Review by Jimmy Burns of
‘Need to Know’ , World War 11 and the rise of American intelligence by Nicholas Reynolds (Mariner Books)
Blame Ian Fleming but my generation of fellow British public-school boys – privileged private educated friends, some of whom went on to enter the secret world after being born in the early stages of the Cold War -developed our early perception of US intelligence through the prism of James Bond’s alliance with his CIA buddy the similarly fictitious Felix Leiter.
The Texan Leiter ,as dramatised by different actors in the blockbuster 007 movies, was a somewhat secondary character in the original Fleming novels. He was portrayed as Bond’s occasionally suffering (he was once half eaten by a shark owned by a sadistic covert enemy) junior partner. He was the genial somewhat laid-back cowboy ally of the sophisticated superhero upper-crust Royal navy officer turned MI6 action man that monopolises the best scenes, and has the pick of the best girls, a partnership that suggested that the special relationship between American and British spies worked well on the personal front , as long as London had the lead role.
While Bond may have proved a questionable if popular promotional vehicle and recruitment agent for MI6 in the past, it has taken the post-war generation of intelligence historians to bring a sharper focus into how spies operate in the real world, not least a greater understanding of those who represent superpowers formed, or in the making.
As a former CIA serving officer, turned historian of the agency’s museum, Nicholas Reynolds is a practiced hand when it comes to the business of espionage. He published an earlier controversial book on Ernest Hemingway and his ‘secret adventures’ suggesting that the renowned 20th century author worked for both the Russians and the Americans. It was a racy read and became a hit on the New York Times best-selling list.
Reynolds more recently made good use of the covid pandemic to extend his research on both sides of the Atlantic , presumably by phone , email, and zoom, and has now delivered a very readable and sound history of US intelligence from its early days in the inter-war years, to its contribution to the Allied victory WW2 when the foundation of intelligence activity was laid for the Cold War and beyond.
The title ‘Need to Know’ draws on a phrase well known to inner government circles on both sides of the Atlantic – the selective and carefully targeted nature of dissemination of secret intelligence-but which Reynolds also applies to a history of occasional failure as well as success, betrayal and loyalty, lessons learnt but also ignored.
It was the imperial British who set up the foundations of an under resourced but reasonably professional security and intelligence apparatus during WW1 and its aftermath , and the Russians who developed their international network of spies post-revolution (managing to set up in the UK relatively easily in the 1930’s a network of agents among old British chums among Cambridge graduates ) , not least once the paranoid and conspiratorial Stalin came to power. The Americans by contrast were late comers to spy craft as they were to pursuing their destiny as a global power.
Readers other than the already specialised in the intelligence field should resist fast forwarding some of the early chapters. They deal with a period during the 1920’s and 1930’s when the US, hard as it may seem to imagine today, had no foreign intelligence to speak of and instead relied on the early stages of signals intelligence as developed by different sectors of the military. It was a recipe for dysfunctional operations, and poor outcomes.
Indeed, as Reynolds reminds us, the US military sigint capability failed to identify and disseminate an accurate advanced warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour , arguably one of the biggest intelligence failures in 20th century history, even if it did have the benefit of ending US isolationism.
US entry into WW2 gave Churchill the military support he desperately needed to avert a German occupation of the British Isles and to launch a post Dunkirk counter offensive against the axis powers, in Asia, North Africa, Italy, and mainland Europe all of which involved improved intelligence and special operations capability.
It is when writing about WW2 that Reynolds gets into his stride with a narrative full of character and intrigue. He does not duck away from the tensions that developed between allies and among the Americans themselves as a new US foreign intelligence service and special operations , the OSS (precursor of the CIA) came into being.
Looming large among the dramatis personae of this well researched and deftly written book are several big egos- the founder of the OSS ‘Wild’ Bill Donovan , the chief honcho of the Federal Bureau of Investigation J.Edgar Hoover, and the Canadian William Stephenson, who was entrusted by MI6 with setting up the wartime multiagency British Security Coordination in New York.
Turf wars were played out with a US presidency-most of it Roosevelt’s-that, according to Reynolds never really had an interest in or grasp of how espionage could be effectively used. They loom large in a book written by an author that does not pull his punches. During the 1930’s, organisational rivalries surface with US naval and army separately developing signals capability , only to poorly coordinate between themselves or share with other departments of state. Reynolds provides a fascinating account of Hoover’s protracted and ultimately failed attempt to extend his power over foreign and counterintelligence while retaining control over major crime investigation and national security.
The need for Hoover and Donovan to strike up a relationship based on friendship, mutual respect , and shared knowledge, proved a forlorn hope of the unsung heroes who worked in cross-over areas with a shared aim of protecting the US and serving the Allied cause.
Among Donovan’s senior ‘officers’ , Reynolds rightly errs on the side of appreciation of David Bruce, a future post-war ambassador in London who was a key player in the rise of American intelligence in WW2. The hardworking if also bon vivant aristocratic OSS London chief Bruce was a real-life kindred spirit of the MI6 club coterie who understood the Brits and felt at home in wartime London.
While Bruce worked, as Reynolds puts it at the “crossroads of the Anglo-American alliance figuring out its needs for intelligence”, the OSS’s Allen Dulles was left to wage almost his own private war in Berne, Switzerland : “at Hitler’s doorstep, surrounded by enemy territory, left largely to his own devices to do what he thought an American spy should do.”
As things turned out , Dulles , had he been British, might have been penned by Le Carre, as he struggled to pursue his links with anti-Hitler German conspirators, only to find that he lacked the political and military support, given a policy agreed by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin of pushing for the total and unconditional surrender of all Germans
As for Stephenson, it is just as well that Reynolds has kept to the unquestionable facts of his important role in WW2 intelligence-namely encouraging Donovan’s cooperation with the British. Reynolds wisely avoids repeating some of the more outlandish and fictitious claims made by the so-called ‘Intrepid’ Stephenson’s ghost writers, ‘official’ biographers and other admirers including Ian Fleming who allowed his imagination to spill into the Bond books.
Given the lack of joined up organisation and strategy at the top it was a small miracle that the Americans and the Brits still managed operationally to produce examples of wartime cooperation in codebreaking , spying , counterintelligence, and special operations that would develop , not without peaks and troughs, in the Cold War and the years beyond it. That said, Reynolds chooses not to go into detail about the extent to which the Russians planted the seeds of distrust between Washington and London with their highly placed moles straddling the developing special relationship , not least Kim Philby on which there is already an extensive bibliography.
As Reynolds himself acknowledges, his book is not an exhaustive history but rather in the spirit of the title , selective of character and topics that are representative and illustrate trends. He has skilfully drawn together and written up his material in way that makes the narrative accessible to a general reader and the content a useful point of reference for the intelligence specialist.
*Jimmy Burns OBE is a British author & journalist. A former security and intelligence correspondent with the Financial Times, he is the author of Papa Spy: Love, Faith, & Betrayal in Wartime Spain (Walker Books & Bloomsbury) and The Land that Lost its Heroes : How Argentina lost the Falklands War (Bloomsbury) . He has recently been researching and writing a biography based on of the life and times of the Catholic MI6 and MI5 officer the late Walter Bell.
