William Wiseman, the only son of a former naval officer, Captain Sir William Wiseman and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Langworthy, was born on 1st February 1885 at Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex. He succeeded to the family title in 1893, then attended Winchester Collegebefore going up to Jesus College in 1904.
A boxing blue, he left Cambridge University without a degree. He worked for the Daily Express and wrote three unperformed plays. In 1908 he married Florence Sams. According to his biographer, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones: "The following year he went to North America to represent the London banking firm of Herndon's, which financed the Mexican government. He enjoyed modest successes in the Mexican meat-packing industry and in Canadian real estate."
On the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to England to serve with the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry. In July 1915 a German gas attack at Ypres affected his vision in one eye. While recovering from his injuries he met Captain Mansfield Cumming, who had served alongside his father in the Royal Navy. Cumming was responsible for for secret operations outside Britain. This organisation eventually became known as MI6. Cumming recruited Wiseman to be his representative in North America. This unit eventually became MI1(c). According to Christopher Andrew, the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985): "Wiseman was just the sort of adventurous, resourceful, clubbable maverick who appealed to Cumming."
On 25th October, 1915, Wiseman arrived in New York City. Cumming was originally asked to work with CaptainGuy Gaunt, British naval attaché to the United States since January 1914, who had already established a network of agents to collect intelligence in North America and also to counter enemy activities such as sabotage and propaganda. Gaunt objected to the arrival of Wiseman but Cumming insisted that he was the man to run the North American operation. Cumming also provided him with an assistant, Captain Norman Thwaites. He had also been wounded and invalided out of the British Army but before the war had been private secretary to the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer and was very well connected in American press and political circles. In January 1916 the two men established themselves in North America, ostensibly as part of the Transport Department of the Ministry of Munitions.
Cumming instructed Wiseman to concentrate on "Contre-Espionage". This included the "investigation of suspects about whom the authorities at home required information", "a general watch on the Irish movement in the United States" and "investigation into Hindu Sedition in America". By the end of the war MI1(c) had ten regular officers, an office staff and ten full-time and some part-time agents (of whom two were German).
According to Keith Jeffery, the author of MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (2010): "The crucial subject about which the British were interested, of course, was that of the United States entering the war. Both British overt and covert publicity and propaganda efforts were focused on marshalling American political and public opinion behind the Allies, while a whole range of information-gathering resources - again, both overt and covert - was devoted to ascertaining the views of policy-makers and opinion-formers in Washington and elsewhere."
Wiseman and Thwaites became involved in several "dirty tricks" operations. For example, while at a party hosted by millionaire industrialist, Oscar Lewisohn, at his Long Island mansion. During the evening Lewisohn passed round some holiday photographs in one of which Thwaites recognized the German ambassador Count Johann von Bernsdorff in a swimming costume with his arms round two similarly dressed young women, neither of whom was his wife. Without Lewisohn's knowledge Thwaites managed to extract the picture, get it copied and then have it distributed to the press where it appeared, much to Bernsdorff's embarrassment.
Wiseman was also involved in what became known as the Zimmermann Telegram affair. On 16th January 1917, the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico City. This instructed the minister to propose an alliance with Mexico if war broke out between Germany and the United States. In return, the telegram proposed that Germany and Japan would help Mexico regain the territories that it lost to the United States in 1848 (Texas, New Mexico and Arizona). The telegram also informed the ambassador that Germany intended to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on 1st February.
The British, who suppressed the fact that they had acquired the telegram by intercepting American diplomatic communications) provided a copy to President Woodrow Wilson on 24th February, 1917. Wilson was shocked and angry at the German government's perfidy in plotting war with Mexico while still discussing peace moves with the United States. It was also leaked to journalists and when newspapers published it on 1st March, it gave a further powerful boost to anti-German feeling in the United States.
Wiseman also developed important contacts in America including Colonel Edward House, an important adviser to President Wilson. This proved very important when the United States joined the war on 6th April 1917. The two men worked closely together dealing with the upheavel in Russia in 1917. Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, made it clear that he was extremely worried about "revolutionary pacifists" becoming dangerously influential in Russia. Balfour cabled Cecil Spring Rice, the British ambassador in the United States to organize, as a matter of the "highest importance" the despatch of "messages from labour leaders, from Russian Americans, and from prominent men in the U.S. emphasising necessity of continuing the war in order to secure triumph of principles of freedom and democracy."
Wiseman was given the task of implementing this policy. He also devised a plan "to send to Russia parties of pro-Ally émigrés - Czech, Slovak and Polish, as well as Russian - who had 'made good' in America". Wiseman suggested to the British Foreign Office that they should "carry with them details of the German intrigues in America and warn their Russian comrades against similar traps". Wiseman got London and Washington each to allocate $75,000 (approximately $1.2 million in modern prices) to his scheme and approached Somerset Maugham(to whom he was related by marriage) in June 1917, to go to Russia. Maugham was "staggered" by the proposition: "The long and short of it was that I should go to Russia and keep the Russians in the war."
Maugham, who could speak Russian, was asked by Wiseman to "guide the storm". He was supplied with $21,000 (approximately $350,000 today) for expenses and travelling from the west coast of the United States, through Japan and Vladivostok, Maugham reached Petrograd in early September 1917. With him went a group of four Czechoslovak refugees headed by Emanuel Voska, Director of the Slav Press Bureau in New York City. Voska made contact with Tomáš Masaryk in the hope of mobilizing Czech and Slovak elements in Russia to work for the Allied cause. Maugham was impressed by his "good sense and determination" and helped set up a press bureau to disseminate anti-German propaganda.
While in Petrograd Maugham met a former mistress, Sasha Kropotkin, the daughter of Peter Kropotkin, who had a good relationship with Alexander Kerensky and the Provisional Government. Maugham entertained Kerensky or his ministers once a week at the Medvied, the best restaurant in Petrograd, paying for the finest vodka and caviar from the funds supplied by Wiseman. Maugham later recalled "I think Kerensky must have supposed that I was more important than I really was for he came to Sasha's apartment on several occasions and, walking up and down the room, harangued me as though I were at a public meeting for two hours at a time".
Somerset Maugham worked closely with Major Stephen Alley, the MI1(c) station chief in Petrograd. On 16th October Maugham telegraphed Wiseman recommending a programme of propaganda and covert action. He said that Voska and Masaryk could both conduct "legitimate propaganda" and act as a cover for "other activities" in support of the Mensheviks and against the Bolsheviks. He also proposed setting up a "special secret organisations" recruited from Poles, Czechs and Cossacks with the main aim of "unmasking... German plots and propaganda in Russia".
On 31st October 1917 Maugham was summoned by Kerensky and asked to take an urgent secret message toDavid Lloyd George appealing for guns and amununition. Without that help, said Kerensky, "I don't see how we can go on. Of course, I don't say that to the people. I always say that to the people. I always say that we shall continue whatever happens, but unless I have something to tell my army it's impossible". Maugham left the same evening for Oslo to board a British destroyer which, after a stormy passage across the North Sea, landed him in the north of Scotland. Next morning he saw Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street. After the agent told the Prime Minister what Kerensky wanted, he replied: "I can't do that. I'm afraid I must bring this conversation to an end. I have a cabinet meeting I must go to." On 7th November, 1917, Kerensky was overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution. Maugham later recalled: "Perhaps if I had been sent to Russia six months sooner... I might have been able to do something."
Wiseman continued to work closely with Colonel Edward House. It was claimed that Wiseman was the President's "confidential Englishman". Officially he was "liaison officer between the War Cabinet and any special representative they might send out to represent them in the United States". House understood that Wiseman was "now acting as liaison officer between me personally and the British Government". However, Mansfield Cummingrefused his request to pass raw secret service papers "to show to Colonel H. for the President" was "far too dangerous"
At the Paris Peace Conference Wiseman served as chief adviser to Arthur Balfour on American affairs to the British delegation. In 1919 he left MI6 to work for the Wall Street banking firm Kuhn, Loeb & Company, run by Otto Kahn and Felix Moritz Warburg. He later became a partner in the company. In 1925 his first marriage was dissolved and he married Patrice Clark. They were divorced in 1933. According to Gill Bennett, the author ofChurchill's Man of Mystery (2009) has argued that Wi semen "spent the inter-war years dabbling on the fringes of Intelligence while pursuing a lucrative commercial career".
On the outbreak of the Second World War Wiseman approached Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax, who promised that for £100,000 he could set up "the best possible intelligence service in the United States" for the British. However, the offer was rejected by Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6. He told a Foreign Office meeting that Wiseman was regarded with considerable suspicion by the US Embassy in London and that "both his predecessors (Mansfield Cumming and Hugh Sinclair) had very strong views about Sir William Wiseman and had recommended that he should on no account be employed by His Majesty's Government."
After Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, William Stephenson was appointed as as the head of the British Security Coordination (BSC). Menzies told Gladwyn Jebb on 3rd June, 1940: "I have appointed Mr W.S. Stephenson to take charge of my organisation in the USA and Mexico. As I have explained to you, he has a good contact with an official (J. Edgar Hoover) who sees the President daily. I believe this may prove of great value to the Foreign Office in the future outside and beyond the matters on which that official will give assistance to Stephenson. Stephenson leaves this week. Officially he will go as Principal Passport Control Officer for the USA." Menzies insisted that any scheme put forward by Wiseman had to "placed before Stephenson in detail before any steps are taken".
On 6th June, 1940, Wiseman had lunch with Lord Halifax in London. According to Jim Wilson, the author of Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie Von Hohenlohe (2011): "Halifax briefed Wiseman to assist Lothian and help him to find some way to starting peace negotiations that would be effective. Before the outbreak of war a substantial number of the British Establishment (prime movers in political, aristocratic and financial circles) many egged on by the princess' activities, were totally opposed to the coming conflict. When, despite their efforts, war broke out, these people continued to believe that it should be resolved as quickly as possible through a negotiated peace."
Scott Newton, the author of Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (1997) has argued that Wiseman represented a group that included Lord Halifax, Lord Rothermere, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 8th Duke of Buccleuch, Charles McLaren, 3rd Baron Aberconway and Henry Betterton, 1st Baron Rushcliffe. "All its members shared a profound fear that the domestic and international order which had sustained liberal-imperialist Britain was about to be irrevocably changed... With some justification it was believed that total war meant the socialization of Britain and a ruinous conflict in the heart of Europe from which only the Soviet Union could benefit."
Research by German historian, Martha Schad, confirms that in 1940, Wiseman was working on behalf of a group headed by Lord Halifax: "Sir William Wiseman was known to be the mouthpiece of a political group in Britain headed by Lord Halifax. These individuals were pinning their hopes on being able to bring about a lasting peace between Great Britain and the German Reich." The FBI became aware of Wiseman when he began meeting the Nazi spy, Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe and Fritz Wiedemann, the German Counsul-General in San Francisco.
On 27th November 1940, Princess Stephanie, Wiedemann and Wiseman had a meeting in suite 1024-1026 of theMark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. The meeting was bugged by the FBI. It was recorded on tape and transcribed as an 111-page document. On 13th January 1941 J. Edgar Hoover sent President Franklin D. Roosevelt received a 30-page summary of the meeting. He claimed the object of this encounter was to work out a plan for persuading Adolf Hitler to make a separate peace with Britain. "The Princess stated that she had not seen Hitler since January 1939. Wiseman then suggested that Hitler might think she was going to Germany on behalf of the British. In reply to this remark, the Princess stated she would have to take that chance but that Hitler was genuinely fond of her and that he would look forward to her coming, and she thought Hitler would listen to her."
William Wiseman died in New York City on 17 June 1962.
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