AUTHORS ON THE RECORD

creating the modern spy

How “Wild Bill” Donovan Ran the OSS and
Put America in the Espionage Business
by hilary parkinson

Before World War II, intelligence gathering was not institutionalized in the U.S. government as it is today.
But President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a keen interest in what his “spies” around the world could find
out for him as war clouds began to form in the late 1930s. After Pearl Harbor, FDR created an intelligence
agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of today’s CIA.
To run it, he chose William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, who had won a Medal of Honor for his service in
World War I and become rich as a Republican lawyer in New York. In running the OSS, Donovan directed
his agents to do things legal and not-so-legal to scoop up intelligence for FDR and his commanders. At the
same time, Donovan himself engaged in the kind of exploits that are today more commonly associated with
James Bond; he could be a loose cannon but usually got the job done.
Douglas Waller

In his new book on Donovan, veteran journalist Douglas Waller takes a close, detailed look at Donovan’s
career, drawing in part on documents from the National Archives never before mined. Waller, a former
correspondent for Time and Newsweek, is the author of five previous books, including best-sellers The
Commandos and BIG RED as well as a biography of Gen. Billy Mitchell, A Question of Loyalty.

Your latest book tells the story of William “Wild Bill” Donovan,
who founded the national intelligence agency known as the Office
of Strategic Services. What prompted you to focus on the life of
this unusual character?
I am attracted to controversial historical figures for biographies. My
previous biography, “A Question of Loyalty,” was on Gen. Billy Mitchell,
the World War I hero and father of the Air Force, who demonstrated that
planes could sink a battleship. People either loved or hated Billy Mitchell.
No one was neutral on the guy. During the 1920s, Mitchell was court-
martialed for insubordination in advocating air power. His Washington
trial was a media spectacular in its day. Thousands of pages of his trial
records are stored at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland,
where I spent many months reviewing them. Interestingly, Wild Bill
Donovan, who was an assistant attorney general in the Coolidge
administration at the time, attended Mitchell’s trial. Donovan, like
Mitchell, also was someone people revered or hated—a very controversial
character whom I found ideal for a biography.
The previous biographies of Donovan were almost 30 years old.
Practically all of the OSS documents have been declassified since
then and are stored at the Archives’ Maryland facility. A historical
biographer quickly learns that the archivist is his best friend—
particularly with a collection as huge as OSS records, which number
in the millions of pages. I spent about a year at the National Archives
wading through OSS records and through documents from other
government agencies. Larry McDonald, an Archives expert on the
OSS records, along with eight other archivists for other collections,
were a godsend for my research.
In researching Donovan’s life, you went to three of the 13
presidential libraries: Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. Had
you done any research at the presidential libraries before? Were
you able to access all the documents you requested, or were some
still classified?
This was the first time I had visited the Roosevelt, Truman, and
Eisenhower libraries, and it was a rewarding experience. Robert Clark,
the archivist at the FDR Library, unearthed a lot of gems for me
from the Roosevelt papers, all of which are declassified. Liz Safley, as
she had done for countless authors, took me under her wing in the
reading room of the Truman Library. She and archivist Randy Sowell
dug up hundreds of Donovan—and OSS-related—papers from the
Truman collections, many of them not seen by previous biographers.
David Haight, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library, helped me
track down Donovan records from Ike’s presidency and his days as
Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. A few of that library’s records
were still classified, but I got them declassified.
Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were very different men in
their experiences and background. Did the documents in the
libraries reveal an equally different attitude toward Donovan?
Were there any unexpected finds?
The presidential library documents reveal markedly different
attitudes by their Presidents toward Donovan. Donovan had a
complicated relationship with Roosevelt, who signed the orders setting
up the OSS and protected him from bureaucratic rivals who wanted
to shut him down. The FDR Library papers reveal that Roosevelt was

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intrigued by espionage and liked Donovan’s being a spark plug for
ideas in his administration. But the papers also reveal that FDR kept
Donovan on a short leash (though Donovan often didn’t know he was
on it), and the Democratic President never allowed this millionaire
Republican lawyer from Wall Street to be an intelligence czar over the
Army and Navy—as Donovan clearly wanted to be.
Truman and Donovan’s relationship was pretty straightforward;
neither man particularly liked the other. Randy
Sowell found documents for me no one had ever
seen before on how bad the blood was between
these two men. One gem Randy uncovered:
Three years after Truman closed down the OSS,
an aide sent him the draft of a speech he was to
deliver for a Sons of St. Patrick Society dinner,
which listed Donovan among the country’s
Irish American heroes. The document shows
that Truman had crossed out Donovan’s name.
Eisenhower and Donovan were always good
friends. Ike thought highly of the OSS work in
his European theater. When he became President,
Eisenhower made Donovan his ambassador
to Thailand in 1953. The Eisenhower papers
were critical in reconstructing Donovan’s year
in Thailand, when he was trying to build that
country into a bulwark against communism in
Asia. The National Security Council records that
have been declassified were also extremely helpful
in documenting how Donovan big-footed other
ambassadors in the region.
Eisenhower and Donovan had a long history together—Donovan
helped Eisenhower with his presidential campaign. Were you able
to learn more about the relationship between the two men? Did
these documents show any significant changes?
The documents did show changes in the relationship. Eisenhower
had a soft spot for Donovan. The Eisenhower papers show that soft
spot wasn’t always shared by other senior members of his military
staff, such as Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, who thought Donovan could
often be a bull in a china shop. Eisenhower retained his fondness
for Donovan after the war, but that fondness went only so far, his
presidential papers show. I found interesting documents in the library
that showed Donovan had intermediaries lobby Ike in 1952, before
he was sworn in as President, to make him CIA director. But the
papers show that Allen Dulles, whose brother was John Foster and
Ike’s future secretary of state, always had the inside track to lead the
CIA. The ambassadorship to Thailand was sort of a consolation prize
for Donovan. Then toward the end of Donovan’s life, when he was
stricken with a severe form of dementia, there are touching documents
in the collection that show Eisenhower and his staff arranging to have
Donovan admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to live out
his final year and a half.
Authors on the Record
In addition to the presidential libraries, you requested the
military records of Bill’s son, David Donovan, from the National
Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis. You have written
other military biographies—were you familiar with the holdings
of the NPRC? What did the records of David Donovan tell you
about his famous father?
I am very familiar with NPRC’s records. I made a trip to St. Louis
to view Gen. Billy Mitchell’s personnel records
for that biography. Donovan had a distant
relationship with his son, David, who wanted
no part of his father’s lifestyle or the spotlight
that followed him. During the war, David
joined the Navy—some relatives say because
he wanted to be as far away as possible from
his father, who was in the Army. The NPRC
records enabled me to trace David’s story in
the Navy for the book, particularly when it
intersected with Donovan’s career with the OSS.
Donovan also participated in the Nuremberg
trials, although he was eventually dismissed
from the prosecuting team. Were you
surprised to learn he had been attempting to
impress Göring so that the Reichsmarschall
could be persuaded to confess in return for
a plea bargain?
I was very surprised over the plea bargain
deal Donovan tried to hatch with Göring:
In exchange for Göring copping a plea and ratting on his fellow
Nazis, the Reichsmarschall would be allowed to die by a firing
squad instead of being hanged as a common criminal. Donovan
had a total of 10 meetings with Göring. Donovan’s papers from
his Nuremberg days are stored at Cornell University’s law library.
They show that the chief prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert
Jackson, wanted mainly to introduce mounds of documents at the
trial to convict the top Nazis. Donovan thought that reading dreary
records day after day would bore everyone to tears. When Jackson
learned of the plea bargain deal Donovan was cooking up, he
closed down the negotiations, wanting no part of putting Göring
on the stand as a prosecution witness. Donovan and Jackson ended
up having a bitter falling out over trial tactics, and Donovan left
Nuremberg an angry man.
You come from a military family. Have you ever considered
researching your own family history through the National Archives?
Or do you have the subject for another book already in mind?
That’s an interesting idea, although my file at NPRC from my
short stint in the Army will be pretty thin. My father was a career
Naval officer, so his file would be thicker. I don’t have another
book in mind, although I would love for it to be another historical
biography.
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