A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible True Story of the Master Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by William Stevenson

Thought-control defied such analysis, though H. G. Wells had tried. Hitler had invented the Big Lie, said Wells. “It will be believed if repeated enough.” The Big Lie spread like a gas that poisoned the minds of foreign observers as well as Germans disposed to trust one man’s claim to infallibility.

The real secret is speed—speed of attack through speed of communications.”

To Churchill, Stephenson reported that the weak link in the German armor would be communications. “If we can read their signals, we can anticipate their actions.”

“How wonderful it would be if the Germans could be made to wonder where they were going to be struck next, instead of forcing us to try to wall in the Island and roof it over!”

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

verisimilitude,” before they were stripped and armed. The

Churchill suggested that if the United States should be drawn into the war, “North and

West Africa might well prove the areas most favourable for the operation of American forces.” The Prime Minister’s remark foreshadowed TORCH, the first combined Anglo-American intelligence and military operation, which was to be, as the BSC Papers later noted, the first light at the end of the tunnel, “when we could go over from the defensive to the offensive, that is to say to secure full American participation in secret activities directed against the enemy.”

“When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”

reckoned “I spent forty per cent of my time fighting the enemy and sixty per cent of my time fighting our friends.” The biggest challenge was

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” —Winston Churchill, at a meeting in the City of London on the final day of fighting in OPERATION TORCH

But the infant OSS was ready to slide into harness within three weeks of Dieppe. Ahead was complete U.S. entry into the type of conflict that would produce the gigantic organizations with their unaccountable budgets known today as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. History must judge if TORCH also marked a fatal division between British and U.S. intelligence systems—shattering Stephenson’s dream of one co-ordinated agency, democratically monitored without being exposed to subversion.

his life. On the one hand, there was increasing reliance on technology, on scientific specialists. On the other, secret warfare, depending on intuition, on the individual. Both were essential to bring down the colossus. But intelligence was the key, the nervous system and brain of strength. Peace in the future would rely on the control of this combination.