The story of BSC seemed to be one of those wartime secrets that was never to be wholly revealed, like Bletchley Park and the Enigma machine decryptions. But the Enigma story was eventually made public and has been written about since the mid-1970s, with films, TV plays and novels.

Somehow BSC and the role of British agents in the US before Pearl Harbor has remained almost wholly undisclosed. Historians of the British Secret Services know about BSC and its operations, yet despite this book, the world at large remains virtually unaware of it.

The reason is the story of BSC and its operations is embarrassing to the US and remains so today. The document condescending about American gullibility: "The simple truth is the United States is inhabited by people of many conflicting races, interests and creeds. These people, though fully conscious of their wealth and power in the aggregate, are still unsure of themselves individually, still basically on the defensive."

BSC set out to manipulate "these people" and was very successful at so doing - hardly the kind of attitude countries involved in a "special relationship" should display. But that relationship is a myth of course, invented by Churchill after the war, and was been bought into wholesale by every subsequent British prime minister (with the possible exception of Harold Wilson), but certainly including - as some commentators contend - a delusional Tony Blair.

As the secret history of the BSC shows, countries act exclusively to serve their own interests. A commentator in the Washington Post who read the BSC history remarked, "Like many intelligence operations, this one involved exquisite moral ambiguity.

The British used ruthless methods to achieve their goals; by today's peacetime standards, some of the activities may seem outrageous. Yet they were done in the cause of Britain's war against the Nazis - and by pushing America towards intervention, the British spies helped win the war."

Would BSC's activities eventually have led the US to join the war in Europe? The probability is high, as US public opinion was turning towards the end of 1941 - though isolationist sentiments remained influential in certain sectors of government.

BSC's propaganda and relentless news manipulation deserved much of the credit for that change, in the event, matters were taken out of BSC's hands. On the morning of Sunday, December 7 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the question of American neutrality was gone for ever. •

Even by today's standards, BSC's media reach was impressive, Karl Rove would have been in seventh heaven. It had its own radio station, WRUL, and its own press agency, the Overseas News Agency (ONA), that fed stories to mainstream US media.

The station would broadcast a story from ONA which then became a US "source" suitable for distribution to other US radio stations and newspapers. BSC's reach also included prominent American columnists such as Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, with planted stories in many newspapers including the New York Post, Herald Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.

Stories would spread exponentially without suspecting they emanated from three floors of the International Building of the Rockefeller Center [on 5th Avenue between 50/51st St]. BSC's propaganda was successfully circulated as 100% bona fide news reporting.

In October 1941, a map was allegedly stolen from a German courier's bag in Buenos Aires. The map claimed to show a South America divided into five new states - each with their own Gauleiter - one of which, Neuspanien, included Panama (which includes the Panama Canal - an important lifeline for the American economy). This proved to be one of BSC's most successful operations. The aim was to suggest that Hitler intended to invade and annex huge swathes of Central and South America. An obvious threat to US economic interests. The map was accepted as legitimate by the Americans and Roosevelt used it in a pro-war speech on October 27 1941: "This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well."

As a piece of anti-Nazi propaganda it could not have been bettered. The BSC had a highly accomplished document forging facility in Ontario, Canada, so was the map genuine? According to author William Boyd, only two of these maps were made; one was in Hitler's hands, the other with the German ambassador in Buenos Aires. So what was a courier in Buenos Aires doing with a copy? And while it's possible, even highly probable that the courier (and other German operatives) were being followed by BSC agents in Argentina, it all fits just too nicely.

Boyd comments that the South American map and other BSC schemes were written up after the war for private circulation by former members of BSC. Only 10 typescript copies ever existed. Churchill and Stephenson had one each and the remainder were given to other high-ranking spies in the SIS.

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