Raymond Hare: Our Man in Cairo during WWII
Egypt and the Suez Canal became a point of global strategic interest during WWII because of the quick access the waterway could provide to Middle East oil, raw materials from Asia, and– for the British Empire particularly– a connection to its distant territories. Britain, as the first state to launch a completely mechanized military, was particularly dependent upon its shipping routes from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Maintaining Allied control of oil exports from the Middle East was also of strategic importance to the United States even before it entered the war, and it therefore commenced a Lend-Lease program in Egypt to equip the British with necessary materiel.
The United States publicly took a position of neutrality early in the war (the Neutrality Act of 1939), and could not sell weapons to foreign governments. In order to protect the national interest without violating the Act, the Lend-Lease program was devised to permit the non-monetary transfer of materiel “to the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” It was during this period that Raymond A. Hare was appointed Second Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and orchestrated the movement of American materiel to British forces in Egypt and later to Soviet forces via Iran. Read more