Wild Bill Donovan

by Douglas Waller

  After his return from Thailand, Donovan’s colleagues were struck by his physical and mental deterioration. Jim Murphy, one of his senior aides in the OSS, could tell he was definitely slowing down. He had serious memory lapses. Ralstone Irvine, one of the firm’s partners, was shocked how Donovan rambled on like a befuddled old man during a dinner with Hollywood movie company presidents. Friends suspected he may have had a series of mild strokes beginning in Thailand and later in New York. If Donovan knew he had experienced them, he kept it secret from his family and colleagues.

  Mary Lasker decided her old friend did not look or act well. She had been a client of Donovan’s since the 1920s. He had introduced her to her late husband, Albert, an advertising executive. With Ruth not around, Mary took over the medical care of her seventy-four-year-old friend. She thought Donovan’s doctor was incompetent and sent him to her physicians, who immediately recommended that he visit the Mayo Clinic. Jack Bergen, a retired admiral and another old friend, flew with him to Rochester. Donovan lied to Jane about where he was going, telling her it was to the Midwest for a speech. After several days at Mayo, Bergen phoned the secretary and told her to find Ruth. The doctors might have to operate and they wanted her permission.

  When Ruth landed at the Rochester airport, however, she was startled to find Donovan there to greet her and looking fit. Mayo’s doctors decided he did not need an operation. Their diagnosis was that his condition was impossible to treat. It was arteriosclerotic atrophy of the brain—a form of dementia. Donovan’s brain was literally shrinking. He was losing his mind, which would eventually kill him. For a man so intellectually and physically vibrant, it was a cruel sentence.

  Donovan returned to New York understandably depressed. He tried to resume his usual workload at the office, but that soon became impossible. Jane Smith would look down the hallway and see him swerving from wall to wall as if he were drunk. By the end of March, Donovan was confined to his bed at Sutton Place with round-the-clock nursing care. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. His mind remained alert most of the time but the stroke had left him often unable to speak clearly.

  On March 27, George Leisure, Donovan’s mild-mannered senior partner in the firm who had loyally held it together for so many years as his friend pursued his other interests, phoned Colonel Robert Schulz, a military aide at the White House, and asked him to slip a confidential note to Eisenhower. “Your old friend, Bill Donovan, is, to use his language, ‘approaching the end of the trail,’” Leisure wrote. Would the president consider one last honor—the National Security Medal, which Truman had created four years earlier to be the nation’s fourth highest award, for “distinguished achievement” in the field of intelligence. That medal, Leisure knew, would put Donovan in the record books, making him the only man to win the nation’s four highest decorations. Fearing Donovan might die before the medal was approved, Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, quickly cleared it on April 1 with Allen Dulles. Two days later, Larry Houston, the CIA’s general counsel, arrived at Sutton Place, where Donovan lay in bed with Leisure and Ruth at his side. He pinned the medal on Donovan’s pajama top. It had been a bad day for her husband and Ruth was not sure he understood what was happening. But the next day he asked to see the medal and brightened when the nurse laid it in his hand. When Doering and another partner arrived to congratulate him, the nurse asked Donovan if he wanted her to pin it on his top. “No, that would be out of character,” he said, but continued looking at the medal, beaming.

  Leisure had another private request when he phoned Schulz. Donovan’s illness had become more serious. Soon, the nurse would not be able to care for him at home. Would Eisenhower consider putting Donovan in Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center? Leisure did not reveal it to Schulz but one of the reasons he was asking for the favor was because Donovan’s finances were still in poor shape. The law firm, whose earnings had been flat since Donovan returned from Thailand, was paying his medical bills, but the expenses would soar if he was admitted to a private hospital and the firm could not afford it. Walter Reed was free for active duty service members, who were its priority patients. Eisenhower did not know if an ex–service member could be admitted, but he told Leisure he would have his staff investigate. Ike felt truly sorry for his old war comrade and penned him a note trying to lift his spirits. “I do recommend most highly that you cooperate fully with the doctors,” he wrote. “I need not tell you that the country needs you back on the active list.” Ruth read the letter to Bill during one of his lucid moments and it did cheer him.

  Miraculously, Donovan improved for a while from late April to May. Ruth and his partners held out hope he might even be able to return to work. But it was only a brief interlude. Donovan’s condition soon worsened and his lucid moments became more infrequent. The White House finally made the arrangements for him to be admitted to Walter Reed on September 23, 1957. He was seventy-four years old.

  The Walter Reed complex took up 113 acres in northwest Washington. The Old Main Hospital, now designated Building Number One, was the first to be constructed on the campus in 1909—a new Georgian revival structure with a cupola on top, stately columns at the front entrance, and high ceilings in the rooms inside. Donovan was placed in Ward Four on the second floor in a small private room with a freestanding closet for his clothes and a small bathroom. The walls were bare. Ruth at one point placed a watercolor portrait done of him on the top of the closet. Another time, a colleague tacked a photo of a pinup onto the wall to get a smile out of him. Across the hall from his room were the nursing station and a small kitchen that prepared meals for the patients. To the right, double doors opened to a day room. From his window Donovan could see the circular driveway in the front and the lush green lawn stretching out beyond it. Eisenhower routinely visited Walter Reed for his medical check-ups. Movie stars like Bob Hope and Red Buttons dropped by to entertain the patients. In the summer months, Donovan could hear the Army band play marches and classical tunes every Wednesday evening in the formal gardens also at Building One’s front entrance. But for him, Walter Reed became his prison.

  A stream of men and women from Donovan’s past visited him at Walter Reed. Richard O’Neill, an Irish Regiment comrade who had also won a Medal of Honor in World War I, dropped by. So did Mountbatten, who came two months after Donovan was admitted. The two shared a laugh over the evening they spent at the Oklahoma! play. David Crockett, the OSS finance officer who had sat up with Donovan the night he had a raging case of the flu in Caserta, was amused the boss still had enough spunk to flirt with nurses at Walter Reed. Donovan also became animated when William vanden Heuvel, his devoted aide in Thailand who also was a regular visitor, brought his fiancée one time to introduce her to him.

  Donovan struggled to recognize friends and maintain his dignity. Armando Chacon, the Army medic who cared for him, helped him put on his coat and tie to receive visitors. He also insisted on wearing a suit when Chacon walked him down the hallway for exercise. But his mind began to fail him far more frequently. He mixed up Mary Gardner Jones in time, believing she had served under him in the Far East during the war. Betty Heppner found it heartbreaking to see him no longer in command of the people around him or of himself, those captivating blue eyes now straining to identify her. Jim Murphy, who had headed X-2 counterintelligence, came away from his visits angry that his OSS comrade was condemned to end his life this way. Jane Smith left the room in tears. When Grayson Kirk, the president of Columbia University and a friend, came by, Donovan stood up in the middle of their conversation, looked out the window for several minutes, then turned to him asking angrily: “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”

  Ruth rented an apartment near the Walter Reed campus so she could be near him. She grew closer to her husband in these final months. As he slowly drifted away from her, she began to read a lot about death. It was strange that the interest would come to her now after a daughter and granddaughter had already died. Ruth still did not believe in the h
ereafter although she was finding more comfort now in religious teachings. Vincent also kept regular watch. Only in his moments of clarity did Donovan know his wife and brother were there. Often in his addled state he became cold and angry with them, turning his head to the side of his bed and refusing to look at them. It would take a while after they left for the nurses to calm him down. For dementia patients, hostility to loved ones was common, but his reaction hurt his wife and brother nonetheless. Three times Vincent gave him the last rites when he thought he was about to die. But Donovan clung to life tenaciously through 1957 and into the next year.

  Chacon discovered he had to keep a close watch on his patient when he escorted him along the hall. Donovan was still strong and there was still spring in his legs. If the Army medic looked away, in an instant the general would slip through an exit and bound down the stairs to another floor. One day, fully dressed in his coat and tie, he scampered out of the building. Orderlies found him walking briskly to Delano Hall, the nurses’ residence, and coaxed him gently back to Building One and his bed. At times, the nurses and friends found Donovan in his room hallucinating. He feared communists lurking in dark corners. He relived in rambling monologues the World War I battles he fought at Ourcq River and Landres-et-Saint-Georges, the daring flight he took over the jungles of Burma, the landing at Utah Beach during the Normandy invasion. In his rare lucid moments, he often became depressed. “This is a hell of a way to die,” he told Leisure during one.

  But 1958 passed and Donovan refused to surrender. In late January 1959, a CIA car pulled up to Building One. The nurses had brushed Donovan’s white hair and helped him into his major general’s uniform, making sure all the buttons were buttoned and the ribbons were in their proper place. Larry Houston helped him to the automobile, which drove them to the CIA’s headquarters, housed in the old OSS compound on E Street. Inside the foyer of the South Building, agents unveiled an oil portrait of him that would be hung there. Donovan’s eyes widened and he tried to come to attention, but his legs began to wobble under the strain. The officers gathered around started to applaud but Donovan looked like he was going to buckle. Houston and another aide grabbed him by the arms before he could fall and took him back down the steps to the waiting car.

  NINE-YEAR-OLD DAVID GRANDIN Donovan sat in his nanny’s Oldsmobile convertible late Sunday afternoon, February 8, listening to the radio. Ruth let him drive her car down the long dirt driveway from the farmhouse and when she wasn’t looking he’d speed up with a cloud of dust behind him. The nanny would only let him listen to the radio in her car, which was parked in front of the garage at Chapel Hill. David had not seen his grandfather Faddy in the hospital. Patricia, the oldest, was the only grandchild allowed to visit him at Walter Reed. In fact, David hardly knew his grandfather. He was a kind old man and it was fun when he showed up at Christmas. David remembered the holiday two years ago when Faddy sat in one of Num Num’s favorite wooden chairs, which cracked and broke, and everybody laughed when he fell down.

  David now sat staring at the car radio, startled at what he was hearing. The broadcast was interrupted for a news bulletin from the Associated Press. “Major General William J. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, lawyer-soldier-diplomat and World War II director of the Office of Strategic Services, died today,” the voice on the radio announced.

  Crockett had dropped by Walter Reed on Saturday. Donovan had awoken from a deep sleep and tried hard to speak to him but he couldn’t. The nurse said he had suffered another stroke. Crockett told her he would return the next day to check on his general. After he left, Donovan muttered softly to the nurse, “Good boy, Good boy,” then drifted back to sleep.

  The last week had been quiet. Donovan never got out of bed. He slept most of the time, awaking only occasionally to mumble something, then closing his eyes. His blood pressure had started to drop, his body organs began to shut down, and his breathing became labored. Dr. Harry Daniel, the attending physician, told Ruth Sunday morning he probably would not last through the day. Vanden Heuvel rushed to the hospital. By noon they stood at both sides of his bed, Ruth holding one of Donovan’s hands, vanden Heuvel the other. At 2 p.m., Donovan died—a little more than a month after his seventy-sixth birthday. Dr. Daniel marked on his chart “pulmonary embolism” as the immediate cause of death—a fatal blood clot blocking the main artery of the lung.

  SAINT MATTHEW’S CATHEDRAL in Washington was filled to capacity for the solemn Requiem Mass on Wednesday morning, February 11. Donovan and Rumsey family members, old pals from Buffalo, Troop I cavalrymen, Irish Regiment comrades, law partners, New York matrons, Ruth’s Berryville friends, OSS colleagues, and British spies filled the pews. Allen Dulles and a delegation from the CIA attended. A military aide from the White House came for Eisenhower. The army chief of staff and army secretary sent generals. The archbishop of Washington represented the church hierarchy. Small laminated cards were passed out to congregants inscribed with biblical passages—“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted”—and a student choir from Catholic University sang Mass. Vincent officiated over the ceremony and the Right Reverend John Cartwright, Saint Matthew’s pastor, delivered the eulogy. Donovan’s “life of combat and leadership, of service and example is ended now,” he said in a loud voice. “He has gone from the scene of his success to meet his final judgment, his final reward, his final destiny.”

  The funeral cortege gathered at the ceremonial gate and marched slowly into Arlington Cemetery, six black horses drawing the caisson bearing the flag-draped coffin, an Army band playing sad music to the muffled beat of drums, Donovan’s red pennant with the two stars on it for his general’s rank fluttering in the icy breeze. Donovan’s gravesite was a choice spot at the foot of the slope to the Lee Mansion. Ruth had arranged for forty-five of his friends from his law firm, from New York society, Hollywood, the military, and his spy world to be his honorary pallbearers. They included Frank Raichle (who had stuck with him after the Saturn Club raid), director John Ford, Time publisher Henry Luce, David Bruce (his London station chief), and Bill Stephenson (the British agent who helped him set up the OSS). Patricia and the other grandchildren flinched when cannons boomed a thirteen-gun salute and a line of Army soldiers in dress blues fired off three volleys from their rifles. As Vincent said a final prayer, an honor guard from the 3rd Infantry Division lifted the flag from the coffin, folded it smartly, and handed it to Ruth, who sat bundled up and grim beside her son, David, in the front row.

  Newspapers around the country printed tributes in their editorial pages. The New York Times called Donovan “a living symbol of what we think of as plain, simple, unadulterated courage.” “Most of the O.S.S. story is still untold,” reported the New York Herald Tribune, “but it is not too much to say that General Donovan created America’s first world-wide intelligence force.” “His imagination was unlimited,” Bruce wrote in a letter to the editor. “Ideas were his plaything. Excitement made him snort like a race horse.” Allen Dulles the next month sent a dispatch to his branch chiefs and the CIA stations overseas. “The greatest tribute of all can be paid by us in the organization that Bill Donovan helped create,” he wrote. “He will know his life’s work has been well done if the CIA can help assure the nation’s security by keeping the Government fully informed of world developments.”

  Hoover mailed a condolence letter to Chapel Hill the day after Donovan’s death. “His life’s work, devoted as it was to service of others, should be a source of gratification to all who were honored to know him,” the FBI director wrote Ruth. “If I can be of any assistance, I hope you will let me know.” Ruth had the grace to respond to the note from the man who was her husband’s enemy. “I thank you for your kind expression of sympathy, which I appreciate very much,” was all she wrote back.

  Yet Hoover remained wary that his rival could remain a threat even from his grave. The director’s press handlers predicted that there would be a biography written on Donovan, surely followed by a movie. Dulles, one bureau memo
warned, “will likely take every opportunity to make certain the movie places the CIA in a favorable light.” Hoover tried to head that off. He spread a false rumor that Donovan had died of syphilis.

  Epilogue

  THE ESTATE DONOVAN left behind was modest. Most of the money and all of the property belonged to Ruth. His assets totaled just $136,587.72 and almost a quarter of it had to go to settling tax bills. When she finished paying all his other bills, Ruth had $83,438.53 left. A month after burying her husband, Ruth flew to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to relax and clear her head of Donovan’s passing. When she returned in mid-April 1959, she was her old self, determined not to let the tragedies in her life—the failed marriage, the deaths of her daughter, her granddaughter, her daughter-in-law, and her husband—weigh her down.

  Seven months later on Tuesday morning, November 3, a CIA car drove up the driveway to Chapel Hill. It was a cool, crisp day, the autumn leaves turned to shades of brown, bright orange, and yellow. Larry Houston, the agency’s lawyer, and Robert Murphy, who had led the Twelve Apostles for Torch, climbed out of the car to fetch Ruth and drive her east to a construction site near Langley, Virginia.

  They arrived at a 140-acre tract of government land on the south bank of the Potomac River. A hastily constructed wooden podium with an American flag fluttering to the side had been set up next to the partially completed building. It was the Central Intelligence Agency’s new headquarters. The eight-story, $44 million complex would have more than a million square feet of space, sixteen high-speed elevators, a cafeteria to serve 1,400 at a time, a labyrinth of pneumatic tubes and conveyor trays to whisk secret documents from office to office, and a freestanding, dome-shaped auditorium to seat five hundred.