British Security Co-ordination

BSC benefitted from support given by the chief of the US Office of Strategic Services, William J. Donovan (whose organisation was modelled on British activities), and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was staunchly anti-Nazi.

[6] Stephenson's report on the American situation advocated a secret organisation acting beyond purely SIS activities and covering all covert operations that could be done to ensure aid to Britain and an eventual entry of the US into the war.

In 1940, a German agent, Gerhard Alois Westrick, who was cultivating support and possible sabotage among American oil companies, was effectively exposed through news articles placed in the New York Herald Tribune.

Through third parties, BSC developed the independent and non-profit WRUL shortwave radio station foreign-language broadcast capability and then fed it stories it wanted disseminated worldwide.

[citation needed] In 1939, Stephenson arranged for the Princess Hotel in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda to become a censorship centre (after initially operating at Prospect Camp.

[10] It was through the BSC that the British acquired the powerful "Aspidistra" transmitter that was used for propaganda by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), BBC overseas broadcasts and by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the war against Germany.

[13][14] Camp X had been established in December 1941 by Stephenson to train Allied agents in methods of clandestine operations; many graduates would be dropped behind enemy lines in Europe by SOE.

[15][14] The British novelist William Boyd, in a 2006 article for The Guardian,[16] stated that although the total number of BSC agents operating in the US in the early 1940s is unknown, he estimated there were at least "many hundreds" and had seen "the figure of up to 3,000 mentioned".

He wrote that the "suite in the Hampshire House with the outsize chintz flowers crawling over the walls became pleasantly familiar to me..." and that Stephenson "had a considerable influence on the next few years of my life".

The Italian airline LATI operated a transatlantic service - between Rome and Rio de Janeiro - which was a conduit for high-value goods (platinum, mica, diamonds, etc.

The airline had connections with the Brazilian government through the President's son-in-law, and it was supplied, despite the US State Department protests, by Standard Oil in the US, making official channels ineffective.