Customer Reviews

Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage

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Intelligence professionals will be very disappointed by this book, citizens interested in Presidential approaches to intelligence, somewhat less so. The author's brilliant biography of William Casey, OSS Veteran and Director of Central Intelligence under President Ronald Reagan, was a much more satisfying book. What we have here is by and large a mish-mash of the works of others, together with an original composition on FDR's involvement in intelligence that is uneven--partly because the subject did not put much in writing, and partly because the author chose to rely primarily on secondary published sources.

From the perspective of one interested in "Presidential intelligence," that is, how does a President manage various means of keeping informed, the book is a must read but also a shallow read. We learn that FDR was a master of deception and of running many parallel efforts, balancing them against one another. We learn that FDR was remarkably tolerant of amateurism and incompetence, while good at finding the gems these same loose but prolific intelligence endeavors could offer.

Perhaps most importantly, we gain some insights into how Presidents, even when properly informed by intelligence (e.g. of Pearl Harbor in advance, or of the lack of threat from domestic Americans of Japanese descent) must yet "go along" and provide either inaction pending the public's "getting it", or unnecessary action (the internments) to assuage public concern.

There are enough tid-bits to warrant a full reading of the book, but only for those who have not read widely in the literature of intelligence and/or presidential history. The British lied to the President and grossly exaggerated their intelligence capabilities, in one instance presenting a man "just back from behind the lines" when in fact he was simply on staff and lying for effect. We learn that the Department of State was twice offered, and twice declined, the lead on a global structure for collecting and processing intelligence. We learn that FDR himself concluded that Croatia and Serbia would never ever get along and should be separate countries.

On the NATO side, we learn that Eisenhower went with bad weather and the invasion succeeded in part because of a successful deception and in part because of Ike's courage in going forward in the face of bad weather--fast forward to how weather incapacitates our high-technology today. Most interestingly, we learn that FDR finally approved Eisenhower as leader of Overload, in lieu of his favorite, General Marshall, in part because he recognized that the allied joint environment required a general and a politician in one man.

This book is a hybrid, attempting to mesh presidential history with intelligence history, and perhaps this should gain the author some margin of tolerance. Unfortunately, in focusing on the relationships among the various intelligence principals and the president, he seriously passes over the enormous contributions of military as well as civilian and allied intelligence to the larger undertaking, and one is left with the narrow impression that American intelligence consisted largely of a number of self-serving clowns vying for Presidential favor.

The flaws inherent in a Federal Bureau of Investigation dominated by J. Edgar Hoover, and the lack of cooperation between the FBI and other major intelligence activities that continues today, are noted throughout the book.

Bottom line: worth buying and reading to gain insight into the challenges facing a President who can become isolated from reality by a corporate staff, but nowhere near the quality of Christopher Andrew's For the President's Eyes Only, or any of many good histories of espionage in World War II.

What a read! This book has it all over even the most well crafted spy thriller. Intrigue, Spy rings, Spy masters, Intelligence blunders and break throughs. Nonfiction should always be this fun to read.
In "Roosevelts Secret War", we are given insight into a crucial time in American history. Mr. Persico has shown all angles of a diverse and complicated situation. The country is strongly isolationist, the Nazi regime is slowly crushing Europe under its boot heel, and Britain is tied up in skulldugery, decreasing moral and a war that is looking more bleak by the day.
This is the maelstrom FDR is thrust into. The States lag behind The U.K. in terms of intelligence capabilities and world view. Churchill informs FDR of the realities of the war, and thus the U.S. has its die cast. Mr.Persico sends us on a journey of burgeoning intelligence offices, agency squabbling, jealous department heads, code breaking, conspirices and much more.
During this ride the author debunks long bandied rumors, such as the supposed prior knowledge FDR had of the Pearl Harbor tragedy. The answer is surprisingly complicated. Hindsight offers a pretty clear view of a pending attack, yet all the intel that pointed towards that travesty was divested in so many small nuggets, bungled through many channels and ciphers, that not even a room of Nobel winners in physics could have pieced together an obvious plot.
FDR is shown as a very shrewd, intelligent and devious man. Though generally moral, he will bend rules, cast aides against one another and down right lie if the greater good will be advanced by his many prevarications. Churchill is of a similar character, and the two spark up a healthy working partnership. The book is peppered with so many gold nuggets, that a list of all its finds would be to long to list here.
Rich, complex and very well crafted, this may be the best work of Nonfiction published this year.

Joe Persico has discovered what many of us World War Two historians never knew: Franklin Delano Roosevelt PERSONALLY ran the war against Hitler and his state sponsored terrorism! Many of the details in this book I was aware of, but what I did not know was FDR's intense and intellectual direction of the war and all of its participants to include Churchill.
The only error I found here was Persico's declaration that the US breaking of the JN 25 Japanese Naval codes was never discovered. Fact is that when the German Raider Thor intercepted the Australian cargo/passenger ship the SS Nakin, the Germans captured several mail sacks with secret documents reveling the fact the we had broken the Japanese codes on 10 May 1942. The Germans did not tell the Japanese until 29 August of that year, which allowed us to win the Battle of Midway. However, the Japanese changed their codes and we did not re-break them until 5 May 1943. Because of this fact we sustained serious naval losses during the naval battles off Guadalcanal.
For those of you who are not students of intelligence matters concerning the WW-II, I suggest you buy "Encyclopedia of the Second World War" by Bryan Perrett & Ian Hogg as a reference when you are reading Persico's book! Another work I recommend is: "The Encyclopedia of Espionage" by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen (which contains a number of details of George Washington's intelligence network that won the Revolutionary War!
There has only been one other person in American history that did what FDR did: George Washington, whose statue is in the entrance of the Headquarters of the CIA. I think they might consider putting FDR's Statue there as well: AFTER ALL HE DID SAVE WESTERN CIVILIZATION. This book is a MUST READ for all Americans!

It is only in the last few pages that Persico makes the most profound observation of this book. He makes the point that intelligence, in the sense of espionage--knowledge of what one is not supposed to know is going on in the camp of the enemy, or in the sense of determining what is really going on in a struggle against a formidable foe, is better served in a free society.

The most ingenious aspect of the "system" that FDR set up to deal with the reality of Japanese and German aggression before and after Pearl Harbor was the absence of a "system". He used all sorts of people, formally and informally, and they competed for his attention, competed with other agencies and persons, struggled for funding and projects, and were not beyond proposing or even trying some pretty wild ideas. Some were reporting directly and only to the President. That competition meant that the Commander-in-Chief did not just hear what he wanted to hear. Nor was he in a position where he would have to rely on what the "experts" told him.

Second only to his admiration for FDR is Persico's obvious liking for the ways of "Wild Bill", William Donovan, who headed up the OSS, predecessor of the CIA. One of the more interesting of the author's observations is that, while Donovan had lots of ideas, many of them crazy, he also had some really good ones, and that if he had a hundred ideas, only five of them were really good, but how many people really have five good ideas in their lifetimes?

In the aftermath of 9-11-01, I found the book particularly effective in reminding all of us that terrorism is not really new to this nation. There were attempts at terrorism in the midst of WWII, including the kinds of threats that have recently come to the attention of today's department of "homeland security". In this connection, Persico's book is effective in describing the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI as well as the
intrigues surrounding that agency's activities and the Director's careful balancing act to protect himself from other agencies and powers, including FDR.

Given that intelligence failures obviously contributed to the disaster we recently experienced, this book, and the ways of FDR that avoided bureaucratic paralysis, should be required reading for our government leaders, including any in the Executive Branch who may occasionally be pubicly paraded about as now reading some highbrow work of history or biography. (But this should not appear on the public reading list).

Admirers of Roosevelt will not find that much here to reinforce their prejudices, despite the author's defense of FDR in such matters as the Japanese internment, the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Manhattan Project. Which is to say that the defenses are convincing and understated. The reader gets the idea that we had exactly the right man in office for the time, primarily because he had his own "intelligence" about how to conduct intelligence. And the reader reaches that conclusion on his own.

It's an entertaining read, to be sure. It could have been improved, for those of us who are not WWII buffs, by some chronological reminders here and there as the story of intelligence is told against the background of the war's progress, and by some editing out of needless details in some parts. But I was delighted to find some illustrations, now rare even in some of the most celebrated non-fiction works, such as attempts at "definitive" biographies.

I can usually tell how much I liked a book by how many of my own notes appear in the back pages, referring to specific pages and other notations. For this book, I have two pages of notations, with arrows of emphasis and explanation points.

Some of those are for matters like the Pearl Harbor, Japanese internment, and atomic bomb issues that are so important to the history of this time, but others are for some of the personalities that come to life here, not just FDR's but even some of the people, even within his own administration, who betrayed him.

All in all, a fascinating book.

I highly recommend this book for those interested in history, politics, and WWII.

Roosevelt's Secret War will be most attractive to general readers who are interested in the problem of how a president of the United States should create a balance between building a political consensus and conducting effective statecraft with foreign nations in a timely way. As FDR put it in describing himself, "I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help me win the war." Mr. Persico argues that FDR did even more than that, deceiving friends and foes alike to get the United States into a European war against Germany.

The book very broadly deals with FDR's personality, personal relationships, executive style, interest in intelligence operations, and relationships with allies and political partners. Coming from a totally different perspective, these observations are cast onto a backdrop of the United States dealing with developing tensions in world politics that led to World War II through to near that conflict's end when FDR dies.

In recent years, much more has been published about code-breaking, diplomatic maneuvering, and allied strategy during the 1930s and 1940s. If you are familiar with that material, there will not be too many surprises here. Most of your new perspectives will come in the form of contingency plans that were considered, but not fully implemented. For example, FDR considered a possible plan to supply Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces with B-17s and American crews to fire bomb Tokyo prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A reduced version of the plan provided the Nationalists with air cover in China from the Flying Tigers during World War II.

There are several ironies when you reflect on the details here. American allies stole many more secrets and provided much more disinformation than did America's enemies. For example, the British provided elaborate falsehoods about Nazi plans for the Western Hemisphere that helped attract American support. The Soviets had spies high in the Democratic administration. British insistence on being part of the Manhattan project brought Klaus Fuchs into contact with the atomic secrets that he supplied to the Soviets. Some of the most damaging leaks during the war came from FDR (across the scrambled telephone line with Churchill), vice president Henry Wallace (telling his Swiss diplomat brother-in-law about what was going on, and having the details snatched by the Nazis from the Swiss), and various members of Congress (in disseminating secret plans until the information reached enemy agents).

If you are like me, you will be hit hard by the chapters on whether FDR intentionally maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor (he did nudge them along towards war, conscious of the impact of his statements and acts through reading their diplomatic correspondence using the broken Japanese Red code), FDR's decision to intern Japanese-Americans in concentration camps (his advisors told him that the only benefit of this would be to protect Japanese-Americans from attacks by their fellow citizens), and the administration's initial coolness towards allowing European Jews into the United States (FDR seems to have known about the Holocaust threat early on, but initially wanted Jews to go elsewhere such as Palestine or Africa).

There's a lot of humor here. FDR at various points sends his yachting buddies off to check out Japanese installations, but they don't get close enough. When the Duke of Windsor apparently planned to suggest a deal with the Nazis, FDR creates a monologue that doesn't permit the duke to get a word in. FDR has his various intelligence operatives providing detailed reviews to him of each other. FDR also established what is now the well-known presidential practice of secretly taping conversations, while indicating that he wanted no records kept. Finally, ex-Nazi Putzi Hanfstaengl is on the payroll to give FDR little tidbits about the quirks of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders.

In early 1944, FDR's daughter was very worried about his health and insisted on a full medical examination. FDR did not ask what the conclusion was, and no one told him. The president clearly had only a few months to live. His high blood pressure was at an unsustainable level, and he had advanced heart disease. Worried about his health, you'll be astounded to see who he confided should replace him as the Democratic nominee in 1944 if he did not survive.

The book's weaknesses are related to excess material. The book usually pays as much attention to minor matters as to major ones. Also, there's more about rivalries among intelligence agencies here than you probably really wanted to know. The details of the personal vices of many prominent Americans and foreign notables will probably leave you feeling more soiled than enlightened.

Ultimately, many aspects of what FDR did remain an enigma. When was he being manipulated by others? When was he going along with an attempt to manipulate him that served his purposes? When was public opinion his real master? Because FDR was good at keeping his own counsel, we may never know. However, if we compare his credulity to the enormous capability for self-deception that Stalin and Hitler had, Americans were clearly fortunate to have FDR at the helm.

A challenge for any historian dealing with this period is that FDR did not allow any notes to be taken in his presence. I do feel that more analysis of FDR's style and effectiveness would have been appropriate. The book ends up reading like a series of disconnected magazine articles with a minor linkage to FDR's fondness for pleasing people and keeping his real views secret.

Listen, watch, ask questions, encourage lively debate, conduct experiments, and keep an open mind to get to the best decisions.

Joseph Perisco's entertaining history of FDR and the birth of the American intelligence infrastructure is a must-read for any fan of WWII history or presidential history.

Adopting almost a Bob Woodward fly-on-the-wall style, Perisco combines incredible research with an eye for the intriguing detail to tell an amazing story. For younger Americans who have always lived in a world where the CIA/FBI/Pentagon/Other Sinister Government Agency combo was the top secret snatcher and spy grabber, it will be hugely entertaining to learn about how recently the American intelligence network was virtually non-existent. Can it be true that a guiding principle of intelligence was "A gentleman does not read another gentleman's mail"?!?! Astoundingly, yes.

Perisco's thesis, that FDR was perfectly suited for the birth of this network, is ably supported by Perisco's research and a bit of arm-chair psychoanalysis. To Perisco, FDR was a titanic personality at a time when giants strode the earth -- Stalin, Churchill, even "Wild Bill" Donovan, an American intelligence agent with his own agenda and the energy of fifteen men. FDR, restricted in the use of his body, used an astoundingly sharp mind and a practical streak a mile wide to bring about the creation of the American intelligence network while guiding America through the precarious pre-war years.

Perisco is a hugely entertaining writer, and while "RSW" is a dense book, it is very readable.

The only problem this book has is that, for all its readability and research, it has taken on a massive subject and one is always left with the impression that there must have been more to it than Perisco lets on. While not quite crossing over into hero-worship in its near-veneration of FDR, one suspects that a few different stories may be told about this era and this subject, and they would be somewhat different than Perisco's.

Perhaps my favorite section of the book is Perisco's pointed response to the allegations that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance. By using a combination of historical evidence as well as his fundamental understanding of FDR, Perisco convincingly debunks this theory.

Through it all, FDR comes across as a very human, if very talented, figure, and Perisco's description of FDR's sudden decline would justify the entire book by itself -- fortunately, it doesn't have to.

Love him or hate him, it's hard to name a 20th century president who was more influential or emblematic than FDR. And he failed at many things, too.

Perhaps his greatest failing, though, was in having no forewarning of the catastrophic attack on Pearl Harbor. Persico wisely starts this book on that scene.

What we identify is Roosevelt's inescapably charismatic leadership foundering on rocks of personal association and overconfidence in "people like me." Roosevelt was at his best in a multipartisan approach to leadership, but when it came to intelligence, he fell prey to an understandable temptation to surround himself with "like-minded people." He also chose to ignore some key messages, for reasons which are still not completely clear.

Some recently-revealed information resources this book greatly. I thank my good friend Rob for loaning me this absorbing and well-written lesson in leadership.

You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. . . . I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help me win the war."--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.--Winston Churchill

At the center of this work is Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), the 32nd president of the United States, who like Winston Churchill, was the right man in the right place at the right time to lead the allies during World War II.

In chap. 23, "A Secret Unshared," Joseph Persico describes Roosevelt as a "byzantine personality," a man attracted to the circuitous and the labyrinthine, the covert and the surreptitious. A consummate politician and pragmatist, he never ventured too far ahead of his constituency. Nevertheless, "FDR's character was drawn to intuition over analysis, boldness over methodology, romance over technology."

"Whether shaped by a privileged childhood, the cruel education of polio, or a dizzyingly complex persona to begin with," writes Persico, "Roosevelt confidently led America in a cataclysmic war in which secret warfare figured significantly and for which he possessed a talent that sprang spontaneously from his nature. . . . Deep in the makeup of FDR something reveled in the whispered secret, the clandestine mission, the mysterious agent."

Perhaps this is why Roosevelt tolerated for so long the bizarre schemes of Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, director of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA). Churchill described Donovan as a "loose cannon," but FDR was impressed by Wild Bill's fertile imagination and entertained by his outlandish schemes. Next to FDR himself, Donovan (who was detested by his archrival, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI) is the real "star" of this book.

Gen. Colin Powell writes of Roosevelt's Secret War: "Just when we thought there was nothing more about President Franklin Roosevelt, Joe Persico has discovered a whole new dimension--FDR's involvement in World War II espionage. I started to tread this book because it was by a friend and collaborator, but once I started, I couldn't put it down."

A reviewer comments that this rich, complex, and well-crafted book may be the best work of nonfiction published this year. Although such a judgment may be premature, it is not without merit. Highly entertaining and revealing, Persico's writing exhibits a zestful flair often missing in other historical and biographical works.

Joseph E. Persico is the author of Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, which was made into a major TV docudrama; Casey, From the OSS to the CIA; and Piercing the Reich, The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents During World War II. He is also the coauthor of Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey.

Sometimes a work of history is so thoroughly researched, so rich in detail, so comprehensive and so lucidly presented as to be considered art.
Such is Joseph Perisco's, "Roosevelt's Secret War." For anyone interested in FDR, World War II or wartime espionage this book is a must.
Perisco is an unabashed fan of FDR. Some readers will doubtless take issue with the author's interpretations of a few of the more controversial aspects of the war as handled by FDR. But while generally lauding Roosevelt, Perisco always gives voice to the president's critics. Perisco is most forceful in his refuting the claims that FDR had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attacks successfully attacking both the reasoning and assertions of revisionists.
One tends to be persuaded by Perisco simply because he brings so much information to his arguments.
The author also fleshes out all manner of other significant supporting players. The scandalized Sumner Welles, pal Vincent Astor, ally Winston Churchill, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, controversial OSS director Bill Donovan to name but a few.
One of Perisco's greatest achievements is to present all the incidents, events and characters (replete with anecdotes) in all their complexity in such an entertaining read. Indeed therein may lay the secret: all the complexity, the maneuvering, the machinations are spiced by the entertaining characters who carried them out, whether dashing or bumbling whether through ingenuity or sheer luck.
Most of all this is the story of an extraordinary man who found himself president of a country during its worse economic/social crisis and the world's biggest war. Perisco reveals everything from how "that man" (as he was sometimes called) handled foreign heads of states to what he liked for breakfast.
FDR was intrigued by espionage and the attendant spies and secrets but his uses and interests in this area quickly changed from a hobby played at with Astor, to an operational necessity worked at with Donovan.
This book gives much for historians and the casual reader to contemplate and debate. This includes such issues as what FDR knew and could have done about the Holocaust; the Japanese internment; FDR-Stalin relations and dealings and how they might have contributed to the Cold War.
But there can be no debate about this: "Roosevelt's Secret War" will enhance any readers knowledge of FDR and broaden their understanding of the United States in World War II. Also unarguable is that this is a fascinating, entertaining read.

When people think of President Franklin Roosevelt, espionage and spies are probably not the first things that come to mind. However, during World War II, Roosevelt became very proficient at the spying game. This book delves into Roosevelt's spying. We are also introduced to some of the men who made their living as spies, including "Wild Bill" Donovan and J. Edgar Hoover. I learned a lot about FDR and spying that I didn't know before I read this book. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in WWII and the espionage aspect of the war.