Intelligence

British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940-1945

H-Net Review: Charles C. Kolb on British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940-1945

William Samuel Stephenson, who served as Britain's intelligence chief in the Western Hemisphere during World War II, was born 11 January 1896 at Point Douglas, Manitoba, Canada and died 31 January 1989 at Paget, Bermuda. The son of a lumber-mill owner, Stephenson left college to join the Royal Canadian Engineers (1914-1915) and fought with the British Royal Flying Corps in France (1915-1918). Stephenson's post-World War I business ventures in construction, real estate, and the steel industry, and inventions and manufacturing (radios, phonographs, automobiles, and airplanes) were highly successful. As a Canadian millionaire industrialist, his business contacts were valuable to the British war effort in the late 1930s. The new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, dispatched Stephenson to the neutral United States on 21 June 1940 to establish a secret spy network in the Western Hemisphere. His official title was in New York City was British Passport Control Officer (PCO), a rather transparent cover for the local representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The British Security Coordination (BSC) Office, headquartered in Rockefeller Center, became an umbrella organization that would, by the end of the conflict, represent MI5, SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), SOE (Special Operations Executive), and PWE (Political Warfare Executive) throughout North and South America and the Caribbean. In 1945 Stephenson received a knighthood in the New Year's Honours List for his service.

The final part of the book, "Part IX: Communications Network," has five chapters: Chapter 1: "Developing Speed and Security" (pp. 447-459); Chapter 2: "Hydra and the South American Scheme" (pp. 460-466); Chapter 3: "Illicit Wireless Intelligence" (pp. 466-477); Chapter 4: "Complexities of Traffic Exchange" (pp. 478-497); Chapter 5: "Purchasing Secret Equipment" (pp. 498-506); and "Conclusion" (p. 507). The BSC was facing a serious problem in communications because SIS messages exchanged between London and New York had to pass through an FBI channel in Washington, DC and a British Communications Centre (Whaddon, Buckinghamshire). The number and length of the messages was becoming a serious issue and would reach 50,000 encrypted messages per day by 1943. The report documents the development of Telekrypton cyphering machines, Transatlantic lines, Rockex I encyphering and decyphering, and its replacement by Rockex II beginning in March 1944.

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