Jimmy Byrnes - Skull & Bones Candidate for President, 1944

MI6 agent Roaldl Dahl became a close "friend" of Vice President Henry Wallace. Unknown to Wallace, Dahl was spying on him and sending his private papers to Sir William Stephenson at 30 Rockefeller Plaza:

Marsh had given him a draft of a pamphlet written by his close friend Henry Wallace. Entitled "Our Job in the Pacific," it summarized the vice president's postwar goals, among them international control of the airways, economic assistance for the industrial development of Asia, and the demilitarization of Japan. Wallace was also in favor of 'the emancipation of colonial subjects" in the British Empire, including India, Burma, and Malaya. Dahl could feel his "hair stand on end." Dahl immediately realized the document's importance, and knowing that his superiors would want to see it, he excused himself saying that he was going to finish reading it downstairs. He quickly phoned his BSC contact, explained the urgency of the situation, and convinced him to meet him on the corner as soon as possible. The agent knew something was up and materialized on the street in front of Marsh's house in a matter of minutes.

Dahl sneaked out of the house and handed the document through his car window, warning his partner in crime to be back in half an hour or there would be hell to pay. "He flashed off," recalled Dahl, "and I'm around downstairs, near the lavatory door, and if the chap upstairs had come down looking for me saying, `have you finished reading it?' then I'd of been in the lavatory you see, saying `I'm sorry I'm caught short."' As it turned out, the agent went straight to the BSC's Washington offices to make copies and made it back within the allotted time. Dahl nipped back out, collected the paper, and no one was the wiser. 

(Conant, The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington, pp. 121-122).

The British spy ring, led by Dahl, made sure that Wallace was not re-nominated for Vice President.
A ferocious fight broke out in Chicago between the supporters of Vice President Wallace and the supporters of Jimmy Byrnes. Everybody seemed to know that Roosevelt would not survive his 4th term so his Vice President would become President.

Jimmy Byrnes arrived at the convention on the morning of July 20, fully confident that he would be the next Vice President . . . and then the next President of the United States:

Across town Byrnes was enjoying a cheerful breakfast with Mayor Kelly and Hannegan. They gave him some further details of Roosevelt's reaction when FDR was told that the danger of losing the black vote with Byrnes had been exaggerated. "Well, you know Jimmy has been my choice from the very first," they quoted Roosevelt as having said to them. "Go ahead and name him." Hannegan did add that Roosevelt had requested that Byrnes' nomination first be discussed with the leadership of the CIO at the convention, but this request was in Hannegan's opinion simply a courtesy of prior notification. Later that same day, after Byrnes had left the breakfast, Mayor Kelly met with Alben Barkley, majority leader of the Senate, and the mayor told Barkley to pass the word that Roosevelt wanted Byrnes and that "it was in the bag for Jimmy." 

(Robertson, Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes. p. 354).

Byrnes was to face a big disappointment however, as nothing could persuade the absent Roosevelt to name him as his heir apparent.
Jimmy Byrnes was one of the few people at the Convention who knew that a new deadly weapon called the atomic bomb was under development. This weapon could change the course of the war . . . and its sole possessor could rule the world unchallenged.