December 2, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, "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 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's Special Operations Forces, along with being credited as the father of psychological and cyber warfare. Here to tell the story is Douglas Waller. He is the author of the bestseller, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
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.
(00:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
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'd go to Broadway 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
(01:22):
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
(01:43):
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. In
law died of a drug overdose. One of his granddaughters,
(02:04):
when she was four years old, died when she accidentally
swallowed silver polish, and a lot of sadness in his life.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
He was born on.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
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 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
(02:33):
a star quarterback on the football team his senior year
until he got hobbled by a cheaf 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.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Roosevelt was on a much.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Higher social strada than a poor kid from Buffalo. He
returned to Buffalo after law school, set up a law practice.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Married one of the richest women in town.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
World War One, he led a battalion with the sixty
ninth Irish Regiment, the very famous regimen. 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
sixty ninth Irish Regiment, a guy named Father Francis Duffy,
(03:26):
said Donovan was the only man he had ever met
in his life who actually enjoyed combat.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
He really did.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
He was a very.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
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,
(04:06):
and said, well, you know, what the heck's the 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, a soldier shouted out, he
never figured out who, but we're not as wild as
you are a bill. From that day on, wile Bill
Donovan stuck. He claimed he didn't like that nickname because
it ran counter to the cool, calm, quiet spy image
(04:29):
he wanted to project, but his wife, Ruth, said that
he really did like to be called wild Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
He returned to New York a hero.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
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, had
promised him that position, and in fact, Hoover had promised
him to the Attorney generalship. But this is the late
(04:58):
nineteen twenties. 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.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He was a prominent Republican.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
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
nineteen thirty two, he decided to dip his toe into
politics once more.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He ran for governor of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
He had been governor of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
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
(06:18):
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
give you some of this backstory is it's amazing then
(06:39):
that Franklin Roosevelt made Donovan his top spymaster, a very
senior position, considering 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, preparing the nation for
(07:01):
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.
(07:24):
In the summer of nineteen forty, 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 is 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
(07:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Donovan was given.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
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's 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,
(08:17):
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 nineteen forty the beginning of nineteen forty one,
Roosevelt sent Donovan on a second mission to Europe, this
time not only to England to collect war material, but
also to tour the Balkans, the Middle East and Eastern
(08:39):
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.
(09:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
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, 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, and then the Second World
(09:40):
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 we continue with our American
(10:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
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,
(10:43):
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, 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
(11:05):
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 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 and the Army, but there were
(11:27):
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 Wilki. 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.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Of him overseas. In fact, it.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Worried him so much at times that he would become
physically ill. When Donovan returns from those two European trips,
when our spy story 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
(12:14):
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 as World War One rank, will collect
information of national security interests for me, and will do
other unspecified jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
In fact, the document.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Was so vague that members of Roosevelt's cabinets 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.
(12:55):
Donovan said that he began his organization really from minus zero,
which is really the case.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
He only began with one guy, which was himself.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
They're still in business.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
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
(13:43):
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 of militarily important sites. Donovan
had a project code named Cigar where he secretly had
ticket agents for PanAm stations throughout Africa that would report
(14:07):
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 two thousand dollars in his
desk drawer at all times, and that was to pay
for informants for information when he was roaming around Washington.
(14:30):
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 his professor Moriarty,
after the Sherlock Holmes character. Stanley Lovell built the things
(14:53):
like the miniature cameras that spies used, the pistols with silencers,
pencil like explosive devices that could be us 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
(15:15):
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 Oggie a number of
times and eventually befriended the gangster. So one day he
invited Little Aggie up to his apartment for some smokes
and a chat.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well. Laced within the cigarettes was a truth drug. It
was tetrahytrius cycling.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
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 trial, would give away the
truth drugs. He had all other kind of wild ideas
(16:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Could alert everybody Roosevelt ignored that idea.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
But Roosevelt was a spy aficionado in his own right,
ever since he was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
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'd burned down Japan.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Great idea.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
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
(17:31):
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 US Special Operations Command, they have
(17:54):
in the main foyer in a glass case Donovan's uniform
there of memorabilia from him.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Donovan loved his commandos.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
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,
(18:25):
at one point he went to Roosevelt said, you know,
I'd like to command a you know, a division.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Of guerrillas and the Philippines. MacArthur didn't think too highly
that idea.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
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 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
(19:39):
continue with our American stories and with Douglas Waller, author
of While Bill Donovan, the spymaster who created the OSS
and modern American espionage, let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He is also considered the father of what we call
today modern information warfare, things like psychological operations and cyber warfare.
In Donovan's day, though, it was done with the technology
that was really pretty crude, and it was called morale
operations back then, and it consisted mainly of newspapers, leaflets,
(20:17):
radios and rumors. So, for example, Donovan's agents spread rumors
in international papers in New York Times, Associated Press or
whatever that top Nazis were fleeing Germany and going to
hide out in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Who was going to leave the German army high and dry?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
But I mean another psyops plan they tried out was
Stanley Lovels had a group of scientists concoct a set
of female hormones.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
And if they could.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Find Hitler's vegetables and inject it in there. It would
make his mustache fall awesome given a falsetto voice, which
of course would be a real bummer for the fure.
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,
(21:08):
and at one point his own senior aides 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 a bug, and to his credit, though
he was a very charismatic leader, he rarely ever issued
an order or a command.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
He was usually always a request, and his agents.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Would follow him loyally 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.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Invasion in North Africa in November nineteen forty two, did
a lot of analysis of the vishy French defenses there
for the Army invading in.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
They had little operations going on in Asia. Douglas MacArthur,
the commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater, banned the OSS
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 research analysts did a considerable
amount of analy topographic analysis of the beaches of Normandy
(22:22):
for the invading armies. He had an economist on his
staff who picked out bombing targets for half Arnold's eight
Air Force. He had hundreds of commandos and spies that
dropped into occupied France before and after the invasion, on
many of them in very dangerous missions. Donovan himself also
liked to go in on every Allied landing, which horrified
(22:45):
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
would be a very valuable prize for the 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 Eyes and Power, commanded
(23:07):
the European Forces Donovan, though, managed to talk his way
aboard a Navy heavy cruiser and a land at Utah
Beach the second day after the first wave. He gets
to the beach and a Germans measuresmith flies by, straights
the beach and he has to dive under the jeep
for cover, dusts himself off, then walks inland about three
(23:29):
or four miles looking for some of his operatives there.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
He weren't going to find him, but he thought you'd
just go in there and look for him. He gets
pinned down by a.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
German machine gun nest 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 it out on and kill yourself instantly
so you wouldn't be tortured. Realized though, that he left
his L pill at Claridge's Hotel in London. In fact,
(23:56):
he had his aid radio London as soon as they
got back to the beach, as he was worried a.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Maid might come in there and mistake it for an aspirin.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It took Donovan almost two years to really build up his.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Spy organization to get into this fight.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Now, that 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. 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
(24:33):
Vatican who was supplying him with verbatim transcripts of papal
conversations that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Pius was popious was having.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
With not only was senior Vatican and envoys all around
the world, but also with foreign diplomats at the Vatican,
including the Japanese ambassador.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
There.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Turned out Vessel was an Italian pornographer with a very
vivid imagination and a real talent for conc dialogue and
snookered Donovan's organization. He had ferocious feuds with j. Edgar Hoover,
the director of the FBI. Hoover thought Donovan's organization was
the biggest collection of amateurs he'd ever seen, and truth
(25:13):
be told, it was a collection of amateurs.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
In the beginning.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Now, in any war, generals and admirals on the same
side will fight among themselves. There's always fierce bureaucratic battles
in World War II was no exception, But in the
case of Donovan, the bureaucratic battles became even more ferocious
because conventional generals and admirals just didn't understand what this
(25:38):
guy was about.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I mean, when Donovan started talking about little Loggie and
sex hormones for Hitler, they thought the guy was deranged.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Donovan would also show 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
(26:09):
that really counted out in the field. Though he could
be what one of his aides said was incorrigibly civilian,
he would show up and his fatigues all wrinkled, look
like he just got out of bed. Sometimes he'd be
wearing a Paisley ascot with him, again as.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
A reminder to everybody around him.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
This was an unconventional guy, and he was running an
unconventional unit. Eventually, Donovan couldn't overcome his political enemies. He
had drafted a plan for a post war Central Intelligence
Agency CIA after the war. He wanted to lead that agency.
(26:48):
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 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
(27:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Back then, if you.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
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,
this is after the war's over. Truman shuts down the
OSS and parcels out its functions to the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And the State Department.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Now Truman was not deaf and dumb to the dangers
that lay ahead of him overseas. I mean, he was
this 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. He just didn't
want to have Donovan. There's oss to be any part
of that. In nineteen forty seven, Truman organizes the Central
(28:06):
Intelligence Agency as part of the Defense Department Act. Donovan
wanted to lead that CIA in nineteen forty seven. In fact,
he had a surrogates lobby Truman to make him CIA director,
but Truman wasn'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
(28:31):
becomes president, a fellow Republican like Donovan. Ike had thought
Donovan had done some fine worship in Europe. Donovan thought
he had his best chance to be CIA director then. Instead, though,
Eisenhower appoints Alan Dalles as CIA director and.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
A terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler in
a special thanks to Douglas Waller, He's the author of
the best seller Wild Bill Donovan, a spymaster who created
the OSS and modern American espionage pet up at your
local bookstore or wherever you get your books online and
by the way. Wile Bill Donovan died at the age
of seventy six from complications of vascular dementia in February
(29:12):
of nineteen fifty nine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington, d c. Shortly before his death, he was
visited by President Eisenhower, who later told a friend that
Donovan was the last hero. 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
(29:35):
of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away. The story
of Wile Bill Donovan here on our American Stories SA
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.
(00:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
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'd go to Broadway 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
(01:22):
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
(01:43):
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. In
law died of a drug overdose. One of his granddaughters,
(02:04):
when she was four years old, died when she accidentally
swallowed silver polish, and a lot of sadness in his life.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
He was born on.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
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 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
(02:33):
a star quarterback on the football team his senior year
until he got hobbled by a cheaf 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.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Roosevelt was on a much.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Higher social strada than a poor kid from Buffalo. He
returned to Buffalo after law school, set up a law practice.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Married one of the richest women in town.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
World War One, he led a battalion with the sixty
ninth Irish Regiment, the very famous regimen. 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
sixty ninth Irish Regiment, a guy named Father Francis Duffy,
(03:26):
said Donovan was the only man he had ever met
in his life who actually enjoyed combat.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
He really did.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
He was a very.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
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,
(04:06):
and said, well, you know, what the heck's the 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, a soldier shouted out, he
never figured out who, but we're not as wild as
you are a bill. From that day on, wile Bill
Donovan stuck. He claimed he didn't like that nickname because
it ran counter to the cool, calm, quiet spy image
(04:29):
he wanted to project, but his wife, Ruth, said that
he really did like to be called wild Bill.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
He returned to New York a hero.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
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, had
promised him that position, and in fact, Hoover had promised
him to the Attorney generalship. But this is the late
(04:58):
nineteen twenties. 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.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He was a prominent Republican.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
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
nineteen thirty two, he decided to dip his toe into
politics once more.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He ran for governor of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
He had been governor of New York.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
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
(06:18):
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
give you some of this backstory is it's amazing then
(06:39):
that Franklin Roosevelt made Donovan his top spymaster, a very
senior position, considering 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, preparing the nation for
(07:01):
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.
(07:24):
In the summer of nineteen forty, 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 is 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
(07:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Donovan was given.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
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's 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,
(08:17):
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 nineteen forty the beginning of nineteen forty one,
Roosevelt sent Donovan on a second mission to Europe, this
time not only to England to collect war material, but
also to tour the Balkans, the Middle East and Eastern
(08:39):
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.
(09:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
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, 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, and then the Second World
(09:40):
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 we continue with our American
(10:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
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,
(10:43):
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, 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
(11:05):
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 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 and the Army, but there were
(11:27):
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 Wilki. 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.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Of him overseas. In fact, it.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Worried him so much at times that he would become
physically ill. When Donovan returns from those two European trips,
when our spy story 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
(12:14):
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 as World War One rank, will collect
information of national security interests for me, and will do
other unspecified jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
In fact, the document.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Was so vague that members of Roosevelt's cabinets 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.
(12:55):
Donovan said that he began his organization really from minus zero,
which is really the case.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
He only began with one guy, which was himself.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
They're still in business.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
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
(13:43):
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 of militarily important sites. Donovan
had a project code named Cigar where he secretly had
ticket agents for PanAm stations throughout Africa that would report
(14:07):
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 two thousand dollars in his
desk drawer at all times, and that was to pay
for informants for information when he was roaming around Washington.
(14:30):
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 his professor Moriarty,
after the Sherlock Holmes character. Stanley Lovell built the things
(14:53):
like the miniature cameras that spies used, the pistols with silencers,
pencil like explosive devices that could be us 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
(15:15):
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 Oggie a number of
times and eventually befriended the gangster. So one day he
invited Little Aggie up to his apartment for some smokes
and a chat.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well. Laced within the cigarettes was a truth drug. It
was tetrahytrius cycling.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
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 trial, would give away the
truth drugs. He had all other kind of wild ideas
(16:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Could alert everybody Roosevelt ignored that idea.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
But Roosevelt was a spy aficionado in his own right,
ever since he was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
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'd burned down Japan.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Great idea.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
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
(17:31):
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 US Special Operations Command, they have
(17:54):
in the main foyer in a glass case Donovan's uniform
there of memorabilia from him.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Donovan loved his commandos.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
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,
(18:25):
at one point he went to Roosevelt said, you know,
I'd like to command a you know, a division.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Of guerrillas and the Philippines. MacArthur didn't think too highly
that idea.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
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 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
(19:39):
continue with our American stories and with Douglas Waller, author
of While Bill Donovan, the spymaster who created the OSS
and modern American espionage, let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He is also considered the father of what we call
today modern information warfare, things like psychological operations and cyber warfare.
In Donovan's day, though, it was done with the technology
that was really pretty crude, and it was called morale
operations back then, and it consisted mainly of newspapers, leaflets,
(20:17):
radios and rumors. So, for example, Donovan's agents spread rumors
in international papers in New York Times, Associated Press or
whatever that top Nazis were fleeing Germany and going to
hide out in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Who was going to leave the German army high and dry?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
But I mean another psyops plan they tried out was
Stanley Lovels had a group of scientists concoct a set
of female hormones.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
And if they could.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Find Hitler's vegetables and inject it in there. It would
make his mustache fall awesome given a falsetto voice, which
of course would be a real bummer for the fure.
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,
(21:08):
and at one point his own senior aides 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 a bug, and to his credit, though
he was a very charismatic leader, he rarely ever issued
an order or a command.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
He was usually always a request, and his agents.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Would follow him loyally 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.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Invasion in North Africa in November nineteen forty two, did
a lot of analysis of the vishy French defenses there
for the Army invading in.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
They had little operations going on in Asia. Douglas MacArthur,
the commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater, banned the OSS
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 research analysts did a considerable
amount of analy topographic analysis of the beaches of Normandy
(22:22):
for the invading armies. He had an economist on his
staff who picked out bombing targets for half Arnold's eight
Air Force. He had hundreds of commandos and spies that
dropped into occupied France before and after the invasion, on
many of them in very dangerous missions. Donovan himself also
liked to go in on every Allied landing, which horrified
(22:45):
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
would be a very valuable prize for the 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 Eyes and Power, commanded
(23:07):
the European Forces Donovan, though, managed to talk his way
aboard a Navy heavy cruiser and a land at Utah
Beach the second day after the first wave. He gets
to the beach and a Germans measuresmith flies by, straights
the beach and he has to dive under the jeep
for cover, dusts himself off, then walks inland about three
(23:29):
or four miles looking for some of his operatives there.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
He weren't going to find him, but he thought you'd
just go in there and look for him. He gets
pinned down by a.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
German machine gun nest 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 it out on and kill yourself instantly
so you wouldn't be tortured. Realized though, that he left
his L pill at Claridge's Hotel in London. In fact,
(23:56):
he had his aid radio London as soon as they
got back to the beach, as he was worried a.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Maid might come in there and mistake it for an aspirin.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It took Donovan almost two years to really build up his.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Spy organization to get into this fight.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Now, that 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. 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
(24:33):
Vatican who was supplying him with verbatim transcripts of papal
conversations that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Pius was popious was having.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
With not only was senior Vatican and envoys all around
the world, but also with foreign diplomats at the Vatican,
including the Japanese ambassador.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
There.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Turned out Vessel was an Italian pornographer with a very
vivid imagination and a real talent for conc dialogue and
snookered Donovan's organization. He had ferocious feuds with j. Edgar Hoover,
the director of the FBI. Hoover thought Donovan's organization was
the biggest collection of amateurs he'd ever seen, and truth
(25:13):
be told, it was a collection of amateurs.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
In the beginning.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Now, in any war, generals and admirals on the same
side will fight among themselves. There's always fierce bureaucratic battles
in World War II was no exception, But in the
case of Donovan, the bureaucratic battles became even more ferocious
because conventional generals and admirals just didn't understand what this
(25:38):
guy was about.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I mean, when Donovan started talking about little Loggie and
sex hormones for Hitler, they thought the guy was deranged.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Donovan would also show 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
(26:09):
that really counted out in the field. Though he could
be what one of his aides said was incorrigibly civilian,
he would show up and his fatigues all wrinkled, look
like he just got out of bed. Sometimes he'd be
wearing a Paisley ascot with him, again as.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
A reminder to everybody around him.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
This was an unconventional guy, and he was running an
unconventional unit. Eventually, Donovan couldn't overcome his political enemies. He
had drafted a plan for a post war Central Intelligence
Agency CIA after the war. He wanted to lead that agency.
(26:48):
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 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
(27:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Back then, if you.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
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,
this is after the war's over. Truman shuts down the
OSS and parcels out its functions to the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And the State Department.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Now Truman was not deaf and dumb to the dangers
that lay ahead of him overseas. I mean, he was
this 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. He just didn't
want to have Donovan. There's oss to be any part
of that. In nineteen forty seven, Truman organizes the Central
(28:06):
Intelligence Agency as part of the Defense Department Act. Donovan
wanted to lead that CIA in nineteen forty seven. In fact,
he had a surrogates lobby Truman to make him CIA director,
but Truman wasn'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
(28:31):
becomes president, a fellow Republican like Donovan. Ike had thought
Donovan had done some fine worship in Europe. Donovan thought
he had his best chance to be CIA director then. Instead, though,
Eisenhower appoints Alan Dalles as CIA director and.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
A terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler in
a special thanks to Douglas Waller, He's the author of
the best seller Wild Bill Donovan, a spymaster who created
the OSS and modern American espionage pet up at your
local bookstore or wherever you get your books online and
by the way. Wile Bill Donovan died at the age
of seventy six from complications of vascular dementia in February
(29:12):
of nineteen fifty nine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington, d c. Shortly before his death, he was
visited by President Eisenhower, who later told a friend that
Donovan was the last hero. 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
(29:35):
of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away. The story
of Wile Bill Donovan here on our American Stories SA
Host
Lee Habeeb
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