Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  Donovan and Knox cruised first aboard a heavy cruiser, then a light cruiser, a destroyer, a battleship, and finally the aircraft carrier Enterprise, in order to get an impression of the combat readiness of the Pacific fleet. When it came time to leave the Enterprise, the members of the official party took off their suit coats in order to slip on Mae West life jackets and parachutes. They climbed into two-seater open-cockpit pursuit planes behind the pilots and stowed their coats behind their seats. Donovan’s plane was next to last to take off. O’Keefe, who was in the last, watched Donovan’s plane go roaring down the deck and lift up into the air. “Donovan’s coat blew out of the cockpit, landed on the end of the deck, and flipped off into the sea,” related O’Keefe. “The sailors tried to fish for it, but it sank out of sight. Donovan lost his wallet containing $400 and a watch that he always carried. The crew chipped in to buy him another watch, which was inscribed to him from the men of the Enterprise.”

  The planes flew to Pearl Harbor, where they landed. “If we can do this,” said Donovan, “the Japs can do it too.”

  Upon his return to Washington, Donovan gave a lecture at the War Department. He stressed the importance of the Mediterranean in the strategy of the war in Europe and said that in talking to the admirals of the Pacific fleet, “I found out that none of us really knew much about what was east of the Strait of Gibraltar or what the situation was there.”

  Donovan had scarcely returned to Washington when Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall asked him to make a tour of the nation’s mobilization centers. With the enactment of the Selective Service Act, the country was gathering its manpower. By March 5, 1941, more than a million soldiers were expected to be under arms, including 375,000 Regular Army, 245,000 National Guardsmen, and 600,000 draftees under the Selective Service Act. Marshall wanted Donovan to observe the preparations being made to train the draftees. The two men conferred on October 1.

  “What can we do for these men in the way of arms and equipment?” asked Donovan. “Have we the means with which to train them? Have we the basic weapons, the use of which they must learn? In other words, is it worthwhile to bring these men into service now? Can we give them the instruction they need?”

  Colonel J. L. Collins of Marshall’s staff and Donovan flew to Barks-dale Field, Louisiana, so that Donovan could meet with the officers conducting the Louisiana maneuvers that were to test the readiness of the Regular Army. Donovan found Lt. Col. Dwight Eisenhower performing as chief umpire of the war games. The contending sides were attempting to find their way through Louisiana swamps and forests with the aid of Standard Oil road maps, and there was confusion everywhere.

  When the war games ended, the top officers met in a large tent for dinner and a critique from Colonel Donovan. Donovan, who had seen the finely honed German and Italian war machines in Ethiopia and Spain and on maneuvers in Bavaria, found some things to admire in the U.S. Army’s performance but much more to lament. Such officers as Eisenhower and Mark Clark who were present took his remarks to heart. There was no doubt at all that the outspoken hero of the World War and perennial observer of foreign military operations knew what he was talking about, but the top brass, perhaps for this reason alone, resented what he had to say.

  Donovan and Collins flew to Randolph Field, San Antonio, on October 5, where they watched demonstrations put on by Latin American officers in school at nearby Fort Sam Houston. They observed the U.S. Army preparations for training the draftees not only at Fort Sam Houston but at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Fort Knox in Kentucky, and Fort Benning in Georgia. Upon his return, Donovan informed General Marshall of what he had learned.

  “On the score of sound doctrine and the imparting of that doctrine I am much encouraged,” Donovan wrote to Edward Stettinius when he returned to New York on October 10. At the same time he noted, “We are not equipped to go to war. There are many shortages. We still need large quantities of new types of antiaircraft guns, artillery, aeroplanes, tanks, as well as ammunition. And it will take us some time to get them. We do have the basic arms and the basic equipment to train the 1,200,000 men we are to have in service.”

  “As to a possible war,” he wrote to Gen. Robert E. Wood,

  I think all of us ought to resist getting into any war (even though we know someday we must get in) until we are ready. As a result of my trip with the Navy and now my inspection of Forts Benning, Sam Houston, Sill, and Knox, I do not see how we can possibly be ready before a year and, perhaps more accurately, a year and a half. I am in favor of holding off the danger of war by whatever means is possible until we can be ready. If it is necessary to supply England even to a greater extent to do that, I am for doing it. We have just been caught in a spot where we are not wholly master of our destiny and we have got to fight for time until we can regain that mastery.

  November 1940 was a hectic time for Donovan, as reported in the newspapers. “Recently, Colonel Donovan has been in and out of Washington much of the time,” wrote James L. Wright to Alfred Kirchhofer.

  He has been in conference with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He has had luncheon with General George Marshall, chief of staff.

  On Wednesday, he arrived by plane from Indianapolis at 5:30 in the morning to have breakfast at that early hour with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Ernest J. King of the General Board of the Navy, and with Rawleigh Warner of Chicago.

  When he wasn’t working on America’s military preparedness, he was making speeches explaining the plight of Great Britain and the part he feels the United States should play in this world crisis.

  “During this period, Donovan badgered anybody who would listen to his views on the situation in Europe,” remembered Jim Murphy. “Hull, Welles, Stimson, Knox, all listened to Bill Donovan, whether they wanted to or not.”

  Donovan at least had one thing to be happy about. On October 16, Joseph Kennedy cabled Franklin Roosevelt and asked to be relieved of his post. He cited his trying experiences in London during German air attack. The same day he telephoned Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles and said that regardless of what he heard from the President, he was coming home. For three months he had been ignored by Roosevelt, who had sent Donovan to London without telling him in advance and who was not giving him any information whatsoever on the destroyers-for-bases deal. Roosevelt accepted his resignation, but upon Kennedy’s return home asked him to keep his own counsel until after the election. Kennedy was furious with Roosevelt, but out of party loyalty and out of fear for what the President, who could be ruthless in politics, might do, he acquiesced.

  “You will either go down as the greatest president in history or the greatest horse’s ass,” he told Roosevelt in Washington after the President’s November defeat of Wendell Willkie.

  “There is a third alternative,” Roosevelt replied. “I may go down as the president of an unimportant country at the end of my term.”

  Kennedy joined the vociferous opposition to the Lend-Lease arrangements with Britain. On December 1, President Roosevelt called Bill Donovan to the White House again. For the man he called “my secret legs,” he had in mind a mission that promised to be even more significant than the last.

  20

  Fifty-Trip Ticket on the Clippers

  WHEN DONOVAN ARRIVED at the White House, Roosevelt proposed that he undertake an urgent mission of the utmost secrecy and importance. The President told him he was to go abroad and “collect information on conditions and prospects” and, “more importantly, to impress on everyone the resolution of the American government and people to see the British through and provide all possible assistance to countries which undertook to resist Nazi aggression.” Donovan was to undertake a critical diplomatic task under cover of what was an equally vital intelligence mission.

  “His directive was a broad one,” said Conyers Read, “so broad that it did not indicate with any precision where he was to go. Evidently he was expected not only to investigate but also to recommend a course of action for America. The President sugges
ted that he should find occasion en route to confer with General Weygand and explore with him the possibilities of some form of Franco-American action in North Africa.”

  Donovan looked forward to seeing his old comrade-in-arms Gen. Maxime Weygand. As early as August he had been arguing that it was important for the United States to arrive at an agreement with the French to protect American interests in North Africa. He expected the Mediterranean to become the next arena of battle between the Axis powers and Britain, and he believed that both France, even if it had been defeated, and the United States must play a role.

  The assignment did not begin in the White House. Weeks before he heard from the President, Donovan had talked to Hull, Stimson, and Knox about a far-ranging journey to Europe and the Middle East. He had discussed such a trip with British Security Coordinator William Stephenson, and on November 27 Knox had brought it up with Lord Lothian, the British ambassador. Knox and Stimson had consulted with the chief of Naval Intelligence, Adm. Richmond K. Turner, and with Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, head of the army’s war plans division. Intelligence officers in both the army and navy immediately began to joust with one another and with civilian authorities to see who would control Donovan’s mission. They might have spared themselves the struggle, because it was Roosevelt himself to whom Donovan was expected to report. Neither army nor navy nor, for that matter, J. Edgar Hoover was given any true idea of the singular importance and nature of Donovan’s assignment.

  As soon as the President summoned Donovan to the White House, Stephenson cabled Churchill: “Impossible over-emphasize importance of Donovan mission. He can play a great and perhaps vital role. It may not be consistent with orthodox diplomacy nor confined to its channels.” Stephenson also informed Sir Stewart Menzies:

  Donovan exercises controlling influence over Knox, strong influence over Stimson, friendly advisory influence over President and Hull. Being a Republican, a Catholic, and of Irish descent, he has following of the strongest opposition to the Administration. It was Donovan who was responsible for getting us the destroyers, the bomb sight, and other urgent requirements. There is no doubt that we can achieve infinitely more through Donovan than through any other individual. He is very receptive and should be made fully aware of our requirements and deficiencies and can be trusted to represent our needs in the right quarters and in the right way in the USA.

  During the first few days of December 1940, Donovan hurried about Washington conferring with administration leaders in preparation for his trip abroad. The day after he met with Roosevelt, he spent the morning with Secretary of War Stimson. He left Stimson a trifle bewildered and at the same time envious. “Colonel Bill Donovan came in this morning to tell me about the new mission which he is going on for Frank Knox and which is approved by the British Government,” Stimson wrote in his diary. “His description of it made my mouth water. He is going over to take another look around and see what is really up—what the chances are. He hopes to get to Gibraltar and Malta and I think Syria and Egypt—or else it was Greece and Egypt—and then he hopes to get down into Central Africa and to meet General Smuts of South Africa, coming up to see him. He has his eye on Weygand and is generally trying to get a look round to see.”

  Each person Donovan talked to got a different impression of what he was going to do abroad, and all sorts of rumors raced about Washington, tumbling over each other, contradicting one another, and mystifying the press. The navy brass was upset by his mission. On November 2 Winston Churchill had asked President Roosevelt for U.S. Navy protection for convoys, and one of Donovan’s assignments from the President was to find out how necessary this might be. Naval Intelligence was in the process of negotiating an intelligence agreement with British Naval Intelligence and did not want Donovan making any commitments for the U.S. Navy to shepherd shipping through the Nazi submarine packs until the promise of such help had been used to extract advantageous terms from the British.

  As the day drew near for Donovan’s departure, Washington intelligence officers discussed various ideas for Donovan’s cover. Some thought he should travel abroad in a naval plane; others thought he should travel incognito in a commercial aircraft. Donovan laughed at the idea that he should carry a false passport and employ an assumed name. He thought it totally ludicrous that he should attempt a disguise and travel by some roundabout way. Such cloak-and-dagger arrangements were bound to be penetrated and were completely unnecessary.

  On December 5 at 5:30 A.M., Donovan breakfasted with Knox, after which Knox left for the Panama Canal on an inspection trip and Donovan left for New York, where he bade Ruth good-bye and packed his suitcase for a long trip.

  The morning of Friday, December 6, the Bermuda Clipper waited at its pier in Baltimore while passengers fumed. At last at a few minutes before noon, a cab dashed up to the terminal, and a well-dressed man, his hair graying at the temples, got out carrying a briefcase. He was called Donald Williams on the passenger list, but waiting reporters took one look at his briefcase, which bore the initials WJD, and readily identified him as William J. Donovan. Donovan did not appear surprised or discomfited when he was recognized. He had already had press contacts in Washington spread the report that he was on his way to Africa, Greece, and Spain, but he had kept secret the actual destination of his trip and its true purpose as well as the date and place of his departure. Now he wondered who exactly had leaked information that resulted in reporters waiting for him in Baltimore.

  The New York Times reporter also noticed that Donovan spoke to two other passengers, one a Mr. Desgarges, a French citizen, which raised the possibility that Donovan might indeed be on his way to see Maxime Weygand to “induce the French military leader to cast his lot with the anti-German forces in North Africa.” Donovan also greeted a Mr. O’Connell. Actually, Desgarges was a French intelligence officer and Mr. O’Connell was Bill Stephenson.

  When asked about Donovan’s trip, State Department officials confirmed that he was heading across the Atlantic on another mission but insisted that the department knew nothing of its purpose. They even declined to say whether he was traveling on a regular or a diplomatic passport, and they refused to discuss Donovan’s destination, “pointing out that passport information was always kept confidential.”

  Westbrook Pegler observed in his next column, “Our Colonel Wild Bill Donovan seems to have a fifty-trip ticket on the Clippers, which he must use up in a certain time or forfeit the remainder.”

  By that time, Donovan was safely in Bermuda and waiting for the Atlantic Clipper from New York. When the seaplane took off from the La Guardia basin on December 7, it was fully loaded, but reporters learned that some passengers would leave the plane in Bermuda to make room for Bill Donovan and a party to fly the Atlantic to Lisbon. The New York Times also learned that five U.S. Army officers on an undisclosed mission were aboard the Atlantic Clipper and were among the nine passengers booked through to Lisbon.

  The army officers, who avoided press cameras, were actually a party of intelligence men headed by Lt. Col. Vernon S. Pritchard. They had been sent by General Strong, ostensibly to help support Donovan in his mission, but actually to make a separate study of British military installations. The army feared that Donovan would report favorably on British preparations and urge the President to give England more military aid. The delegation was instructed to return home with a negative report on the British so as to strengthen the hand of U.S. Army brass, who wanted to give priority to building up American armed strength before attempting to arm the British. The men also were told to learn all they could about British radar and fire-control methods, which appeared to be far in advance of those employed by the U.S. Army.

  The Atlantic Clipper arrived in Bermuda at 2:00 P.M., on schedule, but bad weather in the Azores held it up there. Donovan and Stephenson looked in on the British mail censorship unit in Bermuda. The Atlantic Clipper had brought a maximum mail load of 12,000 pounds, the largest shipment of letters and packages ever carried across the Atlantic on the Cli
pper. All of this mail had to be studied by the British censors before the plane could be cleared for takeoff. Donovan was delighted with Nadya Gardner, the sharp-witted, beautiful Englishwoman whose job it was to fish in the mail for letters that German agents in the United States might be sending to their spymasters in Germany; or vice versa. He was particularly delighted at one of her intercepts, a letter to Reinhard Heydrich from a New York City agent, which proved that Heydrich was spying on his country’s own spies. The delay lengthened as the censors struggled with the vast piles of mail.

  “The two men had to spend eight days in Bermuda where Stephenson must have spent much time showing Donovan the intelligence operations that took place in that vital air and water link between Europe and the Americas,” said Thomas Troy of the Central Intelligence Agency. “All kinds of British authorities checked the passengers, goods, publications, and mail that funneled through their hands.”

  Finally on December 13, the flying boat carrying Donovan and the oddly assorted group of intelligence men took off. The Clipper landed at Lisbon late on December 14.

  “I am hoping to go to London,” Donovan confided to an American journalist who was at the pier to meet the plane.

  Donovan’s hopes proved to be justified, and the next day a British flying boat took him to Poole. From there he went by train to London’s Waterloo Station, where Captain Kirk, the U.S. Navy attaché, and Brigadier General Lee, the military attaché, met him. Several British officials were on hand too, and they drove Donovan to Claridge’s, where a comfortable suite awaited him despite Brendan Bracken’s gloomy prediction upon his departure from Britain some four months before.