“Wild Bill” Donovan, America’s Top Spymaster

And we continue with our American Stories. Wild Bill Donovan was one of America’s most exciting and secretive generals, the man President Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. Wild Bill was the director of the Office of Strategic Services, the country’s first national intelligence agency. He is known as the founding father of both the CIA and the military Special Operations Forces, along with being credited as the father of psychological and cyber warfare. Here to tell the story is Douglas Waller. He’s the author of the best-seller, Wild Bill Donovan, the Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.

Let’s take a listen.

While Bill Donovan, he slept five hours or less a night, speed-read about three books a week. He was an excellent ballroom dancer. He loved to sing Irish songs. In fact, that you go to Broadway and buy up the latest sheet music so he could memorize the words. He didn’t smoke, rarely drank, enjoyed fine dining, although it tended to add to the weight. He spent lavishly, had no concept for a dollar. In fact, when he was roaming the world visiting his different OSS stations, he was always bumming dollars and quarters off as the aides who are with him because he never kept any money with him. He was witty, but he never laughed out loud. He never told a dirty joke. He never showed anger, and steady let it boil inside of him. He was also rakishly handsome. He had these bright blue eyes that women found absolutely captivating. His life also was filled with a lot of personal tragedy. His daughter died in an automobile accident in college; daughter-in-law died of a drug overdose. One of his granddaughters, when she was four years old, died when she accidentally swallowed silver polish, and a lot of sadness in his life.

He was born on New Year’s Day, 1883, in Buffalo, New York’s poor Irish First Ward. He thought he might wanted to become a priest, and every Irish Catholic family was always assumed that one of the sons would become a priest, and Donovan thought that was going to be him. Realized later on that he wasn’t cut out to be a man of the cloth. He went to Columbia University, was a star quarterback on the football team his senior year until he got hobbled by a chief tackle by a Princeton lineman. He then went to Columbia Law School. Franklin Roosevelt also attended the law school at that time. In fact, Roosevelt later liked to say that he and Donovan rolled buddies in law school, and Donovan said, “Oh, that’s a bunch of maloney.” Roosevelt was on a much higher social strada than a poor kid from Buffalo. He returned to Buffalo after law school, set up a law practice, married one of the richest women in town. World War One, he led a battalion with the 69th Irish Regiment, the very famous regiment.

In fact, they did a movie on it. Jimmy Cagney played in it.

Donovan was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism in battle during World War One. The chaplain of the 69th Irish Regiment, a guy named Father Francis Duffy, said Donovan was the only man he had ever met in his life who actually enjoyed combat.

He really did.

He would write home to his wife, Ruth, that going out on combat missions was like going out trick-or-treating at night. Also during World War One is when he got his nickname, Wild Bill. He was a very rigorous, almost a brutal trainer of his men because he realized they were going to be going into a meat-grinder of combat in World War One, which they did. So before they actually went into action in France, he had him running over hill and dale and over obstacle courses, under bob wire and everything. Finally, the entire battalion collapsed in front of him, and he stood up there, old Johnny, and said, “Well, you know, what the heck’s the matter with you? I’m 35 years old carrying the same pack that you are. You don’t see me out of breath.” From somewhere in the back, a soldier shouted out, (he never figured out who), “But we’re not as wild as you are, Bill.”

From that day on, Wild Bill Donovan stuck.

He claimed he didn’t like that nickname because it ran counter to the cool, calm, quiet spy image he wanted to project, but his wife, Ruth, said that he really did like to be called Wild Bill.

He returned to New York a hero.

He became an assistant to the Attorney General in the Coolidge administration during the Roaring Twenties. His goal at that point was to become Attorney General of the United States, and he thought Herbert Hoover, who succeeded Calvin Coolidge, had promised him that position, and in fact, Hoover had promised him the Attorney Generalship. But this is the late 1920s. Ku Klux Klan is a very powerful political movement in this country, and it was up in arms of the idea of a Roman Catholic becoming Attorney General of the United States. Donovan, as any prominent figure in Washington, also made his share of enemies there.

He was a prominent Republican.

Senate Democrats avowed to block his nomination. Hoover re indegged on the promise until the day he died. Donovan never forgave Herbert Hoover for denying him the Attorney Generalship. In 1932, he decided to dip his toe into politics once more.

He ran for Governor of New York.

His idea then was to become the first Irish Catholic President of the United States, and the Governorship of New York was an ideal stepping stone for the presidency. Many respects it may still be today. Keep in mind, 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was running for his first tournament office and he had been Governor of New York. Donovan ran against a guy named Herbert Layman, who was Roosevelt’s lieutenant governor. He ended up running as much against Roosevelt as he did against Layman. Said some pretty nasty things about FDR on the campaign trail. At one point, he accused Roosevelt at being, quote, “crafty.” Another time, he accused Roosevelt being a Hyde Park faker, because Roosevelt claimed he was a simple farmer from Hyde Park, and Donovan said that was a bunch of bologney. Roosevelt, for his part, sent out surrogates on the campaign trail to take their shots at Donovan. In fact, Eleanor hit the trail and went after Donovan on different issues. Now, the reason I gave you some of this backstory is it’s amazing then that Franklin Roosevelt made Donovan his top spymaster, very senior position, considering all the nasty things these two guys had said about each other.

In New York politics.

Fast forward to 1940, going in 1941, Roosevelt is building up the nation’s defenses, preparing the nation for war that he can see on the horizon. Donovan, even though he was a conservative Republican, he believed the New Deal was a Communist plot to take over America. He, too, also thought that the nation needed to build itself up for war. So he had two very canny, savvy politicians here who saw common cause in working with each other. In the summer of 1940, Roosevelt sends Donovan to England, basically just to answer a very simple question: “Can Britain survive this war, or is it going to be occupied by Nazi Germany?” And this was a question that Roosevelt didn’t really have a clear answer to. He didn’t really have a good read on Winston Churchill either. Later on, they would become very, very close, but at that point he didn’t know who this Prime Minister really was, so he sent Donovan over. Donovan was given access to the top levels of the British government, which is actually kind of unusual because here’s an Irish American going over, and the British government, particularly Churchill’s office, didn’t know whether this guy is going to be an Anglo file or an Anglo phobe. Turned out, Donovan was a committed Anglo file. Came back to Washington with a bag full of secret documents and an answer to Roosevelt’s question, which was, “Yes, Britain could survive the war, but it’s going to need a considerable amount of material aid from the United States,” which eventually came in the form of lease at the end of 1940, the beginning of 1941. Roosevelt sent Donovan on a second mission to Europe, this time not only to England to collect more material, but also to tour the Balkans, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, again, to gather up intelligence there, but also to deliver a very private message, particularly to Balkan leaders, and that was that if you, a Balkan leader, were sitting on the fence in this war, and many of them were at this point, just keep in mind that Franklin Roosevelt does not intend to let Great Britain lose this conflict. So if you’re trying to decide which side you want to be on, keep in mind the winning side is going to be the Allied side. Churchill was delighted with the message that Donovan conveyed in the region; he sent a cable to Roosevelt saying that Donovan had been a heartwarming flame.

And you’ve been listening to Douglas Waller tell the story of Wild Bill Donovan, and what a wild story it is. Born poor in Buffalo; Columbia, U. and law school; and then right into the middle of World War One, where he becomes a Medal of Honor recipient and describes himself as enjoying combat. Politics follows, and then the Second World War and the life of espionage. When we come back, more of this remarkable story. While Bill Donovan’s story here on our American Stories, and we continue with our American Stories and with the story of Wild Bill Donovan. Telling that story is Douglas Waller, an author of the best-seller Wild Bill Donovan. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

Churchill also supplied a British plane to take Donovan around to the different countries, and British escorts officers to open doors for him and also to keep an eye on to report back to London to make sure he stayed own message. One of those escort officers was Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond novel. The State Department, though, wasn’t so pleased with this trip, because here you had somebody with no official government standing in either the U.S. government or the British government, strong-arming Balkan leaders behind closed doors, and in fact, at one point, senior State Department aids discussed the the possibility of whether Donovan should be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, which makes it a crime for a private citizen to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government. Roosevelt, however, was only too happy to have Donovan out there freelancing because, keep in mind, 1940, going into ’41, Roosevelt has no foreign intelligence service to speak of. There were tiny foreign espionage units in the Navy and the Army, but they were largely dumping grounds for poor-performing officers. Roosevelt is facing a very tough re-election fight for an unprecedented third term. He’s running against Wendell Wilkie. He’s a very strong candidate. Roosevelt was actually seriously worried that he was going to lose that race. And here he is making major foreign policy decisions overseas, largely blind to what lay ahead of him overseas. In fact, it worried him so much at times that he would become physically ill. When Donovan returns from those two European trips, that’s when our spy story begins. In July 1941, Roosevelt signed an executive order. It made Donovan his Coordinator of Information. A year later, the organization be redesignated the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, but it started out as the Coordinator of Information. It was just a one-page document he signed, very vaguely written. It said, “Colonel Donovan,” (which had been his World War One rank), “will collect information of national security interests for me, and will do other unspecified jobs.” In fact, the document was so vague that members of Roosevelt’s cabinet scratched their heads and wondered, “What in the heck is Franklin doing here, appointing this Republican Wall Street lawyer who had been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for the GOP, to this nefarious position in the administration doing all kinds of unspecified things?” Donovan said that he began his organization really from minus zero, which is really the case.

He only began with one guy, which was himself. In the beginning.

He was kind of like a player in a pickup basketball game, looking for agents and operations anywhere he could find him. So, for example, the Phillips Lamp Company, they made lamps, sold lamps worldwide.

They’re still in business.

Donovan arranged privately with the Phillips Lamp Company that when its salesman went overseas, particularly into occupied countries, they would report back to the OSS on anything they saw that might be of interest or of military value. The Eastman Kodak Company, my day, you know, they made Brownie cameras. Back then, the Eastman Kodak Company had thousands of camera clubs around the country. Donovan arranged for those camera clubs to send him photos that tourists had taken when they were overseas on vacation, particularly militarily important sites. Donovan had a project code-named Cigar where he secretly had ticket agents for PanAm stations throughout Africa that would report back to him whenever Abver or Gestapo agents moved into the airports or came in or came out on different flights. He cooked up all kinds of wild schemes when he was OSS director. He’s opened to really any idea that crossed his desk. He kept $2,000 in his desk drawer at all times, and that was to pay for informants for information when he was roaming around Washington. I don’t think you’d find a CIA director today keeping two grand.

In his desk.

He had a research and development chief, a guy named Stanley Lovell, who was a very famous New England inventor in his own right, and he was the guy who created all the spy gadgets for Donovan. Donovan used to call him his Professor Moriarty, after the Sherlock Holmes character. Stanley Lovell built the things like the miniature cameras that spies used, the pistols with silencers, pencil-like explosive devices that could be used to detonate charges or for discreet assassinations. Donovan was also very, very interested in truth drugs and how they might be able to be secretly administered to an unwitting official to get him to spill the beans on different secrets. So one time they decided to test the truth drugs out on a New York mobster guy named Little Aggie. There was an ossauficer who had been a New York City cop who had busted Little Oggie a number of times and eventually befriended the gangster. So one day he invited Aggie up to his apartment for some smokes and a chat. Well, laced within the cigarettes was a truth drug. It was tetrahydrous cycling. And so Little Oggie starts puffing away, puffing away, slowly getting a silly grin on his face and chuckling and telling the officer about working for Lucky Luciano and all the mob hits he’s carried out, and all the congressman he’s bribed. Of course, Little Oggie’s secrets were safe with Donovan. He couldn’t bring him to try would give away the truth drugs. He had all the other kind of wild ideas that he would propose to Roosevelt. One of them was that he proposed that Roosevelt would have a button at his desk that he could punch at any time, and it would put him in instant radio communication with every radio in America. So that way, if the Japanese were going to bomb Los Angeles, or the Germans were going to attack New York, Roosevelt could alert everybody. Roosevelt ignored that idea. But Roosevelt was a spy aficionado in his own right, ever since he was a teenager. He always enjoyed subterfusion, intrigue, and keeping secrets. And in fact, Roosevelt sent ideas to Donovan that were kind of off the wall, too. One of them was bats that, you know, bats that fly. They were gonna fit these bats with incendiary devices, time around them, and they’re gonna fly over Japan. Drop the bats out of the plane, and the bats would fly into the paper and wood homes in Japan, into the eves. The incendiary devices would go off and it burned down Japan.

Great idea.

Someone had written Eleanor with the idea. She passed it along to Franklin. Franklin thought it was cool and gave it to Donovan. So Stanley Lovell and his guys went out to the Midwest somewhere, got a bunch of these bats, fitted them with the incendiary devices, took them up in a plane, dropped them out of the plane. Guess what happened to the bats? They all sank like stone. There was no idea the way that idea was going to work.

But Roosevelt didn’t mind the failures, and Donovan was willing to try anything. In addition to being the father of the modern CIA, Donovan is also the father of modern special operations. If you go down to Tampa, Florida, to the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command, they have in the main foyer in a glass case Donovan’s uniform. There a lot of memorabilia from him. Donovan loved his commandos. He would talk in kind of that soft purr and say, “You know, I know this is a dangerous mission, but if I could, I would go with you,” and he actually meant it. In fact, it got to be kind of a joke within OSS circles, you know about, you know, Donovan coming and putting his arm around an agent, “This is an easy,” you know, “if I could go with you, I would.” That meant you were headed for trouble. In fact, at one point he went to Roosevelt sa