LETTER TO MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM J. DONOVAN(Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R002500060005-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 8, 2002
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: February 27, 1953
• Content Type: LETTER

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27 February 1953
!
Major denerai YQilliaiu J. DV vanJJJ
___. .Y
2 all. Street
New York 5, New York
Dear General Donovan:
At breakfast this morning Mr. Dulles suggested that
you come by to see him at 4;OO o'clock on Tuesdays 3 March.
He finds now that a conflicting engage nt mates 4:30 more
appropriate and has asked me to see whether this new hour
would be acceptable to you.
Sincerely,
ST
Assistant to the Director
-& 56 z~ 7
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 WASHINGTON OFFICE
CAFRITZ BUILDING
1625 EYE STREET, N.W.
WASHINGTON 6, D.C.
WILLIAM J. DONOVAN
GEORGE S. LEISURE
CARL ELBRIDGE NEWTON
J. EDWARD LUMBARD, JR.
RALSTONE R. IRVINE
THOMAS U. Mc FADDEN
OTTO C. DOERING, JR.
DAVID TEITELBAUM
FRANCIS A. BRICK,-R.
GRANVILLE WHITTLESEY, JR.
CARBERY O'SHEA
JAMES R. WITHROW, JR.
MALCOLM FOOSHEE
BRECK P. Mc ALLISTER
JAMES V. HAYES
ROY W. Mc DONALD
RICHARD P. HEPPNER
THEODORE 5. HOPE,JR.
WALTER R. MANSFIELD
GEORGE A. WOOD
July 3rd, 1952
Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith,
Central Intelligence Agency,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Bedell:
Thank you for your letter of
July first. I do not see what else' you could
have done.
Sincerely yours,
161
ZS'D
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AMERICAN COMMITTEE ON UNITED EUROPE
537 FIFTH AVENUE ? NEW YORK 17, N. Y.
MURRAY HILL 2-1084
3, AVENUE BOSQUET ? PARIS
INVALIDES 21-13
* WILLIAM J. DONOVAN
Chairman
*ALLEN W. DULLES
Vice-Chairman
*EMMETT F. CONNELY
Treasurer
*GEORGE S. FRANKLIN, JR.
Secretary
* WILLIAM P. DURKEE
Executive Director
DIRECTORS
RAYMOND B. ALLEN
*THOMAS W. BRADEN
HOWARD BRUCE
Lucius D. CLAY
CHARLES S. DEWEY
*DAVID DUBINSKY
*ARTHUR J. GOLDBERG
A. CRAWFORD GREENE
CONRAD N. HILTON
PAUL G. HOFFMAN
*CHARLES R. HOOK
DAVID E. LILIENTHAL
HERBERT S. LITTLE
* WALTER N. MAGUIRE
STACY MAY
CARL T. NIXON
*FREDERICK OSBORN
WALTER BEDELL SMITH
*ARNOLD J. ZURCHER
*Members, Executive Committee
WARREN G. FUGITT
Representative in Europe
r~l~ 4-~&
2-2-15- 0 ?//
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IvIr. ? Allen f-T ? Dulles
1308 29th Street,
Washington., D.C.
May 13 s 1952
Cable Address:
AMANCUE, N. Y.
AMANCUE, PARIS
This is to notify you that there will be a meeting of the Board of
Directors of the ACUE on Tuesday, April 20th, for lunch at 12:30
Ph at the Brook Club, 111 East 54th Street, New York.
At that time a complete report of Committee activities will be
presented and future plans will be discussed.
I hope that you will find it possible to attend and shall look
foriard to seeing you.
Sincerely,
~sr.
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STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE-WHERE DO WE STAND?*
by
WILLIAM J. DONOVAN
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : Judge Proskauer has asked me to
come here tonight and talk to you on a subject that I think affects all of us
as Americans. I am going to talk to you about intelligence and I am going
to talk about it very simply and directly. Most people interpret intelligence
as a fancy word for spies that we liked to read about in cloak-and-dagger
books but which we did not have in real life. Women in intelligence service
are less often the sultry blonde or the dazzling duchess than they are like
the OSS girl, who, in spite of an artificial leg, stayed on in France and helped
to organize a resistance group and operate a secret radio station-the first
woman civilian to win the Distinguished Service Cross.
Intelligence is not cloak-and-dagger. It consists simply of finding out
what we can about a given subject, putting the facts together in their most
logical pattern, and then drawing the conclusions upon which to base our
policy.
Up to World War II we had not thought it necessary to bother ourselves
with the aims and purposes of other nations. We did not feel the pressures
upon us that were felt by the nations of Europe. We had no great standing
army. We thought oceans and distance protected us. We feared no attempts
to invade us.
We all know the kind of world we live in. Every sovereign state has
certain national interests both domestic and foreign which it seeks to protect
against the action of other foreign states whose interests may be in conflict.
National policy, therefore, is the determination and redetermination of that
course of action which will enable a sovereign state to defeat the attempt by
any other nation to destroy its national interest. Intelligence, therefore, is
the means by which we receive a flow of reports concerning those national
interests, followed by frequent appraisals of general and particular situations
in order to determine the attitude or probable decisions of other nations.
It is not the function of intelligence to determine policy nor to justify it,
nor to enforce it. Its function is simply to gather together the various items
that bear upon a particular subject and shape that into a mosaic of information
upon which national policy shall be based. There are different kinds of intelli-
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gence. There is strategic intelligence, which furnishes information bearing
upon long range problems affecting the situation not only in relation to military
questions but also political and economic. Today strategy imports something
different than it did in the 17th and 18th centuries. In those days, strategy
was not the art of integrating all of the resources of a nation, in order to meet
the problem of total war. There is also tactical intelligence which is that
information gathered in the daily problems of a military or political unit in
order to meet the immediate question and deal with it accordingly:
Then you have to consider the means by which you obtain such intelli-
gence. It can be obtained both by conventional and by secret means. The
conventional means consists of material gathered from newspapers, magazines,
technical journals as well as from military and naval attaches and from people
raveling in foreign countries; who-may=bring back with-them maps,-postcards,
photographs, catalogues and timetables. Some of the open channels of infor-
mation in time of peace may be completely shut off as open channels in time
of war. These means are easily and readily available in peacetime and are
of the greatest importance, particularly if they are channelled into an organ-
ization, competent to analyze and appraise the information obtained. The
secret means consists of material concerning the intentions, capabilities and
activities of foreign nations or of foreign nationals, which foreign governments
wish to keep secret and which can only be obtained by clandestine means.
Open channels of information in time of peace usually become closed channels
in time of war.
Now the curious thing is that prior to this last war, this country never
had an integrated, organized intelligence service and I often wondered why.
George Washington handled his own funds, kept his own accounts when
money was given to him by Congress, and was always alert in the carrying
out of ruses and stratagems. We lost that art. So, all through the years
following Washington, there was never any organized system of intelligence.
Infact. Intelligence has always been a sort of -an "Orphan Annie" of the
military services.
When World War II started, we had to rely upon information that
came to us from foreign lands, gathered by foreign hands and interpreted by
foreign minds. That was the situation in 1941. I was asked to submit a
plan of organization-I did so and out of this grew the Office of Strategic
Services. The functions of OSS were to collect secret intelligence; to establish
and maintain direct liaison with Allied secret intelligence agencies; to obtain
information from underground groups; to carry out secret operations within
enemy countries.
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Now, let me illustrate this. The vital thing in intelligence is that you
get the information, evaluate it and interpret it correctly. It is hardly necessary
at a meeting like this to talk about the needs of intelligence, but let me give
one or two illustrations. Suppose that in 1936 when Hitler came into the
Rhineland with an empty pistol-would the British and the French have been
so complacent had they been aware that it was Hitler's intention to make solid
that right flank in preparation for the attack he subsequently made upon
Russia? Suppose that Hitler had known that the Russian Army instead of
being weakened as he believed as a result of the purge carried on by Stalin
had become stronger-would he have made that attack when he did make it?
Let us look at Pearl Harbor. There was plenty of information coming
into Pearl Harbor but it was read and thrown away and discarded like the
separate editions of a newspaper. There never was any pattern established
into which such information could be fitted and upon which an evaluation
could be made and a conclusion could be based. Suppose that that had been
done. Is it not safe to assume that the conclusion would have driven out
of the minds of the admirals and generals their preconception that the Japs
could not do what they did do at Pearl Harbor? I know that such a pre-
conception existed by my own experience, because on returning from Europe
in October, 1940, I went out on manoeuvers with the Navy beyond Pearl
Harbor, about 100 miles down in the direction from which the Japs ultimately
came. To return, I took off in a plane from the Carrier "Enterprise" and
when I landed at Hawaii again, I said to the admirals there: "Well, if we
can do it, why the hell can't the Japs do it?" "That is impossible, they could
never get there. We would know it before they got over." That is the kind
of thing I mean about intelligence.
Now, how do you get such intelligence. The first thing was to get an
intellectual base, and to do that we took a group of scholars ultimately amount,
ing to about 1,200 who had research technique, who had some 30 or 35 different
languages and who were trained in the technique of research and analysis.
In order to get agents into the field, we first of all established a unit in Switzer-
land and there we placed in charge Allen Dulles whom I had known in the
first World War. He had been there as a young legation attache then, and
I . knew his ability and that he had contacts there. He did an excellent job.
I have been asked a question as to what kind of intelligence was developed
that influenced us in taking our position against Franco. Well, you can judge
from what I say, that at the time that determination was made, we had no
intelligence service. Our intelligence service in Spain was established only by
1942, and then it was established only because of an attack contemplated in
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North Africa. It was important, as you can see, that we should be able to
tell our people whether or not there would be a flank attack by air from the
air fields of Spain.
We were able in Germany to get a man who had charge of the desk in
the German foreign office and to whose desk came various cables from the
ambassadors in different parts of the world. Every 10 days that man would
put these cables into an ordinary envelope, put it under his arm, get on the
train and go to Bern and then go to what we -call a "safe address". That
afternoon, or next morning, it would be picked up and this furnished for us
the actual report of the ambassadors in the field, directed to Hitler. Of course,
you don't always have such luck as that and you have to run risks of failure.
You had to be careful of penetration because no secret organization in the
world can save itself -from penetration.- The only thing you must be able to
do, as in any kind of business or sport, is to have fewer errors than the other
fellow.
We had a man who was an oil specialist. He was a young fellow named
Walter Levy, who in Bremen in 1938 had refused to give the Nazi salute,
and who escaped that night and went to England. In England he worked for
the Foreign Office and specialized in petroleum. So, when he came to us, we
put him to work looking for oil fields in Austria or in Germany. Now the
German railroad service had a journal that came out every two weeks and in
that journal, in fixing up the railroad rates, they would always precede the
coming in of an oil field by two or three weeks of just what the railway
charges were going to be for that field. We were able to send the contents
of those journals from Switzerland to Washington and thus located the two
new oil fields in Austria which reports were given to the air force and the
installations there were bombed and destroyed.
The British and the French used to say to me: "The great difficulty with
you is that you have so many minority groups that y_ou are peculiarly sus-
ceptible to the penetration of the enemy." I said to them: "I will show you
fellows that what you consider a liability is really an asset." So we took the
men of the racial origin and of the language of the countries we were seeking
to liberate, and we trained them and set them up into groups to be dropped
behind the enemy lines to activate resistance movements there. We had not
only such units in France, Holland, Belgium, Norway and in Denmark and
Germany, but in China as well; in the house of the prime minister in Siam
we had installed a radio set which communicated with Ceylon and from there
to Washington.
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The war ended. We turned in our uniforms but we said: "Here there
are certain assets that have been created." The problems of peace are going
to be much more difficult than ever were the problems of war. There should
be set up at once an Intelligence Service to which these assets should be
transferred. It took a long time to do it, but there now exists the Central
Intelligence Agency which has the money and the aut_h_ ority, and which is set
up along the lines that we had established, to carry out the functions that
Now we know that today, with the development of atomic energy, with
the new power of the air, space has been annihilated. You don't have depth
of defense in space, you have it only in time. You have got to be able to
answer the question, not how or where, but when. In 'order to be able to
answer that question when, you have got to have an intelligence service. So
your first line of defense is intelligence! We in America are trained in the
orthodox warfare. We think of war. only in terms of army, navy, planes and
of shooting. But there is another kind of war, a war older than the orthodox
-it is called subversive war. He who wins the subversive war, has an advan-
tage if it comes to a shooting war. Winning the subversive war may mean
the determination as to whether there is going to be a shooting war or not. Let
me illustrate. If I am on your team and I am killed-you just lose me. But
if I am on your team and my mind is turned against you-and you don't
know that it is-and I work inside your fence but work against you-then
I am more effective against you as a hidden enemy than I would be as an open
one. That is the essence of subversion. That is what is going on today.
We don't appreciate as yet what we must do to counter these attacks
against us on a psychological, political and an economic front.
There is much more than a humanitarian question involved in our going
in under the Marshall Plan. It is a very practical question of our survival,
because in two wars, Western Europe has been our outer bastion. What
will happen if Finland goes tomorrow and Norway the next day and ulti-
mately Russia comes in to occupy all of Europe? That is not impossible because
what is there to meet it? Our danger lies in the fact that if we permit Russia
or any nation to seize bases that have been held by people friendly to us,
permit her to cut across our lines of communication and under a strategy of
disunity to penetrate our inner defenses, then we become so tied down that
if the day came when we felt it necessary to fight we would not be able to
get on our feet to fight. In France and in Italy today the striking head against
communist control are the men of the labor unions who don't intend to submit
to it.
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The weapons they need are not guns, rifles or atomic bombs. The
weapons they need are newspapers, printing presses and a news service-
gasoline and automobiles. Those are the kinds of weapons they need..
If Italy loses, there is communist domination, the Mediterranean becomes
an inland lake, and with Italy gone, the Soviet Union is on the flank of France.
France gone, means the Soviet outposts are on the Atlantic.
Now, our great difficulty, ladies and gentlemen, is that today oceans are
no longer barriers. They are ports of entry. Suppose it is true that there
is foreign enemy penetration of those facilities and instruments upon which
strategy depends, where is your strategy? Those are very practical questions
which we have to consider because for the first time in our history, the men
and women of this country can no longer be complacent. They find that they
are faced with the danger and the insecurity the same as millions of other
peoples in the world have been for centuries.
We have got to ask ourselves two questions: Is Russia our friend or our
enemy? Second-the thing that we are called upon to do, whatever we may
be asked to do must be measured by the question: "Is this in the interest of
the security of our country?"
If the answer to that question is "yes", then let's march up to it and
face it and abide by the consequences.
THE LAWYER
I am the lawyer.
I displaced brute force with mercy, justice and equity.
I taught mankind to respect the rights of others to their property, to their
personal liberty, to freedom of conscience, to free speech and assembly.
I am the spokesman of righteous causes.
I plead for the poor, the persecuted, the widow and the orphan.
I maintain honor in the market place.
I am the champion of unpopular causes.
I am the foe of Tyranny, Oppression and Bureaucracy.
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 MEMOftNDUM TO: GENERAL S4T
STAT
You will recall that in General Donovan's
last letter to you he indicated he would keep
looking for an individual with Far Eastern
s. I assume that is why he brings
o our attention.
Mr. Dulles has suggested we send copy of
General Donovan's letter M for
comment, which has been dorl
22 December 1951
DATE)
z. S-0 Z. z-3
STAT
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30 November 1951
Major General William J. Donovan
Donovan Leisure Newton Lua~'?
Two Wall Street
New York s, New York
Mary thanks for your recomsendation of possibilities
for the Indo-China situation. I am following up on the
man in the Paris bassy who is known to us. The Mn
you mentioned in the second paragraph of your letter is
a friend of Allen's and he knows where to reach him.
Please let as know when you are next in Washington.
Sincerely yours,
Walter Bedell Smith
Distributioh:
Orig ? Addressee
1 cc - DDCI Chrono
1 cc - Reading file
1 cc - Exec. Reg* ---a
Z 502.2
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ER 2-3!420
Xajor General it
NO wail street
x-V Zurk 5, U. Y.
Thank v ~~ Nr much for letter of November 2, 1951,4 rour concerning I tuli understand his
Position pus s c. cct e1 a: ee that he is not the
man for he o'c, 2 hope you will be successful in finding
another pros r t for us.
With regard to the History of OS,, %, I find this was pro
pared by the ; trate is Services Unit, Off .ce of the Assistant
Secretary of rt ar,,, and published in two volumes under the title
`Yrar acr;ort, Office of Strategic Services." Since it its &
classified (to, Secret) 'per # par erst publication, I have no
authority, to release it. I hews, hoer, asked Alex Bolling,
the present Assists nt Chief of SW f,* 0-24, Department of the
Jrmy, to get a copy for you if at all possible. In the event
you do not hear from hies in a r sssble l s th of time, I
suggest you get in direct contact with his.
JSE: dr: ab
Distr: Orig-add
2-signer
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WILLIAM J. DONOVAN V~'(ftl//~"'
GEORGE S. LEISURE
CARL ELBRIDGE NEWTON
'?J // ~ V.
J. EDWARD D LUM BARD, JR.
RALSTONE R.IRVINE
THOMAS J. Mc FADDEN
OTTO C. DOERING,JR.
DAVID TEITELBAUM
FRANCIS A. BRICK,JR.
GRANVILLE WHITTLESEY, JR.
CARBERY O'SHEA
JAMES R. WITH ROW, JR.
MALCOLM FOOSHEE
BRECK P. McALL15TER
JAMES V. HAYES
ROY W. Mc DONALD
RICHARD P. HEPPNER
THEODORE S- HOPE, JR.
WALTER R. MANSFIELD
GEORGE A. WOOD
General Walter Bedell Smith,
Central Intelligence Agency,
2430 E Street, N. W.
Washington, D. C.
My dear Bedell:
WASHINGTON OFFICE
CAFRITZ BUILDING
1625 EYE STREET, N.W.
WASHINGTON 6, D.C.
November 2nd, 1951
tC
P.S. You perhaps have forgotten that sometime a o I
told you that at the request of
sent him material for the history of OSS and he
promised that, in return, I would receive a com-
plete copy. This has not been done, and I hope
this failure can be remedied.
WJD
a.so Z~.
00206
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M-1-9930a
1 August 1951
General William J. Donovan
2 Wall Street
New York, New York
STAT
As you know, Allen is abroad and I am therefore
acknowledgin with thanks!your letter to him of July 27.
Your friend is certainly ent,aged in an
active and prariatung se. I have passed on a copy
of his letter to the interested people here.
Unless my plane are changed again by developments
STAT ""beyond my control,, it and I cr pect to be in New York
for a day or two to latter part of this month.
We shall give You ample notice and I hope that we can get
together.
Sincerely,
ST
Distribution:
,rig - addressee
1 cc - DD/P chrono
1 cc
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