[grants70]

This extract might clarify some related stuff:

".....There were hundreds of British agents in this country and their goal was to get the U.S. into the war. One of their ways to do it was to cast doubt on the isolationist movement. So they were tapping phones and they were inserting articles into American newspapers about the isolationists and they were spying on isolationists in Congress and elsewhere. Roosevelt allowed this to happen. Again, we were supposedly a neutral country then, and this was all quite illegal."