The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Winnipeg-born Sir William Stephenson, wartime head of British Security
Coordination (BSC) and a man given much credit for the creation of the
American CIA, has been the subject of two biographies: The Quiet
Canadian (1962) and A Man Called Intrepid (1976). The latter contained
an introduction purportedly by Stephenson, although his authorship is
questioned in this new book. In that introduction, Stephenson wrote,
“I have read the manuscript and vouch for its authenticity,” but
when Winnipeg teacher and journalist Bill Macdonald began to research a
piece on Stephenson’s Manitoba background, his diligent sleuthing
revealed that both previous biographies were filled with untruths
concerning the spymaster’s early years. They had wrong his ethnic
background, his birth name, his parents’ names, and the day and year
of his birth. The Winnipeg school he attended in A Man Called Intrepid
never existed, and his birthplace was not correctly located.

Macdonald expanded his research into a 1998 book. This paperback
edition includes a new introduction by a former staff historian of the
CIA, a new preface by the author, and several new interviews. A short
section of the book deals with previous writing about
Stephenson—particularly A Man Called Intrepid, which offered neither
documentation nor bibliography and was famously dismissed by one noted
English historian as “start to finish utterly worthless.” Macdonald
gives an extensive bibliography and his documentation fills 30 pages,
although one notes uneasily a precept of Stephenson’s: “Nothing
deceives like a document.”

The biographical part of Macdonald’s work occupies less than a third
of his book. Stephenson’s early years are thoroughly explored, and
photos of documents (including his birth certificate) are included. But
once we get to Hitler’s war and Stephenson’s appointment by
Churchill to head a vast British intelligence network in New York, hard
documentation dries up and much about this mysterious Manitoban recedes
into the shadows. He may have made as many as 43 trips to England during
the war, “but few are documented,” and “It is not known what
exactly ... Stephenson did in Britain during the war.” In fact,
Macdonald concedes later, “the exact extent of BSC’s operation will
probably never be known.”

What makes Macdonald’s addition to the literature about BSC of value
is the longest section, “The Unknown Agents.” More than half of the
book consists of recollections of people who worked for BSC. These
include a University of Toronto electrical engineer whom Stephenson put
in charge of “Camp X” near Oshawa, where agents were trained for
espionage work in occupied Europe. Stephenson’s former head secretary
is informative, as is English author Roald Dahl, who worked for BSC.
Several of the more than one thousand young Canadian women who were
recruited by BSC and sent to New York to work in its secret offices also
contributed recollections.

“I have tried to step away from the material,” Macdonald writes.
This leaves the reader to persevere through some rambling recollections
and make what he will of some contradictory accounts. Still, they have a
cumulative effect in creating a picture of a Canadian whom Macdonald
describes as “the greatest unsung hero of the twentieth century.”