Positive Quiddity: Sir William Stephenson

William Stephenson may have been the most important man in private life of the 20th century.

Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC (January 23, 1897 – January 31, 1989) was a Canadiuan soldier, airman, businessperson, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best-known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond. Ian Fleming himself once wrote, "James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is ... William Stephenson."

Early life

Stephenson was born William Samuel Clouston Stanger on January 23, 1897, in Point Douglas, Winnipeg, Manitoba. His mother was from Iceland, and his father was from the Orkney Islands. He was adopted early by an Icelandic family after his parents could no longer care for him, and given his foster parents' name, Stephenson.

He left school at a young age and worked as a telegrapher. In January 1916 he volunteered for service in the 101st Overseas Battalion (Winnipeg Light Infantry), Canadian Expeditionary Force. He left for England on the S.S. Olympic on June 29, arriving on July 6, 1916. The 101st Battalion was broken up in England, and he was transferred to the 17th Reserve Battalion in East Sandling, Kent. On July 17 he was transferred to the Canadian Engineer Training Depot. He was attached to the Sub Staff, Canadian Training Depot
Headquarters, in Shorncliffe, and was promoted to Sergeant (with pay of Clerk) in May 1917. In June 1917 he was "on command" to the Cadet Wing of the Royal Flying Corps at Denham Barracks, Buckinghamshire.
On August 15, 1917, Stephenson was officially struck off the strength of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and granted a commission in the Royal Flying Corps. Posted to 73 Squadron on February 9, 1918, he flew the British Sopwith Camel biplane fighter and scored 12 victories to become a flying ace before he was shot down by German ace Justus Grassmann and captured by the Germans on July 28, 1918. He was held as a prisoner of war and repatriated on December 30, 1918.

By the end of World War I, Stephenson had achieved the rank of Captain and earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. His medal citations perhaps foreshadow his later achievements, and read:

For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When flying low and observing an open staff car on a road, he attacked it with such success that later it was seen lying in the ditch upside down. During the same flight he caused a stampede amongst some enemy transport horses on a road. Previous to this he had destroyed a hostile scout and a two-seater plane. His work has been of the highest order, and he has shown the greatest courage and energy in engaging every kind of target.
  - Military Cross citation, Supplement to the London Gazette, June 22, 1919.

This officer has shown conspicuous gallantry and skill in attacking enemy troops and transports from low altitudes, causing heavy casualties. His reports, also, have contained valuable and precise information. He has further proved himself a keen antagonist in the air, having, during recent operations, accounted for six enemy aeroplanes.
  - Distinguished Flying Cross citation, Supplement to the London Gazette, September 21, 1928.

Interbellum

After World War I, Stephenson returned to Winnipeg and with a friend, Wilf Russell, started a hardware business — inspired largely by a can opener that Stephenson had taken from his POW camp. The business was unsuccessful, and he left Canada for England. In England, Stephenson soon became a wealthy industrialist with business contacts in many countries. In 1924 he married American tobacco heiress Mary French Simmons, of Springfield, Tennessee. Stephenson patented a system for transmitting photographic images via wireless that produced 100,000 pounds sterling per annum in royalties for the 18 year run of the patent (circa $12 million per annum adjusted for inflation in 2010). In addition to his patent royalties, Stephenson swiftly diversified into several lucrative industries: radio manufacturing; aircraft manufacturing; Pressed Steel Company that manufactured car bodies for the British motor industry; construction and cement as well as Shepperton Studios and Earls Court. Stephenson had a broad base of industrial contacts in Europe, Britain and North America as well as a large group of contacts in the international film industry. Shepperton Studios were the largest film studios in the world outside of Hollywood.

As early as April 1936, Stephenson was voluntarily providing confidential information to British opposition MP Winston Churchill about how Adolf Hitler's Nazi government was building up its armed forces and hiding military expenditures of eight hundred million pounds sterling. This was a clear violation of the terms of the Treatyt of Versailles and showed the growing Nazi threat to European and international security. Churchill used Stephenson's information in Parliakment to warn against the appeasement policies of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

World War II

After World War II began (and over the objections of Sir Steward Menzies, wartime head of British intelligence) now-Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent Stephenson to the United States on June 21, 1940, to covertly establish and run British Security Coordination (BSC) in New York City, over a year before U.S. entry into the war.

BSC, headquartered at Room 3603, Rockefeller Center, became an umbrella organization that by war's end represented the British intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS), SOE (Special Operations Executive and PWE (Political Warfare Executive) throughout North America, South America and the Caribbean.

Stephenson's initial directives for BSC were to 1) investigate enemy activities; 2) institute security measures against sabotage to British property; and 3) organize American public opinion in favor of aid to Britain. Later this was expanded to include "the assurance of American participation in secret activities throughout the world in the closest possible collaboration with the British". Stephenson's official title was British Passport Control Officer. His unofficial mission was to create a secret British intelligence network throughout the western hemisphere, and to operate covertly and broadly on behalf of the British government and the Allies in aid of winning the war. He also became Churchill's personal representative to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Stephenson was soon a close adviser to Roosevelt, and suggested that he put Stephenson's good friend William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan in charge of all U.S. intelligence services. Donovan founded the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which in 1947 would become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As senior representative of British intelligence in the western hemisphere, Stephenson was one of the few persons in the hemisphere who were authorized to view raw Ultra transcripts of German Emigma ciphers that had been decrypted at Britain's Bletchley Park facility. He was trusted by Churchill to decide what Ultra information to pass along to various branches of the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Under Stephenson, BSC directly influenced U.S. media (including newspaper columns by Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson), and media in other hemisphere countries, toward pro-British and anti-Axis views. Once the U.S. had entered the war, in 1941–44 BSC went on to train U.S. propagandists from the United States Office of War Information in Canada. BSC covert intelligence and propaganda efforts directly affected wartime developments in Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, the Central American countries, Bermuda, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Stephenson worked without salary. He hired hundreds of people, mostly Canadian women, to staff his organization and covered much of the expense out of his own pocket. His employees included secretive communications genius Benjamin deForest “Pat” Bayly and future advertising wizard David Ogilvy. Stephenson employed Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, codenamed CYNTHIA, to seduce Vichy French officials into giving up Enigma ciphers and secrets from their Washington embassy. At the height of the war Bayly, a University of Toronto professor from Moose Jaw, created the Rockex, the fast secure communications system that would eventually be relied on by all the Allies.

Not least of Stephenson's contributions to the war effort was the setting up by BSC of Camp X in Whitby, Ontario, the first training school for clandestine operations in Canada and North America. Some 2,000 British, Canadian and American covert operators were trained there from 1941 through 1945, including students from ISO, OSS, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Roya Canadian Mounted Police, United States Navy and Military Intelligence, and the United States Office of War Information, among them five future directors of what would become the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Camp X graduates operated in Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Balkans) as well as in Africa, Australia, India and the Pacific. They included Ian Fleming (though there is evidence to the contrary), future author of the James Bond books. It has been said that the fictional Goldfinger's raid on Fort Knox was inspired by a Stephenson plan (never carried out) to steal $2,883,000,000 in Vichy French gold reserves from the French Caribbean colony of Martinique.

BSC purchased from Philadelphia radio station WCAU a ten-kilowatt transmitter and installed it at Camp X. By mid-1944, Hydra (as the Camp X transmitter was known) was transmitting 30,000 and receiving 9,000 message groups daily — much of the secret Allied intelligence traffic across the Atlantic.

Honors

Stephenson died in 1989, aged 93, in Paget, Bermuda.

For his wartime work, he was knighted by the British in the 1945 New Year's Honours List. In recommending Stephenson for knighthood, Winston Churchill wrote [on the list of candidates, to the King's attention]: "This one is dear to my heart." In 1946 Stephenson received the Presidential Medal for Merit, at that time the highest U.S. civilian award; he was the first non-American to receive the medal. General “Wild Bill” Donovan presented the award. The citation paid tribute to Stephenson's "valuable assistance to America in the fields of intelligence and special operations".

The "Quiet Canadian" was recognized by his native land late: he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada on December 17, 1979, and invested in the Order on February 5, 1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson