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

Chapter 1 Gentleman Amateurs THE DATE was May 12, 1938. With three bells announcing his arrival, trailed by trotting Secret Service agents lugging wire baskets of official papers, FDR propelled his wheelchair from the first-floor elevator into the Oval Office where he summoned Missy LeHand. As she came in, the President greeted his secretary with a blinding smile and an expression that said, what does the world have in store for Franklin Roosevelt today? It was nearly 11 a.m. as the softly attractive LeHand sat down and propped her steno pad on her knee. By now, eighteen years at his side, through his glowing early promise, the catastrophe of polio, the slow resuscitation of his spirits and ambitions, she could read FDR's every mood and need instantly. The President took from a can on his cluttered desk one of the forty-odd Camel cigarettes he would smoke that day and inserted it into a nicotine-stained holder. He chose from a wire basket a letter delivered personally to the White House the day before by Uncle Ted's son Kermit Roosevelt. It was from Vincent Astor. Before he began dictating, FDR reread the nineteen handwritten pages in the familiar script. The letterhead read simply Nourmahal, the name of Astor's yacht. The very word suffused FDR with warm memories. He had first sailed the Nourmahal in 1932 while still president-elect. The luxurious oceangoing vessel, manned by a crew of forty-two, recalled America's Cup races off Newport watched from her deck, fishing trips off Long Island Sound, cruises in the Caribbean, card games, drinking, and, for some of Astor's pals, occasional amorous adventures on board. It was to the Nourmahal, tied up in Miami, that FDR had retreated in February 1933 after an incident that nearly ended his presidency before it began. He had been seated in the back of an open car after addressing a crowd when, as he later described the moment, "A man came forward with a telegram about five or six feet long and started telling me what it contained. Just then I heard what I thought was a firecracker: then several more." Roosevelt saw a Secret Service agent wrestle the man to the ground. The assailant was Giuseppe Zangara, an unemployed bricklayer and political malcontent whose shots had miraculously missed Roosevelt, but struck Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago then visiting Miami, a woman, and a policeman. Roosevelt accompanied Cermak to the hospital, where the fifty-nine-year-old mayor's wound proved fatal. The other victims survived. The president-elect then joined Astor and other friends aboard the Nourmahal, grateful for a respite from the horrors of the day. Subsequently, FDR had sailed the Nourmahal every year, enjoying himself tremendously, especially his fellow passengers' sophomoric hijinks. He got a kick out of the mock bills Astor sent after each cruise-"Expenses incurred for alcoholic stimulants and repeated correctives, $37.50 per diem. (Note: the Chief Steward reports that consumption of the above stores was so vast as to overwhelm his accounting system.) With a further $1.90 for chipping Mother-of-Pearl surfaces of bell contacts through impatient punching of the above, to hasten the arrival of correctives. Seventeen cigars, Profundo Magnifico, $.90 each." And always the appended note, "The President is exempt." The letter from Honolulu now in Roosevelt's hands did not, however, recount shipboard capers. Rather, it was Astor's report of an espionage mission the President had entrusted to the yachtsman. This deep trust, granted by a president to a private citizen, had equally deep roots. The names Roosevelt and Astor had echoed down Hudson Valley history since colonial times. The Roosevelts of Hyde Park and the Astors up the road at Rhinebeck stood at the heart of the Dutchess County gentry, their lives a weave of family, professional, and commercial interests.Persico, Joseph E. is the author of 'Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage' with ISBN 9780375502460 and ISBN 0375502467.