination. The Brits wanted Roosevelt to win, but they hedged their bets by trying to ensure that if a Republican replaced him the White House wouldn't be home to an isolationist. Part of the strategy was to marginalize Republican leaders who wanted to cast the GOP as the “peace party.”39
On June 25, the second day of the GOP's national convention, the New York Herald reported that a poll found that three-fifths of the delegates supported helping the allies “with everything short of war.”40 The result was a surprise given the strong isolationist streak in the Republican Party. The story reported that the poll had been “conducted by Market Analysts, Inc., an independent research organization.” It didn't reveal that Market Analysts had organized and phrased its questions in a manner that was designed to make the case for intervention and to exclude the possibility of opposing increased assistance to Britain. For example, delegates were asked “If you think we are endangered, do you favor our helping the Allies with everything a) short of war; b) would you declare war now; or c) send navy or air force units to Europe.” While the Herald positioned the results as a strong show of support for aiding Britain, in fact the majority picked the answer that was least interventionist. They were not given the option to suggest that the United States withhold assistance. Market Analysts didn't reveal the premise of the question, or that only 0.7 percent of those surveyed favored a declaration of war.41
In fact, contrary to the Herald story, Market Analysts was anything but independent. It was run for the BSC by Sanford “Sandy” Griffith, an American who had worked for British intelligence since the late 1930s. His experience included serving in the French and US armies in World War I and as a Wall Street Journal reporter in London. Griffith returned to New York in the late 1920s, turned his hand to selling securities, and, accused of swindling his clients, avoided jail by the skin of his teeth. He operated Market Analysts from an office in New York City that housed several other BSC operations.42
Griffith hired an experienced covert operator, Francis Henson, as his right-hand man. Henson had a colorful background, which included working in Europe to rescue refugees who were fleeing Nazi Germany and a job in Detroit trying to flush communists out of the United Auto Workers union.43
Henson worked undercover for Griffith in 1940 and 1941 from the eleventh floor of the National Press Building. Sometimes Henson said he worked for Market Analysts; on occasion he presented himself as an employee of a fictitious company called “Information, Incorporated.” Letterhead advertised Information, Inc.'s ability to provide “Confidential Research for the Facts You Seek,” and directed correspondence to “Mr. Francis A. Henson, Regional Director, Washington Research Division, 1196 National Press Building, Washington, D.C.” The stationary conjured images of a well-appointed office. The reality was less grand. Henson rented a desk in a room with two reporters and a representative of the Bible Truth Seekers Foundation.44
One of Henson's many jobs for Griffith and BSC was conducting public opinion surveys, like the poll taken at the Republican National Convention that appeared to show strong support for aiding Britain. Many of these polls were aimed at influencing politicians.45
In a resume written in 1948, Henson recounted that his job from 1940 to 1942 “was to use the results of our polls, taken among their constituents, to convince on-the-fence Congressmen and Senators that they should favor more aid to Britain.”46 Market Analysts’ polling results always supported British goals. Henson and Griffith accomplished this by asking questions like those posed at the Republican convention that were crafted to elicit the desired responses, by carefully selecting the individuals whose opinions were solicited while pretending that they had been chosen at random, and by suppressing any results that didn't come out as intended.
William Allen White, a respected voice in the Republican Party who headed a pro-intervention group called the William Allen White Committee, had commissioned the poll of delegates to the Republican convention. He wrote in a newspaper column that it had been “carefully and rather expensively made…by a professional group of interviewers.”47 The column, which was printed in the Boston Globe and other newspapers across the country, cited the poll as evidence of the delegates’ opposition to Hitler, as well as their eagerness to bolster American defenses and to forge an economic alliance with Central and South American nations against Germany. White argued that the survey results demonstrated that Willkie, a former Democrat who felt that “America's first line of defense is Great Britain,” best represented the Republican Party's views.48
It isn't clear whether BSC's assistance was decisive, but Willkie, who did not campaign in the primaries, went into the convention an underdog and—to London's delight and the astonishment of the Republican establishment—emerged as the GOP candidate.
Henson and Griffith were also deployed to the Democratic convention in July.
Newspapers stories based on their polling reported that more than 90 percent of “advance guard delegates” favored sending aid to Britain, and after the convention was underway 86 percent of an unspecified number of delegates felt that Britain's defeat would endanger America, and 45 percent believed that if Hitler conquered Britain, he would immediately attack the United States. The poll was intended to show that rank-and-file Democrats were more inclined to go to war to prevent the defeat of Great Britain than the men who wrote the party's platform, which pledged that the United States “will not participate in foreign wars, and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas, except in case of attack.”49
The White Committee declared in a press release that “a wide disparity exists between the Democratic Platform and the opinions of the individual delegates, as revealed in a very complete poll.”50
In addition to their polling work at the Democratic convention, Henson and Griffith posed as representatives of Information, Inc., handing out business cards with Henson's Press Building address and interviewing delegates who were promoting pacifism. The interviews, which were forward to Cuneo, were intended to help BSC develop propaganda to counter pacifist arguments.51
Although they worked to solidify Democratic support, the BSC's operatives devoted far more attention to Republicans in the summer of 1940 as part of an all-out push to keep the destroyers-for-bases deal alive. Willkie supported FDR's foreign-policy goals, but he also wanted to win the election, so the White House couldn't assume that he would acquiesce to sending American ships to Britain without congressional approval. Even a hint that Willkie might accuse Roosevelt of overstepping his authority could have scuttled the deal. As the first president to snub George Washington's precedent of voluntarily stepping aside after two terms, Roosevelt was vulnerable to accusations that he was behaving like a dictator. He also knew that while the public was split about the merits of helping Great Britain, most Americans wanted to stay out of the war, and that Congress wouldn't agree to transferring destroyers to Britain.
Bell worked behind the scenes with other members of the Century Group to persuade Willkie to endorse the transfer, or at a minimum to adopt a neutral attitude toward it. On August 30, Bell and other members of the group gathered at the Hay-Adams House, Washington's most luxurious hotel, awaiting news from their contacts in the Republican campaign. They received two telephone calls that afternoon from Willkie's aides conveying the candidate's promise not to criticize the destroyer deal. Bell wasted no time in conveying the news to the White House. The president, assured that he wouldn't pay a devastating political price, announced the deal at a press conference four days later.52
BSC's championing of Willkie was exceptional. Most of its interventions were intended to destroy rather than build political careers.