Who's Who in Latin American Affairs 1914-1922
Please Note - This is a new topic that will be under construction for the next few months...
By Jamie Bisher
Edward Bell
Edward Bell was the US intelligence liaison in London and deserved much credit for the Zimmermann Telegram revelation. He enjoyed excellent rapport with British officials. Bell’s innocuous title was Second Secretary of the US Embassy, but through him passed the most sensitive secrets of the world war. He was an American blueblood: a 1904 graduate of Harvard and former stockbroker who arrived at the London embassy in 1913. The quiet support of Ambassador Walter Hines Page was crucial to Bell’s success.
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Leon J. Canova
In July 1915, the US State Department appointed Canova chief of the Mexican Affairs Division. He was a controversial figure, wily and capable to admirers, corrupt and arrogant to detractors. He was a 48-year-old Florida newspaperman when he entered service for the State Department, allegedly because of a few insightful articles about Mexico and his ability to speak Spanish. He was not afraid to venture into Mexico as a US special representative in July 1914 and other perilous times, making several investigative journeys through the region.
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Friedrich Karl von Erckert
German diplomat Friedrich Karl von Erckert served at legations in Rome, London, Guatemala, Lisbon and Tokyo before his superb performance in Santiago from 1910 until 1919, during which he kept Chile neutral while nimbly supporting German naval and intelligence operations. He defended brazen violations of Chilean neutrality by German warships in 1914 and 1915, and covered for German intelligence escapades through 1918, even including sabotage of vessels in Chilean harbors. He certainly played a key role in the secret diplomacy that enabled German and Chilean intelligence organizations to cooperate in operations against Peru. After the world war he was promoted to steer Foreign Ministry policy in the Americas and Iberia, but soon traded the bedlam of Berlin for the tranquility of Santiago, and returned to Chile as ambassador in 1921. Von Erckert was an avid mountain-climber who had been the first to scale Volcan Mocho In February 1923, he died in a fall while leading a three-man ascent of Chile’s 12,000-foot Volcan Lanin.
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Leland Harrison
"Colonel" Edward House
President Woodrow Wilson’s controversial confidante and advisor, “Colonel” Edward Mandell House, steered the neutral United States towards war with Germany. House was scion of a wealthy Texas family, born in Houston July 28, 1858, schooled in England and at Cornell University, and the bank-roller and strategist of several prominent Texas Democratic Party politicians. His “colonel” title was an honorary one (bestowed upon him by a grateful Texas governor), not a military rank. House was an anglophile who kept President Wilson apprised of German sabotage and other breaches of neutrality 1915-1917, thanks to information House received “informally” from Captain Guy Gaunt, the British naval attaché in Washington (who answered directly to Captain Reginald “Blinker” Hall, director of the Royal Navy’s Intelligence Division). “Colonel” House became Wilson’s intermediary in back-alley intelligence throughout the world war, influencing foreign relations with the American republics as well as the European powers.
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Edward McCauley, Jr.
Formerly the nation’s timekeeper at the Naval Observatory in Washington, Commander McCauley was the focal point at ONI for all information concerning enemy communications. However, he was also the official who swore in new field intelligence officers to ONI’s Investigation Division, indicating that his true role was much broader.
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Ralph Van Deman
Roger Welles
A Naval Academy graduate and career line officer, Welles wanted a battleship command, not a desk job in Washington. Gall bladder surgery forced the latter upon him days before the US declaration of war. As wartime Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), he adapted quickly to the German foe's technological and operational innovations, like U-boats, aggressive sanction evasion, sabotage and global espionage and influence peddling.
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Herbert Yardley
Self-educated in Midwestern pool halls and saloons, this frustrated State Department code clerk and telegraph operator believed that neither his talents nor SIGINT were being properly exploited. He harangued executives in both the State and War Departments to get hired in June 1917 as the head of a new Code and Cipher Bureau at the Military Intelligence Division.
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Copyright 2022, Jamie Bisher.