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Nelson Rockefeller and British Security Coordination

1981; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/002200948101600105

1461-7250

Paul Saul Kramer,

Military History and Strategy

On 16 August 1940 (well over a year before Pearl Harbour) President Roosevelt, by Executive Order, created the Office of the Coordinator of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics (later changed to Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs),' and appointed young Nelson A. Rockefeller who was then thirty-two years old, Coordinator. The 'Rockefeller office', as it came to be known, immediately became a focal point of the first peacetime effort by a US government in what has since been termed operational intelligence. The work involved in the creation of this office was conducted by James Forrestal, then serving as one of six Special Assistants to the President, and later to become Secretary of the Navy and, subsequently, America's first Secretary of Defense. Experience gained in operational intelligence became a factor, through Forrestal, in the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. American intelligence experts, as well as writers on the subject, have remained totally in the dark as to the work of the Rockefeller office in the intelligence field. Those who knew, for reasons we shall examine later, remained silent, and those who did not know, but who were experienced in other areas, preferred to describe themselves as the pioneers in the field. From the standpoint of intelligence history it has been as if Fremont, the 'Pathfinder', had never heard of Lewis and Clark, and they, in turn, either remained in ignorance of Daniel Boone, or preferred for reasons of vanity or pride, to ignore him.