UNITED KINGDOM

World War II

British Security Coordination (BSC)

O - Z

Ogilvy, David. Blood, Brains and Beer. New York: Atheneum, 1978. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978.

The author worked with Stephenson's British Security Coordination (BSC) during World War II. Nevertheless, Constantinides warns us that Ogilvy "has very little to say of his wartime intelligence work."

Smith, Bradley F. "Admiral Godfrey's Mission to America, June/July 1941." Intelligence and National Security 1, no. 3 (Sep. 1986): 441-450.

The material presented here includes Smith's comments on and text of the report by the British Director of Naval Intelligence, Adm. J.H. Godfrey, on his visit to the United States in June-July 1941. According to Smith, the document "shows Admiral Godfrey more closely involved with the developmental activities of William Stephenson ... and William Donovan ... than many scholars ... had realised.... Admiral Godfrey not only gave direct support to the cause of William Donovan and the COI, but ... he went to ... unprecedented lengths to assist them."

Stafford, David. Camp X: Canada's School for Secret Agents, 1941-45. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Harmondsworth: Viking/Penguin, 1986. Camp X: SOE and the American Connection. New York: Didd, Meda, 1986.

Clark comment: Stafford provides a scholarly account of this SOE training base on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario, which was used by the British in providing some initial training for OSS secret operatives.

Charles, I&NS 15.2, finds Camp X to be a "well-researched account" of the secret training base. Stafford also "corrects much of the mythology surrounding British intelligence in the Americas promoted by Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid."

See also Lynn-Philip Hodgson, Inside-Camp X (1999).

Stafford, David.

1. "'Intrepid': Myth and Reality." Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 2 (1987): 304-316.

2. "A Myth Called Intrepid." Saturday Night (Toronto), Oct.1989, 33-37.

Stevenson, William. A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War, 1939-1945. London: Macmillan, 1976. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1976. [pb]

According to Pforzheimer, the author's work "has been severely attacked ... as inaccurate in many respects, badly documented and grossly inflated."

Constantinides says the book "does not fully represent a historically correct account of Stephenson's work and that of BSC." Implying that Stephenson was the leader of British intelligence and BSC the center of British intelligence efforts worldwide is a serious exaggeration.

For Charles, I&NS 15.2, this is an "embellished account" that "contains inaccuracies" and makes "[q]uestionable claims."

West, I&NS 19.2/276, calls this work "hopelessly unreliable."

To Troy, IJI&C 20.4 (Winter 2007), this is a "best-selling but thoroughly unreliable" book.

Troy, Thomas F. "CIA's Indebtedness to Bill Stephenson." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 20, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 717-727.

The author offers his opinion (Clark comment: better than anyone else's I am aware of on this topic) about the greatness of Stephenson "as a covert-action agent, station chief, and agent of influence in New York in 1940-1945." He suggests that the debt owed to Stephenson by the CIA is for its very existence.

Troy, Thomas F. "The Coordinator of Information and British Intelligence: An Essay on Origins." Studies in Intelligence 18, no. 1-S (Spring 1974).

Troy, Thomas F. Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency. Washington, DC: CIA, 1981. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981.

Pforzheimer finds that the "documentation for this book has been brilliantly researched.... The excellent writing makes it essential reading" for intelligence professionals and scholars alike.

For Constantinides, Troy's work meets "high standards of scholarship." The author's research is "enormous and painstaking," and his sources are "carefully documented." He could have made the work "even better by describing the world environment within which the main debates and bureaucratic battles took place."

Powers, Intelligence Wars (2004), p. 12, and NYRB, 12 May 1983, calls Donovan and the CIA "a plodding insitutional history." He, then, hastens to add that the author "is an intelligent writer, and his book unveils much about territorial wars between bureaucracies."

Troy tells the story of how the CIA bureaucracy handled his biography of Donovan -- written on Agency time and with OTR support -- in "Writing History in CIA: A Memoir of Frustration," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 7.4 (Winter 1994): 397-411.

Troy, Thomas F. Wild Bill and Intrepid: Bill Donovan, Bill Stephenson, and the Origin of CIA. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Warren, CIRA Newsletter 21.2, says that Troy "has destroyed some of the most cherished myths of the intelligence community and replaced them with solid facts and speculation so firmly based that it might as well be fact." It is the relationship between the CIA's father, Donovan, and its Godfather, Stephenson, that Troy has sought to explicate. He "has produced a detailed and fascinating account of two remarkable men and the process by which they established the foundation" for the CIA. "Unfortunately, by concentrating on the process and the details Troy produces little about the personality and character of his two main actors." Of course, doing so was not his goal.

For Morley, WPNWE, 29 Jul.-4 Aug. 1996, Troy's "useful study" demonstrates "in scholastic detail that Donovan was actually working in 1940-41 with senior eminences in the British Secret Intelligence Services.... The CIA, in other words, was not the brainchild of a lone bureaucratic gunslinger but the offspring of an Anglo-American liaison."

Friedman, Parameters, Summer 1997, comments that "[w]idely believed tales surrounding the founding of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by 'Wild Bill' Donovan and the role of Sir William 'Little Bill' Stephenson ... often turn out to be about as accurate as Parson Weems' fable about George Washington and the cherry tree. Troy sets these myths straight in his well-documented work."

Similarly, Immerman, Choice 34.2, finds Troy's arguments "persuasive"; his work will necessitate some minor qualification of the "standard characterization of US intelligence as distinctly American."

For Crane, http://www.cdsar.af.mil/bookrev/troy.html, Wild Bill and Intrepid is an "outstanding, thoroughly researched account of the origins ... of the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)." This book "is truly an intelligence treasure"; it is "[r]ich in information about World War II, declassified documents, and charismatic personalities."

Kimble, Military Review, May 1998, comments that "[t]he book's endnotes are an excellent source of information for further research."

On the other hand, Hoffman, WIR 15.5, believes that Troy has "stretched [his material] precariously thin." The author's thesis is that Stephenson should be credited with assisting in "the conception and establishment of COI" (Coordinator of Information), but his "presentation of the evidence ... is rather confusing."

Warner, JAH 83.4, also sounds a cautionary note: "Despite Troy's impressive research and analysis,... this case cannot yet be closed. We do not know whether the president ever heard Stephenson's advice."

West, Nigel [Rupert Allason], ed. British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45. London: St. Ermin's, 1998. New York: Fromm International, 1999.

Waller, IJI&C 12.1, notes that West's introduction "carefully tracks th[is] heretofore highly classified record of the BSC ... as the verbatim account of BSC's history written at war's end." The reviewer concludes that "it is probably safe to accept most of this book's version of BSC's activities in World War II as valid, although there seem to be omissions."

For Foot, Spectator, 23 Jan. 1999, this is "a long, in places dullish but often fascinating account" of Sir William Stephenson's "real responsibilities." Although Ultra is not mentioned [Clark comment: not surprisingly, given that this book was written immediately after the war], "otherwise, no holds are barred."

After noting that this "is certainly the most comprehensive record of [BSC's] activities we can expect to see," Bath, NIPQ 15.4, notes the tendency of the authors "to see BSC in a vacuum, rather than as a part of the larger and highly complex Allied cooperation structure."

Jensen, I&NS 15.3, says that "[t]his is the most balanced and correct story" of BSC. "Embellishments about [Willian] Stephenson found in many of the postwar books on BSC find no corroborating evidence in this BSC volume."

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