WILD BILL DONOVAN AND HIS COMPANY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100110006-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: December 19, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100110006-5
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THE WASHINGTON PC-ST
19 DECEHBEK 1982
THE LAST HERO. Wild Bill Donovan:
by Anthony Cove brown. Times Books.
#6.4 pp. S24.95
DONOVAN: America's Master Spy.
By Richard Dunlop. Rand McNally. 562
pp. S 19.95
DONOVAN AND THE CIA: A History
of the Establishment of the Central
Intelligence.Agency. By Thomas F.
Troy. Aletheio Books/University Publi-
cations of America. 589 pp. 52950
By DAVID KAHN
N Ti EW YEAR'S DAY is the 100th anni-
versary of the t' birth of America's first
spv'maste:,. William J. ' Donovan. He
founded and led the Office -of Strategic
Services, t World War Il intelligence or-
g ziation from which is descended the
Cent_-al intelligence Agency in whose en-
trance ball his portrait ham ?(Januarv 1 is
also. curiously enough, the birth anniver-
sa.-t? of the 20th census-%'s two other most
famous spvmasters. Admiral W lhelm
Ca.:aris of Nazi Germany's Abwehr, born
in 18877, and J. Edgar Hoover, who main.
tamed a host of informers for his FBI, born
in 189M.)
Perhaps to commemorate Donovan's
birth, two new biographies of him are
being published within E few months of
one another. (Thomas F. T?ov's book is not
a biography but an indispensable organiza-
tional lardy.) Both biographies tower over
Corey Ford's inadequate sketch. of 3970,
but Anthony Cave Brown's The Last Hero
is markedly superior to Richard Dunlop's
,DonoUOn.
-In 'Part this is because Cave Brown is a
more fluent, more colorful, and better or-
ganized writer; Dunlop's OSS section is a
confused jumble of anecdote and quota-
lion. In part it is because Cave.Brown is
more objective; Dunlop, a former OSS
member,. writes what often seems Like a
panegyric, with Donovan not merely at
she focus of the story but apparently run-
ning the war. And in part it is because,
while Dunlop has assiduously inter-
viewed ex-OSSers and pored through
documents at dozens of libraries and.ar-
chlves, Cave Brown was given, by a
Donovan associate, the microfilm made
by Donovan himself of his director's files.
The richness and volume of this docu.
mentation have more turned thf World
War II portion of the book into 2 narra-
tive of OSS operations thansept it a
biography of Wile
Bill Donovan. But this is not unwelcome.- For not. only i<
Cave Brown's account highly readable. not only does it re-
place such previous histories of the OSS as R. Harris
Smith's, but it provides the best survey of America's first
spy agency in action likely to be available for some time-
and one enjoying the great advantage of the perspective of
the director.
That man was not, despite the titles of these two books,
either a spy or America's last hero. Rather, he was a brave
soldier and failed politician who, even if he had never
headed OSS, would probably have had a biography writ-
ten about hm -though by a Ph.D. candidate.
Born and raised in Buffalo, he went to Columbia Law,
married an- heiress, and began a successful legal career.
During World War I, he rose to command the Fighting
69th Regiment and won the Congressional Medal of
Honor. By the end of the war, he had become the nation's
most decorated soldier, and as Cave Brown observes,
"with General Pershing and Sergeant York, one of the
three American vrar heroes"
His fame attracted wealthy clients. It contributed to his
service in the Justice Deparanent and to his being chosen
as the Republican candidate for New York goverrner in
1932 (he lost to Herbert Lehman). But it was not enough.
to get him named attorney general or secretary of war in
Herbert Hoover's cabinet Higb political office was never
again offered him. His destiny lay elsewhere.
In 1919, he had taken the first of ,,any fact-finding trips
for presidents and clients. He penetrated by rail halfway
into Soviet Russia from the east at the time of the Amer-
ican intervention in Siberia, and Dunlop may be correct
when he suggests that "the taproot [of the CIA) reached
back to this train and this man." The next year he spent
eight months in Europe for J.P. Morgan Jr., meeting key
politicians and social leaders. This and subsequent trips
gave him.ex eptiona%, wide acquaintanceship aboard, and
was one of the reasons that President Franklin D. Roose-
velt sent him in 1940 and 1941 to gather information in a
Europe at war.
Donovan had wanted to command a division in the
struggle in which he feared America would soon be en-
meshed. But his success on these trips, together with his
energy, .his integrity, his insatiable curiosity, his intelli-
gence, and the appearance of nonpartisanship afforded by
his membership in the opposition parry led Roosevelt to
choose a highly visible personality to head a secret service.
On July 11, 1941, Roosevelt appointed Donovan the first
Coordinator of Information, "with authority to collect and
analyze all information and data, which may bear upon
national security ... and to make such information and
data available to the President...' The organization that
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100110006-5