Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44

Rating:
Summary: Excellent research
Review: Mahl does an excellent job unearthing data that the British secret services sorely wish had remained secret. With copious footnotes, Mahl shows how Britain manipulated public opinion, lied to the American people, and subverted the democratic process. Mahl also demonstrates how Britain could not have pulled this off without the complicity of American Anglophile elites with stronger devotion to a foreign power than to their own country.

While the information is interesting and well-supported, I found the writing style of this book to be tedious. Despite the fascinating material, this book is not written in a way that grabs your attention for a sustained read. Still, it's history, not a novel, so at least some of this is to be expected. If you have any interest in the intelligence field, and particularly the effect of covert operations on politics, policy and civil society, I recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating information, but a tedious read
Review: Mahl does an excellent job unearthing data that the British secret services sorely wish had remained secret. With copious footnotes, Mahl shows how Britain manipulated public opinion, lied to the American people, and subverted the democratic process. Mahl also demonstrates how Britain could not have pulled this off without the complicity of American Anglophile elites with stronger devotion to a foreign power than to their own country.

While the information is interesting and well-supported, I found the writing style of this book to be tedious. Despite the fascinating material, this book is not written in a way that grabs your attention for a sustained read. Still, it's history, not a novel, so at least some of this is to be expected. If you have any interest in the intelligence field, and particularly the effect of covert operations on politics, policy and civil society, I recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent research
Review: Professor Mahl provides and excellent overview of British covert efforts to drag America into WWII. Mahl's writing style is a bit dry, but the book compels the reader to seriously consider that a foreign power could again control out media, politicians, and polling data.

Rating:
Summary: Power structure at work
Review: The book is an excellent way to understand how money, sex and power are the keystone of achieving short term objectives in the halls of power.

British Intelligence begins by understanding British history and foreign policy. This can be seen from Caesar's calling them Britons meaning the "People With Painted Faces" as he attempted conquest. The Celts fought a guerrilla war against Caesar and he even knew when to leave such determined people to making their own destiny with Rome. Such determination continued when Queen Elizabeth had to change the minds of several traitors whom she persuades to be sons of England rather servants to Spain. They helped defeat the Spanish Armada with such 'blowback spying' resulting in the 'fire in sky' tactics used to burn the Armada into history.

The author briefly explains English's Divide and Conquer policies against great powers, how the British Empire loses over one fourth its wealth and the need to have America enter the war to save democracies. The book details many openly negative actions of British Intelligence towards American values, but the English never let details get in way of knowing what is important for England to survive. The book only reinforces that British Intelligence sometimes must be nasty to friends to help fight real enemies in the face of two devils to choose from in usefulness.

It is noteworthy that Russia the biggest land mass nation, China the most populous country, America the largest industrial power and Great Britain the greatest empire on earth were all on the verge of defeat in 1941. Only England's intelligence services seem to be doing anything about countering this threat to freedom from dark forces abroad.

British Secret Service was right to influence America in adopting international global policies to counter Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo of that era and later communism. Upon reflection, I rather have MI-6 participation in America elections to counter Indonesian, Russian and Chinese contributions or other foreign powers that do the same thing to undermine freedom. It is so easy to condemn England for doing many things outlined in the book, but it is far harder to argue otherwise. The judgment of having Americans help rid Nazis, Fascists and Militarists cannot be question. Today, English Intelligence stands with us against the Taliban, Bin Laden and terrorism. I for one welcome every cunning method they can create to remove such a blight from the world.

Consequently, I can forgive past sins in manipulating our constitutional process that did not result in all they sought in the end either. As America prepares for a War on Terrorism, it is now in our interests to permit Intelligence Organizations to do what is necessary to make a safer world.

The book publication is an indication of the passing of British Intelligence to the American cousins they created. Or perhaps it is being used as a perception of power serving as a warning to others in the future. In the end, this is an admirable read based on a terrific examination that only a few can understand. It will leave the common citizen into believing it is just a fairy tale, but full reality is often a nightmare compared to a dream.

A group of evil men have decided to perverse Islamic fanatical dreams causing a worldwide nightmares recently, it is time for them to worry about sleeping in peace with the unleashing of such Organizations! This book should serve of a new nightmare for those who practice such terrorism, if the British did such things to friends in order to stop thugs in the world back then, what can such enemies expect today so justice, freedom and global cooperation are secure tomorrow?

Rating:
Summary: Churchill and FDR -- the Two-Headed Monster
Review: The book's thesis is that British and U.S. "elites" maneuvered us into WWII to serve the interests of the State. The corrupt Churchill and FDR and their respective intelligence agencies blindfolded the American public into believing that U.S. entrance into the war was justifiable on moral and political grounds.

As usual, the docile masses were swept away in all the rhetoric. Every attempt was made to smear the isolationists as Hitleresque and un-American. More often than not, with such media rhetoricians as Walter Lippman, the attempts were successful. Even today, the uneducated public is convinced that the Old Right anti-interventionist movement was Communist!

Mahl covers some old ground--for those who are familiar with the FDR-Churchill deception--but he writes a compelling story.

Rating:
Summary: For our own good, or for their own purposes?
Review: This is a shocking book. No, let's put it another way. I would have been shocked by this book had I not been educated about the corruption of the press with a crash course during the Clinton administration. What's truly revealing about Mahl's book is how long the press has been sold out to prevailing political power. In the period covered by the book, the prevailing power was the British and their internationalist collaborators here in the United States.

The legacy of the British intelligence service in the U.S. lives on with their spawn, the CIA:

"Further testimony to the success of British intelligence operations can be seen in the actions of Americans who, having learned the intelligence trade from the British, later flattered their teachers by copying their successful methods. The aggressive offensive spirit of British intelligence at war became the model for generations of American intelligence officers and government officials in the Cold War." ---

"Was [British] Special Operations Executive officer Bill Morrell planting twenty items a day in the media? The CIA planted eighty. Did BSC organize opposition for political candidates? The CIA did the same: the Italian election of 1948 is a known example. Did BSC introduce women and agents of influence to politicians? 'The CIA maintanis an extensive stable of 'agents of influence' around the world..from valets and mistresses to personal secretaries....'"

The planted stories in the American press included polls by British-penetrated "reputable" polling firms giving the impression that Americans were a good deal more eager to support the British in the war in Europe than was actually the case. It also included buying off American journalists, a task made easier by the fact that the Roosevelt administration and powerful Americans like Walter Lippmann and Nelson Rockefeller collaborated with the British in their efforts.

The organization of political opposition included setting up the lifelong Democrat, Wendell Willkie, to oppose FDR as a Republican in the 1940 presidential election, giving the electorate no genuine anti-war choice.

The "agents of influence" were used to neutralize hopeless womanizer, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who had been one of the most powerful voices against American foreign entanglements. His own carnal entanglements, with the help of the British, led him astray.

This book should be read along with Robert B. Nesbitt's "Day of Deceit, the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor." Together, they remove all doubt that Roosevelt--or whoever was pulling his strings--put first priority on coming to the aid of the British. Mahl shows that he was quite willing to see our democratic institutions and our "free" press subverted to achieve that end. Nesbitt shows definitively that Roosevelt and his coterie were also willing to provoke the Japanese into an attack while depriving commanders on the ground with the information needed to combat it, leading to the deaths of thousands of sailors and soldiers.

Maybe it is a concession they make in order to get their books published, but both Nesbitt and Mahl suggest strongly that it was all worth it. Roosevelt and the conniving elitists with or for whom he worked, they imply, did it for our own good. I can't quite shake the suspicion, though, that they simply did it for their own purposes.

But for Mahl's cop out in the end, I would have given the book five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Where Mahl Goes Wrong
Review: Thomas Mahl's Desperate Deception includes a lot of information about British-sponsored efforts to influence America away from isolation and toward helping Britain against Nazi Germany. However his understanding of the public opinion polls of that period is extremely flawed. He claims (and some reviewers repeat) that the Gallup, Cantril, and Roper polls were "rigged" by British intelligence to produce a false picture of American public opinion. This is simply untrue. These pollsters used a wide variety of question wordings and posed a variety of alternatives to assess public opinion, and they all came up with the conclusion that - at least after the fall of France in 1940 - the great majority of the public favored "all aid to Britain short of war," even if giving such aid risked actually getting into the war. They did not, however, favor immediately declaring war against Germany and sending troops to Europe. That didn't win majority support until Pearl Harbor. (Hadley Cantril's Gauging Public Opinion (1944) gives many details of the pollsters' testing the limits of American willingness to become involved as do his subsequent articles in Public Opinion Quarterly.) As to the "British agent" in the Gallup organization, Mahl simply has it wrong. David Ogilvy, later a famous advertising man, worked for Gallup in studies of what audiences wanted in Hollywood movies; he resigned and went to work for British intelligence on Latin America. He had nothing to do with Gallup's questions on aid to Britain. See my article in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Summer, 2003. Mahl claims that a poll sponsored by an anti-interventionist group produced very different findings from the Gallup and other published polls - it did not, rather finding very similar results. Mahl's information on the polls and the pollsters is very inaccurate, because he is trying to fit everything into his general thesis.

Rating:
Summary: Fullest account on British manipulation of American opinion
Review: With Thomas E. Mahl's book, we have our fullest account of hidden British operations. Like Nicholas John Cull's and Francis MacDonnell's books, Mahl's study is based on a doctoral dissertation, this one completed in 1994 at Kent State University. Mahl's archival research is extensive. British sources include the records of the Foreign Office, the H. Montgomery Hyde papers, and the manuscripts of the British publicist Eveline Mary Paterson (Lady Cotter). American collections encompass the papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, William J. Donovan, the columnist Drew Pearson, Ernest Cuneo (ghostwriter for the sensationalist journalist Walter Winchell), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mahl clearly shows how extensive British operations were and in the process very ably illuminates the complicated network of intelligence groups and leaders. [Candian-born industrialist Sir William] Stephenson and his British Security Coordination (BSC) established operatives in the United States on a massive scale, engaging in "dirty tricks" in order to manipulate the nation into war and, in the process, to destroy isolationism as a respectable intellectual position. Without question, as Mahl shows, the British covertly worked in tandem with such interventionist bodies as the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, Fight for Freedom, and the Irish-American Defense Association. Similarly, there was hardly an administration move, including the destroyers-for-bases deal and lend-lease, that the British did not secretly promote. They helped spearhead the federal investigation of New York congressman Hamilton Fish, who led the non-interventionist of the House, and possibly committed perjury in the process. They fabricated a "secret German map" that indicated German designs to conquer South America and that was cited by FDR in a speech given in late October 1941. They helped ghostwrite an attack on Standard Oil of New Jersey, which had entered into cartel arrangements with Germany's I. G. Farben.

Certain names stand out. The interventionist columnist Dorothy Thompson frequently met with British intelligence officials. Another columnist, Walter Lippmann, advised the British to initiate surreptitious operations against anti-interventionists. Walter Winchell's scriptwriter, Ernest Cuneo, was fed data by the British operative Sandy Griffith, who also engineered stacked polling at conventions of the American Legion and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Several New York Times correspondents, among them James Reston, were fed material by British intelligence. For the first time, the Rockefellers come to the fore. The family gave the BSC rent-free space in Rockefeller Center and helped subsidize Fight for Freedom. Holding the post of coordinator of inter-American affairs, Nelson Rockefeller aided British intelligence in Latin America.

The book is marred by careless errors.... More significant, there is hardly an interventionist group that Mahl does not label a "British interventionist front," basing his claim on a boast of British operations officer Sidney (Bill) Morrell.... Certainly the British were involved in secret efforts, some of which were worse than shady.... At the same time, Mahl is wrong in his implicit assumption that the British played the crucial role in energizing American intervention, that most prominent FDR backers he discusses were little more than British puppets, and that Roosevelt's policies usually lacked the support of his countrymen. Some line of distinction must be drawn between interventionist moves plotted by the British and those fostered by Americans on their own. By his overstatements Mahl mars what could have been a superb study.