Engineered polls at the Republican and Democratic conventions were the opening salvos in an extraordinary campaign BSC waged in 1940 and 1941 against isolationist politicians. British intelligence intervened in American elections with an intensity and employing methods that no foreign government had ever attempted. BSC agents based in the National Press Building were central players in the drama.

Hamilton Stuyvesant Fish III, a New York Republican and leading isolationist who had represented residents of the Hudson Valley in Congress since 1920, was at the top of the British hit list. Removing a politician who threatened American support for Britain was far more important to BSC than respecting the will of his constituents.

To dig Fish's political grave, BSC created and funded the Non-Partisan Committee to Defeat Hamilton Fish. It operated from the same New York City address as Market Analysts Inc. and other fronts for British intelligence. Like the faux polling firm, the committee was run by Sandy Griffith and Francis Henson. In October 1940 Henson traveled from his Press Building office to Poughkeepsie, New York, where he set up a war room in the Campbell Hotel. In addition to pulling a thorn from the British government's side, the campaign against Fish was intended to “put the fear of God into every isolationist senator and congressman in the country,” one of Henson's comrades told a potential financial contributor.1 In a letter to Cuneo dated October 18, 1940, Henson wrote that because there was “a very good chance of…putting Fish on ice,” he and Griffith planned to remain in Poughkeepsie working on the campaign until election day.2 The Democratic Party, which did not consider Fish vulnerable, put almost no resources into the race, so for the most part the campaign against a sitting member of Congress was led by British operatives.

The Non-Partisan Committee engineered a series of dirty tricks. For example, Henson and Griffith manufactured a tale about Fish renting property to German Nazis who paid him inflated rents as a covert bribe.³ In a classic “October surprise,” Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, acting in concert with Cuneo, reported the story in their Washington Merry-Go-Round column on October 21, just a few weeks before the election. They were fortunate that Fish decided against following through on threats to sue them for libel.⁴

Henson and Griffith also circulated a photo that appeared to show Fish meeting with the “American Hitler,” Fritz Kuhn. The leader of the German American Bund was serving a jail sentence at the time for embezzlement. The caption asked “Voters of Dutchess, Orange and Putnam Counties is Hamilton Fish Pro-Nazi?” Contrary to the impression created by the photo, Fish had never met privately with Kuhn. The photo had been taken in 1938 at a congressional hearing.⁵

Fish was reelected by 9,000 votes, half the margin he'd had in 1938. In an after-action report to Cuneo, Griffith wrote: “Francis [Henson] probably reported to you on the Hamilton Fish fight. Our size-up of the situation was correct—that $2,000 or $3,000 additional a week or two ahead would have been sufficient to put it over. The local Democratic machine in the district was of practically no help.” Griffith also sent Cuneo a four-page memo with recommendations for the best methods to beat Fish and other congressmen in the future. His pointers included avoiding all appearance of a centralized campaign, the need to make planned attacks seem spontaneous, and the importance of keeping “in the background any protests emanating from New York City, and protests from Jewish and foreign groups.” Covert campaigns should take care to “tie-in attacks with current events. Study, and where necessary create, incidents which give sufficient news pegs on which to hang a story.” He also recommended actions in Washington, including pinning “on the pro-Nazi and obstructionist labels” and cooperating “with the Administration and hostile colleagues to assure their ganging up on Fish whenever he obstructs.”6

Henson and Griffith weren't the only assets BSC deployed against Fish. In spring 1940, British intelligence threw out a net that ultimately snared Fish, two dozen other isolationist members of Congress, and to the delight of the White House linked the America First Committee to Nazi Germany.

The story started when a man named Henry Hoke became curious and, as he investigated, furious about pro-Nazi propaganda that was flowing through the mail to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Hoke, publisher of The Reporter of Direct Mail Advertising, took an interest in the techniques that were used to target and disseminate the propaganda.⁷

In May 1940 Hoke published a story in The Reporter revealing that the German Library of Information sent a pro-Nazi publication, Facts in Review, every week to 90,000 ministers, school teachers, legislators, and publishers. Hoke detailed other German-financed propaganda activities, such as an initiative by the German Railroads Information Office to send “about 40,000 weekly mimeographed bulletins to hotel managers, travel agencies, stock brokers, bankers, and small businessmen” that were intended to “convince Americans that the Nazi system of doing business was best.” The Postmaster General should prevent foreign governments from using the US mail to distribute propaganda, Hoke demanded.⁸

The article also reported that individuals on the German Library mailing list were “receiving reprints from the Congressional Record, mailed under a Congressman's frank, containing Nazi-phrased and Nazi-inspired material which followed the line of editorials appearing in Facts in Review.” The “frank” Hoke referred to was a privilege extended to all members of Congress to send an unlimited amount of mail at no cost on envelopes that bore their printed signatures instead of postage stamps. Such envelopes were supposed to be used exclusively for communications sent by a member of Congress, such as the Congressional Record, an official government periodical that publishes congressional speeches and debates.9

Hoke's story garnered a small amount of attention in left-wing newspapers but didn't make a major splash. The waves were strong enough, however, to come to the attention of BSC, which, sensing an opportunity to disrupt a Nazi subversion operation and embarrass isolationist politicians, provided Hoke undercover investigators and funding. Before long, BSC's Griffith in New York and Henson in the National Press Building were supporting what had become a personal crusade for Hoke. Two other BSC collaborators in the National Press Building, Bell, who had become a leader of a BSC-aligned group called Fight for Freedom, and one of Fight for Freedom's members, Washington Merry-Go-Round columnist Robert S. Allen, also helped investigate and publicize what became known as the congressional franking scandal.¹⁰

BSC had infiltrated the German Library's staff, so it was a simple matter to arrange for the insertion of phony names at BSC-monitored addresses onto its mailing list. Soon letters containing reprints of the Congressional Record with speeches that would have warmed Joseph Goebbels's heart started showing up at these addresses. The letters were sent postage-free under the franks of more than two dozen members of Congress. American taxpayers were footing the bill for the dissemination of German propaganda.¹¹

BSC determined that addresses on the franked envelopes were printed using an antiquated duplicating machine, and found that the Steuben Society, a Nazi organization in New York, owned one of the few working models of the machine. It obtained confidential bulletins issued by the society and learned not only that the envelopes were printed on the society's duplicating machine, but also that the group was inviting its members to come to meetings where they could pick up speeches by isolationist senators Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye in franked envelopes to mail to their friends.¹²

BSC and Hoke had uncovered part of the story, but they had not learned how the Congressional Record reprints and franked envelopes ended up in the hands of the Steuben Society. They got a break when a representative of the Order of the Purple Heart wrote to Hoke complaining that his article had incorrectly accused the veteran's organization of sending propaganda to its members in franked envelopes. BSC looked into the matter and determined that the Order had been falsely accused. The investigation also uncovered a very interesting bit of news. The Order's “Commander” in Washington was a WWI veteran named George Hill who worked as a personal secretary for Representative Fish.

BSC zeroed in on Hill. It either had sources in place on Capitol Hill capable of keeping a close eye on Fish's offices or quickly recruited them. Henson was almost certainly involved in this aspect of the operation. The Brits also targeted Hill with an agent identified in British intelligence reports as “a very capable female operator.”13 She extracted information from Hill about his background, associates, and financial situation.

The sleuthing revealed that Hill had accumulated wealth far beyond the level that could be obtained as a secretary to a member of Congress. BSC figured out that Hill was running an elaborate and lucrative scam that linked unwitting members of Congress to Nazi propagandists.

Hill's enterprise was based on an intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill procedures. He knew that members of Congress routinely stood up on the floor of the House or Senate and asked for unanimous consent, which was always granted, to have written remarks inserted into the Congressional Record.

Hill had cultivated a group of female secretaries on Capitol Hill who, in exchange for small gifts, arranged to have their bosses insert speeches into the Record that Hill had supplied. Although the congressmen were listed as authors, they rarely read them. The speeches coincided with their isolationist beliefs, so they didn't recoil on the rare occasions when they did skim the text.

Acting in his capacity as Fish's secretary, Hill sent orders to the Government Printing Office for thousands of reprints of the speeches and paid for them at the official rate, which was less than a third of the cost of commercial printing. He then sold them at a hefty markup to organizations like America First and the McWilliams Anti-Semitic League. If these groups knew Hill was profiting on the arrangement, they wouldn't object because he provided the reprints in franked, unaddressed envelopes, thus saving the groups the cost of postage.14

Hill used his relationships with the secretaries of isolationist members of Congress, and his knowledge of their postal habits, to create a related business. Senators and representatives receive massive amounts of mail from constituents. Sorting and replying to constituent mail is still a major activity in every congressional office. In those days the common practice was to reply to as much mail as possible as soon as it arrived and to destroy the vast majority of incoming correspondence within a day or two. This was an act of self-preservation: so much mail arrived on Capitol Hill that retaining a week's worth would have created a fire hazard, and the legislative branch would have drowned in the mail accumulated in a month.

Instead of destroying them, Hill persuaded the secretaries to set aside mounds of letters from constituents who had expressed pro-isolationist sentiments. He had bags of these letters delivered to an office where eight women typed the return addresses on notecards. Hill had the cards duplicated and sold the resulting mailing lists to the same organizations that bought the speeches.¹⁵

BSC brought the fruits of its investigation to the attention of the FBI, but the bureau expressed little interest in pursuing a case. BSC had more luck persuading a sympathetic federal prosecutor to convene a grand jury to investigate illegal franking.¹⁶ The grand jury sent a subpoena to one of Hill's associates requesting that he turn over copies of Congressional Record speeches in franked envelopes. The associate panicked and called Hill demanding that he immediately pick up twenty sacks of franked mail.

BSC operatives were watching as a truck marked “US House of Representatives” picked up the sacks and delivered them to Fish's office, not to his storehouse as Hill had instructed. The secretary who met the delivery man knew what was in the sacks, and it was her turn to panic. The deliveryman refused her adamant demands to remove all of the bags, and after a heated argument agreed to take all but eight of them to the address she provided—the Washington office of the America First committee.

A BSC operative, possibly Henson or someone working for him, called the Federal Marshal's office to report the location of the subpoenaed mail sacks. The operative also tipped off a Washington Post reporter who observed the Marshals’ raid on America First, and then raced back to Capitol Hill where he poked around in the sacks that had been left outside Fish's office. A breathless description of the escapade made it onto the front page of the Post and was picked up by newspapers around the country.17

A secret report BSC sent to London in May 1941 noted that the delivery mix up and raid were “our opportunity to see that Hamilton Fish's office, and therefore George Hill, as Fish's Secretary, got into the newspapers.” The BSC report added that “most of the stories printed in the newspapers are only partially true as we only gave them sufficient [information] to drag Hill's name before the public and the appropriate Washington authorities.”¹⁸

Pro-intervention newspapers seized on the opportunities to run headlines linking Fish to the Nazis. A Washington Post story ran under the banner “8 Bags of Evidence in Nazi Probe ‘Turn Up’ at Rep. Fish's Bin in House Storeroom,” while the leftwing PM plastered “Ham Fish Snatches Evidence Wanted in US Nazi Hunt.” In an hour-long speech to the House, Fish asserted his ignorance of Hill's activities and denied any connection to Nazis or tolerance for anti-Semitism.¹⁹

Although BSC spun the news to reporters in a way that made Fish look culpable, in its internal report it acknowledged that it had painted him as an active participant in the scandal when in fact he had been an unwittingly victim. The congressman's public remarks about the affair were “ridiculous, due no doubt to the fact that Fish simply doesn't know what he is talking about and did not wish to know what had been going on right under his nose,” the BSC report noted. BSC's assessment accurately predicted “that the case will develop into the biggest scandal Washington has had in many years.”20

Tying the bow on the box, BSC revealed to the press and the Department of Justice that the speeches Hill had arranged for isolationist members of Congress to insert in the Congressional Record had been written by George Viereck, a well-known Nazi propagandist who had registered with the State Department as an agent of the German government. The connection to Viereck seemed to validate Roosevelt's assertions that America First, which was distributing the speeches, was a Nazi front. Stories linking the Nazi propagandist to America First tarnished the group's reputation, alienating isolationists who wanted nothing to do with Nazis.

BSC's friends in the press, including reporters in the Press Building office of the New York Herald Tribune, as well as Pearson and Allen, ran with the story, taking care to mention Fish, who denied all knowledge or involvement. BSC's sleuthing and the publicity led the Justice Department to indict Viereck for failing to report his Nazi ghost writing activities on foreign agent registration forms.²¹

BSC's staff took complete credit for the franking scandal. “In May 1940 we first claimed there was a ‘tie-up’ between the Nazi Propaganda Organization in the United States the postal ‘Franking’ privilege of members of Congress of the United States. Recent indictments of George Sylvester Viereck, and George Hill (secretary to Congressman Hamilton Fish) have been the direct results of our efforts to expose the ‘tie-up,’” BSC boasted in a report to London.²²

BSC continued to chase Fish. For example, in September 1941 it obtained a franked envelope from his office and stuffed it with anti-Semitic literature, including excerpts from the notorious and libelous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A BSC operative wrote “Fight for Jewdom” above Fight for Freedom's address on the envelope and dropped it into a mailbox. Despite Fish's honest assertions that it was a fabrication, PM newspaper ran a story with photographs of the envelope and its contents.23

Even after America's declarations of war against Japan and Germany rendered them toothless, British intelligence didn't give isolationist politicians any peace. In October 1942, Griffith and Henson arranged another October surprise for Fish. A Washington Merry-Go-Round column falsely accused the congressman of accepting $3,100 from German propagandists in the Romanoff Caviar company. Fish managed to hang on by a fingernail, winning the election by 4,000 out of 100,000 votes cast.²⁴

Two years later, after twenty-four years in Congress, Fish was defeated by a liberal Democrat. In his concession speech, the Republican said his loss “should be largely credited to Communistic and Red forces from New York City backed by a large slush fund probably exceeding $250,000.” A few weeks later he claimed it had taken “most of the New Deal Administration, half of Moscow, $400,000, and Governor Dewey to defeat me.” As BSC's secret history crowed: “He might—with more accuracy—have blamed BSC.”²⁵

Fish, one of the strongest voices against coming to Britain's assistance, was on the wrong side of history. Policies he advocated would have made America disastrously unprepared for war. On the other hand, contrary to BSC's slurs, there is no evidence that he was either an anti-Semite or a Nazi sympathizer. The fact that a foreign government led a years-long effort to trick New York voters into voting against Fish does not make him a more sympathetic figure, but it also doesn't burnish the reputation of British intelligence or the Americans who helped it. Whatever their feelings for Fish, most of his constituents, and Americans across the country, would have been outraged if they had learned that a foreign government had conspired to engineer his defeat.

Frying Fish was far from an isolated incident.