Benson House

 Benson House, now part of the Episcopal Church, was home to FBI agents and radio technicians who, posing as German spies, broadcast false intelligence to Germany from January 1942 to June 1945.   It was built in 1912 by Dr. Gabriel S. Owen as a summer house. Weeks after the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, the FBI began using Benson House as a top-secret radio site transmitting and receiving encoded messages with German intelligence agents. The Germans believed they were communicating with their espionage agents operating in New York.  As cover for the operation, the FBI moved one of its agents, Donworth Johnson, and his family, into the house. Mrs. Johnson cooked meals for her husband and the other agents who worked on the second and third floors.

A cover story was developed that Johnson suffered from tuberculosis and was, therefore, deferred from military service. The house was outfitted by FBI technicians with several large shortwave radios and supporting equipment. Antennae were hidden in nearby trees and intruders were discouraged by Clifford, the agent’s german shepherd. The radio equipment drew enormous amounts of electricity and not wanting to attract undue attention from the local utility companies, agents powered their equipment using the engine from a Buick which they bolted to the basement floor. The car’s muffler was also used to dampen the sound of the engine.

In the summer of 1943, FBI transmissions from Benson House gave the Germans bogus information designed to freeze German forces in northwest Europe to prevent their redeployment to strengthen the Italian and Eastern Fronts. In 1944 and 1945, radio transmissions from Benson House fed the Germans a steady stream of truthful and false information to confuse the German military about the size and disposition of Allied forces in Great Britain, along with the time and place of the D-Day invasion The most significant World War II contributions was the receipt of a German message in April 1942 instructing its spies to obtain information about American atomic bomb development; an order that helped influence President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to pursue an atomic weapon.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

 

Sources:

Campdewolfe. “Benson House Listed on National Registry of Historic Places.” Camp DeWolfe, https://campdewolfe.org/wading-river-radio-station-at-benson-house-listed-on-national-register-of-historic-places

Phillips, Ted. “Benson House's Wartime Role as Li Espionage Post Remembered.” Newsday, Newsday, 8 June 2014, https://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/benson-house-s-wartime-role-as-li-espionage-post-remembered-t81293

Valiquette, Joe. “Long Island Home's Secret Role in WWII Espionage Revealed.” NBC New York, NBC New York, 6 June 2014, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/benson-house-long-island-fbi-wwii-intelligence-spying/2002799