Joseph E. Persico by Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR, World War II Espionage Page A

legitimacy. Earlier on the day that he had attended the White House Correspondents dinner, FDR had addressed a joint session of Congress hammering at his pet theme, “the treacherous use of the fifth column” and the necessity for America to strengthen its national defense. The speech was blatantly interventionist, and its isolationist critics were swift in counterattacking. Two days after addressing Congress, FDR brandished a sheaf of telegrams before his press secretary, Steve Early. The senders, he told Early, were opponents of a strong national defense. He wanted Early to give the telegrams to J. Edgar Hoover to “go over” the names and addresses. Whatever “go over” meant, Hoover had the senders checked against the FBI’s dossiers and promptly reported his findings back to the President. Three days later, Roosevelt sent Early another batch with a note reading, “Here are some more telegrams to send to Edgar Hoover.” By the end of May, Hoover had checked out 131 of the President’s critics, including two senators, Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald Nye, and America’s aviator hero, Charles Lindbergh.
    The President and Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle who flew the Atlantic solo in 1927, had met once, on April 20, 1939. Lindbergh, convinced of Germany’s bright future and fast becoming the darling of the isolationists, was determined not to be taken in by Roosevelt’s charm. At the end of fifteen minutes, he left the White House feeling that the President was “a little too suave, too pleasant, too easy.” Later Lindbergh told friends that the experience had been like talking to a man wearing a mask. From behind that mask, the President had studied America’s boyish paragon of Yankee virtue with a measuring eye. He was aware of an incident five months before at which Lindbergh had accepted from the number two Nazi, Hermann Göring, the Service Cross of the Order of the German Eagle with Star. With Germany having sliced itself a piece of Czechoslovakia only two weeks before and with Nazi persecution of the Jews intensifying, acceptance of the medal had tainted Lindbergh in the judgment of many Americans including the President. Lindbergh’s defense, that the medal had been sprung on him without warning, that the presentation had taken place at a dinner given by the American ambassador, and that to have refused it would have been an offense further straining U.S.-German relations, did not wash with Roosevelt.
    Then, on May 19, 1940, two days before FDR was to deliver a speech on military preparedness to Congress, Lindbergh openly unfurled his own isolationist banner. In a nationwide Sunday night broadcast, he charged the Roosevelt administration with creating “a defense hysteria.” Nobody was threatening to invade the United States unless the “American people bring it on through their own quarreling and meddling with affairs abroad,” he warned. The only danger of war, Lindbergh claimed, came from “powerful elements in America who desire us to take part. They represent a small minority of the American people, but they control much of the machinery of influence and propaganda.” If a fifth column threatened the United States, Lindbergh said, it lay in Roosevelt’s belligerence. After hearing the speech, FDR told Henry Morgenthau, “If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this. I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi.” He wrote Henry Stimson, who was about to join his cabinet, “When I read Lindbergh’s speech, I felt that it could not have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels himself. What a pity that this youngster has completely abandoned his belief in our form of government and has accepted Nazi methods because apparently they are efficient.” Lindbergh’s name entered the President’s list of foes. J. Edgar Hoover was only too ready to maintain a watch on him for FDR, but not