Swashbuckling Spymaster

By JENNET CONANT

Published: February 11, 2011

Roosevelt and Donovan could not have been more different, Douglas Waller writes in this entertaining history, and it was, at best, an uneasy alliance. They came from divergent backgrounds — one the scion of an old aristocratic family, the other a poor Irish Catholic boy from Buffalo — and barely acknowledged each other while at Columbia Law School. They were also members of opposing political parties, and the fiercely Republican Donovan, during a failed bid to become governor of New York in 1932, campaigned not only against his rival for the office, Herbert Lehman, but also against Roosevelt’s domestic policies, and ridiculed him as a dictator with “delusions of grandeur.” But the growing military crisis in Europe gave them a common cause.

In June 1940, Roosevelt tapped Donovan for a confidential mission to Britain. His assignment was to gauge the situation there, and determine the validity of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s assertion that the British had neither the will nor the means to beat back a German attack. Donovan returned to Washington with the optimistic message that Britain could fight on, but only with American military equipment and destroyers, and lobbied hard for aid, inspiring the columnist Walter Lippmann to gush that his findings “almost singlehandedly overcame the unmitigated defeatism which was paralyzing Washington.” More secret missions followed, and by July 1941, Roosevelt had become sufficiently impressed with Donovan’s sense of purpose and swashbuckling style to charge him with creating a new civilian intelligence agency, soon to be known as the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), which would carry out secret activities abroad and analyze information related to national defense.

“The feuding fiefdoms” of the Army, Navy and State Department had little sympathy for Roosevelt’s new spymaster, but Donovan’s “most implacable foe” was J. Edgar Hoover, the ambitious director of the F.B.I., who resented the brash interloper’s meddling in his bureau, and who regarded him from the outset as a threat to his power. The central villain of “Wild Bill Donovan,” Hoover was a bachelor who still lived at home with his mother, obsessed over cleanliness and was sensitive about his height. Add to this that he was untalented at sports, earned his law degree at night school and got a draft exemption from the Army, and it’s easy to see why he felt competitive with the macho Donovan.

As the two rival intelligence chiefs aggressively expanded their empires, their run-ins grew more frequent. Waller, the author of several books on the military, writes that “it was not long before both men began keeping files on each other.” Hoover was particularly incensed that Donovan was close to William Stephenson, Churchill’s leading spy in the United States, who had long been an irritant to Hoover. He maintained a dossier filled with dirt about Donovan’s unseemly ties to British intelligence as well as his flagrant womanizing, while the O.S.S. chief accumulated reports that the F.B.I. director was homosexual.
Roosevelt, who liked playing his top advisers off one another, read Hoover’s “poison-pen memos” about Donovan’s unconventional, and often undiplomatic, methods, but refused to dismantle the fledgling spy agency. The president had been enamored with intrigue since his youth, and enjoyed reading inside information and scandalous tidbits from around the world, describing Donovan favorably to friends as “my secret legs.”

During the war years, while Donovan traversed the globe developing his spy network and becoming an influential player in international affairs, Hoover remained in Washington plotting and scheming. It was not hard to find fault with the overreaching Donovan, who was spread way too thin, and was seemingly willing to try almost anything; even his own aides worried that he jumped “at too many jobs and offbeat ideas.”
Soon, as Waller demonstrates, Donovan was irritating almost everyone, running roughshod over the military, and leaving a long trail of bruised egos behind him. By late 1944, some O.S.S. intelligence failures, like a bungled operation in Italy, began to leak to the press, and there was speculation — stoked by Hoover — that Donovan and his O.S.S. were on their way out.

None of this helped Donovan when it came to the most ambitious initiative he wanted Roosevelt to approve — a future central intelligence agency with himself at the helm. Usually one step ahead of his adversaries, the O.S.S. chief was caught short in early 1945 when his secret proposal was leaked to the conservative Washington Times-Herald, and savaged as a “super spy system” with plans for a powerful domestic police force on a par with the Gestapo. Donovan tried to counter the negative press with a media blitz of his own but the damage was done, and his hopes of making the O.S.S. a permanent postwar institution were dead.
Donovan blamed Hoover for the leak and instigated a full-scale criminal investigation to find proof. He remained bitter about the incident in later years, convinced the F.B.I. director sabotaged him in order to ensure his own position as spy czar. What Donovan never wanted to admit, however, was that in his own ruthless drive for power he had alienated too many powerful constituencies, and had left himself and his agency vulnerable to attack. When Roosevelt died, he lost his protector. The newly sworn-in Harry Truman, busy downsizing the government, did not think twice about abolishing the O.S.S. and dividing its functions between the War and State Departments. After his four years of dedicated service, Donovan was dismissed with a perfunctory form letter.

Yet Donovan did not have to wait long to see his dream of a central intelligence agency realized. Not two years later, with the onset of the cold war, Truman asked Congress to approve the creation of the C.I.A. Donovan hoped to be named director, but there was little chance that Truman would turn to him. He remained hopeful after Dwight Eisenhower became president. But in 1953 the job went to Donovan’s protégé, Allen Dulles. Instead of being proud that one of his own men was put in charge, and that the spirit of his organization would live on, Donovan was annoyed at being passed over for an underling.

This book is not the place to seek a comprehensive appraisal of the O.S.S.’s far-flung intelligence operations. Its many successes and debacles are only hastily sketched here. Waller is more concerned with the politics of personality, and the legacy of Donovan’s complex, larger-than-life character. As he amply shows, Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history.


Jennet Conant’s latest book, “A Covert ­Affair: Julia and Paul Child in the OSS,” will be published this spring.

• © 2011The New York Times Company

Personal Note: I have many friends, thank almighty God, for small blessings. As I was getting my gear, my beach umbrella, my galoshes, my life-savers, not that silly device, they throw at you, just when you are trying to find the difference between low point and the high point of your life, in the middle of choppy waters, the mints, breath fresheners, with a hole in the middle, my fishing gear, a bucket of water, bunch of live baits, tackle, hooks, sinkers and a happy puppy, not too happy to be outdoors, today, as the sky is depressingly gray, with patchy clusters of dark, mean clouds, I get poked, literally, by my bosom buddy, the bosom part,  applies to her, more than to me, "Youzi-youza" Mary utters in a very low, almost guttural tones, see, Mary ain't what she used to be, what with her age related, arthritis, asthma, overweight, both in her upper and lower torso and fading (in content) curly-top, "what the fuck am I seeing, an old, dilapidated, fat as a pig, big-buddy of mine, Sid?"
Frankly, I never felt so amused by a person with a tongue as acidic, to some extent, utterly with venom, grret me with the most kind words. More on Mary's other (self) expressions, later.
"Mary, you know, as well as yours truly, my fucking days are over. Not that a reference to my (past) glory-days ain't inspiring, I remain, yours truly (friend in need is friend indeed)."
After joshing and pulling each others legs and other unmentionable body parts, we settled down to a friendly discussion of life, afterlife, life in between orgies, and most of all, our current (book) reading (habits).
Mary got so excited over this ordinary, kitchen garden variety of lackluster topic, that she bolted from the scene of the crime, namely, a dock on the bay, and waddled thru small and large puddles to fetch her books that she forgot to return to the library in time.
I found this one, overdue by almost eleven months, most interesting.



...and I am Sid Harth