Franklin roosevelt appoints him in the summer of 1941 aswhat eventually becomes the office of strategic services. Kind of a strange choice because donovan was a staunch republican, had run for governor of new york on an antiroosevelt, antinew deal platform. But he was also a man of irrepressible spirit, boundless optimism, full of ideas and, in a sense, hehe reflected the qualities of Franklin Roosevelt so he was named the head of our first spy service. Cspan as you know, they called him wild bill donovan. Tell us a wild story. Guest well, oneone of theone of the conclusions i reached about donovan was that he was a magnificent magnet for attracting talent. His oss attracted College President s, semanticists, philosophers, writers, journalists, photographers, actors, cameramen. Arthur goldberg had been an oss veteran, subsequently goes on the supreme court. Historian Arthur Schlesinger jr. Was with the oss. The french chef julia child was with the oss. But what kind of strstruck me about donovan is the crackbrained ideas that he could advance, one of which was that his agents would somehow intrude into hitlers diet substances that would cause the fuhrers breasts to swell, his voice to rise and his mustache to fall out. Another idea that he came forward with was to drop leaflets over japanese troops which show pictures of japanese women involved in compromising positions with caucasians, which presumably wouldwould demoralize them and seeing that their women were not being faithful. The thing that was surprising to me is that these crazy ideas did not turn fdr off at all. He didnt reject them out of hand because he loved thethe surreptitious, the furtive, the clandestine and the covert. Cspan you say in your book at, i think, the height of the oss, he had Something Like 1,600 people working for him . Guest more like 16,000. Cspan sixteen thousand people guest yes. Cspan boy, i missed that. Guest and thats starting from ground zero. You know, we had no Intelligence Service to speak of, even the year before pearl harbor. Cspan so kind of relate that to today. The president of the United States has somebody whos a friend of his who creates what kind of aand what wouldwhat would happen if this kind of thing was developed today . Guest well. Cspan can you relate it to whats going on in the world right now . Guest yeah. Ii thi think that thethe real parallel here is the shocking unexpectedness of pearl harbor and september 11th. How could this happen . At theafter the fact, the strand of intelligence that leads from a to b to c to pearl harbor may stand out glaringly, and after the fact the strand of intelligence that runs from x to y to z to the World Trade Center and the pentagon may seem to stand out glaringly. But before the fact, this intelligence doesnt come in single strands. It comes in great bundles. You know, we were breaking the japanese code, there were hundreds of messages available to the president. We now have the nsa, which i understand does Something Like 3 billion of worldwiwide eavesdropping. So what we have thats comparable is a fa flood tide of intelligence which seems to overwhelm the circuitry. What we seem to be lacking isthen and now is careful analyananalysis to say, well, weve got this tide of intelligence. What direction is it falling in . What do these jigsaw pieces tell us if we can put them together . that was a failing prior to pearl harbor and obviously a failing now. Cspan Vincent Astor. What did he do for fdr . Guest well, i mentioned a moment ago that the United States didnt go into the intelligence business in a serious way until 1941. We were probably the only world power that didnt have a professional Intelligence Service. Roosevelt relied very heavily prior to, lets say, 1940 on a circle of socialite friends as his sources. There were a group of them who styled themselves the club, and they had taken a shabby apartment on new yorks upper east side. They had an unlisted phone number. They had a secret mail drop. Ititit sounded like the spy games of boys being carried out by grown men. The chthe chief figure in this outfit called the club was Vincent Astor, one of the wealthiest men in the country. Cspan which one is he in this photo at top . Guest Vincent Astor is the one to the right of the bar on the ship wheres is standing. Cspan or to the left of fdr . Guest and hesand helets see. It looks to me like hes toyes. Yes. Cspan andand who was he . Guest Vincent Astor was thethe heir of a massive fortune in the United States. He washe was a socialite, but he was also a man interested inin causes, owned probably the biggest chunks of real estate in manhattan. He and his other members of the club, while they seemed like dilettante amateurs, had this value for fdr they were very highly placed. For example, astor was a director of western union, and consequently he was privy to the kinds of cables which were going from foreign embassies in the United States back to their homelands, and though it was illegal, he had these cables intercepted and he passed this intelligence along to fdr. Another member of the club was winthrop aldrich, who, at the time, was head of the chase manhattan bank. Aldrich knew about International Financial dealings. He could report to fdr all the money that was going into and coming out of the russian spy front in the United States, the amtorg trading company. But thisthis was a pretty unsophisticated level of intelligence for a country the size of the United States at that point. Cspan well, in 1939 and 40, what kind of an intelligencegathering operation did fdr have . Did he have an official one . Guest no, hethat doesnthe doesnt begin a formal, official Central Intelligence agency until the summer of 1941. What he has before that are the military services, the office of naval intelligence, he has the military Intelligence Division of the army, and he has the fbi and he hahe trihes very unhappy with the lack of coordinationand doesnt that ring a bell today . For example, at one point, to try to get these people moving in the same direction, hehe calls a meeting ofof hoover as the head of the fbi and the head of military intelligence and naval intelligence. Hoover doesnt dane to come. Cspan just says, im not coming . Guest well, he had to be ordered by fdr finally to come. We had the army and navy with the lunatic handling ofof the messages that we were decoding, particularly japanese diplomatic traffic. They had this rivalry in which the army would decode messages on even days, theand the navy would do it on odd days. They had a sa sa system where they would share who got to deliver the plum traffic to the president. The army would do it in certain months and subsequent month would be in the navy. And it wasit was madness. And finally roosevelt himself just cut out that nonsense. Cspan back to Vincent Astor. Was he the one that went on the trip to try to find some intelligence over in japan . Guest yeah. Again, this indicates the rather amateurish intelligence that roosevelt conducted prior to forming a formal agency inin the oss. Astor had a magnificent oceangoing yacht called the nourmahal. It had a crew of over 40 members. Fdr asks Vincent Astor to cruise the pacific, seemingly on a pleasure junket, and hit places in the marshall islands, which were then managed by japan asas a mandate, and to report on our preparations there. And this was great fun for Vincent Astor and a great adventure. He subsequently thought this would lead to his becoming fdrs chief of intelligence, but hes up against tougher rivals in donovan and some others. Cspan John Franklin carter. Youve got a photo of him in your book. Who doeswho is he . Guest John Franklin carterinteresting manwas a columnist in washington. At one point he wangles an appointment with the president in the oval office and he, in effect, says to fdr, you know, i have extraordinary contacts in journalism, among International Government figures, among businessmen worldwide. I could easily set up for you a ring and i would report strictly to you. roosevelt lapped that up. It was just the kind of thing that appealed to fdroff the books, circumventing his own bureaucracy, something private, clandestine. A spy thriller kind of thing appealed to him. So he took money out of his own white house budget to set up the John Franklin carter ring. Has this money transferred into the state department, where presumably its there to buy reports about foreignforeign governments. And then carter operates throughout the war, directly reporting to fdr and the oval office. Cspan how many people did he have working for him . Guest very small group, only about 12. But the interesting thing is that we have an oss that doesnt necessarily know about the John Franklin carter ring. We have John Franklin carter who doesnt necessarily know about the astor ring. Cspan and you say that fdr didnt write very much down. Guest fdr, by his character and temperament, was ideally suited forfor secret warfare. He loved to trade in secrets. He was a master manipulator of people. He misled his own associates when it suited him. He seemed to enjoy subterfuge for its own sake. And he said it best himself. He said, im a juggler. I never let my left hand know what my right hand is doing. and to answer your point, he left virtually no fingerprints. One of the most frustrating things that hhistorians on theon the trail of Franklin Roosevelt complain about is the lack of written commitment to decisions that he made or explanations as to what he did. Cspan what did you learn about him baas a person . Guest well, i always had ahad a sense thatthat roosevelt was a man with a certain amount of guile. My research in writing roosevelts secret war convinced me even further of that. As ias i said a moment ago, he was ideally suited for this kind of thing. Hehe wasi think some of the best descriptions of him, which i accept asas essential to his character, one of which was made by one of his new deal associates, who said, the man always conceals the purposes of his mind. ananother one of his Close Associates said, ithis was robert sherwood, who wrote speeches for roosevelthe said, i could never penetrate that heavily forested interior. Henry Wallace said, the only certainty in the Roosevelt Administration was what was going on inside fdrs head. mmy initial expectation that he would be aa man who held the cards close to the vest was confirmed. Somebody said to me, well, did this make you think less of him . it made him more interesting to me, a more textured character. Cspan you say in the book that yourecolin powell helped you with information on this book. Did i misinterpret that or was that from your old friendship . Guest well, in this sense, asas you know, i wi was Colin Powells collaborator on his autobiography, my american journey. Colin powell, needless to say, had very, very useful connections throughout the federal bureaucracy, and when i would have queries, i could go to some of his staff whowhowho would get answers for me, for which im very grateful. Cspan how long did you work on his book . Guest he and i were together for about 20 months. Most of the time i spent down in a little study in his office examining the soles of his sneakers. Hes a, you know, very casual guy. And he putpropped his feet up on the desk andand we would just Start Talking with a tape recorder on, and essentially, what we arrived at was an extended oral history. Colin powell has an extraordinarily retentive mind. Hes a great storyteller. Every once in a while when we were sated with working on the book, he would regale me with his renditions of jamaican songs which had kind of a naughty double entendre lyric. It was a sstimulating experience. Cspan what do you know about him that we dont that gives you a certain view of him during this crisis as secretary of state . Guest well, im not sure whowhowho would not be aware of this now, but mymy sense is that werewere fortunate in that inin colin powell we have an unusual preparation for the work hes carrying on now. This man, from the military standpoint, was thethe nations chief military figure as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Frequently overlooked is the fact that he had already been a National Security adviser. He was reagans man at the nsc. And then he has developed a worldwide reputation for integrity, inintelligence, candor, so that in building coalitions, this is enormously important. So i think we have an extraordinary combination in colin powell, and i would say, in short, the man i see is resolute, but at the same time reasonable. Thatsthats a comfort. Cspan but just on a personal level, if somebody came to you and said that, joe, im gonna go meet colin powell. Ive got to do business with him, what would you tip him off to do . Guest well, iii will tell you, brian, what iwhat i told my wife when i first met colin powell. I went down to the pentagon the very day before he retired from 35 years in the military. Hes a jointchairman of the joint chiefs. And we were just kind of sizing each other up for the collaboration. And i went home and my wife said, well, what is he like . and i said, colin powell is the most comfortable man in his skin whom i have ever met. and what i would tell somebody is pretty much expect a direct, casual figure with no guile, no side to him. Cspan so how did you get to all this . Where werewhered you first get interested in being a writer . Guest well, i wanted to be a writer ever since i was a kid. Finally, ii backed into writing, i guess. I was, for many years, chief speechwriter for governor and later Vice President nelson rockefeller. Did that for a long time, as i say, and started outthe first five years i loved it. The next three years i tolerated it. The final three years i hated it. It had nothing do withwithwith my boss. It was that i wanted to write my own books. And finally, rather late in life i would say, in my 40s, i started writing my own histories and biographies. Cspan i counted in the front part of the book that this would be your ninth book. Did we miss any . Guest not that im going to admit to. Yes, these. Cspan youyou wrote in 94 about nuremberg, in 91 about william casey. Guest right. Cspan . In 98 about edward r. Murrow. Guest yeah. Cspan . In 90in 79, piercing the reich the penetration of nazi germany by american secret agents during world war ii. How much of that book led to what youre doing here . Guest well, itit led to a sense of confidence that i could write reasonably well about intelligence. And ii did that book. Ananother book that dealt with intelligence was casey, william j. Casey, who subsequently becomes the director of Central Intelligence and who i first had met inin talking to him about bill donovans oss. Casey, you know, as the brits would say, had a pretty good war. Casey waswas posted inin england during the latter part of world war ii, and he was responsible for one of the great triumphs during that period, which was something the british said couldnt be done, and that is we got a number of teams inside nazi germany, intointo Something Like 60 german cities so this would have been a coup for the oss and a coup for the Roosevelt Administration of the war. Cspan what is magic . Guest the us code crackers were working very hard prior to 1940 in breaking the japanese diplomatic code. They called it code purple. They finally broke that code, and therethere bit was broken sby a team led by a man named Frank Rowlett. Rowlett andand his people were now able, in effect, to place the president of the United States on the distribution list of the Japanese Foreign office because were breaking these messages, theyre available in a very shin a very short time. They mayit may be a message from the foreign offices in tokyo to the americanor toexcuse meto the japanese ambassadors in washington. Were breaking that code and these messages go up to preto president roosevelt very quickly. And thats what the magic operation was. Very important because our breaking of the japanese codes were responsible for our 1942 victory in the pacific at midway, which is a turning point of that war. And. Cspan Frank Rowlett is what kind of a guy back then and where did he operate from . Guest Frank Rowlett was operating out of a former girls school in the Northern Virginia suburbs of washington called arlington hall. He operated with a very small group of people. I cant imagine they made a great deal of money. They worked for the army as cryptographers, but they were very dedicated. And theirtheir breakthrough was really a significant advance for us. One of the things that theytheythey enabled us to doby breaking the japanese codes, we also were able to find out german intent. How did that come about . Because the japanese had an ambassador posted to berlin. His name was oshima. Oshima was a rabid pronazi. Consequently, he won the confidence of adolf hitler. Hitler would bring in oshima and say, mr. Ambassador, im going to send you to inspect the atlantic wall. I want you to see what im erecting to repel an allied invasion of the continent, or he would say to oshima, im going to tell you how many divisions i have deployed in norway, denmark, in belgium, most importantly inin france. And then he would say to oshima, upon thesethese rather critical revelations, and i dont want you to breathe a word ofof this to anybody. well, oshima did what a good diplomat does. He would report back to tokyo, virtually verbatim, his conversations with hitler through that diplomatic code that were breaking, and these messages then are available to the president , to his secretary of war, to the military chiefs. One of the most significant revelations was whenwhen hitler tells oshima, ill tell you where the allies are going to strike. Theyre going to strike at the pasdecalais, the narrowest part of the british channelthe english channel. And he reports this back to tokyo. We intercept it. We now know that hitler expects the invasion there. Why is that significant . Because that was our deception plan. Thats exactly what we wanted him to think, and we know its working. Cspan you say thatthat some 400 messages that fdr could have read from oshima . Guest therethere was Something Like 400 oshima intercepts per year. General marshall. Cspan per year . Guest yes. General marshall said that he was our best source of information on german intentions. He was ourourour best agent, an unwitting agent albeit. And for the president , it was not simply peeking at the other fellas hand. It was like holding the other fellas hand. Cspan so the president s in the oval office, and every day they could bring in these oshima messages. And did the japanese ever find out that the president knew all this stuff . Guest its really extraordinary. In 1942, after the battle of midway, the Chicago Tribune frontpaged a story which practically blew the secret. Thethethe tribune headline read, in effect, navy knew japanese war plan. Well, how else would we have known it . The storys virtually saying werewere breaking the japanese code. Astonishingly, while any cabdriver in chicago could have drawn that conclusion, the japanese considered their code unbreakable. They used the same compromised code to the end of the war. Cspan you mentioned the Chicago Tribune. And again, i want to try to relate to the atmosphere were living in right now. First of all, when you read this book, the first thing that comes to mind is that fdr knew a lot more than the American People ever knew. And i wonder if you think that our president today knows a lot more than well ever know about whats going on in the world. Guest well, ii would think the president does, i would think the intelligencegathering agencies do, bebecause, you know, its alits almost like a criminal investigation or a manhunt that were on now. Andandand by revealing everything you know, you also tip off your adversaries as to what you know. You dry up sources, you compromise people. I think it has to be that way. Cspan you point out that 20 cases of espionage happened here in the United States from outside coming in, and that at one point there were 16 of the 20 they had inin jail somewhere. But thewhat im getting at is how muchim looking at a story of willie copawis that the way you pronounce it . Guest yes. Yeah. Cspan how much of theyou know, the enemy coming inside this country did we have back in world war ii . Guest surprisingly little. The fbi had rounded up almost all agents operating with the United States. However, hitler was very unhappy with the job being done by his Intelligence Service, the abwehr, and pressured admiral kanaris, his intelligence chief, do something more dramatic. The result was an operation called pastorius in which eight germans who had lived in the United States, two of whom had been us citizens, andmen who had gone back to germany, were recruited to form this team. They were put ashore in the United States via submarine in the summer of 1942 to carry out espionage. One of them decided to rat on his other comrades, thinking this would make him a hero. Thisandandand so they were all quickly rounded up. This story isis fairly wellknown. What is far less known was roosevelts attitude towards these saboteurs. He immediately directs his attorney general, francis biddle, to organize the trial outside of the civilian courts through a military tribunal. And he said to biddle, in effect, these are agents of the enemy. Theyve come ashore in wartime thin civilian clothes. I dont think there can be any doubt as to what their fate must be. so he keeps thethis case out of the civilian courts because the rules of evidence are strict, the opportunities for appeal seem to be endless. A military court which he creates and he names all the members, and then he directs his attorney general, biddle, to prosecute the case, so that within eight weeks of these saboteurs setting foot in the United States, they have ball been condemned to death. Two of them subsequently are commuted. But what i found interesting was that this hudson river patrician, this amiable, genial Franklin Roosevelt, was underneath hard as nails. He expressed his only regret in this case that these men hadnt suffered the more ignominious fate of being hanged rather than being electrocuted. Cspan i mention willy copaw. Youyou write on page 387, he had never fit in. He was a bony 6 2 26yearold from a good greenwich, connectia good connecticut family but a social outcast and a loner. what happened there with copaw . Guest he got caught. Cspan what did he do, though . What was that story . Guest well, ccopaw, as youve just read, didnt seem to fit anywhere. He had german ancestry, and consequently, he was enamored ofof what was happening in germany and very much impressed by hitlers early victories and manages to get himself thrown out of the us navy for being overtly pronazi; manages, through merchant vessels, to get himself to europe, and he volunteers with another figure to carry on probably the last attempt the nazis made toto land saboteurs ashore on the United States. He meets one of his former schoolmates, who persuades him that this is madness. Copaw turns himself in, serves aaa modest sentence after the war. We knew we had victory in hand now, and there wasnt quite this sspirit of vengeance that fdr had expressed earlier. Cspan but you puti mean, one of the things thats interesting is that he was dropped into Frenchmans Bay up there ini assume, in maine. Guest yeah. Yeah. Cspan thats the way he got back into the country. Guest right. Hehe didhe did make it back to the United States wiwith a bundle of money. He had a good time with the fuehrers dollar supply but was useless as an agent. And i think thethe lack of appropriateness of this man and the Previous Team i talked about is an indication of how weak german intelligence was as targeted against the United States. Cspan whos this fellow right here . Guest that man is ernst putzi hanfstaengel. That was his nickname, putzi. He had been a close personal associate of hitlers. He handled the Foreign Press for hitler. He was a pretty good pianist, and he was dubbed hitlers piano player. Hanfstaengel was eventually driven out of hitlers circle by more ruthless nazi rivals, became fighting for his life, went to england, the war breaks out, and hanfstaengel is interned in a pow camp. He is subsequently sprung by one of fdrs personal agents, John Franklin carter, who i mentioned earlier, and they bring him to the United States and they install him in a safe house in washington suburbs. Now roosevelt is very interested in hanfstaengel because, first of all, he is halfamerican and he comes from a pedigreed new england family, and like fdr, he went to harvard. Hanfstaengels job is to provide the president with inside information on the cast of characters in the third reich and anything else he can provide of value. Much of what he provides isis more titillating than elevating he sent rereports to roosevelt about how hitler had exsent out agents to recover pornographic paintings that thethe fuehrer had done as a penniless artist in vienna. Hehe was able to report to the president on how the hitlereva braun romance had begun. He further was able to tell the president about hitlers sexual ambiguity. He also was able to deliver some intelligence or estimations that were of sof substance. For example, he was the first to insist that hitler, no matter how bad things got, would not surrender, that he would commit suicide first, which is, indeed, what happened. The president looked forward to these reports from hanfstaengel he called them my hitler bedtime stories. cspan what enwhat hapended up happening to putzi . Guest well, putzi sseemed to lose favor when he got done telling his bedtime stories or when he had revealed whatever he knew, whichabout the third reich and hes now a number of years divorced from that, and because hes kind of a pain in the neck who expects the United States to provide him with a piano, take care of all of his dental work. Hes finally shipped back to the pow camp in britain, and that is the end of his spy career. Cspan also, you have sprinkled in your book some stories that, if it were to happen today, they would keep some Cable Networks going for about three months. And what im getting at is things like the Eleanor Rooseveltjoseph lashe story, the personal side of that. Where do thosediddid thehow did the president did the president know about those kinds of stories . Guest well, theres antheres an interesting dichotomy inin hoovers relationship with fdr and with Eleanor Roosevelt. He got along surprisingly well. You have this genial, patrician, charming figure on one side and the dour hoover on the other, but they cooperated very closely. However, Eleanor Roosevelt had made the mistake once of referring to j. Edgar hoover as stupid because he was pressing a background clearance of a white house staffer who had been around for years. Hoover was not the kind of figure who would forget a slight, and consequently, when the army came up with a preposterous report that Eleanor Roosevelt had been involved in a sexual tryst with her young protege, joe lash, hoover kept this information in his own private files to the day of his death. Cspan what was the story, though . Didwas it ever proved that they had a relationship . Guest no. The Army Intelligence people that provided this information to hoover had made aa small error in their eavesdropping. They had found Eleanor Roosevelt in ain a hotel with lash visiting. But what they produced as proof of a tryst was young lashs involvement with hiwith his girlfriend. He was having an affair with a married woman at the time, who he subsequently married himself but thethe army milimilitary intelligence people areare taping this, theyre peeping throughthrough holes in the wall, and somehow it gets mixed up that its not lash and his girlfriend trudy, but its lash and Eleanor Roosevelt. Cspan how public has the Sumner Welles story been, the one in the train . Guest itsits fairly wellknown. And youwhat youre referring to is the fact that Sumner Welles, who was the undersecretary of state in the Roosevelt Administration and who was an important figure, he was roosevelts man. The secretary of state was cordell hull, and roosevelt pretty much circumvented him andand worked through Sumner Welles, who was an old family friend. Welles had made some sexual advances on trains, part of hishis business trips, to black porters on these trains, who reported him. This was concealed for a long time. It was two or three years before it finally erupted. Roosevelt is under tremendous pressure from people who fear that having a man with homosexual tendencies in such a sensitive position at statewe have to remember were not talking about the current world; were talking about the attitudes of theof the 1940s. Hes looked upon as aas aa security threat, and roosevelt very unhappily eventually dismisses Sumner Welles. What i thought was interesting was after he has tohas to force welles out of the state department, he considers sending welles on a mission to moscow for him, and hes talked out of that. But one can only imagine, with the capabilities of the nkvd toto blackmail and to lead people into compromising positions, what might have come of that assignment. Cspan and how does William Bullitt fit into all this . Guest William Bullitt was aa rival ofof Sumner Welles bullitt had been fdrs ambassador to france. Obviously he has to come back when france falls, and he is one who is pressuring the president to do something about Sumner Welles, to get rid of him. Roosevelt iisis loyal to people, and hes very fond of Sumner Welles, and he is very dependent on Sumner Welles. And after he hears of the tarring of Sumner Welles by bill bullitt, he, in effect, says to bill bullitt, what Sumner Welles is doing is wrong, but what you are doing to denigrate another man will send you down there, and he makes this hellward gesture. Cspan there are so many stories, as you know, in this book. You bein the back you have a legend of where you got a lot of it. You mentioned the library. How much time did you spend at the Hyde Park Library . Guest well, i was practically living there for many months. Hyde park was aa commute for me almost. It was about an hour and a half from my home in albany, new york. That was my greatest source. I also had marvelous results in my research at the national archives, the library of congress. The stories i was telling about the messages that were intercepted by ambassador oshima i managed to track down at the national archives. I dont think theyd been looked at very much or at all since that time. That was very rewarding for a researcher. Cspan well, oone of the things you have listed is psand you have the little designation so you can tell where somethings coming frompsf, president s secretaries file, roosevelt library. have a lot of people mined that file . Guest certain areas, things have been mined rather heavily. But therethere are always fresh revelations thatthatthat astonish me. For example, there was some suspicion that an economist by the name of lachlan curry, who was ana utility infielder for president roosevelt, took onundertook many trusted missionsthere was some suspicion about hishis loyalty, and im plowing through the archives at hyde park, and i find that lachlan curry was the white house man tracking the development of the secret explosive rdx. Somehow soviet union finds out about the development of rdx. On another occaon another occasion, he is assigned to track the development of a new bomber, the b29. Somehow the soviet union finds out about the b29. These were things that i discovered that ii dont imagine anybody paid any attention to before. So there are still, among these millions of pages, some Fresh Research nuggets. Cspan whatever happened to lachlan curry . Guest well, lachlan curry denied, after the war, thatthat he had ever been aa spy or that hes ever been a member of the communist party. Lachlan curry was one of a number ofofof people who were useful to the soviet union, who took the position at that period that russia is our ally, why should we hold anything back from the soviet union . So a ga guy like curry may not have been a spy in the white house in the most narrow, technical sense, but he certainly was aaaa priceless source of inof intelligence. Cspan its not often that i would cite a pr insert in a book, but this was the most complete pr advance work ive ever seen. I guess its from random house. Guest thats right, my publisher. Cspan and the reason i cite it is cause itin spite of reading the book, it makes it so easy. Im gonna go down the list of things that they point out here, because time goes by very quickly, but just give people just a little nugget of whatwhat youre talking about here. It says here, among the revelations discussed in roosevelts secret war, the failure of Us Intelligence to anticipate the surprise pearl harbor attack. guest well. Cspan whywhy did they fail . Guest because, aas i have explained to people at the time ori shexcuse me, after the fact, that thread of intelligence running from a to b to c to pearl harbor seems glaringly obvious, or from x to y to z. Cspan but did they have the inthe intelligence information . Guest theythey hadthey had the intelligence. They had the information, but it came in a flood tide. Ininin the roosevelt era, you know, roosevelt didnt get inintelligence decrypts that had been examined by analysts andand placed together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He got raw intelligence. You know, its very hard to sense, whats the direction of this . Whats it warning us about . What is our antagonist likely to do next . Also we hadwe had nobody on the ground. We had no spies inside jajapan, just as apparently wewe havent done very much to penetrate the inner sanctum ofof our current adversaries. Cspan another item fdr wanted to bomb tokyo before pearl harbor. guest yeah. Thats amazing. Roosevelt was outraged by the behavior of the japanese in the war against chinamachinegunning civilians in the street, bombing defenseless cities. He considered a planthis was a ya year in advance of pearl harborwhereby the United States would give b17 bombers to the chinese and train chinese pilots to fly them against tokyo. He was told that it would take too long to train these pilots. So the backup position was we would give the bombers to china; we would have american pilots resign from the air force and volunteer to fly them. So we would have american pilots flying american planes a year before pearl harbor against tokyo. He was advised by cooler heads that this would be an outright provocation and could only lead to war. Cspan the british fed fdr phony intelligence to draw the United States into the war. guest well, Winston Churchill was very eager to have the United States join the war against hitler, and consequently, british agents were to provide intelligence that would help rothis happen they told roosevelt about the fact that the germans had taken a map and cut latin america into six future nazi vassal states, thatthat a bolivian prous government was going to be toppled by the nazis, that we had 6,000 brazilian troopsexcuse me, 6,000 german troops in brazil. Roosevelt used some of this information in his speeches and in his fireside chats. It was all fabricated by theby the british to help encourage the United States to enter the war. Cspan fdrs yielding to churchill led to the theft of the abomb. guest yeah. A curious tale. In the beginning, the United States and britain were full partners in developing an atomic weapon, but as time went on and the United States launched the manhattan project, was putting millions of dollars into this, creating the facility at los alamos, we became the dominant partner and started cutting the british out of what was happening for security reasons. Churchill comes to the United States at one point, sees roosevelt at hyde park. Hes furious. He accuses roosevelt of reneging. So a compromise is reached the british will not be getting sinformation on the abomb imported into britain, but we will allow a small team of british physicists, mathematicians and other scientists to work at los alamos. One of them turns out to be klaus fuchs. So as we know, klaus fuchs steals major secrets of the bomb, gives this information to his soviet controllers. He is itat los alamos because of a deal cut between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Cspan what happens to klaus fuchs . Guest fuchs is finally unmasked several years after the war inin 1950. He was sentenced, i think, a 14year prison term. Eventually, upon his release, hehe continued his work in east germany. Cspan how did he get into this in the first place . Guest well, heklaus fuchs had been a young, avid communist in his native germany. Things got very tough forfor communists in germany as the nazis came to power, so he fled to Great Britain and eventually became a british citizen. Cspan back to the pr sheet here, whichby the way, did you write this . Guest i made some suggestions. Cspan because, you know, sometimes authors dont, and then theyre always surprised by whats in here. a leaked fdr plan led hitler to declare war on the United States. guest yeah, this is frequently overlooked, brian, ththat the United States did not cldeclare war on germany; we declared war only on japan on december 8th, 1941. Why did hitler do something seemingly so rash . There was a leak of an important document called rainbow five, a contingency plan that roosevelt had called for what would we need, should we go to war against germany by 1943 . How many divisions, how many ships, how many aircraft, how much fuel, etc. . The Chicago Tribune gets a hold of this secret plan and frontpages it, does not play it as a contingency plan. The tribune plays it as a war plan, and thethe headline says fdr, five million troops against germany by 43. And when hitler declares war on the United States four days after pearl harbor, hehe virtually quotes this. He says, frapresident roosevelt intends to make war against us by 1943, so in declaring war against the United States, he doesnt view it as being rash. He views it as anticipating the inevitable and getting the draw on the us. Cspan the relationship between fdr and josef stalin. guest well, thethe president recognized that stalin was taking 80 percent of the casualties during world war ii and inflicting 80 percent of the casualties on the germans. So he was very, very eager to cultivate and placate joe stalin, would bend over backwards. Ill gill give one example. There is the longstanding controversy about the katyn forest. Who murdered 9,000 poles in the katyn forest . The germans claimed the soviet union did it. The soviet Union Claimed that it happened when the germans occupied this territory. This story was rather controversial for a half a century. Interestingly enough, roosevelt and churchill knew from day one that these murders of the poles had been done by soviet union on joe stalins orders. They didnt say anything, again, because they did not want to alienate stalin, who could conceivably make a separate peace with germany; then we would have been left with the bulk of the fighting and the bulk of the casualties. Cspan page 273. This seemed to be one of those sentences that people who dont like fdr probably use when theyre talking about him. I thand this is a quote i think if i give stalin everything i possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wont try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. Where does that come from . Guest it comes out of Franklin Roosevelts character, which is a reliance on aan almost overwhelming charm. Roosevelt could charm almost anybody, and he thought that he could charm joe stalin by being utterlyutterly respectful and admiring and not questioning anything that stalin did, underrating the hard pragmatism of a joe stalin. Cspan did that hurt us in the negotiations . Guest well, it hurit hurt us to the extentfor example, the story i just told about the katyn forest, that wewe are not letting the American People know thethat the monstrousness of stalin is not all that different from that ofof adolf hitler. But inin the end, iii dont accept the charge thatthat roosevelt gave the store away at yalta, which is a common conclusion ofof many who discuss this era. He was too forgiving and too accommodating to stalin. I dobut ii dont think hehe gave anything away that created ourour postwar confrontation with the soviets. Cspan did you learn anything about his relationship with Winston Churchill that you hadnt known in the past . Guest it was a relationship that sthat started poorly. Franklin roosevelt had a tretremendous ego. As a young assistant secretary of the navy, he had visited britain, and hed come away with a very poor opinion of Winston Churchill. He said that Winston Churchill had not shown anyany respect for him. He called Winston Churchill a stinker. subsequently, whwhen subsequently, whwhen pearl harbor is attacked, churchill calls him and says, were all in the same boat now. they pretty much behaved that way, although we have two men, both withwith giant egos, andand theyand they do collide occasionally because britains obobobjectives are not the United States objectives, and this is clearest ininin churchills determination to win this war, at least in part, to be able to restore the british empire, much of which had been taken away by the japanese. And churand roosevelt wants to go in the opposite direction. He wants this war to serve the human end of allowing countries to develop theirtheirtheir own independence, their own freedom. So there is a real collision. Cspan youyou say that president kennedys father, joseph kennedy, called him at one point, quotehe was angry, called him a crippled sob. Do you remember where that quote came from, and why did he call him that . Guest joe kennedy had a son, joe kennedy jr. , the elder brother of the future president roosevelt was very insistent that a certain secret Operation Take place in which an aircraft would be loaded with high explosives. The pilot and the copilot would head it towards the target, v1s and v2s, the german secret weapon launching sites. The pilots would bail out and a guide plane wouldwouldwould, in effect, lead this flying bomb towards the target through radio remote control. Churchill opposed this. Churchill was afraid that the nazis would retaliate against london, and roosevelt took the position, we know theyre developing these secret weapons theyre gonna strike london anyway. so this plan, aphrodite, went forward, and on the first mission, joe kennedy and his pilot take off with this explosivesladen aircraft. Itit explodes mysteriously. Both men are killed. Joe kennedy, sr. , who at one point had been roosevelts ambassador to Great Britain, runs into harry truman at an event. Truman is then roosevelts Vice President ial candidate in the 1944 election. And joe kennedy says to harry truman, harry, what are you doing working for that crippled sob who killed my son joe . cspan theres a woman that is always around fdr in your book, someone named margaret suckley, Daisy Suckley. Who was she and where did you get the information about her . Guest Daisy Suckley was a distant cousin of roosevelt. Cspan shes in the middle in this picture. Guest let me take a little closer look. Yes. And Daisy Suckley was a person who roosevelt would confide in, things that he would not tell to anybody else. He felt perfectly comfortable. Because she adored him, he knew he had her absolute trust. So he tohe told her things that, for example, would have very much surprised other members of theof the roosevelt team, one of which was the state of fdrs health. From the last year at least of fdrs life, he whe was a dying man. He had been examined at the Bethesda Naval Center by cardiologists that realized he had astronomic blood pressure, that he was suffering from hardenedhardening of the arteries. Amazingly, roosevelt never asked a question. He never asked what was the result of these examinations . What had they found . A cardiologist is assigned to him in the white house who checks him out daily. He joshes with the cardiologist, gossips with him, never asks about his condition. So one would have the sense that he doesnt know whats happening or doesnt want to know. But he, on one occasion, in one of these private sessions with his confidante and distant cousin, Daisy Suckley, he says, in effect, ii am very sick, much sicker than i have been told, and if i am sick enough, i will not run for another term. I must be convinced that i can complete another term. hes talking about a fourth term. And as we know, hehehes right on one count. He runs again. Hes wrong on another count, he dies only four months into his fourth term. Cspan unfortunatelyno, fortunately, i have about a