Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [244]
Chapter 11
1. Harry Vaughan, President Truman’s aide, years later said flatly that Corcoran had been tapped during the Roosevelt era – as he was to be during the Truman presidency. No records survive of such a tap during the Roosevelt period, but that does not necessarily mean it did not happen. Not all such records survived. (D, p. 109, and see B, pp. 163ff.)
Chapter 12
1. Britain did not fully share the secret with the U.S. until 1943.
2. Some scholars have questioned whether Stephenson really had access to Roosevelt. The President’s appointment records do not reflect such visits, but the Roosevelt Library Archivist notes that he often had ‘off the record’ meetings, which went unrecorded. Stephenson’s secretary, Grace Garner, said he ‘certainly’ saw the President, and repeatedly. She personally handled much of the relevant cable traffic. (Raymond Teichman, FDR Library Supervisory Archivist, in letter to author, June 16, 1992, int. Garner, 1992.)
3. A copy of the official British history of the Stephenson operation surfaced in 1989 in Canada.
4. Von Auenrode was using the name ‘von Karsthoff’ at the time. (Popov Papers.)
5. ‘Good riddance’ was a characteristic Hoover phrase, one he used in writing when an agent he disliked quit the Bureau. (Davidson to Callahan re Nelson Gibbons, Sept. 24, 1962, FBI 67–528050.)
6. Sir William Stephenson confirmed before his death that he did discuss Popov with Hoover. (Response to author’s question, 1988.)
7. Popov’s private papers show Masterman addressed him as ‘My dear Popov,’ while Popov addressed him as ‘JC.’
8. Popov’s ghostwriter, and his son Marco, said he was initially reluctant to include the anecdote at all, because it was such a bitter memory.
9. The widows of two other British officers who worked with Popov, Ewen Montagu and Bill Luke, said in 1990 their husbands had no doubt Popov saw Hoover. Popov also discussed the episode with a friend, the Yugoslav author Branko Bokun, in 1946. ‘He told me then, and many times afterwards,’ Brokun recalled, ‘there are some things in life that shock so much they never leave you. It marked him for the rest of his life.’ (Ints. Iris Montagu, Anne Luke and Branko Bokun, 1990.) The official files neither support nor impugn Popov’s account. The British practice has been not to release intelligence records. One of the official histories of wartime intelligence, co-authored by former MI-5 Deputy Director Charles Simkins, says there is nothing in MI-5 or MI-6 files about Popov’s talks with Jebsen, nor about his confrontation with Hoover. It may be significant that, as official accounts admit, there were frequent turf battles between the foreign and domestic arms of British Intelligence. John Pepper, who worked for William Stephenson and who arrived in New York with Popov, said in 1990, ‘We didn’t tell MI-5 anything about the case.’ MI-5, which had handled Popov’s early European operations, lost effective control and contact once his American mission began. Popov’s U.S. sojourn may have been covered by the files of British Security Coordination – William Stephenson’s organization – but their contents remain an unknown quantity. (British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, by Michael Howard, London, HMSO, 1990, and British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, by F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, London, HMSO, 1990, [turf battles] ibid., p. 181, intl.