Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

3. The Undetected Spy: Edward Bancroft

29 3 The Undetected Spy Edward Bancroft It is impossible . . . to prevent Being watch’d by Spies. Benjamin Franklin Charlevois, “Nothing to Hide.” The Revolutionary War was fought against the backdrop of eighteenthcentury European rivalries, particularly the bitter conflict between France and Great Britain. France had lost Canada to Great Britain in the Seven Years’ War and was eager to exploit British conflicts with the colonies to counter the defeat. At the same time, France could not risk another war with Great Britain by openly supporting the American cause. Covert support , however, offered an attractive alternative. The American colonies sorely needed arms and supplies to fight the King’s Army, and the Continental Congress had established a Committee on Secret Correspondence to seek military assistance and win political support for the colonies among Great Britain’s adversaries in Europe. In December 1775 the French foreign minister dispatched a merchant, Julien de Bonvouloir, to approach Benjamin Franklin about a secret channel between the Continental Congress and France. Bonvouloir and Franklin agreed that, in exchange for American commodities, France would open its ports to American ships and covertly provide arms and military supplies through a front company.1 The Revolutionary War 30 The Continental Congress sent Silas Deane, a Connecticut delegate, to Paris as liaison for the covert effort. Deane had never traveled abroad, spoke no French, and was out of his depth amid the foreign intrigues of Paris. To assist him, Franklin highly recommended Dr. Edward Bancroft, an American-born resident of London who the venerable patriot had befriended and mentored during his years as the colonies’ representative in Britain. Deane, coincidentally, had been Bancroft’s tutor at a Connecticut high school and agreed with Franklin’s suggestion. He sent a letter to Bancroft in London and enlisted the young doctor to assist him in his efforts with the French. Bancroft was also enlisted soon after by British intelligence to spy against America. The Bancroft spy case was marked by the same elements that would characterize future espionage operations against America. Like other spies to follow, Bancroft professed that he was motivated by purely ideological motives although he was paid handsomely for his information. In a surprisingly revealing letter written on September 17, 1784, he asked the British foreign secretary for payment of compensation due him for his espionage and detailed his motivations and spying activities for Great Britain. He claimed that he had agreed to cooperate primarily to thwart a Franco-American alliance and achieve reconciliation between the Crown and the colonies.2 Although he emphasized in the letter that he initially sought no compensation, he readily accepted the Crown’s offer of payment . His self-professed ideological motivation was far overshadowed by his subsequent complaints about delayed salary payments in other correspondence . At the time of his recruitment by the British, he was experiencing serious financial difficulties as a result of an unsuccessful business enterprise to sell dyes made from South American tree bark.3 He was also a notorious gambler and speculator on the London stock market, an issue that would have a considerable impact on his spy career. Bancroft’s clandestine relationship remained undetected until 1889, when documents detailing his espionage, including the September 1784 letter, were found among papers opened by the British National Archives. Like Benjamin Church and other American spies, Bancroft’s occasionally suspicious activities were largely ignored by his colleagues. He also communicated with his British handlers using clandestine tradecraft methods that other intelligence services have also used throughout history to The Undetected Spy • Edward Bancroft 31 collect secrets from American spies. Most curiously, he escaped detection as a spy in his lifetime but he may have been a pawn in a grand American deception of the British by Benjamin Franklin—the answer still remains a mystery today.4 Bancroft was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1745 and moved to Connecticut after his father’s death. Like Benjamin Church, Bancroft was a physician. He worked as a plantation doctor in Dutch Guiana, where he became an expert on the flora and fauna of the region and subsequently wrote an extensive study of its people and its plant and animal life.5 He then returned to London to continue his study of medicine and wrote a political treatise on British relations with the colonies. His work brought him to the attention of Franklin, who sponsored him for membership in the Royal Society...