Transcripts For CSPAN3 World War II Allied Spy And Debutante

Vengeance, salvation, and world war ii, about a group of jewish volunteers who fought the nazis and the postwar actions of a few of them. In todays presentation, the last kiss good night, howard has found another remarkable story about a dazzling american debutante who became an allied spied during world war ii and was hailed by oss chief general wild bill donovan as the greatest unsung heroine of world war ii. Ladies and gentlemen, howard blum. [applause] for every author, there is a time when he thinks he has found a story that interests him, when he begins to realize that maybe he can wake up each morning, go to his desk, and look forward to the prospect of spending a day making this story come alive on the page. But those moments are just preludes to the energizing moment when he decides, i love this story, this is a book i have to write. This afternoon, what i would like to tell you is how i came to write the last good night, a true story about a glamorous american debutante who became a fine spy whoan helped the allies win the war. My thoughts first began to crystallize and gather a sense of commitment as i was walking among the ancient stones and tall spires of cambridge university. The story of my heroine, betty pack, is a spy story, so it is appropriate that my thoughts began to come together when i was in cambridge, because cambridge has been a home for many spies. It was the intellectual breeding of ad most notoriously certain spy ring, a group of longterm penetration agents, or as they say in the jargon, moles , who had buried their way in the english establishment while working for the soviet union. But i had not come to cambridge to look for that ring. I had gone there to search another spy. First beginning, when i started thinking about another book to write, i was looking for a womans story. I had dealt with 13 previous nonfiction books, and there was not a central female character in any of them. Tacits this was a admission that i was not up to the narrative challenge, but now i was older and, if not wiser, a bit more battle scarred. I had two daughters in their early 20s, one exwife. I have paid my dues, not to mention alimony intuition. Alimony and tuition. [laughter] howard i thought perhaps i could now handle a story about an intelligent, ambitious, and glamorous woman. As soon as i reached this decision, i was nudged by another concern. My books are true stories, filled with suspense, drama, excitement. So i naturally began to start reading about female spies, since i would be adding romance into the mix. As i read, i uncovered a bit about betty pack. There was not much there, but it was all intriguing. She had been born in minnesota, raised in washington, d. C. Lots of derringdo missions. Then i read her obituary in time magazine. , ay called her a blonde bond woman who used the bedroom the way bond used to be beretta. It was intriguing. Even after that, i had another concern. I cannot get by with an Operational History of a spy. I had to tell something more. I had to be able to explain to the readers how she had made this journey from debutante to become this perfect spy, how she had lived in a world of moral ambiguity, how she had lived such a roller coaster life a e filled with your curial curial attachments, yet she always remain loyal to the nations who served. I had to be able to do this in bettys own words. This what is a bit of a problem since betty had been dead for over 50 years. That is why i had come to cambridge university. Cambridge is a collection of many ancient colleges, but across the river is one of the newer ones Churchill College. Churchill college is famous for its archives center. Bettys papers had been bequeathed to Churchill College archive center. They had been given to the college by a man named harford montgomery hyde, rather interesting individual. Mi6 during a spy for the war, a member of parliament, a barrister, and an author. At one stage, when he was looking to do a quick look, he had written sort of a bodice ripping account of a spy codenamed cynthia, which was bettys codename. He had gathered up her papers, and after his death, he gave his letters, his documents, and all of her papers to Churchill College. I went to the archives not quite knowing what to expect. As soon as the archivist started bringing out boxes, i knew i had struck gold. There was an unpublished memoir that betty had written, her childhood diaries, letters she had written during her life, and eptress book she had k that showed her travels around the world. There was even a fairytale she had written when she was 12 years old living with her parents in hawaii that was very revelatory about the woman she would grow up to be years later. I dug into all of this eagerly. By the time the weeks have passed and i was done going through the boxes, i reached a number of conclusions. One, i could tell bettys Operational History with some sense of drama, suspense, and accuracy. I could also tell about her amorous adventures, how she had used the bedroom as an operational battlefield to help the allies win the war. I could also create a psychological detective story. I could tell how betty had made this journey from this debutante to spy and how she was able to live with the compromises that life requires and never feel any guilt, never have any qualms. Surprise ied a found out about bettys final mission. When betty was in her early 50s living with her second husband in a castle in france near the spanish border, she made a yde came toen h visit her, to leave the life she was leading, leave her husband and castle and go off with him. Thewanted to understand choices she had made in her life , to come to some kind of understanding where she could begin to find some respect for how she had been such a disastrousparent, daughter, disastrous wife, and yet how she had been totally loyal to the spy masters. She wanted to see if there was really some sense of honor in this. This was so important to her because she was dying. She had cancer and this cancer was metastasizing rapidly through her body and she wanted to reach some sort of peace while she still had time. I use this journey that betty took as the narrative spine of my book. I tell bettys story looking back retrospectively as she and hyde move through ireland and review her many missions. When i finally finished up in cambridge, using bettys memoir as my guide, i began to follow in her footsteps. I stood on the battlements of the ancient castle where she had made up her mind to leave her husband and run off with hyde. Wicklow hills,he ireland and the bar in dublin where she sat with hyde and look back at her life and discussed are many missions. I went to spain, madrid, valencia. At this time, the civil war was not happening. Bullets were not whizzing through the air, bombers were not up in the sky, and menacing armies were not perhaps laying around each bend as betty navigated the streets and towns of france. I went to washington, d. C. To georgetown, where betty had performed many of her most important missions. As i relived her past, as i followed in her footsteps, i was surprised. I had gone off on this mission not having too much respect for betty. As i said, she had been a complicated a disastrous, a terrible parent. She betrayed two husbands, she was a difficult daughter, and i had not much sympathy to her. Im the father of three children, i could not quite understand the choices she had made. But the end of my journey following in her footsteps, i began to have respect for her. I began to have a great deal of admiration for her courage and patriotism and for the service she did for the allies during the war. What do i mean by her courage and patriotism . Let me share with you a few of her missions, and then you decide what you think of betty. Spys place to start any life is when they cross the rubicon between the life they had been leading in the secret world. , her recruitment occurred in 1938 in prewar warsaw. In atty described warsaw letter, it was a cold and gray place. The city and country even more lugubrious because betty was in the midst of a very unhappy marriage. She was married to a british diplomat who is 20 years older, and he looked at least three times that. He was a staid, pinstriped, suspenders, bowler hatted englishmen. They just did not hit it off. She was a glamorous 26yearold full of life and mission. To make matters worse, on new years eve at an embassy party, her husband arthur had a severely debilitating stroke. So betty, being the dutiful wife, goes back with him to england, where he is going to recuperate. As soon as they get to the convalescent home, arthur tells her, i want you to go back to warsaw, i want the ambassador to understand that im coming back, too, and if you see is you are there, he will know that my recuperation will not be long and he will not give up my post. So she goes back to warsaw. It is winter, she is by herself. The other embassy wives are not having much to do with her. They raise a censorious eyebrow over bettys antics. What can she do . She follows her wayward heart. And not for the first time, she stumbles into an affair. Her affair is with a young, soulful member of the polish Foreign Service. As she describes it in her like a he plays chopin master, rivers of ice ivanka kaowed, rivers of icy vod flowed, and they would cuddle in front of a fire on a tiger skin rug. To tellt, he happened her about a topsecret paper he had seen that day, how poland had reached an agreement with germany that they would stand back while germany invaded czechoslovakia. She listened and went back to cuddling him. The next morning, she picked up the found and called a british passport control officer. Andveryone in the embassy perhaps everyone in worse on you, the passport control officer was a cover and a thin cover at best for the mi6 agent at the embassy. She called him up and said, how about a round of golf . ,t is a winters day in warsaw the greens of the country club were never very good even in the summer. The german army is mobilizing across the border. But he hears bettys request and says, sure. At the same time, he admires her tradecraft, to be able to talk on the golf course in private and without arousing suspicion of what theyre up to. So betty tells him what she had learned and he says, i will pass that to my superiors in london. A few days later, he gets back to her and says, they like it. They want this and more you can get, whatever you can get. They dont care what you have to do to get it. From that moment on, that he became a spy, working for mi6. She stayed with this young polish Foreign Service officer for a while, but then the spymasters in london told her it was time to move on. Betty was able to move on without any regrets. She did not have romances as much as she had adventures. Her controller asked her, do you know count lubinski . She said no, and he explained that he was the chief aide to the polish foreign minister. He said, i would like you to get to know the count. But he said, ok, i will try to arrange it. She went to see the american ambassador, an old family friend of her mother and father from washington. She said, i think its time you throw a party. He said, ok. I would like to sit next to count lubinski. He gave her a wink and said, i understand. Betty goes to the party and approaches the table. As she wrote in her memoir, i would have made a play for the count if he was as ugly as satan. Fortunately, he was not. [laughter] howard so betty and the count dance cheek to cheek, the champagne flows, and by the evening end, betty is in the counts bedroom. She manages to maintain this relationship for months. She would lie in his arms at night and as soon as he left, she would type up everything he had said and pass it on to her handler. How was she able to do this . She had no guilt. She was able to be in love with someone at the moment when she was with him, and the moment he left, she moved on. Learns,k, as every spy is you mean it when you say it and when the moment passes, you no longer mean it. I think that is perhaps not something that spies just learn, but maybe politicians, too. [laughter] howard but i shouldnt editorialize. It was well betty was with count lubinski that she learned about the black chamber. Operationecret army that was happening in a 10th century city in an army base wase the polish phifer team looking at the enigma machine. It had been developed before the foras a commercial device encrypting messages that you do not want the competition to read. As were approached, the german army got out of it. It looked like a typewriter and they added wheels so that it was a very sophisticated coding machine. Type something into enigma, he would come out at another enigma machine with a possible 150 million million million permutations, and you needed to enigma machines and a codebook to decipher it. This young polish cipher specialist working in the black chamber had cracked the first enigma machine. When betty reported this back to the british spy masters, they quickly bought the machine and brought the polish cipher specialist to bletchley park. It helped provide, according to the british history of the war, the missing link. In an operation as, located and sophisticated as enigma, many people get to where the laurels. There were many heroes. There was alan turing, the geniuses at bletchley park, brave british seamen who dove into icy waters to recover enigma machines from uboats, but betty had played an important role, and we all know how important enigma was during the high points of the war. The allies were decoding 84,000 messages a month. According to general eisenhower, enigma saved thousands of lives and reduce the war at least one or two years. And betty helped make this all possible. Then there was another operation involving ciphers that betty played a key role in. This was in 1940 in washington, d. C. The u. S. Was not in the war at that point. It was still officially neutral. But the British Secret Intelligence Service had put betty and a house in georgetown, a rather cute house that is Still Standing today on oh street. The british rented it for her for 250 a month, it last sold for 7 million. They gave it to betty for what they called discrete entertaining. So while she is living there working as a british agent, a flash cable comes into the british headquarters on 5th avenue manhattan, where their Intelligence Service was located, and is said, the admiralty desperately needs the vichy naval ciphers. I of the Italian Naval ciphers. They did not have to explain why the Italian Naval ciphers were so desperately needed. It was well known that the british fleet was spread perilously thin across the Eastern Mediterranean and that they had been attacked en masse, they could be in a bottle it could be a debacle. Betty is told by her handler that there is an admiral in washington who has control of these ciphers. Can you get them . It just so happens that bettys family knew alberto before the war, and he had known betty when she was a 12yearold girl. Now betty was determined to show him she had become a woman. So betty meets the admiral, in his 60s and portly, two grown children and wife, but betty invites them over to her house, and it is not long before he is seeing betty twice a week and spending the night at her house in georgetown. During this relationship continues for a while, and betty finally get the nerve to say, i need your help. I need to get the ciphers. The admiral is enraged. He says, youre asking me to commit treason and he storms of the house. For the next week, betty is living on pins and needles. A thug is a thug from the Italian Embassy going to come to her house . Has the admiral alerted the fbi and will they arrest or as a Foreign Agent . She considers running but she stays. And her persistence pays off. The admiral returns and says he has worked out and honorable solution. He says, i cant give you the ciphers but i can give you the name of my cipher clerk and the rest will be a pio. The rest will be up to you. Even if this is not honorable, it is honorable enough for the admiral to convince himself he can still spend time with betty in her bedroom. So betty now takes up another identity. She takes journalistic cover and goes off as a reporter to look for this site for clerk. She says she is writing a story on the Little People in the embassy, people behind the scenes who really make things happen. He is very flattered. Betty invites them to her house for dinner. She can tell he is not a womanizer, but she cooks dinner and they have a nice bottle of wine. They are sitting in her living room in georgetown, and he is very impressed by how well appointed the house is. He says, i wish i could live like this but i will never be able to afford it. Betty says, perhaps there is a way you can. The British Government had told her how much she could offer for the ciphers. Betty offers a fraction of that amount. She knew the art of making the deal. And she gets the man to sell her the ciphers. They are photographed by the British Secret Intelligence Service, placed back in the embassy safe. How important are these ciphers . 28, admiral Andrew Cunningham off the southern tip of greece surprises the italian fleet. Fire,itish guns open up the 15 inch guns, and by dawn, three destroyers, two cruisers, one battleship, and 2400 italian seamen have lost their lives. These ciphers, which were taken to bletchley park, working with helpedre helped provide the british with the information they needed for this attack. Churchill told parliament that after this battle, the Eastern Mediterranean became a british sea, and betty have helped make this possible. There was another operation that betty was involved in an washington, d. C. Involving ciphers. This was the vichy ciphers. It was in 1941, december. As you know, this was a desperate time for the allies. Pearl harbor had just been bombed. The british have been kicked out of europe. The germans were marching into russia. Came to the United States to meet with fdr and help figure out what the allies are going to do next. The decision was beginning to be made for what would become known as operation torch, the allied invasion of north africa. Key to making this work were the vichy ciphers. Vichy, as you know when france was invaded in 1940, the not see his took control the paris, butcontrol of the south and central areas of paris were allowed to exist as a quasiindependent nazi public state wit