Passenger and Crew List of SS “Excalibur,” arriving at New York, New York, October 30, 1940, page 147; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957 (National Archives Microfilm Publication T715, roll 6506); Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
Finding Fairly’s name on this manifest came as a great surprise. His presence this early in Brousse’s story has until now gone undiscovered. The finding is significant, because it reveals Brousse to be disingenuous, uninformed or doling disinformation about events that fall, as the Cordinator of Information (predecessor to OSS) was taking cues from the British. Fairly, an operative ostensibly working for ONI, raises question about British intentions in the early days of American and British intelligence cooperation. More important, the meeting between Fairly and Brousse comes at a time when relations between British intelligence and U.S. intelligence were developing rapidly and under intense stress. Paul Fairly, it seems, threads through the knit of incipient U.S.-British espionage networks.
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