September 5, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Drew Newman, of JC Newman Cigars, tells the story of cigars in the United States, a story his family played a big part in. “Wild Bill" Donovan was one of America’s most exciting and secretive generals—the man President Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. “Wild Bill" was 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's Special Operations Forces—along with being credited as the father of psychological and cyber warfare.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The History of Cigars in America
10:00 - "Wild" Bill Donovan, Super Spy Extraordinaire
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habbib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. And now joining us is
Drew Newman, the great grandson of the founder of the
oldest family owned premium cigar company in the United States,
(00:31):
to tell us the story of cigars in America. Here's
Drew with the story. Most people don't realize that the
United States has a rich cigar tradition that dates back
to the sixteen hundreds. The first crop of cigar tobacco
was planted in the Virginia Colony in sixteen twelve, and
(00:55):
at the time of our American independence, every colony grew tobacco,
and many of our founding fathers, such as George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson, were tobacco farmers. One hundred years ago,
Tampa was the cigar capital of the world. Tampa was
(01:15):
known as Cigar City and there were one hundred and
fifty large cigar factories just like ours here in Tampa
that made more than five hundred million cigars by hand
each year, just in Tampa. To give you some comparison. Today,
there are approximately three hundred million premium handmade cigars sold
(01:38):
in the United States each year that are made in
Central America and the Caribbean. But a hundred years ago,
one and a half times that amount was made just
inside the city limits of Tampa. But in the sixties, seventies, eighties,
and nineties, many of these factories here in Tampa closed,
and one by one they moved production overseas to developing countries,
(02:04):
primarily because the way we make cigars it's so labor
intensive that the labor savings of having overseas productions really
help them lower their costs and be more efficient. And
so one by one we realize that the other factors
were closing that suddenly my family and I had the
last cigar factory left and the cigar city of Tampa.
(02:27):
And we're very proud to be here, very proud to
continue the American cigar tradition. But doing so is at
an added cost. Labor is more expensive, materials are more expensive,
but we think it's worth it to keep the American
cigar making tradition alive. We rule cigars today just like
(02:52):
my great grandfather did one hundred years ago. The process
hasn't changed one bit. It's slow, it's labor intensive, and
because we are dealing with nature, every single cigar is different.
Generally speaking, it takes about three years and three hundred
(03:12):
pairs of hands to handcraft a single cigar. The process
starts in the farms. Beautiful farms that are here in
the United States are in Connecticuts Pennsylvania and here in
Florida as well, that grow beautiful cigar tobacco the same
way for generations. Farmers plant the seeds in a greenhouse
(03:34):
and then transplant them into the field, and after about
sixty days, the plants grow tall and thick and beautiful
and green and lush. And each leaf is picked off
of those plants and hung in a barn where the
tobacco naturally wilts, it dries out, it loses its humidity,
(03:54):
it crumples up a bit, and then from that point
the tobacco is taken down leaf by a leaf, put
into bales, and then sent to be fermented naturally. And
all we're doing with these natural leaves that are of
tobacco that are grown is simply putting them into piles.
We put them into big piles about a thousand pounds
(04:16):
each and add a little bit of water, and Mother
nature combines the water with a tobacco and the leaves
get warm, and as they get warm, the natural ammonia
and the leaves releases from the tobacco. What's left is
a beautiful aroma and taste of natural tobacco leaves. That
process of natural fermentation is slow. It takes roughly eight
(04:40):
months of simply letting the leaves sit in the pile,
turning the pile every eight days so they have an
even fermentation. And then finally we get to have leaves
that are thin, that are silky, that are smooth, that
are beautiful that we can then gently roll into cigars.
(05:05):
The cigar rolling process is really interesting. I like to
compare it to wine, because we make cigars just like
the great winemakers make blends of red wine. What we
do with cigar makers is we take different leaves grown
on different plants and different farms in different years, and
(05:26):
we blend them together to create unique and different tastes
than a single tobacco plant grown on a farm. You
can have forty fifty sixty different grades or tobacco because
some leaves are longer, some are shorter, some are thicker,
some are thinner. The leaves near the top of the
(05:47):
plant get more sun, so they have more nutrients, so
they taste stronger. The leaves at the bottom are thinner
and they have fewer nutrients and they burn better. And
so our job as cigar makers to understand these natural
variations and leaves that are grown, blend them together, harness
(06:08):
this natural variation and create unique blends that consumers like.
None of this is written down. There's no school for
cigar making. There are no rule books. It's simply a tradition.
Doesn't passed down from generation to generation. The generation that
we are working very hard to maintain and great job
(06:33):
is always by Joey bringing us that story and the
production herb is always in A special thanks to Drew Newman,
whose great grandfather was the founder of the oldest family
owned cigar company in the United States. By the way,
be sure to visit the JC Newman Factory l Roulot
with your family. That's in the Tampa region if you're
ever in the area of vacationing, or heck, you're on
(06:56):
your way to Disney when you're passing through. They have
some great exhibits and loads of activities for your family
to enjoy the story of American cigars has told to
us by Drew Newman, the great grandson of the oldest
cigar maker in the country. Here on our American story. Folks,
(07:26):
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:48):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot du
to learn more, and we continue with our American stories.
(08:12):
While 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 Two while Bill was the
director of the Office of Strategic Services, the country's first
national intelligence agency. He is known as the founding father
(08:33):
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 bestseller Wild Bill Donovan, the
spymaster who created the OSS and modern American espionage. Let's
(08:54):
take a listen 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'd go to Broadway and
buy up the latest sheet music so he could memorize
(09:15):
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 the aids who
are with him because he never kept any money with him.
(09:36):
He was witty, but he never laughed out loud. He
never told a dirty joke. He never showed anger. Insteady
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. His
(09:58):
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,
eighteen eighty three in Buffalo, New York's poor Irish first ward.
He thought he might wanted to become a priest, and
(10:19):
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
(10:40):
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 baloney. Roosevelt
was on a much higher social straighter than a poor
kid from Buffalo. He returned to Buffalo after law school,
(11:00):
set up a law practice, married one of the richest
women in town. World War One, he led a battalion
with the sixty ninth 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
(11:21):
chaplain of the sixty ninth 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
(11:42):
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 Warden and every thing. Finally,
the entire battalion collapsed in front of him, and he
(12:03):
stood up there all Johnny and said, well, you know
what the hecks of matter with you? I'm thirty five
years old carrying the same pack that you are. You
don't see me. Out of breath from somewhere in the
back of soldier shouted out he never figured out who,
but we're not as wild as you are a Bill.
From that day on, while Bill Donovan stuck, he claimed
he didn't like that nickname because it ran counter to
(12:26):
the cool, calm, quiet spy image he wanted to project,
but his wife Ruth said that he really did like
to be called while Bill. He returned to New York
a hero. He became an assistant to the Attorney General
and 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,
(12:51):
had promised him that position, and in fact, Hoover had
promised him the Attorney generalship. But this is the late
nineteen twenties. The ku Klux Klan is a very powerful
political movement in this country, and it was up in
arms over the idea of a Roman Catholic Attorney General
of the United States. Donovan, as any prominent figure in Washington,
also made his share of enemies there. He was a
(13:13):
prominent Republican Senate Democrats avowed to block his nomination. Hoover
rendigged on the promise until the day he died. Donovan
never forgave Herbert Hoover for denying him the Attorney generalship.
In nineteen thirty two, he decided to dip his toe
into politics once more. He ran for governor of New York.
(13:36):
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 nineteen
thirty two, 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.
(14:00):
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
a 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
(14:20):
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, a very senior position, considering
(14:43):
all the nasty things these two guys had said about
each other in New York politics. Fast forward to nineteen
forty Going in nineteen forty one, Roosevelt is building up
the nation's defenses. He's preparing the nation and for war
that he can see on the horizon. Donovan, even though
(15:04):
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 you had two very canny, savvy politicians
here who saw common cause in working with each other.
In the summer of nineteen forty, Roosevelt sends Donovan to
(15:27):
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,
(15:50):
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 where
this guy is going to be an Anglo file or
an Anglo fobe. Turned out, Donovan, who was a committed
to Anglo file, came back to Washington with a bag
(16:12):
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
the len lease at the end of nineteen forty the
beginning of nineteen forty one, Roosevelt sent Donovan on a
second mission to Europe, this time not only to England
(16:33):
to collect war 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 I view
a Balkan leader were sitting on the fence in this war,
and many of them were at this point. Just keep
(16:54):
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
(17:17):
to Douglas Waller tell the story of wild Bill Donovan,
and what a wild story it is. Born poor in Buffalo, Columbia,
you 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,
(17:37):
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 story, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and with the story
of wild Bill Donovan. Telling that story is Douglas Waller,
an author of the bestseller 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
(18:30):
also to keep an eye on to report back to
London to make sure he stayed owned 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 US government or the British government,
(18:52):
strong arming Balkan leaders behind closed doors. In fact, at
one point, senior State Department aids discussed the possibilit 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 US government. Roosevelt, however, was only
too happy to have Donovan out there freelancing because, keep
(19:14):
in mind nineteen forty going into forty one, Roosevelt has
no foreign intelligence service to speak of. There were tiny
foreign espionage units in the Navy, in the Army, but
there were largely dumping grounds for poor performing officers. Roosevelt
is facing a very tough reelection fight for an unprecedented
(19:36):
third term. He's running against Wendell Wilkie. He's a very
strong candidate, and 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. So that's
(19:59):
when our spy score he begins. In July nineteen forty one,
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
(20:20):
page document he signed, very vaguely written. It said, Colonel Donovan,
which had been as 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
(20:41):
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,
(21:02):
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
(21:22):
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 military value.
The Eastman Kodak Company my day, you know, they made
Brownie cameras. Back then. The Eastman Kodak Company had thousands
(21:42):
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 pan Am stations throughout Africa that
(22:05):
would report back to him whenever ab Ver 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 two
thousand dollars in his desk er at all times, and
that was to pay for informants for information when he
(22:27):
was roaming around Washington. I don't think he'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
as Professor Moriarty, after the Sherlock Holmes character Stanley Lovell.
(22:51):
Built the things like the miniature cameras that spies used,
the pistols with silencers, pencil like explosive devices that could
be used at Debton h ars are 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
(23:12):
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 OSS officer who had
been a New York City cop who had busted Little
Aggie in a number of times and eventually befriended the gangster.
So one day he invited Little Aggie up to his
(23:32):
apartment for some smokes in a chat will. Laced within
the cigarettes was a truth drug was tetra hikers cycling,
And so Little Aggie starts puffing away, puffing away, so
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
(23:53):
congressman he's bribed. Of course, little Aggie secrets were safe
with Donovan. He couldn't bring him in to trial or
it 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
(24:14):
in instant radio communication with every radio in America, so
that way, if the Japanese were going to bomb Los Angeles,
or the Germans we're 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 subtrafusion, intrigue in keeping secrets,
(24:38):
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. Dropped the bats out of
(24:59):
the plane, and the bats would fly into the paper
and wood homes in Japan, into the eaves. The incendiary
devices would go off and had 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,
(25:21):
fitted him with the incendiary devices, took him up in
a plane, dropped him 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
(25:43):
the modern CIA, Donovan is also the father of modern
special operations. If you go down to Tampa, Florida, to
the headquarters of the US Special Operations Command, they have
in the main foyer in a glass case Donovan's uniform
there and a lot of memorabilia front him. Donovan loved
his commandos. I am. He would talk in kind of
(26:04):
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,
I 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 you were headed for trouble. In fact, at
(26:24):
one point he went to Roosevelt said, you know, I'd
like to command, you know, a division of guerrillas in
the Philippines. MacArthur didn't think too highly that idea. And
you've been listening to Douglas Waller tell the story of
Wild Bill Donovan, particularly his exploits along with Roosevelt around
World War Two and the formation of the OSS in
(26:45):
the end, the modern precursor to the CIA. And when
we come back more of this remarkable story. While Bill
Donovan's story here on our American story, and we continue
(27:39):
with our American stories and with Douglas Waller, author of
Wild Bill Donovan, the spymaster who created the OSS and
modern American espionage. Let's pick up where we last left off.
He is also considered the father of what we called
(27:59):
a modern information warfare, things like psychological operations and cyber warfare.
In Donovan's day, though, it was done with a technology
that was really pretty crude, and it was called morale
operations back then, and it consisted mainly of newspapers, leaflets, radios,
and rumors. So, for example, Donovan's agents spread rumors in
(28:21):
international papers in New York Times, Associated Press or whatever
that top Nazis were fleeing Germany and going to hide
out in Argentina. Who was going to leave the German
army high and dry? But I mean another psy ops
plan they tried out was Stanley Lovels had a group
of scientists concoct a set of female hormones okay, and
(28:47):
if they could find Hitler's vegetables and injected in there,
it would make his mustache fall awesome and given a
falsetto voice, which of course would be a real bummer
for the fur. Donovan turned out to be a horrible manager.
In the four years he ran the OSS, he violated
every rule they teach at Harvard Business School, or public
administration school, and at one point his own senior aids
(29:10):
there tried to oust him. Donovan, who by then had
launched enough coups to smell one on it being launched
on himself, squashed it like above. But to his credit
though he was a very charismatic leader, okay, he rarely
ever issued an order or a command. He was usually
always a request, and his agents would follow him loyally
(29:30):
and blindly, and eventually Donovan built a spy organization of
over ten thousand espionage agents, research analysts, commandos, and support
staff scattered in OSS stations all over the world. They
mounted a number of covert operations for the Torch invasion
in North Africa in November nineteen forty two, did a
(29:52):
lot of analysis of the Vichy French defenses there for
the Army invading in Interestingly, they had little operations going
on in Asia. Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Southwest
Pacific Theater, banned the USS from his theater didn't want
to have anything to do with him. They had extensive
operations before and after the Normandy landing in France. His
(30:14):
research analyst did a considerable amount of analysis topographic analysis
as the beaches of Normandy for the invading armies. He
had an economist on his staff and picked out bombing
targets for half Arnold's eight Air Force. He had hundreds
of commandos and spies that dropped into occupied France before
(30:34):
and after the invasion, on many of them very dangerous missions.
Donovan himself also liked to go in on every Allied landing,
which horrified his senior staff, because the last place you
want your top spymaster with all those secrets in his
head is at the front, where he might be captured
and he could be a very valuable prize for the
(30:55):
other side. General George Marshall, the chief of Staff of
the Army, thought he had Donovan prohibited from going in
on the Normandy landing, and so did Dwight Eisenhower, commanded
the European forces. Donovan, though, managed to talk his way
aboard a Navy heavy cruiser and in land at Utah
Beach the second day after the first wave. He gets
(31:17):
to the beach and a German measure smith flies by
straight to the beach and he has to dive under
the jeep for cover, dusts himself off, then walks inland
about three or four miles looking for some of his
operatives there. He weren't going to find him, but he
thought you'd just go in and there looking for him.
He gets pinned down by a German machine gun. Nesk.
(31:37):
He's with another aid. He reaches into his jacket pocket
to pull out his L pill. That's a potassium cyanide
capsule every OSS agent carried that he could chomp an
out and kill yourself instantly. So you want to be tortured.
Realize though, that he left his L pill at Claridge's
Hotel in London. The fact he had his aid radio
London as soon as they got back to the beach
(31:59):
because he was worried maid might come in there and
mistake it for an aspirin. It took Donoman in almost
two years to really build up his spy organization to
get into this fight, and it sounds like a long time,
and keep in mind took the US Army almost that
amount of time, so unprepared were we for World War Two.
(32:19):
Like any other intelligence agency, Donovan also had his intelligence failures.
One of the most notable ones was the Vessel case.
Donovan thought he had a silver bullet agent planted inside
the Vatican, who was supplying him with verbatim transcripts of
papal conversations that Pious was Popious was having with noting
(32:42):
with senior Vatican and envoys all around the world, but
also with foreign diplomats at the Vatican, including the Japanese ambassador.
There turned out Vessel was an Italian pornographer with a
very vivid imagination and a real talent for concocting dialogue
and snuckered Donovan's organization. He had ferocious feuds with j
(33:05):
Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI. Hoover thought Donovan's
organization was the biggest collection of amateurs he'd ever seen,
and truth be told, it was a collection of amateurs
in the beginning. Now, in any war, generals and admirals
on the same side will fight among themselves. There was
always fierce bureaucratic battles. World War two was no exception.
(33:28):
But in the case of Donovan, the bureaucratic battles became
even more ferocious because conventional generals and admirals just didn't
understand what this guy was about. I mean, when Donovan
started talking about little Aggie and sex hormones for Hitler.
They thought the guy was deraised. Donovan would also show
(33:48):
up to Pentagon meetings, usually late, immaculately tailored in his
general's uniform. He bought it from Wessels in New York,
and on the uniform he would have sewn on it
just his Medal of Honor ribbon, as a not so
subtle reminder to all the generals and admirals in the room,
with their rows of ribbon, all that fruit salad, that
he had the only one that really counted out in
(34:11):
the field, though he could be what one of his
aids said was incorrigibly civilian. He would show up in
his fatigues, all wrinkled, looked like he just got out
of bed. Sometimes he would be wearing a Paisley ascot
with him, again as a reminder to everybody around him
that this was an unconventional guy and he was running
an unconventional unit. Eventually, Donovan couldn't overcome his political enemies.
(34:37):
He had drafted a plan for a post war Central
Intelligence Agency CIA. After the war, he wanted to lead
that agency. Walter Trohan, who was a reporter for the
McCormick Patterson newspaper, chain Trohan got leaked to him a
copy of Donovan's secret plan to set up a post
(34:57):
war CIA, and he published the entire plan in the
Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times Herald, and a New York
paper on the same day, along with a very inflammatory
story accusing Donovan of wanting to set up a quote
gestopo like organization that was going to spy not only
on people overseas, but Americans at home. Back then, if
(35:21):
you accused any organization of being gestopo like that about
sank it politically, and it did with Franklin Roosevelt. He
basically shelved the plan on September twentieth, nineteen forty five,
Truman says, after the war's over, Truman shuts down the
LSS and parcels out its functions to the Pentagon in
the State Department. Now, Truman was not deaf and dumb
(35:45):
to the dangers that lay ahead of him overseas. I mean,
he was just pretty savvy president. He could see and
he was going to see the Cold War rolling out,
and he realized he needed a foreign intelligence service, but
he just didn't want to have Donomans has to be
any part of that. In nineteen forty seven, Truman organizes
the Central Intelligence Agency as part of the Defense Department Act.
(36:09):
Donovan wanted to lead that CIA nineteen forty seven. In fact,
he had a surrogate's lobby Truman to make him CIA director.
Truman weren't going to have any part of that, particularly
after Donovan had said some mean things about Truman on
the campaign trail. Presidents usually don't forget that kind of
stuff that's said about him. Nineteen fifty three, Eisenhower becomes president,
(36:31):
a fellow Republican like Donovan. I could thought Donovan had
done some fine works in Europe. Donovan thought he had
his best chance to be CIA director then instead, though,
Eisenhower points Alan Dallas as CIA director and a terrific
job on the production by Greg Engler and his special
thanks to Douglas Waller. He's the author of the bestseller
(36:52):
wild Bill Donovan, a spymaster who created the OSS and
modern American spionage. Pick it up at your local bookstore
or wherever you get your books online, and by the way,
wild Bill Donovan died at the age of seventy six
from complications of vascular dementia in February of nineteen fifty
nine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.
(37:16):
Shortly before his death, he was visited by President Eisenhower,
who later told a friend that Donovan was the last Euro.
Upon learning of his death, the CIA sent a cable
to its station chiefs. It read, quote, the man more
responsible than any other for the existence of the Central
Intelligence Agency has passed away. The story of wild Bill
(37:40):
Donovan here on our American Story
This is Lee Habbib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. And now joining us is
Drew Newman, the great grandson of the founder of the
oldest family owned premium cigar company in the United States,
(00:31):
to tell us the story of cigars in America. Here's
Drew with the story. Most people don't realize that the
United States has a rich cigar tradition that dates back
to the sixteen hundreds. The first crop of cigar tobacco
was planted in the Virginia Colony in sixteen twelve, and
(00:55):
at the time of our American independence, every colony grew tobacco,
and many of our founding fathers, such as George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson, were tobacco farmers. One hundred years ago,
Tampa was the cigar capital of the world. Tampa was
(01:15):
known as Cigar City and there were one hundred and
fifty large cigar factories just like ours here in Tampa
that made more than five hundred million cigars by hand
each year, just in Tampa. To give you some comparison. Today,
there are approximately three hundred million premium handmade cigars sold
(01:38):
in the United States each year that are made in
Central America and the Caribbean. But a hundred years ago,
one and a half times that amount was made just
inside the city limits of Tampa. But in the sixties, seventies, eighties,
and nineties, many of these factories here in Tampa closed,
and one by one they moved production overseas to developing countries,
(02:04):
primarily because the way we make cigars it's so labor
intensive that the labor savings of having overseas productions really
help them lower their costs and be more efficient. And
so one by one we realize that the other factors
were closing that suddenly my family and I had the
last cigar factory left and the cigar city of Tampa.
(02:27):
And we're very proud to be here, very proud to
continue the American cigar tradition. But doing so is at
an added cost. Labor is more expensive, materials are more expensive,
but we think it's worth it to keep the American
cigar making tradition alive. We rule cigars today just like
(02:52):
my great grandfather did one hundred years ago. The process
hasn't changed one bit. It's slow, it's labor intensive, and
because we are dealing with nature, every single cigar is different.
Generally speaking, it takes about three years and three hundred
(03:12):
pairs of hands to handcraft a single cigar. The process
starts in the farms. Beautiful farms that are here in
the United States are in Connecticuts Pennsylvania and here in
Florida as well, that grow beautiful cigar tobacco the same
way for generations. Farmers plant the seeds in a greenhouse
(03:34):
and then transplant them into the field, and after about
sixty days, the plants grow tall and thick and beautiful
and green and lush. And each leaf is picked off
of those plants and hung in a barn where the
tobacco naturally wilts, it dries out, it loses its humidity,
(03:54):
it crumples up a bit, and then from that point
the tobacco is taken down leaf by a leaf, put
into bales, and then sent to be fermented naturally. And
all we're doing with these natural leaves that are of
tobacco that are grown is simply putting them into piles.
We put them into big piles about a thousand pounds
(04:16):
each and add a little bit of water, and Mother
nature combines the water with a tobacco and the leaves
get warm, and as they get warm, the natural ammonia
and the leaves releases from the tobacco. What's left is
a beautiful aroma and taste of natural tobacco leaves. That
process of natural fermentation is slow. It takes roughly eight
(04:40):
months of simply letting the leaves sit in the pile,
turning the pile every eight days so they have an
even fermentation. And then finally we get to have leaves
that are thin, that are silky, that are smooth, that
are beautiful that we can then gently roll into cigars.
(05:05):
The cigar rolling process is really interesting. I like to
compare it to wine, because we make cigars just like
the great winemakers make blends of red wine. What we
do with cigar makers is we take different leaves grown
on different plants and different farms in different years, and
(05:26):
we blend them together to create unique and different tastes
than a single tobacco plant grown on a farm. You
can have forty fifty sixty different grades or tobacco because
some leaves are longer, some are shorter, some are thicker,
some are thinner. The leaves near the top of the
(05:47):
plant get more sun, so they have more nutrients, so
they taste stronger. The leaves at the bottom are thinner
and they have fewer nutrients and they burn better. And
so our job as cigar makers to understand these natural
variations and leaves that are grown, blend them together, harness
(06:08):
this natural variation and create unique blends that consumers like.
None of this is written down. There's no school for
cigar making. There are no rule books. It's simply a tradition.
Doesn't passed down from generation to generation. The generation that
we are working very hard to maintain and great job
(06:33):
is always by Joey bringing us that story and the
production herb is always in A special thanks to Drew Newman,
whose great grandfather was the founder of the oldest family
owned cigar company in the United States. By the way,
be sure to visit the JC Newman Factory l Roulot
with your family. That's in the Tampa region if you're
ever in the area of vacationing, or heck, you're on
(06:56):
your way to Disney when you're passing through. They have
some great exhibits and loads of activities for your family
to enjoy the story of American cigars has told to
us by Drew Newman, the great grandson of the oldest
cigar maker in the country. Here on our American story. Folks,
(07:26):
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:48):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot du
to learn more, and we continue with our American stories.
(08:12):
While 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 Two while Bill was the
director of the Office of Strategic Services, the country's first
national intelligence agency. He is known as the founding father
(08:33):
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 bestseller Wild Bill Donovan, the
spymaster who created the OSS and modern American espionage. Let's
(08:54):
take a listen 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'd go to Broadway and
buy up the latest sheet music so he could memorize
(09:15):
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 the aids who
are with him because he never kept any money with him.
(09:36):
He was witty, but he never laughed out loud. He
never told a dirty joke. He never showed anger. Insteady
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. His
(09:58):
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,
eighteen eighty three in Buffalo, New York's poor Irish first ward.
He thought he might wanted to become a priest, and
(10:19):
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
(10:40):
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 baloney. Roosevelt
was on a much higher social straighter than a poor
kid from Buffalo. He returned to Buffalo after law school,
(11:00):
set up a law practice, married one of the richest
women in town. World War One, he led a battalion
with the sixty ninth 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
(11:21):
chaplain of the sixty ninth 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
(11:42):
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 Warden and every thing. Finally,
the entire battalion collapsed in front of him, and he
(12:03):
stood up there all Johnny and said, well, you know
what the hecks of matter with you? I'm thirty five
years old carrying the same pack that you are. You
don't see me. Out of breath from somewhere in the
back of soldier shouted out he never figured out who,
but we're not as wild as you are a Bill.
From that day on, while Bill Donovan stuck, he claimed
he didn't like that nickname because it ran counter to
(12:26):
the cool, calm, quiet spy image he wanted to project,
but his wife Ruth said that he really did like
to be called while Bill. He returned to New York
a hero. He became an assistant to the Attorney General
and 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,
(12:51):
had promised him that position, and in fact, Hoover had
promised him the Attorney generalship. But this is the late
nineteen twenties. The ku Klux Klan is a very powerful
political movement in this country, and it was up in
arms over the idea of a Roman Catholic Attorney General
of the United States. Donovan, as any prominent figure in Washington,
also made his share of enemies there. He was a
(13:13):
prominent Republican Senate Democrats avowed to block his nomination. Hoover
rendigged on the promise until the day he died. Donovan
never forgave Herbert Hoover for denying him the Attorney generalship.
In nineteen thirty two, he decided to dip his toe
into politics once more. He ran for governor of New York.
(13:36):
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 nineteen
thirty two, 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.
(14:00):
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
a 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
(14:20):
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, a very senior position, considering
(14:43):
all the nasty things these two guys had said about
each other in New York politics. Fast forward to nineteen
forty Going in nineteen forty one, Roosevelt is building up
the nation's defenses. He's preparing the nation and for war
that he can see on the horizon. Donovan, even though
(15:04):
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 you had two very canny, savvy politicians
here who saw common cause in working with each other.
In the summer of nineteen forty, Roosevelt sends Donovan to
(15:27):
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,
(15:50):
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 where
this guy is going to be an Anglo file or
an Anglo fobe. Turned out, Donovan, who was a committed
to Anglo file, came back to Washington with a bag
(16:12):
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
the len lease at the end of nineteen forty the
beginning of nineteen forty one, Roosevelt sent Donovan on a
second mission to Europe, this time not only to England
(16:33):
to collect war 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 I view
a Balkan leader were sitting on the fence in this war,
and many of them were at this point. Just keep
(16:54):
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
(17:17):
to Douglas Waller tell the story of wild Bill Donovan,
and what a wild story it is. Born poor in Buffalo, Columbia,
you 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,
(17:37):
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 story, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and with the story
of wild Bill Donovan. Telling that story is Douglas Waller,
an author of the bestseller 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
(18:30):
also to keep an eye on to report back to
London to make sure he stayed owned 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 US government or the British government,
(18:52):
strong arming Balkan leaders behind closed doors. In fact, at
one point, senior State Department aids discussed the possibilit 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 US government. Roosevelt, however, was only
too happy to have Donovan out there freelancing because, keep
(19:14):
in mind nineteen forty going into forty one, Roosevelt has
no foreign intelligence service to speak of. There were tiny
foreign espionage units in the Navy, in the Army, but
there were largely dumping grounds for poor performing officers. Roosevelt
is facing a very tough reelection fight for an unprecedented
(19:36):
third term. He's running against Wendell Wilkie. He's a very
strong candidate, and 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. So that's
(19:59):
when our spy score he begins. In July nineteen forty one,
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
(20:20):
page document he signed, very vaguely written. It said, Colonel Donovan,
which had been as 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
(20:41):
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,
(21:02):
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
(21:22):
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 military value.
The Eastman Kodak Company my day, you know, they made
Brownie cameras. Back then. The Eastman Kodak Company had thousands
(21:42):
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 pan Am stations throughout Africa that
(22:05):
would report back to him whenever ab Ver 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 two
thousand dollars in his desk er at all times, and
that was to pay for informants for information when he
(22:27):
was roaming around Washington. I don't think he'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
as Professor Moriarty, after the Sherlock Holmes character Stanley Lovell.
(22:51):
Built the things like the miniature cameras that spies used,
the pistols with silencers, pencil like explosive devices that could
be used at Debton h ars are 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
(23:12):
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 OSS officer who had
been a New York City cop who had busted Little
Aggie in a number of times and eventually befriended the gangster.
So one day he invited Little Aggie up to his
(23:32):
apartment for some smokes in a chat will. Laced within
the cigarettes was a truth drug was tetra hikers cycling,
And so Little Aggie starts puffing away, puffing away, so
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
(23:53):
congressman he's bribed. Of course, little Aggie secrets were safe
with Donovan. He couldn't bring him in to trial or
it 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
(24:14):
in instant radio communication with every radio in America, so
that way, if the Japanese were going to bomb Los Angeles,
or the Germans we're 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 subtrafusion, intrigue in keeping secrets,
(24:38):
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. Dropped the bats out of
(24:59):
the plane, and the bats would fly into the paper
and wood homes in Japan, into the eaves. The incendiary
devices would go off and had 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,
(25:21):
fitted him with the incendiary devices, took him up in
a plane, dropped him 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
(25:43):
the modern CIA, Donovan is also the father of modern
special operations. If you go down to Tampa, Florida, to
the headquarters of the US Special Operations Command, they have
in the main foyer in a glass case Donovan's uniform
there and a lot of memorabilia front him. Donovan loved
his commandos. I am. He would talk in kind of
(26:04):
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,
I 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 you were headed for trouble. In fact, at
(26:24):
one point he went to Roosevelt said, you know, I'd
like to command, you know, a division of guerrillas in
the Philippines. MacArthur didn't think too highly that idea. And
you've been listening to Douglas Waller tell the story of
Wild Bill Donovan, particularly his exploits along with Roosevelt around
World War Two and the formation of the OSS in
(26:45):
the end, the modern precursor to the CIA. And when
we come back more of this remarkable story. While Bill
Donovan's story here on our American story, and we continue
(27:39):
with our American stories and with Douglas Waller, author of
Wild Bill Donovan, the spymaster who created the OSS and
modern American espionage. Let's pick up where we last left off.
He is also considered the father of what we called
(27:59):
a modern information warfare, things like psychological operations and cyber warfare.
In Donovan's day, though, it was done with a technology
that was really pretty crude, and it was called morale
operations back then, and it consisted mainly of newspapers, leaflets, radios,
and rumors. So, for example, Donovan's agents spread rumors in
(28:21):
international papers in New York Times, Associated Press or whatever
that top Nazis were fleeing Germany and going to hide
out in Argentina. Who was going to leave the German
army high and dry? But I mean another psy ops
plan they tried out was Stanley Lovels had a group
of scientists concoct a set of female hormones okay, and
(28:47):
if they could find Hitler's vegetables and injected in there,
it would make his mustache fall awesome and given a
falsetto voice, which of course would be a real bummer
for the fur. Donovan turned out to be a horrible manager.
In the four years he ran the OSS, he violated
every rule they teach at Harvard Business School, or public
administration school, and at one point his own senior aids
(29:10):
there tried to oust him. Donovan, who by then had
launched enough coups to smell one on it being launched
on himself, squashed it like above. But to his credit
though he was a very charismatic leader, okay, he rarely
ever issued an order or a command. He was usually
always a request, and his agents would follow him loyally
(29:30):
and blindly, and eventually Donovan built a spy organization of
over ten thousand espionage agents, research analysts, commandos, and support
staff scattered in OSS stations all over the world. They
mounted a number of covert operations for the Torch invasion
in North Africa in November nineteen forty two, did a
(29:52):
lot of analysis of the Vichy French defenses there for
the Army invading in Interestingly, they had little operations going
on in Asia. Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Southwest
Pacific Theater, banned the USS from his theater didn't want
to have anything to do with him. They had extensive
operations before and after the Normandy landing in France. His
(30:14):
research analyst did a considerable amount of analysis topographic analysis
as the beaches of Normandy for the invading armies. He
had an economist on his staff and picked out bombing
targets for half Arnold's eight Air Force. He had hundreds
of commandos and spies that dropped into occupied France before
(30:34):
and after the invasion, on many of them very dangerous missions.
Donovan himself also liked to go in on every Allied landing,
which horrified his senior staff, because the last place you
want your top spymaster with all those secrets in his
head is at the front, where he might be captured
and he could be a very valuable prize for the
(30:55):
other side. General George Marshall, the chief of Staff of
the Army, thought he had Donovan prohibited from going in
on the Normandy landing, and so did Dwight Eisenhower, commanded
the European forces. Donovan, though, managed to talk his way
aboard a Navy heavy cruiser and in land at Utah
Beach the second day after the first wave. He gets
(31:17):
to the beach and a German measure smith flies by
straight to the beach and he has to dive under
the jeep for cover, dusts himself off, then walks inland
about three or four miles looking for some of his
operatives there. He weren't going to find him, but he
thought you'd just go in and there looking for him.
He gets pinned down by a German machine gun. Nesk.
(31:37):
He's with another aid. He reaches into his jacket pocket
to pull out his L pill. That's a potassium cyanide
capsule every OSS agent carried that he could chomp an
out and kill yourself instantly. So you want to be tortured.
Realize though, that he left his L pill at Claridge's
Hotel in London. The fact he had his aid radio
London as soon as they got back to the beach
(31:59):
because he was worried maid might come in there and
mistake it for an aspirin. It took Donoman in almost
two years to really build up his spy organization to
get into this fight, and it sounds like a long time,
and keep in mind took the US Army almost that
amount of time, so unprepared were we for World War Two.
(32:19):
Like any other intelligence agency, Donovan also had his intelligence failures.
One of the most notable ones was the Vessel case.
Donovan thought he had a silver bullet agent planted inside
the Vatican, who was supplying him with verbatim transcripts of
papal conversations that Pious was Popious was having with noting
(32:42):
with senior Vatican and envoys all around the world, but
also with foreign diplomats at the Vatican, including the Japanese ambassador.
There turned out Vessel was an Italian pornographer with a
very vivid imagination and a real talent for concocting dialogue
and snuckered Donovan's organization. He had ferocious feuds with j
(33:05):
Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI. Hoover thought Donovan's
organization was the biggest collection of amateurs he'd ever seen,
and truth be told, it was a collection of amateurs
in the beginning. Now, in any war, generals and admirals
on the same side will fight among themselves. There was
always fierce bureaucratic battles. World War two was no exception.
(33:28):
But in the case of Donovan, the bureaucratic battles became
even more ferocious because conventional generals and admirals just didn't
understand what this guy was about. I mean, when Donovan
started talking about little Aggie and sex hormones for Hitler.
They thought the guy was deraised. Donovan would also show
(33:48):
up to Pentagon meetings, usually late, immaculately tailored in his
general's uniform. He bought it from Wessels in New York,
and on the uniform he would have sewn on it
just his Medal of Honor ribbon, as a not so
subtle reminder to all the generals and admirals in the room,
with their rows of ribbon, all that fruit salad, that
he had the only one that really counted out in
(34:11):
the field, though he could be what one of his
aids said was incorrigibly civilian. He would show up in
his fatigues, all wrinkled, looked like he just got out
of bed. Sometimes he would be wearing a Paisley ascot
with him, again as a reminder to everybody around him
that this was an unconventional guy and he was running
an unconventional unit. Eventually, Donovan couldn't overcome his political enemies.
(34:37):
He had drafted a plan for a post war Central
Intelligence Agency CIA. After the war, he wanted to lead
that agency. Walter Trohan, who was a reporter for the
McCormick Patterson newspaper, chain Trohan got leaked to him a
copy of Donovan's secret plan to set up a post
(34:57):
war CIA, and he published the entire plan in the
Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times Herald, and a New York
paper on the same day, along with a very inflammatory
story accusing Donovan of wanting to set up a quote
gestopo like organization that was going to spy not only
on people overseas, but Americans at home. Back then, if
(35:21):
you accused any organization of being gestopo like that about
sank it politically, and it did with Franklin Roosevelt. He
basically shelved the plan on September twentieth, nineteen forty five,
Truman says, after the war's over, Truman shuts down the
LSS and parcels out its functions to the Pentagon in
the State Department. Now, Truman was not deaf and dumb
(35:45):
to the dangers that lay ahead of him overseas. I mean,
he was just pretty savvy president. He could see and
he was going to see the Cold War rolling out,
and he realized he needed a foreign intelligence service, but
he just didn't want to have Donomans has to be
any part of that. In nineteen forty seven, Truman organizes
the Central Intelligence Agency as part of the Defense Department Act.
(36:09):
Donovan wanted to lead that CIA nineteen forty seven. In fact,
he had a surrogate's lobby Truman to make him CIA director.
Truman weren't going to have any part of that, particularly
after Donovan had said some mean things about Truman on
the campaign trail. Presidents usually don't forget that kind of
stuff that's said about him. Nineteen fifty three, Eisenhower becomes president,
(36:31):
a fellow Republican like Donovan. I could thought Donovan had
done some fine works in Europe. Donovan thought he had
his best chance to be CIA director then instead, though,
Eisenhower points Alan Dallas as CIA director and a terrific
job on the production by Greg Engler and his special
thanks to Douglas Waller. He's the author of the bestseller
(36:52):
wild Bill Donovan, a spymaster who created the OSS and
modern American spionage. Pick it up at your local bookstore
or wherever you get your books online, and by the way,
wild Bill Donovan died at the age of seventy six
from complications of vascular dementia in February of nineteen fifty
nine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.
(37:16):
Shortly before his death, he was visited by President Eisenhower,
who later told a friend that Donovan was the last Euro.
Upon learning of his death, the CIA sent a cable
to its station chiefs. It read, quote, the man more
responsible than any other for the existence of the Central
Intelligence Agency has passed away. The story of wild Bill
(37:40):
Donovan here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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