An impatient President next wanted to press aid to Britain beyond lend-lease. The only question was how rapidly he dared move. On April 11, with Hitler’s Wehrmacht triumphing in Yugoslavia, Greece, and North Africa, Roosevelt initiated a secret operation. He informed the man who held the purse strings for him, budget director Harold Smith, to find money to covertly finance American patrols to protect British shipping in the Atlantic. He shared his intentions with only four members of his cabinet because, as he put it, the rest “could not keep their mouths shut.” On April 10, Henry Stimson, among those trusted, confided to his diary that he had spent “a very long day at the White House… . The President had evidently been thinking,” he wrote, “how far he could go toward the direction [of] the protection of the British transport line. He had made up his mind that it was too dangerous to ask the Congress for the power to convoy.” Roosevelt feared that if such a resolution were pressed now it would probably be defeated. From the heaps of books and papers cluttering his office, the President asked Stimson to hand him his favorite atlas. He opened it to the Atlantic, and drew a pencil down a vertical line between the easternmost bulge of Brazil and the westernmost bulge of Africa, at roughly longitude 25 degrees. “He is trying to see how far over in the direction of Great Britain we could get,” Stimson later wrote in his diary. “His plan is then that we shall patrol the high seas west of this median line, so that they will be within our area.” In the President’s scheme, American planes and ships would accompany the British convoys and alert them to the presence of German raiders or submarines. Soon after the meeting with Stimson, FDR quietly informed a delighted Churchill of this extended support for Britain. And a stretch it was. By executive fiat, FDR had swept Iceland and Greenland, over twenty-one hundred miles from the U.S. border, into the Americas, no different from Cuba, Argentina, or Peru, just as he had done earlier with the Azores.
Admiral Harold Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, had become accustomed to being summoned to the White House at odd hours. FDR’s performance invariably mesmerized him. He once told an interviewer: “When we were squidging as far as we could in North American waters,” FDR produced books “to prove that Iceland was in the western hemisphere… . I don’t think anyone could equal him. He could sit and plot all the towns that would be passed on a flight down Brazil and over to India.” When the Navy, on FDR’s flimsy authority, was ordered to build a chain of offshore bases, Stark complained to Roosevelt, “I’m breaking all the laws.” Roosevelt replied, “That’s all right Betty [Stark’s unlikely nickname], we’ll go to jail together.”
On April 24 the President closeted himself with Stimson and Knox to consider how best to explain his increasingly bellicose posture to the American people. Stimson was struck by the sinuosity of the President’s thought processes. FDR kept referring to the new patrol policy as “principally a defensive measure,” saying that the force in the Atlantic was merely going to patrol, looking out for any aggressors and reporting them. After hearing this semantic wiggle several times, Stimson interjected with a bemused smile, “But you are not going to report the presence of the German fleet to the Americas. You are going to report it to the British fleet.” After leaving the White House that day, Stimson wrote in his diary of the President’s latest gambit, “He seems to be trying to hide it into the character of a purely reconnaissance action which it really is not.”
The next day, the President had a press conference scheduled, and Stimson urged him to level with the reporters if the patrol issue came up. When the question was indeed raised, FDR stuck by his story. “Now this is a patrol, and has been a patrol for a year and a half, still is, and from time to time has been extended,” the President explained, “for the safety of the Western Hemisphere.” He made no mention of the patrols passing intelligence on German naval movements to British warships.
Henry Stimson had one constituency and one duty, the country’s armed forces and their state of preparedness. FDR had a nationwide constituency that ran from isolationists to interventionists, and he had to gauge just how far he dared get ahead of the public. Indeed, when a month after the press conference, a German submarine sank an American freighter, the Robin Moor, in the South Atlantic but outside the patrol zone, the President made the required rhetorical fuss, branding the attack piracy, demanding compensation from Germany, and kicking German consular staffs out of the country. But he did not make of the matter another Lusitania.
On May 24 an event at sea forced FDR’s combative streak back to the surface. He was informed that the German pocket battleship Bismarck had escaped British attackers and was headed toward the Americas. FDR considered the maneuver a threat to U.S. security. His aide Sam Rosenman has described the President’s quandary regarding the Bismarck: “Should he order submarines to attack it? What would the people say if he did? There would obviously not be enough time to ask Congress.” The British navy solved the President’s dilemma when, on May 26, it sank the Bismarck far closer to France than to the United States.
The President, however, was not appeased. To him, the incident underscored the potential of Nazi aggression against the Americas. He summoned Rosenman and Robert Sherwood, a three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatist, and said that he wanted them to help him write a tough speech to be delivered at the Pan American Union, where he was scheduled to speak on May 27, commemorating Pan American Day. One day after the Bismarck went to the bottom, FDR, in black tie, his brow moist with sweat on one of the steamiest days of the year, was wheeled into the East Room of the White House to address an audience of Latin American diplomats and their spouses. The occasion was customarily marked by boilerplate paeans to hemispheric solidarity. It quickly became apparent that this speech, which only the trusted Grace Tully had been allowed to type, was not primarily intended for the Latin Americans seated on gilded chairs in the room. The Roosevelt voice, at once commanding yet intimate, was being heard by some eighty-five million people over radio. FDR came quickly to the point. “[W]hat started as a European war has developed, as the Nazis always intended it should develop, into a world war for world domination. No, I am not speculating about this,” he went on. “I merely repeat what is already in the Nazi book of world conquest. They plan to treat the Latin American nations as they are now treating the Balkans. They plan to strangle the United States.” He portrayed a Nazi octopus, its tentacles already enveloping Europe, now stretching across North Africa toward the Suez Canal and capable of reaching the Azores and Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic only “seven hours distance from Brazil” for modern bombers.
The President shared with his audience an intense debate going on behind the scenes. In their secret correspondence, Churchill had confided to Roosevelt that German submarines were sinking ships faster than Britain could replace them. American military chiefs had been dead set against FDR’s revealing to the Germans how well their wolf pack strategy was working. Furthermore, they feared that by publicly discussing German naval operations, British codebreaking successes might be compromised. FDR overruled his chiefs. He assumed that German submariners kept a fairly accurate tally of their scores. More important than protecting secrecy was to substantiate his claim that the wolf packs were a menace to the United States and to arouse the American people from their complacency. And so he told his perspiring, brow-mopping audience, “The blunt truth is this—and I reveal this with the full knowledge of the British government, the present rate of Nazi sinking of merchant ships is more than three times as high as the capacity of British shipyards to replace them; it is more than twice the combined British and American output of merchant ships today… . We shall give every possible assistance to Britain and to all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism.” He continued, “Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of the needed supplies to Britain. All additional measures necessary to deliver the goods will be taken.” America’s situation had changed, the President declared. Until now, the war in Europe had required only a “limited” national emergency. Th
at stage was over. He now proclaimed, “an unlimited national emergency exists.”
After the speech, FDR retreated to the Monroe Room, where he was joined by Harry Hopkins and Robert Sherwood, who had brought along the songwriter Irving Berlin. Sam Rosenman had always been impressed by FDR’s capacity to shift gears instantly. “The President was able to relax completely, or the job would have killed him earlier,” Rosenman noted. “He was an expert at dividing his day into periods of work and play, of excitement and relaxation, of importance and minutiae.” That evening, setting aside the significant step he had taken with his speech, FDR asked Berlin to play the piano for him. He wanted to hear the composer’s first big hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Berlin complied, continuing with an impromptu concert of his other favorites. Afterward, a beaming President retired to his bedroom. Sherwood popped in to say good night and found FDR still in high spirits. He was blanketed under almost a thousand telegrams. “They’re ninety-five per cent favorable,” he grinned. “And I figured I’d be lucky to get an even break on this speech.” In Vichy France, FDR’s ambassador, Admiral William Leahy, saw the speech as more than increased preparedness. To the admiral, whose association with FDR preceded World War I, the President had declared war against Hitler.
For all FDR’s charges of a German threat, the truth was that Hitler still hoped to avoid a conflict with America. He had issued his navy strict orders against sinking American ships. He had no intention of attacking either North or South America. That spring, his eye had turned in the opposite direction, toward the East. Nevertheless, FDR continued to believe in the genuineness of a Nazi threat. One consequence was his warming to the idea of an American intelligence agency, thus far the unsuccessful objective of Admiral Godfrey. The admiral had spent two weeks in Washington plotting how to place his case before FDR. Finally, he found an opening wedge. A fellow Briton, Sir William Wiseman, who had been chief of British intelligence in America during World War I, knew the publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who was persuaded to intercede on Godfrey’s behalf. Thereafter, the admiral was invited to dinner at the White House, and promised an hour alone with the President afterward.
Godfrey and Ian Fleming had been doing their homework, meeting with Bill Donovan at his Georgetown townhouse to help him draft a “Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information.” The draft began: “Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless. Likewise, information is useless unless it is intelligently directed to the strategic purpose.” The United States clearly lacked an instrument to implement this logic of warfare. “Our mechanism of collecting information is inadequate,” the paper continued. The potential enemy surely did not make that mistake: “It is unimaginable that Germany would engage in a $7 billion supply program without first studying in detail the productive capacity of her actual and potential enemies. It is because she does this that she displays such a mastery in the secrecy, timing and effectiveness of her attacks.” The United States must establish “a coordinator of strategic information, who would be responsible directly to the President.” The plan also heeded Donovan’s earlier concern: “… [T]he proposed centralized unit will neither displace nor encroach upon the FBI, Army and Navy Intelligence, or any other department of the Government.” Again, aping the British pattern, Donovan’s draft noted: “… [T]here is another element in modern warfare, and that is the psychological attack against the moral and spiritual defenses of a nation. In this attack, the most powerful weapon is radio.”
Donovan was later to claim that he had submitted his ideas for an intelligence agency at Roosevelt’s request. However, he had a penchant for making stories come out the way he wanted, ex post facto. Frank Knox was still Donovan’s eager advocate and continued to bewail the failure of the administration to use his friend’s talents. He told Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, “I am getting to be a little sensitive about urging him because it looks as if I were trying to find something for him to do, which is not the case.” FDR continued to perpetuate the notion that he had been close to Donovan; but Knox’s failure thus far to win a substantial berth for the man stemmed from a long ago collision. In 1932, Donovan had been the unsuccessful Republican candidate to succeed FDR as governor of New York while Roosevelt was running for the presidency. Donovan had vigorously attacked FDR during the campaign and became a vocal critic of the New Deal afterward.
The Donovan memorandum reached the President’s desk with exquisite timing, on June 10, the very day that Admiral Godfrey was urging FDR both to get into the intelligence game and to name Donovan America’s spymaster. Sir William Wiseman had warned Admiral Godfrey about FDR’s conversational ploys. Godfrey went to the White House knowing that Roosevelt “would almost certainly pull my leg and make some provocative remark about the British, or Imperialism, and that I must on no account allow myself to get cross (or ‘mad’ as the Americans say).” FDR lived up to his billing. During dinner, he asked how Godfrey had traveled to the United States. When the admiral answered that he had come via Bermuda, Roosevelt retorted, “Oh yes, those West Indies Islands. We’re going to show you how to look after them, and not only you but the Portuguese and Dutch. Every nigger will have his two acres and a sugar patch.” Godfrey was known to have a short fuse, but managed to ignore the taunt and “mustered up the semblance of a laugh.” Dinner was followed by what Godfrey described as “a rather creepy, crawly film” about snakes.
The admiral did get his private hour with the President. FDR began by reminiscing about his visit to London in the last war and his admiration for Blinker Hall, Godfrey’s predecessor. Again the President jabbed: “Hall had a wonderful intelligence service but I don’t suppose it’s much good now.” Godfrey bit his tongue, and listened while Roosevelt nostalgically recalled Blinker Hall’s revealing to him the exploits of British spies sneaking in and out of Germany. Godfrey was astonished to find that after nearly a quarter of a century, Roosevelt still swallowed the concoctions that Hall had fed him. When he finally had a chance to get in a word, he urged FDR to create “one intelligence security boss, not three or four.” And the person most qualified, he said, was William J. Donovan. FDR noncommittally resumed his reminiscing, and Godfrey left the White House doubtful that he had made a sale.
The President had already offered Donovan a job before Godfrey’s visit, not as America’s intelligence chief, but a position that had to have offended that proud, ambitious man. On June 5, while Donovan, with Ian Fleming, had been designing an American espionage agency, Henry Morgenthau Jr. and FDR discussed making Donovan the New York State chairman of the Defense Savings Program. Donovan had received a letter from Morgenthau that read, “This would be a full time job,” and FDR agreed that it presented “an unusual opportunity for public service in these critical times.” Twelve days after the offer, on June 17, an impatient Morgenthau told his secretary to get hold of Donovan on the phone. “I want to have him give me a yes or no on whether he is going to take the Chairmanship in New York State,” he fussed. “I am not going to wait any longer.” During their subsequent phone conversation, Donovan was evasive. War bond salesman was hardly the role in which he saw himself. The call ended with Morgenthau demanding Donovan’s answer by sunset.
Donovan did not call Morgenthau back. Instead, he was summoned to the White House the next day, where he met the President, along with his champion, Knox, and Ben Cohen, a trusted New Deal aide who drafted much legislation for Roosevelt. By then FDR had had eight days to study Donovan’s proposal for a coordinator of intelligence. Donovan was primed. He waxed eloquently and persuasively, urging that America catch up with other major powers in the intelligence field. FDR was impressed by Donovan’s energy, ideas, and conviction. Here was the man who had told him that Britain would survive after Dunkirk, who had assured him that the RAF would prevail in the air war, and that the British could not only take it, but hand it out. Thus far, he had proved right.
After leaving the White House, Donov
an finally got around to calling Morgenthau, who was out of the office. He left a message that he was not going to become New York chairman of the Defense Savings Program, for he had at last been offered an appointment commensurate with his ambition and talents. After the meeting with Donovan, FDR had scrawled across the bottom of the espionage agency proposal, “JBJr. Please set this up confidentially with Ben Cohen, military not O.E.M.,” signed “FDR.” JBJr. was John B. Blandford Jr., assistant director of the budget. What FDR meant was that this latest federal agency was to be placed under the military and its creation kept quiet by not making it part of the Office of Emergency Management. In these ten words scribbled on an interoffice memo, the President created America’s first central intelligence service.
Ben Cohen went to see Blandford’s boss, Harold Smith, the director of the Bureau of the Budget, in the Executive Office Building, the gloomy stone heap to the west of the White House, to figure out how to translate FDR’s note into a government entity. Cohen and Smith came up with possible titles for Donovan, Coordinator of Strategic Information or Coordinator of Defense Information, and tested them with the military. The chiefs balked. They did not want “strategic” or “defense” in Donovan’s title. They compromised finally on the nebulous Coordinator of Information. Since the organization would be under the military, Donovan, the President’s aides suggested, should be commissioned a major general. Again the officers balked. However, they said, he could use the honorific “colonel,” his World War I rank. Donovan was not to be salaried but would be reimbursed only for “transportation, subsistence and other expenses incidental to the performance of your duties.” He himself would have to pay for the scrambler phones to be installed in his homes. The first draft of a proposed press release announcing Donovan’s appointment had repeated from his proposal that he could “undertake activities helpful in securing of defense information not available to the government through existing agencies and departments.” The sentence meant that Donovan could initiate espionage. This clause was knocked out by the military.
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