The Craft of Intelligence by Allen W. Dulles Read Free Book Online Page A

between the lines of love letters. Whenever he had more information than could be fitted into the bottle, or when he needed new directives from the British, he simply paid a visit to London—with Franklin’s blessing, for he persuaded Franklin that he could pick up valuable information for the Americans in London. The British obligingly supplied him with what we today call “chicken feed,” misleading information prepared for the opponents’ consumption. Bancroft was thus one of the first double agents in our history.
    To deflect possible suspicion of their agent, the British once even arrested Bancroft as he was leaving England, an action intended to impress Franklin with his bona fides and with the dangers to which his devotion to the American cause exposed him. Everything depended, of course, on the acting ability of Dr. Bancroft, which was evidently so effective that when Franklin was later presented with evidence of his duplicity he refused to believe it.
    Perhaps the wily Franklin really knew of it but did not want to let on that he did. In 1777, Franklin wrote to an American lady living in France, Juliana Ritchie, who had warned him that he was surrounded with spies:
    I am much oblig’d to you for your kind Attention to my Welfare in the Information you give me. I have no doubt of its being well founded. But as it is impossible to . . . prevent being watch’d by Spies, when interested People may think proper to place them for that purpose; I have long observ’d one rule which prevents an Inconvenience from such Practices. It is simply this, to be concern’d in no Affairs that I should blush to have made publick; and to do nothing but what Spies may see and welcome. When a Man’s Actions are just and honourable, the more they are known, the more his Reputation is increas’d and establish’d. If I was sure therefore that my Valet de Place was a Spy, as probably he is, I think I should not discharge him for that, if in other Respects I lik’d him.
    —B.F. 2
    2 The original of this letter is in the collection of Franklin papers of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
     
    Once when the British lodged an official diplomatic protest with the French regarding the latter’s support of the American cause, they based the protest on a secret report of Bancroft’s, quoting facts and figures he had received from Franklin and even using Bancroft’s wording, a bit of a slip that happens from time to time in the intelligence world. Bancroft was mortally afraid that Franklin might smell a rat and suspect him. He even had the British give him a passport so that he could flee on a moment’s notice if necessary. Franklin did express the opinion on this occasion that “such precise information must have come from a source very near him,” but as far as we know he did nothing else about it.
    The British, also, had reason to suspect Bancroft. George III does not seem to have fully trusted him or his reports since he caught him out investing his ill-gotten pounds in securities whose value would be enhanced by an American victory.
    Bancroft’s duplicity was not clearly established until 1889, when certain papers in British archives pertaining to the Revolutionary period were made public. Among them, in a letter addressed to Lord Carmarthen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and written in 1784, Bancroft set down in summary form his activities as a British agent. It seems the British government had fallen behind in their payments to him and Bancroft was putting in a claim and reminding his employers of his past services. He closed with the words: “I make no Claim beyond the permanent pension of £500 pr an. for which the Faith of Government has often been pledged; and for which I have sacrificed near eight years of my life.”
    Franklin’s own agents in London were apparently highly placed. Early in 1778 Franklin knew the contents of a report General Cornwallis submitted in London on the American