| Summary/Abstract |
In June 1919, a leaked communiqué printed in New York exposed the “all-pervading system of British intrigue” in the United States during the Great War. The anonymous pamphlet, titled The Re-Conquest of America, reproduced a diplomatic cable that summarized Britain’s covert activities. British intelligence agent William Wiseman and his colleagues had sought to drive Americans into an “Anglo-American alliance” by triggering “anxiety concerning the staunchness of the structure of the nation.” They had begun by “impugning the loyalty to the United States of the Irish, German, and other riff-raff here.” Wiseman’s team had produced a “persecutory mania” by publicizing “German-American and Irish-American plots—discovered and disclosed by our American Secret Service and Military Intelligence Department with carefully calculated timeliness.” Wiseman boasted that “we encouraged the common people to spy upon and to denounce their neighbours; and an orgy of persecution followed.”
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