Secret Agent Man

Since the 1960s, when Americans think of spies, the first name that probably comes to mind is  James Bond, that suave fictional British agent extraordinaire.  However, the most important name in American spydom is actually Wild Bill Donovan, a wealthy Republican Wall Street lawyer and political figure who created the OSS and modern American espionage and, interestingly enough, worked as a spy with Ian Fleming, the British author who created the Bond character.

Today, author Douglas Walker appeared at the National Archives to discuss the life, times, and legacy of Donovan, the subject of Walker's latest book entitled aptly enough Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.

Walker said that during the years of research for his book, 3 intriguing stories developed. First, there was the biography of an extremely interesting character. Secondly, there was an engrossing tale of World War II spying and the creation of the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services) which was the forerunner to today's the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Finally, there was a a tale of political intrigue at the highest levels of American and world governments.

According to Walker, Donovan was rakishly handsome with flashing blue eyes that made him irresistible to women. He slept only 3 hours a night and speed-read at least 3 books a week. He spent lavishly and often wore a colorful ascot with his military uniform. Before becoming America's top spy, he had been a starting quarterback for Columbia University, a Congressional Medal of Honor winning colonel from World War I, a successful New York lawyer, and a failed GOP candidate for New York governor.

Donovan got his name from the men he trained for combat in World War I. Acutely aware of the dangerous, difficult times they would be facing, he was relentless in his training. One day, the story goes, as his men lay breathless on the ground around him after a particularly brutal session, Donovan began berating them, pointing out that, although older, he was not the least bit tired. One of the men reportedly hollered out: "we are not as wild as you are" and the nickname stuck. Although Donovan later publicly indicated that he did not like the nickname because it clashed with the cool, calm spy image he was trying to project,  his wife said that privately he was really pleased.

Walker said Donovan appeared to be absolutely fearless. "He actually enjoyed combat and wrote his wife that going out on a combat mission was like trick or treating on Halloween night," Walker said.

In 1940, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was preparing America for what he knew would be entry into World War II, he called on Donovan to undertake fact-finding missions to Europe, the most important of which was to determine if Britain could keep from being defeated by Nazi Germany. It was during the first of these fact finding missions that Donovan would be escorted by British spy Fleming.

After the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, FDR charged Donovan with creating the OSS to provide intelligence for an Allied victory. Starting with only himself and 1 agent, Donovan, who was open to any and all ideas no matter how outlandish, quickly started to build a spy network. These steps and plans included:

• asking Kodak Eastman to supply travel pictures from Europe
• enlisting salesmen to bring back information from their travels
• employing economists and insurance agents to suggest the best targets for air strikes
• testing various truth serums on unsuspecting subjects, including Mafia mobsters.
• trying to find Hitler's vegetable garden and injecting the vegetables with female hormones so the Fuhrer's mustache would fall off and he would gain a falsetto voice
• distributing pamphlets from the made up League of Lonely Women to German troops on the front lines claiming their wives and girlfriends at home were having wanton sex with other comrades
• dropping fire-bomb loaded bats from airplanes onto the wooden homes of the Japanese, a plan that had to be aborted when the bats, made super heavy from the incendiary devices, simply plummeted to their deaths.

After the war ended, Donovan, fearing a threat from the Soviet Union, hoped to remain on and continue to head up an intelligence gathering group. But he had made many enemies, including powerful generals, disgruntled members of his own organization, and head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, Donovan once said that his "enemies in Washington were as ferocious as Adolph Hitler."

Walker said not all the spying in World War II had been directed toward the enemy; Allied groups kept constant covert tabs on each other, too. "As I was researching I sometimes wondered when did they have time to spy on the Axis because they were always spying on each other," Walker said.

Often these tactics were brutish and dirty. For example, someone, believed to have been Hoover, leaked a report to FDR's successor Harry Truman claiming that Donovan was having an affair with his own daughter-in-law.  While the OSS chief had indeed had a series of mistresses and affairs, his relationship with his son's wife was purely platonic.

In 1947, Truman authorized the formation of the CIA and there was no place for Donovan. He hoped to regain his stature in 1953, but new Republican President Dwight Eisenhower bypassed Donovan for one of Donovan's own World War II underlings, Allen Foster Dulles.  Donovan died in 1959 at the age of 76, still estranged from the intelligence community he had helped formulate.

Asked how important Donovan's group was to America's success in World War II, the Cold War, and the rest of the modern era, Walker replied: "Well, 4 of the CIA's first directors cut their teeth learning their craft under Donovan."

As to the war effort, even Donovan acknowledged that other groups such as the code-breakers for Project Magic were more important to the winning effort.

"The OSS isn't what won the war; brute force won the war," Walker said. "But the OSS played a part just like a soldier in Europe and a sailor in the Pacific and Rosie the Riveter back home."

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
Hollywood had long glamorized spies. But in World War II, the movie industry actually played a significant role in the secret agent/intelligence war effort. As a lawyer Donovan had represented Mae West and other Hollywood stars and his brother Vincent was known as the Hollywood priest to the stars. Donovan used his California connections often and wisely. For example, he convinced director John Ford to produce pro-US propaganda films for public consumption. He was also able to work out a deal with Paramount Pictures. The film company had large reserves of foreign currencies that the spies could use as cash.