Despite all that has already been written on Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlooked
dimension of FDR''s wartime leadership: his involvement in
intelligence and espionage operations.
Roosevelt''s Secret War is crowded with remarkable
revelations:
-FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor
-A defector from Hitler''s inner circle reported directly to the
Oval Office
-Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler''s plan to
invade Russia
-Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds of
British soldiers'' lives in order to protect Ultra, the British
codebreaking secret
-An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with a
direct pipeline into Hitler''s councils
Roosevelt''s Secret War also describes how much FDR had been
told--before the Holocaust--about the coming fate of Europe''s Jews.
And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennial
question Did FDR know in advance about the attack on Pearl
Harbor?
By temperament and character, no American president was better
suited for secret warfare than FDR. He manipulated,
compartmentalized, dissembled, and misled, demonstrating a
spymaster''s talent for intrigue. He once remarked, "I never let my
right hand know what my left hand does." Not only did Roosevelt
create America''s first central intelligence agency, the OSS, under
"Wild Bill" Donovan, but he ran spy rings directly from the Oval
Office, enlisting well-placed socialite friends.
FDR was also spied against. Roosevelt''s Secret War
presents evidence that the Soviet Union had a source inside the
Roosevelt White House; that British agents fed FDR total
fabrications to draw the United States into war; and that
Roosevelt, by yielding to Churchill''s demand that British
scientists be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, enabled the
secrets of the bomb to be stolen. And these are only a few of the
scores of revelations in this constantly surprising story of
Roosevelt''s hidden role in World War II.
From the Hardcover edition.