Chapter 33
Thailand
DONOVAN CAMPAIGNED HARD for Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential race. The two men had become good friends during Ike’s short tenure as president of Columbia University from 1948 to 1950. Donovan was an eager fund-raiser for his alma mater, which Eisenhower appreciated. Early in 1952, Donovan joined other prominent Republicans pressing him to enter the race. He helped line up GOP support among his political friends and fed Ike memos on how to outmaneuver Ohio senator Robert Taft for the nomination at the Chicago convention. Donovan insisted to Ike that he wanted nothing in return, but he did. He wanted to be the CIA director. He thought he had his best chance at the job now that his Republican friend was in the White House.
News reports circulated that General Beetle Smith would soon resign as the CIA’s chief, which could not come too quickly for Donovan. He feared that Smith had ruined the CIA, sapping it of the esprit de corps that existed under the OSS; the agency needed an infusion of outsiders and a leader who was a civilian like him, not a career military man. Donovan began a quiet campaign for the directorship. The Veterans of OSS, an organization of ex-OSS officers that Donovan controlled, lobbied Eisenhower on behalf of their old boss. The national commander of the American Legion, which Donovan helped found, told Ike the OSS chief was now the man with the “knowledge, experience and passion” to wage a subversive war against the Soviets.
Men more powerful mobilized against Donovan, however. Tipped off early by his agents that Donovan wanted the CIA job, Hoover paid a visit to the president-elect on the morning of December 30. Unlike Truman, Eisenhower harbored no doubts about retaining the FBI director and he was anxious at the outset to have good relations with him. But Hoover soon learned he had to tread carefully with Ike. The president-elect started off their meeting in his transition headquarters ordering Hoover not to send him uncorroborated rumors about the sex lives of people he was thinking of appointing to his administration. Eisenhower wanted just the facts, which eliminated the best trash Hoover had on Donovan. But he still managed to work in a shot. Beetle Smith was a “sincere and earnest man,” Hoover told Eisenhower, but he had been hobbled by bad elements from Donovan’s old organization. His agents followed up with more derogatory information slipped to the transition team on Donovan’s OSS years.
Even if Hoover had kept his mouth shut, Donovan was not in the running to be CIA director. Allen Dulles had the inside track. The former Bern station chief had joined the CIA in October 1950, in charge of its clandestine operations, and within a year became its deputy director under Smith. Dulles considered himself the natural heir to the top job and he had an advocate who had the new president’s ear on foreign policy: his brother, John Foster Dulles, whom Eisenhower tapped to be his secretary of state. Ike moved Smith, his loyal staff chief during World War II, to the State Department to keep an eye on Foster as the undersecretary of state. That conveniently opened the door for Allen to lead the CIA, which his brother and Eisenhower wanted.
The appointment left Donovan bitter. He still believed Dulles was a poor administrator, although his low opinion of him was tinged by jealousy that his underling had jumped ahead of him after the war. To friends, Donovan continued to predict that Dulles would be a disaster as director of central intelligence. As a consolation prize, Eisenhower offered Donovan the ambassadorship to France. Ike was surprised and irked when Donovan summarily rejected the prestigious post. But Donovan knew that John Foster Dulles was deeply interested in Europe, as any secretary of state would be. Foster would hover over him if he took the Paris post, and Donovan could not stomach being his errand boy. He thought Eisenhower’s secretary of state was sanctimonious and as weak-kneed as Acheson. Donovan, however, was willing to serve elsewhere as a diplomat.
HIS PLANE touched down at Bangkok’s airport early Thursday morning, August 27, 1953. Weary from little sleep on the long flight, Donovan was the first to leave the aircraft, Thailand’s baking tropical heat enveloping him instantly and taking out what starch was left in his summer suit. A large welcoming party of some 150 stood on the tarmac at the end of the ladder along with a battery of Thai reporters shouting questions and photographers jostling for position to snare the best shots. When Donovan’s feet touched ground, General Phao Sriyanon, the country’s police chief, stepped forward and placed a lei in his hand. The chief of protocol for the king and a senior officer representing Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram, the prime minister, approached with stiff bows and handshakes. In the terminal, Donovan sat briefly for the ceremonial tea and delicacies always offered high-level visitors while the photographers crowded around for more pictures. A large contingent of Americans from the U.S. embassy stood by as well, along with a handful of former OSS officers who had remained in Southeast Asia after the war. They finally managed to pry Donovan loose from the newsmen and bundle him into a limousine for the motor convoy to his new home: the palatial U.S. ambassador’s residence, a rambling two-story structure with an immense pagoda, magnificent green lawns, and lush gardens.
Donovan had been in chilly Oslo, Norway, three months earlier when an urgent cable arrived from Beetle Smith asking him to return to Washington immediately. The Truman administration had worried about Red China’s domination of Southeast Asia by invasion or subversion. Though Thailand shared no border with China, Truman feared it was vulnerable to communist infiltration from Vietnam—a prospect not helped by the fact that the Bangkok government was run by “a small group of conniving and often venal upper-class politicians,” as one secret National Security Council memo warned. With the Korean War a stalemate, Mao’s takeover of China in 1949 still a fresh wound, and the Viet Minh unraveling French control of Vietnam, Eisenhower entered office at the beginning of 1953 even more intent on blocking further communist advances in the Far East. Ike viewed Thailand not only as a bulwark against the Reds but also as a base for operations to roll back communism in the rest of Southeast Asia. Thailand would be the launching pad for America’s propaganda, paramilitary, and covert missions in the region.
Donovan was not the State Department bureaucracy’s first choice to be ambassador to Thailand. But Foster told his aides he wanted a “big man” for what he thought might be “a real hot spot,” and Donovan, who loved adventure, seemed to him ideal for the assignment. When Donovan arrived in New York on Sunday, May 17, he phoned Smith at his home.
“I have a tough dirty job for you,” the undersecretary said, not revealing on an open line what it was.
Donovan took the train to Washington the next day and met Smith at the State Department. “I am authorized by the President to offer you the ambassadorship of Siam,” Smith began their conversation. Donovan accepted on the spot. In Thailand he would be far more independent of Foster, who he thought would be preoccupied with Europe.
But typical of Donovan, he soon made a counteroffer. The communists threatened all of Southeast Asia, he told Smith. Ike should make him not just an ambassador to Thailand but also a regional envoy, perhaps restoring his general’s rank, with a beefed-up staff, plenty of money, a plane always at his disposal to roam through other countries, and a direct phone line to the White House. Donovan envisioned using Thailand as his base for dabbling in the Malayan guerrilla conflict, in Vietnam’s counterinsurgency, in Taiwanese covert operations into China, even the Korean War nearing its end.
John Foster Dulles wanted no part of Donovan becoming a second secretary of state for Asia. Neither did the Defense Department, the CIA, or the White House. Donovan was “grabbing off much too much territory,” one White House memo warned. Smith drafted a letter Eisenhower was happy to sign, which squelched the scheme. “You are the man best qualified” to be the envoy to Thailand, Ike’s confidential note to Donovan read. “However, I want you to do it in the capacity of Ambassador, under the direction of the Secretary of State and within State Department channels of control.” Donovan agreed to the conditions—but he was intent on breaking them when he arrived in Thailand.
Before he could leave, Donova
n’s nomination had to be confirmed by Congress. Dulles asked the FBI to conduct a background check, which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee required for ambassadorial nominees. Hoover now had a precious opportunity and he did not intend to waste it. Donovan had been chief of the nation’s intelligence service with access to its most sensitive secrets, but Hoover treated him like a first-time applicant for a government job—and a suspicious one at that. He put his best men on the case and for a month they scoured the country. FBI agents investigated the loyalty of Donovan’s parents and dug up his school records. They interviewed his law partners, business associates, judges he had appeared before, former colleagues in the intelligence world, political enemies in Washington, residents of Berryville, even the doorman at his Sutton Place apartment. For the most part the agents came back with positive reports. Even men Donovan had clashed with in the past, such as Herbert Hoover, recommended him for the job. But the FBI investigators also turned up nasty allegations and rumors from informants, two of whom were New York newspaper columnists. As the Elizabeth Bentley hearings had revealed, Donovan’s OSS had been infested with communists, the sources reported. Staffers in the agency’s Presentation Branch once held a collection “for Russian war relief,” another report alleged, and “were anxious to hire colored personnel.” Pro-communists had infiltrated Donovan’s law office. When it comes to fighting Reds, Donovan was a “bubblehead,” one of the columnists told the agents. He had even joined an effort to oust Joe McCarthy from the Senate.
On July 15, Hoover sent the White House a twenty-page report on Donovan. The first eleven pages dutifully acknowledged the rave reviews the agents had received. But the next seven dwelled on what Hoover had to be sure would scare any administration away from a nomination—particularly in the McCarthy era. The FBI director practically accused Donovan of being a traitor. The OSS chief “has always been ‘soft and mushy’ in his treatment of Communists,” Hoover reported, quoting “an informant of known reliability.” (The informant was one of the New York columnists.)
Hoover’s report did not scare off Eisenhower or his secretary of state. The Senate quickly confirmed Donovan. Three days before taking off for Bangkok, he held another meeting with Smith to receive the top secret mission Eisenhower wanted him to carry out. He was to “quietly” assume command not only of the embassy but also the propaganda, military aid, and CIA operations for Thailand. He was to build “a bastion” for democracy there, Smith told him, and use it to fight communists overtly and covertly in the neighboring countries. Donovan already was on board. He had huddled with OSS officers who spied in Thailand during the war and had just returned from a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to scout out Green Beret guerrilla fighters and Army psychological operations officers he wanted for the embassy.
RUTH, MARY, AND PATRICIA (who was now twelve) arrived in Thailand on a later flight. The other grandchildren remained with David at Chapel Hill. Ruth was not particularly thrilled with her husband’s foreign posting or eager to join him but she agreed to stay in Bangkok for at least three months. Mary still had not recovered from Sheilah’s death and Donovan thought Thailand might get her mind off the tragic accident. Patricia was enthralled with her new exotic home. Funny-looking insects always crawled across the dinner table, snakes slithered through the gardens, and gibbons roamed the yard and hopped on the handlebars of her bicycle when she rode it or sneaked into Ruth’s room and stole underwear from her drawer.
Dressed in formal morning clothes and a top hat, Donovan on September 4 presented his credentials to King Phumiphon Adunyadet at the Grand Palace along the Chao Phraya River. The lighting in the court chamber was dim. Donovan had difficulty reading from the sheets of paper he held so he ad-libbed parts of his speech. The twenty-five-year-old king paid no mind and read the speech the government had written for him thanking Donovan profusely for American cooperation and aid. The Bangkok press hailed Donovan’s arrival, which gratified the State Department. Appointing an ambassador as high-profile as the former director of the OSS carried considerable symbolic weight with the Thai public.
But officers at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok remained leery of Donovan’s arrival. Demoralized by the McCarthy witch hunts at the State Department, the embassy staff feared Donovan was invading with a planeload of OSS spooks to take over the diplomatic mission. Donovan sensed the nervousness the minute he walked through the front door of the embassy and worked hard to cultivate his new employees. But he did intend to run the embassy as an OSS outpost. He brought with him an energetic young Air Force lawyer named William vanden Heuvel, who had been an associate in his law firm. Vanden Heuvel, whose assignment was to keep watch over the intelligence operations Donovan planned to jump-start, soon became his confidant and sounding board for ideas. Donovan began consulting closely with old OSS comrades, such as Jim Thompson, who remained in Bangkok after the war to make his fortune in the silk trade. Donovan hired an Army lieutenant as his personal bodyguard and was quick to dress down embassy employees he thought were too lax with security. He also got the White House to agree to beef up the number of U.S. military advisers assigned to the country to four hundred.
Five days after he landed in Bangkok, Donovan sat down with the embassy staff to outline his vision for the post—which was now Washington’s vision. The line against communism would be drawn at Thailand’s border. Eisenhower had ordered him “to create a bastion of resistance in this area of the world,” he told them. “The battle that has to be won need not employ only machine guns as weapons,” he said, although there would be more of them coming from the United States. He also planned to push for more American business investment and to “harness the minds of free men . . . to devise the imaginative means to preserve the meaning of democracy.” With its three million ethnic Chinese and fifty thousand Vietnamese refugees, the country was ripe for subversion, he warned his staff. And if Thailand falls, “all of Southeast Asia might be lost.” Ike believed the domino theory as well.
Some of the seasoned foreign service officers in the Bangkok embassy thought Donovan’s thinking far too simplistic. Nationalism drove politics in Southeast Asia more than communism, they believed. The Joint Chiefs thought the communist presence in Thailand too puny to warrant it becoming a base for the U.S. military. Moreover, the bastion Donovan wanted to create there protected the ruthless and corrupt men who ran the country. Prime Minister Phibun had grown wealthy from businesses on the side. His hard-drinking army chief, General Sarit Thanarat, ran whorehouses and raked off money from the national lottery. Phao, the charming yet cunning police chief, controlled the opium trade. And to keep a firm grip on the nation, Phibun and Sarit rigged elections while Phao’s security agents efficiently rounded up dissidents and threw them in jail.
Donovan knew the three men were brutal and crooked but he cozied up to them nonetheless. The triumvirate served the Eisenhower administration’s higher cause. Donovan convinced the White House to spend more than a million dollars for propaganda in Thailand—among its projects, the Handbook of Communism, which was passed out to Thais and was of dubious value. He pushed for tens of millions of dollars to expand the Thai army, navy, and air force, which delighted Phibun. Donovan organized an intelligence unit in the army and the Green Berets he scouted at Fort Bragg arrived to train Thai soldiers in counterguerrilla tactics. He trudged through steamy jungles to watch their training and inspect their camps. It left him dripping wet and panting for breath. But it was important to him to be out in the field in command once more of his warriors. He envisioned covert commando outfits being organized not only in Thailand but also in the Philippines and Taiwan to sneak into other Southeast Asian nations and harass the communists.
Donovan also dialed up the CIA’s operations. At first Allen Dulles had not wanted Donovan in Thailand. He ordered his officers there to watch the new ambassador closely and report back to him every move he made. But Donovan was intent on leading the CIA in Thailand instead of the agency leading him. Dulles eventually sent him mon
ey from the CIA’s account for an embassy “nest egg,” as Donovan called it, to use for emergencies. Donovan pushed the CIA station to supply Phao more weapons for his police and had it assign bodyguards to protect King Phumiphon. He had the agency launch a covert operation to rid Thai newspapers of communist infiltrators and CIA spies sneaked into the Russian embassy in Bangkok to bug it. He also tried to clean up one agency misadventure in the region before it became a major embarrassment for the U.S. government.
Less than a week after he had arrived in Bangkok, Donovan had been briefed on the CIA debacle with General Li Mi. Defeated by Mao’s communists in 1949, the Nationalist general had evacuated remnants of his force to Burma’s Shan State near the Thai border. But the CIA, in Operation Paper, continued to fund and arm Li Mi’s ragtag army, hoping it would launch guerrilla attacks against the communist Chinese in Yunnan, forcing them to divert troops from the Korean War. Li Mi mounted several cross-border raids into southern China, which Mao had no trouble beating back. The Kuomintang mercenaries, however, proved to be far more successful setting up their own narco-state in southeast Burma, plundering local villagers and smuggling out opium by the ton. Finally fed up with the criminal force, Burma took its case to the United Nations, which pressured the United States to evacuate Li Mi’s gang to Chiang Kai-shek’s exile island of Taiwan. Donovan did not have an exact count of how many Kuomintang soldiers were hidden in the jungle—he had been given estimates ranging from 1,200 to 20,000—but he now had the miserable job of flying out the bandits in planeloads of several dozen to several hundred. Not all the soldiers brought their weapons with them but they were all forced to leave their opium behind. Fifteen tons piled up at one airport. It was a slow headache-filled operation that took months. Donovan, with a .38-caliber pistol strapped to his waist, had to make several trips to the dense Burmese jungle just off the northern Thai border to unsnarl problems with the flights. Eventually more than 5,500 mercenaries were airlifted out but thousands more remained behind exporting heroin for decades from the Golden Triangle, much of it pumped into American veins.
Wild Bill Donovan Page 44