| Download Photo 1 | William J. | Bradley | DC- WFO; IL- Chicago; BRAZIL- Nata, Rio Grande de Norte, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil | 1940 - 1945 | | World War II, Legal Attaché, SIS | For the FBI Oral History Heritage Project sponsored by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc., which holds the copyright to the material.
Special Agent William J. Bradley served in the FBI from 1940 to 1945. This interview took place on February 7, 2006. Interviewed by John J. “Jack” O’Flaherty.
SA Bradley was interviewed within a few days of his ninety-third birthday, and noted that he was probably the oldest living Legal Attaché. As a young lawyer in Dayton, OH, SA Bradley joined the FBI as United States involvement in World War II was imminent.
SA Bradley’s first office was WFO for a few months, then Chicago, and mysteriously back to WFO and the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). His training for SIS consisted of special courses in codes, cameras and the Spanish language. He arrived in Brazil – where Portuguese is spoken – on May 31, 1941. He was stationed on the northern seacoast in Natal, just fifteen hundred miles from North Africa. He arrived undercover but, after a few months, he was transferred to Rio de Janeiro to the American Embassy as a Legal Attaché.
Coded messages went out by commercial company until a radio transmitter was installed. There was a lot of radio traffic due to activity in Brazil. Natal was a ferry point for planes and material headed for England via North Africa. Brazil was a strategic source of platinum, industrial diamonds, etc. SA Bradley describes the Atlantic Clipper and Pacific Clipper routes of Pan American Airlines. The political inclinations of various leaders in the 1940s are discussed as well as the sinking of vessels flagged Brazilian and American in the south Atlantic.
Although colonies of German, Italians, and Japanese settled in Brazil, only a few were involved in acts such as disruption of trade, propaganda, sabotage, and clandestine radios which reported ship movements.
Informants’ surveillances led to a mass arrest of Germans, although there was no Brazilian law against spying. The German Ambassador and Naval Attaché were implicated. SA Bradley tells of two spies who landed by sailboat in 1943, one of whom immediately defected.
Other important organizations in the area were the Rubber Development Program and the Federal Communication Commission.
In 1944, SA Bradley returned to the United States to marry and was head of the Brazil desk at the Bureau until the war was over. He resigned in November 1945. | Download PDF 1 | Download PDF 2 | Download Photo 2 |