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The Second Washington Conference

PREFACE
This volume of documents on the conferences at Washington (1941-1942) and Casablanca (1943) is published in continuation of the special series of Foreign Relations volumes on the World War II conferences attended by President Roosevelt or President Truman, along with Prime Minister Churchill or Marshal Stalin, or both of the latter. Volumes previously published in this series were entitled The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943; The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945; and The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945. COnferences till to be covered in this series are those at Washington in 1943 and Quebec in 1943 and 1944.

The principal compilers and editors of the present volume were Fredrick Aandahl, William M. Franklin, and William Slany. Substantial work was done on the initial collecting of documents for this volume by Edwin S. Costrell, S. Everett Gleason, and Isaac A. Stone. The volume was reviewed by the undersigned.

The technical editing of the volume was the responsibility of the Publishing and Reproduction Services Division, Jerome H. Perlmutter, Chief.

“In order to make this volume as complete and accurate as possible, the editors supplemented the data available in the Department of State by obtaining source material and information on these conferences from a number of individuals and agencies outside the Department. The Historical Office would like to express its sincere appreciation for this assistance. particular acknowledgment is made of the extensive help received form the Historical Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and form the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. Quotations from certain of the books and manuscript collections listed in the Introduction to the volume have been made with the kind permission of the respective publishers and archival authorities. The photographs were supplied through the courtesy of the British Central Office of Information, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and the U.S. Army Photographic Agency. ”

source: Thomas F. Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of CIA, 1st ed. (Yale University Press, 1996), 35

Hyde, H. Montgomery (foreword by Ian Fleming). 1964. Room 3603. Dell Books, New York,  3, 58.

Hyde, H. Montgomery. 1982. Secret Intelligence Agent British Espionage in America and the Creation of the O. New York, NY St. Martin’s Press, 82

West, Nigel. 1998. British Security Co-ordination: British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45. Little, Brown, xxx

This document is also often referred to as “The BSC Papers,” particularly before their initial publication by St. Ermin’s Press.

A history of the document, according to Tim Naftali, and Nigel West, the publication’s editor: H. Montgomery Hyde (whom West identifies in the “Introduction” to the  book British Security Coordination as Madame Brousse’s case worker, and who would later go on to write a biography of her life) wrote the first 200-page Report on British Security Coordination in the United States of America, on the order of William S. Stephenson, BDS’s director. Subsequently, the Hyde document was developed  – on Stephenson’s orders — by Gilbert Highet as the official record of BSC. Highet’s effort was rejected by Stephenson as too dry and academic, according to West. Subsequently, author Roald Dahl and trade journalist Tom Hill worked together at Camp X on the Highet draft, but Dahl soon left the project. According to Nigel West, Hill completed the project in summer of 1945 and Giles Playfair was brought in to do editing. It was this final Playfair version that became the “BSC Papers” and subsequently the book, British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas 1940-1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998),