Privately, Donovan brought back a very important message. There was skepticism at that time in some quarters in Washington as to whether the British could effectively carry out Churchill’s promise to never surrender. Donovan reported to Roosevelt the British resolve he had seen firsthand. It had a direct influence on American policy, the most immediate effect of which was the agreement to transfer fifty World War I American destroyers in return for leases for military basis in British territories in Newfoundland and the Caribbean.
* * *
At the beginning of December 1940, Donovan undertook a second fact-finding mission overseas on behalf of the president. In fourteen weeks he covered twenty-five thousand miles visiting most of the countries in Northern Africa and the Balkans in addition to Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and England.19 Upon returning to the United States, Donovan recommended to the president that the United States start preparing immediately for a global war. He particularly stressed the need of a service to wage unorthodox political and psychological warfare, to gather information through every means available, and to centralize its analysis and dissemination, the way the British had begun to do in London. At Roosevelt’s direction, Donovan discussed this idea at length with Cabinet members including Secretaries Knox and Stimson, and Attorney General Jackson.20 Eventually, he molded a role for himself as coordinator of all intelligence information gathered by all government agencies, a role without precedent at the time.
Up to then, the United States government had obtained a wide range of information from scattered agencies acting independently of one another. The State Department had a worldwide system of reporting that yielded volumes of information from those parts of the world where the United States had diplomatic presence. The Army and the Navy each had a highly coordinated intelligence division, which relied on reports from military attachés and observers attached to British units. In addition, trade commissioners and agricultural attachés operating at diplomatic posts sent voluminous reports on economic conditions around the world. The problem that Donovan proposed to solve was looking at all the independent reports from this multitude of sources and analyzing them in relation to each other.
Roosevelt’s military order of July 11, 1941, created the position of Coordinator of Information and appointed Donovan to fill it vested “with the authority to collect and analyze all information and data, which may bear upon national security; to correlate such information and data, and to make such information and data available to the President and to such departments and officials of the Government as the President may determine …”21 Donovan reported directly to the president, his role was a civilian one, and his office would not control any of the standing departments or interfere with the existing missions of the various intelligence agencies. Nevertheless, Donovan’s duties were defined broadly and made sufficiently elastic to allow for future possibilities “to carry out, when requested by the President, such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.”22 In his capacity as Coordinator of Information, Donovan received no compensation but was entitled to transportation, subsistence, and other expenses incidental to the performance of his duties.
Military order of July 11, 1941, appointed William J. Donovan as Coordinator of Information.
FDR letter to Donovan specifying compensation details as Coordinator of Information.
All along, Donovan’s intentions were to create an all-inclusive organization that incorporated all the elements of intelligence. First, it would be a “service of strategic information” for the president. In Donovan’s view, strategy without information was helpless and information collected for no strategic purpose was futile. He aimed for his organization “to constitute a means by which the President … would have available accurate and complete enemy intelligence reports upon which military operational decisions could be based.”23 Next, the organization would conduct psychological warfare that he had observed the Germans conduct so masterfully to soften their enemies’ defenses. Finally, although not explicitly stated in the military order, the intent all along had been for the Coordinator of Information to conduct physical subversion and guerrilla warfare, as well.
The British secret services took a great interest in the newly formed American spy agency from the beginning. They offered the Americans access to their operational and training methods and techniques—a move without precedent among intelligence agencies. In return, they demanded knowledge of special operations and counterintelligence activities, which often amounted to complete control. In a memorandum written at the end of June 1941, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, a British Naval Intelligence officer in 1941—and of James Bond fame after the war—laid out a series of steps for Donovan to follow with urgency to set up the new organization in time to meet war before Christmas. “Unless you make an early attack on the inertia and opposition which will meet you at every step, there is a serious danger of your plans being still-born,” Fleming wrote. It was a short, three-page document, which included an outline of the initial structure of the organization and names of key personnel to staff it. It was striking for the terse style and direct actions it listed, including:
There is opposition to your appointment, which must not be allowed to organize itself.
Enlist the full help of the State Department and FBI by cajoling or other means. You will have to be (and stay) friends with both.
Dragoon the War and Navy Departments…. explain your plans and request their full cooperation. Be prepared to take action quickly if they don’t help.
Make an example of someone at an early date for indiscretion and continue to act ruthlessly where lack of security is concerned.24
Donovan moved swiftly to develop the elements of the central intelligence service he envisioned. A Foreign Information Service began broadcasting radio messages, issuing pamphlets, and spreading propaganda materials reflecting the American principles and points of view. It also established a number of listening outposts around the world to monitor foreign broadcasts and feed the information back to the United States for the production of intelligence. An Oral Intelligence Unit began interviewing persons recently arrived from abroad and studying foreign nationals to discover what they might reveal concerning the conditions and opinions in their countries of origin. The collection of information by undercover agents also began, but only outside the Western Hemisphere, a territory J. Edgar Hoover had guarded jealously for the FBI.
A Research and Analysis Branch established in August 1941 began to collect and evaluate the basic materials for intelligence reports. A large staff digested and cross-referenced the reports and created summaries for the president and those of his subordinates who were designated to receive them. Very quickly, they realized that no matter how skillfully the analysts condensed and correlated the information, the outcome was piles of new reading materials added to desks already overflowing with other papers that required the attention of the officials. A Visual Presentation Branch began developing techniques for delivering the information to the concerned departments and services in a way that presented all the major facts visually without the need to read the mass of reports behind them.25
Seventy years before concepts like data mining, big data, and executive information dashboards became mainstream, Donovan had geographers, historians, economists, military and naval experts, sound and color engineers, and journalists working on making sense of massive amounts of information from a multitude of sources. They looked for ways to present it in an easy-to-grasp form for “[t]he tired mind of the President or another high official, now burdened by a mountain of reports containing this information.” One idea reported to be in advanced planning stages in October 1941 was a “huge globe, lighted from within” that would display, plainly marked and in vivid color, information such as the strength and location of all military, air, and naval forces and bases in a given area of the world. It would also show economic consequences of m
ilitary action in certain areas including what resources had been gained or lost and what ethnic populations were affected. The lighted globe would show the industrial areas of a nation and a simple chart of changes in their productive capacity as determined by air raids or land actions.26
* * *
To strengthen the special ties with the British, Donovan placed a branch office of his service in London and the British services established quarters in New York. The cooperation was close especially as Donovan began planning for the eventuality of war even before it came with the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Donovan established a section named “Special Activities—K and L Funds” on October 10, 1941, to take charge of espionage, sabotage, subversive activities, and guerrilla units.
There had been no formal authorization for these activities. The president’s order of July 11, 1941, merely provided for “such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.” But the intent was clear. In September 1941 Donovan sent one of his staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel Robert A. Solborg, to study British practices in close association with the organization and practices of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). During his visit to England, Solborg received extensive training at all SOE training schools there and studied the entire scope of the SOE organization.27 The SOE had been formed on July 22, 1940, to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement. Its mission was to encourage, facilitate, and conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements.
Donovan leveraged SOE to provide training in irregular warfare to his officers. SOE established Special Training School 103 (STS 103), also known as Camp X, on December 6, 1941, between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. The first contingent of American intelligence officers, as well as agents from the FBI, took instructions there in a variety of special techniques including silent killing, sabotage, partisan support and recruitment methods for resistance movements, demolition, map reading, use of various weapons, and Morse code.
With the entry of the United States in World War II, the Special Activities section evolved into a separate Special Operations branch within the COI organization designated as SA/G. In a memorandum to the president on December 22, 1941, Donovan formalized the objectives of SA/G to include “organize and execute morale and physical subversion, including sabotage, fifth column activities and guerrilla warfare.” Donovan further defined guerrilla warfare as “(1) The establishment and support of small bands of local origin under definite leaders, and (2) the formation in the United States of guerrilla forces military in nature.”28 Reflecting the wartime conditions at the time, SA/G was oriented from the beginning toward unorthodox warfare in support of military operations under the direction of local area commanders. This was different from other branches of the COI that reported directly to Washington, such as those responsible for collecting intelligence, analyzing it, and preparing reports for dissemination.
Upon his return to Washington from his England trip, Solborg prepared a proposal to create an American Special Operations Service (SOS) in the mold of the British SOE. Submitted to Donovan on January 13, 1942, the proposal captured the objectives and urgency of these operations:
The Axis powers by the enormous extension of territory, which they at present control, and by their brutal behavior against the inhabitants have left themselves open to all sorts of subversive warfare.
Without outside support, however, it is quite impossible for the people concerned to continue such warfare for long owing to the lack of direction, control, communications, materials, etc.
The SOS organization should endeavor to exploit that situation.
The Axis is waging total war and must be answered in the same way. Its fifth column must be out-columned. Information shows that it is vulnerable; that it makes elementary mistakes and its methods are not infallible.
The oppressed people must be encouraged to resist and to assist in Axis defeat, and this can be done by inciting them, by assisting them and by training and organizing them.
We must make up for lost time and we must go to our task with a will. There is so much to be done and so little time in which to do it.29
In a wider move reflecting the new realities of the nation engaged in open war, Donovan advocated that the entire organization of the Coordinator of Information be placed under the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These held their first meeting on February 9, 1942, as they prepared to work with their British counterparts in the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Donovan also floated the idea of establishing an American force like the British Commandos to raid enemy positions in Europe and Asia by land, sea, and air. Through Secretary Knox, Donovan proposed to the president that he himself create and command a unit of five thousand men who would constitute that force. Donovan suggested the new organization be called Special Service Troops and unofficially be known as “Yankee Raiders” or some such term. It would be an independent command reporting to the president through the secretary of the Navy, composed of volunteers from all branches of the Army and the Navy and of specially qualified non-service men. The organization would carry out small independent raids or coups-de-mains and would act in conjunction with larger attacking forces of the Army and the Navy.
President Roosevelt approved the proposal in principle, subject to agreement of the services, who were adamant against it. Ultimately, the Joint Chiefs decided that commando-like units were best suited within the regular military, which lead to the creation of the US Army Rangers, whose first unit was activated in June 1942. Donovan instead was tasked to continue developing within his office forces capable of conducting physical subversion activities and guerrilla warfare deep behind enemy lines that would complement black propaganda and psychological warfare activities.
The president’s military order of June 13, 1942, replaced the Office of Coordinator of Information with the Office of Strategic Services, placed it under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and appointed Donovan as director of strategic services. The military order defined the duties of the OSS very broadly and generically:
a. Collect and analyze such strategic information as may be required by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
b. Plan and operate such special services as may be directed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.30
Although the strategic intent had been simply to roll forward the functions and capabilities of the COI into the new organization and place them under the control of the military, the implementation of the intent was anything but simple. The transfer and operation of a civilian agency, such as the OSS, under military control was without precedent and strained even the most basic bureaucratic processes of the military. Most importantly, military leaders viewed the OSS as encroaching upon the functions of existing organizations within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Army, and the US Navy intelligence organizations, including the Army Intelligence G-2 and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Entanglements in Washington created a stalemate, which put into question the entire existence of the new organization.
Its opponents included none other than General Walter Bedell Smith, the brusque and demanding senior Army officer who at the time served as the secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bedell Smith’s frustration boiled over at a meeting with officials from the Bureau of the Budget to discuss the 1943 budget requirements for the new organization, when he learned that Donovan had requested $2 million for the construction of a large presentation building. Smith called the requested building “merely a ‘big toy’[with] a good many ‘frills,’ [which] although it would have value in training officers for future wars, it would have little, if any value, in the present war.”31 Smith said:
Military order creating the Office of Strategic Services.
Col. Donovan is still “Wild Bill.” He is aggressive and ambitious and very much action-
minded. He is a poor administrator and has little organizational sense. His activities might seriously impair the workings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by placing the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the defensive before the President in explaining why certain suggested strategy plans of Col. Donovan cannot be carried into effect.32
Bedell Smith paused for a moment to recognize the value of the intelligence material collected in Latin America and the work of the Research and Analysis Branch before venting his frustration with Donovan’s ideas for subversive operations. Smith said:
Col. Donovan’s subversive activities were originally planned to be conducted by civilians of the “burglar type” who would be willing to go to any country of the world and perform any task, either out of patriotism or for sufficient money. If Army or Navy personnel are used on subversive missions, the protection of a uniform and Army and Navy enlistment in time of war will be lost and all parachute troops dropped behind the lines of the enemy would be shot. Col. Donovan, in developing these “subversives” and his attempt to build up a group of “commandos” had been driven by his desire to lead a “personal army.” The Marine Corps has been designated as the agency to develop “commandos” and any commando operation requires the closest cooperation between the Army, Navy, and the Air Corps.33
Early in November 1942, the JCS assigned two senior military officers to conduct an inquiry into the OSS and provide recommendations on its future functions. They were General Joseph T. McNarney, deputy chief of staff of the Army, and Admiral Frederick J. Horne, vice chief of Naval Operations.34 They met with Donovan separately, collected a number of memoranda and reports documenting the history and evolution of COI/OSS, and spent time with the staff to see the organization at work. They then spent time reviewing the information and correlating it with data they had collected from military commanders in the field regarding their perceptions of the value that the OSS provided.
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