“ROOSEVELT’S SECRET WAR: FDR and WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE” by Joseph E. Persico (1) Foreword:

“…Few leaders have been better suited by nature and temperament for the anomalies of secret warfare than FDR. ‘You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does,’ he once confessed. ‘I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help me win the war’…His style of leadership bears out this admission. FDR compartmentalized information, misled associates, manipulated people, conducted intrigues, used private lines of communication, scattered responsibility, duplicated assignments, provoked rivalries, held all the cards while showing few…His behavior, which fascinated, puzzled, amazed and occasionally repelled people, parallels many of the qualities of an espionage chief… 'So you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.’

“Still, the President took almost childish delight in subterfuge for its own sake…He deliberately concealed the processes of his mind. His vice president Henry Wallace concluded that the only certainty in dealing with the man was the uncertainty of ‘what went on in FDR’s head’… His inscrutable nature found full play when America went to war. The man with the instincts of spy master now had a war in which to indulge his attraction to the clandestine” (1, xii).

Comment: Compartmentalization (into hidden alternate personality states) is the essence of multiple personality, but it may be an asset, not a mental disorder, in a high-functioning person.

1. Joseph E. Persico. Roosevelt’s Secret War (FDR and World War II Espionage). New York, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2002.