SPEECH BY ALLEN W. DULLES DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO THE ERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION BUFFALO, NEW YORK MAY 4, 1959

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000200020051-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2000
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: May 4, 1959
• Content Type: SPEECH

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SPEECH
BY
ALLEN W. DULLES
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
TO THE
ERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION
BUFFALO, NEW YORK
May 4, 19 5 9
"William J. Donovan and the National Security"
It's a very great pleasure to be in Buffalo, and an honor to be
asked to address your Bar Association on Bill Donovan's day.
It was my privilege to be associated with William J. Donovan
both as a lawyer and then during World War II when I served under his
command in the Office of Strategic Services. His courage and leader-
ship qualities made a profound impression on me.
You are all familiar with the early career of this distinguished son
of Buffalo's First Ward. Born here on New Year's Day, 1883, he attended
St. Joseph's Institute and Niagara University, and then went on to New
York City where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Columbia
in 1905 and his law degree in 1907.
At Columbia, Donovan was a star quarterback on the football team.
He often commented on his football experience as having set a pattern
for him of keeping in top physical condition -- a pattern which he inspired
in others.
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After being admitted to the bar, Bill Donovan returned here in
1907 to practice law.
His interest in our national defense and security started early.
In 1912 as the war clouds gathered in the Balkans, he helped organize
Troop I of the New York National Guard. Shortly after this, in 1914,
he married Ruth Rumsey, a Buffalo girl.
In 1915 he went to Poland as a member of a Rockefeller commission --
there being in that country a great shortage of food and particularly milk
for the children. When the National Guard was mobilized in 1916, Bill
resigned his war relief assignment and came home to join his Troop I
on the Mexican Border.
Then came his fabulous career in World War I with the 165th Infantry
of the 42nd Division -- the renowned "Fighting 69th" of the Rainbow Division.
Here he received his nickname "Wild Bill. " The legend goes that after
the regiment landed in France he ran them five miles with full packs to
limber them up. As the men were grumbling with exhaustion, Donovan
pointed out that he was ten years older and carrying the same 50-pound
pack. One of the men replied, But we ain't as wild as you, Bill!"
Another legend has it that Bill gained his honorary title from a professional
baseball pitcher named Bill Donovan whose control left something to be
desired. Whatever the origin, the title stuck.
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The citations Colonel Donovan received in France tell the military
story: On July 28, 1918, a Distinguished Service Cross. The citation
reads, "He was in advance of the division for four days, all the while
under shell and machine gun fire from the enemy, who were on three
sides of him, and he was repeatedly and persistently counterattacked,
being wounded twice. "
Three days later, on July 31, the Distinguished Service Medal:
The citation reads, "He displayed conspicuous energy and most efficient
leadership in the advance of his battalion across the Oureq River and the
capture of strong enemy positions... His devotion to duty, heroism, and
pronounced qualities of a Commander enabled him to successfully accom-
plish all missions assigned to him in this important operation. "
And then, for action in combat in the Meuse-Argonne on October 14,
the greatest of them all, the Congressional Medal of Honor. This citation
reads, "... Colonel Donovan personally led the assaulting wave in an
attack upon a very strongly organized position, and when our troops were
suffering heavy casualties he encouraged all near him by his example,
moving among his men in exposed positions, reorganizing decimated
platoons and accompanying them forward in attacks. When he was wounded
in the leg by a machine gun bullet, he refused to be evacuated and continued
with his unit until it withdrew to a less exposed position. "
General Douglas MacArthur who saw the action in which Donovan
won the Medal of Honor said, "No man ever deserved it more. "
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Reverend Francis P. Duffy, the chaplain of the 69th, said,
"His men would have cheerfully gone to hell with him, and as a priest,
I mean what I say." Three aides were killed at Donovan's side in the
course of these actions.
Last Thursday I read these pages to one of the most distinguished
leaders of the Bar, and a former President of your Association, John
Lord O'Brian. John remarked that several years ago General Frank McCoy
described his close association with Bill Donovan during World War I.
General McCoy said that Donovan was one of the finest soldiers he ever
saw in his life-long service in the Army; that he had the qualities of the
ideal soldier, judgment and courage and the respect and affection of his men.
Shortly after Donovan returned from the war, Niagara University
awarded him an honorary law degree in 1919.
In 1922 he made his first venture into the political field, running
for Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York. That same year
Donovan was appointed U. S. Attorney in Buffalo.
Shortly thereafter he entered a new phase of his career. In 1924,
President Coolidge reorganized the Department of Justice and called Bill
to Washington to be assistant to the Attorney General, and to head the
Antitrust Division. Here he showed both his fearless qualities in law
enforcement and his intense interest in making law a practical vehicle
to promote the economic welfare.
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Donovan was firmly convinced that individual freedom was vitally
linked to our system of free enterprise. He attacked restraints and
monopoly with effective enthusiasm. In the Trenton Potteries case
the Supreme Court agreed that price fixing among dominant competitors
was illegal per se. Brought under legal attack were such diverse
industries as oil, sugar, harvesting machinery, motion pictures, water
transportation and labor unions. Yet he recognized that the uncertainties
of our antitrust laws posed serious business problems. Accordingly, as
head of the Antitrust Division, he instituted the practice of passing in
advance upon the legality of proposed mergers and certain other business
conduct which lay in the area of uncertain legality.
It is said that Bill had his heart set on being Attorney General, but
that honor did not come to him. When President Hoover entered the
White House in 1929, he offered Donovan the Governor Generalship of
the Philippines, but Bill turned it down and went into law practice in
New York City.
This brought him back to the State and he was shortly appointed
Counsel to several of the New York Bar Associations in connection with a
general overhauling of the bankruptcy laws. During this period he also
served as Counsel to the Committee for the review of the laws governing
the State's Public Service Commission. In 1932 he unsuccessfully ran
for Governor of the State.
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While in Washington he had gained valuable experience practicing
before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1935 as a corporation
attorney he won the important Humphrey case which you will remember
held that the President could not arbitrarily remove a chairman of the
Federal Trade Commission.
He also won an important decision in the Appalachian coal case,
upholding the right of coal producers to organize a joint selling agency,
as a measure of economic self-defense. This is still in existence.
During this period of corporate law practice, Bill never lost his
interest in world affairs. He took time off to visit Ethiopia during the
Italian invasion of that country in 1935. He was in Spain during the Civil
War, carefully observing the Axis efforts to test their new equipment in
these foreign adventures.
In the early days of World War II, Donovan was called into action
by President Roosevelt. In 1940 he was sent on a fact-finding mission to
England; in 1941 to the Balkans and the Middle East. Anthony Eden advised
Washington that Colonel Donovan's confidential mission to the Balkans had
been most helpful to the British in their assessment of the situation in the
area.
From his earlier trip to Britain, not long after Dunkirk, Bill
Donovan brought back to Washington a very important message about the
British situation. You will recall that at that time there was skepticism
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in some quarters in this country whether the British could effectively
carry out Churchill's thrilling promise, "We shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight
on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. "
Donovan reported to Roosevelt that the British could, and that they
would, do just that. This had a direct effect on American policy.
He also warned Harry Hopkins that the Germans might strike toward
Suez through French North Africa -- a prophecy that soon became a reality.
Donovan also reported to the President that the United States should
start preparing immediately for a global war. He particularly stressed
the need of a service to wage unorthodox warfare and to gather information
through every means available. Donovan discussed this idea at length with
his close friends in the Cabinet, Secretaries Knox and Stimson, and with
Attorney General Jackson.
The seeds which Bill planted bore fruit. In July 1941 the President
established the Office of the Coordinator of Information and called
Donovan to Washington to head it. The original concept of this organization
was that it should combine information and intelligence programs with
psychological and guerrilla warfare. This proved too big a morsel for
one basket and in 1942 the organization was split. That portion of it
dealing with wartime information services became the Office of War
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Information, while the intelligence and unorthodox warfare work, where
Bill's greatest interest lay, was put in the Office of Strategic Services.
Truly one of the remarkable accomplishments in World War II was
the organization and activities of the O. S. S. -- a feat which would never
have been achieved without Bill Donovan's leadership and his vast interest
in the unorthodox, the novel and the dangerous.
Starting from scratch in 1941 Donovan built an organization of about
25 thousand that made a real contribution to the victory. Many of the deeds
of O. S. S. will have to remain secret, but many with the passage of time
can now be disclosed.
Bill Donovan conceived the O. S. S. as a world-wide intelligence
organization that could collect the facts necessary to develop our policy
and war strategy. He was convinced that the Axis secrets were to be
found not only in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo, but in other capitals and
outposts around the world. So he immediately set about dispatching officers
to key spots in Europe, Asia, and later Africa. The pay-off justified the
effort.
He was able to obtain information of great value from carefully
established agents with contacts in Berlin, in the German High Command,
and the Abwehr -- the secret German service. As the result of the work
of his agents we were able to receive advance information about the
development of German jet aircraft, about German work with heavy water
in an effort to develop a nuclear weapon, about the V-ls and V-2s --
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the "buzz bomb" and rocket with which they attacked England, and about
the plot against Hitler.
Donovan knew that in addition to an organization for the collection
of strategic intelligence there should be a counterpart to help gather
tactical information in the combat areas. Here he set about having
organized teams of parachutists- -Americans as well as indigenous--to
drop behind enemy lines.
In addition to both these types of intelligence, he also wanted action.
He knew that well organized guerrillas operating behind enemy lines
in areas where the local population was friendly could wreak havoc on
enemy lines of communication and tie down troops that could otherwise
be used in combat. Working with our allies, he built up teams of leaders
and communicators to organize resistance in the Nazi Fascist and
Japanese-occupied countries. There were also air drops of supplies
and equipment, -- deep behind the Axis lines in France and Italy, in Burma
and elsewhere.
Such "action" groups were well supported by a Headquarters
technical group which was constantly at work under Bill Donovan's guiding
hand in an imaginative fashion developing new ways to sabotage the enemy
war effort and new gadgets either to harass the enemy or help our own
cause. Illustrative of what this unusual part of the organization did was
the development of equipment ranging from the most sophisticated
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communications systems to a lotion that could be used as a shark repellent
for personnel forced to bail out in shark-infested waters. Not all of the
products were quite so practical.
Ambassador David Bruce, one of Bill Donovan's closest associates,
in a recent tribute to the General's qualities of leadership, vividly
described his excitement over ideas. Ambassador Bruce wrote, and I
subscribe to every word of it, --
"His imagination was unlimited. Ideas were his plaything.
Excitement made him snort like a race horse. Woe to the officer
who turned down a project because, on its face, it seemed ridiculous,
or at least unusual. For painful weeks under his command I tested
the possibility of using bats -- / they were to carry delayed action
incendiary bombs / -- taken from concentrations in Western caves,
to destroy Tokyo. The General, backed by the intrigued President
Roosevelt, was only dissuaded from further experiments in this
field when it appeared probable that the cave bats would not survive
a trans-Pacific flight at high altitudes. "
Many ingenious ideas to work on the nerves of the enemy were born
in another part of the O. S. S. - the Morale Operations Branch. This was
the undercover psychological warfare branch of the war effort. While the
Office of War Information was telling the enemy about the magnitude of the
U. S. war effort and getting the facts and figures well circulated, this
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branch of 0. S. S. was dedicated to confusing the enemy and breaking
their will to resist.
General Donovan was convinced that there were great untapped
reservoirs of information in this country about foreign areas which had
become of vital interest to the U. S. at war. These included information
in the archives of business organizations, information acquired abroad
by American scientists, academicians, and tourists and also that held by
foreign experts residing here. He set about to collect this information
and data and a mass of photographs of foreign areas. As the war extended
on a global basis, this information became of great importance.
He also realized the importance of properly analyzing and presenting
intelligence to the policy makers in readily useable form - one of the most
difficult tasks in the intelligence field. To accomplish this, in the 0. S. S. ,
a very major branch was established for research and analysis. He
assembled in Washington the best academic and analytical brains that he
could beg, borrow or steal from the universities, laboratories, libraries,
museums; from the business world and from other agencies of government.
Theirs was the task of following the political and economic aspects of the
war, as regards both our allies and our enemies, the neutrals and the
occupied lands. Theirs also was the task of estimating Axis vulnerability
and war potential and the staying power of the Russians who even then told
us all but nothing about themselves.
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Bill Donovan possessed the qualities of a great intelligence officer.
He took nothing for granted and at the same time was insatiably curious.
He had a good nose for the news and a faint whiff of something unusual
would speed his mind into a dozen possible explanations. The explanations
were generally as ingenious as the wiles of the enemy.
He wanted to see things on the spot and judge for himself. He was
constantly on the move and drove his staff wild trying to keep him from
going places they thought too exposed. He also kept them in a state of
near exhaustion trying to keep up with the pace he set himself. One of his
great qualities was his dedication to the men who served under him, and
his ever readiness to give them his full support. He, in turn, had their
complete loyalty, respect and affection. I vividly recall a personal
instance.
For about two years from November 1942 to September 1944, I was
working for Donovan in Switzerland which then was entirely encircled by
the Nazi-Fascist forces. In September 1944, the American Seventh Army
coming up from Southern France, broke through to the Swiss border near
Geneva.
Under orders to return to Washington to report on my two years'
stewardship, I had joined a group of the French Underground in a secret
retreat in the Rhone Valley between Geneva and Lyon awaiting a clandestine
flight to take me to London. As far as I knew, General Donovan was in
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Washington, and, as far as I knew, he had not the slightest idea where
I was hidden. Weather prevented my plane coming from London for
several days and as I was waiting in my hideout, there was a knock on
the door in the middle of the night. It was one of General Donovan's aides,
telling me that the General himself was waiting for me at the nearest
available airstrip south of Lyon which had just been evacuated by the
Nazis. For some twenty-four hours, Bill Donovan, who had come from
Washington, had been searching the area, had finally discovered where
I was. Together we flew back to London, reunited after two years.
We arrived in London, as I remember well, on that day in
September 1944 when the Germans launched the first of their ballistic
missiles on the British capital. It descended near the center of London
after a flight of nearly two hundred miles.
Both the American and the British intelligence services had been
closely following the development of this missile. I have often wondered
why, in this country, our technicians and strategists had failed to draw
earlier the real implications of the success of the V- Z, as I believe the
Soviet did, and to realize, much earlier in the game, that the combination
of the ballistic missile and the atomic bomb, which then was about to be
unveiled, could change the nature of war and the security position of this
country.
Few men of his time were more alert than Donovan to the new
threats that might develop. In late 1944 he sent a man to Cairo to take over
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the direction of activities at that post and gave him oral instructions to
the effect that the main target for intelligence operations should now
become discovering what the Soviets were doing in the Balkans rather
than German activities in the Middle East. The German threat was
receding. The Soviet danger was already looming. He realized this
but, for obvious reasons, he could not put such instructions in an
official dispatch.
Also, while the war was still in progress, General Donovan was
looking forward to the peace. He foresaw the need for a permanent
organization not only to collect intelligence, but, perhaps even more
important, to coordinate the over-all intelligence effort of the government
and to see that the President and the policy makers receive comprehensive
and consolidated analyses on which to make decisions as to our course of
action.
In the Fall of 1944, Donovan presented to the President a paper
proposing a United States intelligence organization on a world-wide scale.
This organization would be directly responsible to the President, and
while it would not interfere with the responsibilities of the departmental
intelligence services, particularly those of the armed forces, it would act
as a coordinating mechanism. Donovan's paper stressed that his proposed
organization would have no police or subpoena powers and would not
operate in the United States.
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President Roosevelt expressed considerable interest in General
Donovan' s proposal. In fact, just a week before his death in April 1945,
the President asked Donovan to poll the Cabinet and the heads of the
appropriate agencies for comment on his proposals. The replies make
interesting reading today and range all the way from those who felt that
such a peacetime organization was vital to national security to those who
saw no need for it.
While Donovan received an Oak Leaf Cluster to his Distinguished
Service Medal for his wartime work, he was not to realize his ambition
to see the O. S. S. evolve into a peacetime intelligence organization
immediately upon the cessation of hostilities.
His plan was beset with conflicting views: Some in our Government
would have the new organization report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff --
as did O. S. S. during the war -- while others preferred it to be under the
Department of State. And there was controversy as to whether one individual
could or should be responsible for presenting a consolidated view of the
intelligence picture to the policy makers, or whether this should be the
collective responsibility of the chiefs of all the intelligence services.
In any event sometime after the war ended in August 1945, the
O. S. S. was ordered disbanded.
A proposal for a central intelligence organization, such as Donovan
had conceived, was contained in the first draft of the so-called unification
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act submitted by Ferdinand Eberstadt to Secretary Forrestal in October
1945. And in January 1946 to preserve assets while the issue was
determined, President Truman issued the order creating the Central
Intelligence Group which later picked up some of the activities and
personnel still remaining from O. S. S.
Bill Donovan's dream was yet not completely realized. Congress
still had to act. After extensive hearings to which General Donovan
contributed important testimony, the provisions for a Central Intelligence
Agency were incorporated into the National Security Act of 1947, which
created a Department of Defense and set up the National Security Council
which is advisory to the President and to which the new Intelligence Agency
was made responsible. In July 1947, final executive and legislative
endorsement was given to the views which Donovan had been striving to
have accepted. I have always felt that the decision to place the C. I. A.
under the President as recommended by Donovan, was wise and necessary.
While Bill Donovan's restless energy had turned elsewhere with
the disbanding of O. S. S. , he never gave up his interest in the organization
or stopped hammering home to the public the necessity for providing
adequate and accurate information to the policy makers of the government
in order to protect the national security.
Donovan's varied talents were being called on for other important
services. His legal ability and vast knowledge of German wartime activities
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were used in helping to prepare the Nuremburg trials for the Nazi war
criminals.
He went to Greece to investigate the murder of newsman George
Polk, a clear effort of the Communists to prevent the truth about the
extent of their activities in the Greek civil war from seeping out.
The more General Donovan saw of the Soviets in action the more
concerned he was with alerting the American people to the dangers.
In the Yale Law Journal for July 1949 he was co-author of an article
presenting a "Program for a Democratic Counter Attack to Communist
Penetration of Government Service. " The article said:
"The Communist Fifth Column.. , seeks to identify
itself with every social grievance. Russian espionage and
subversive operations are made up of trained and skilled spy
technicians and intelligence officers, propaganda specialists,
experts in spreading rumors. Instruction is planned so that the
agent will find it as easy for a minority to operate a labor union,
or a pacifist league, or any other such movement, as it is for a
minority group to control a large corporation when most of the
stockholders take no active interest in the management. "
In 1950 President Eisenhower, then President of Columbia
University, presided on the occasion of the award to Bill Donovan of the
Alexander Hamilton Medal, which is awarded by the Columbia Alumni
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Association for distinguished service and accomplishment in any of
the great fields of human endeavor.
Donovan was soon to enter the fight against Communism in a
new arena. In 1953 the President named this remarkable man of 70
to be United States Ambassador to Thailand. At the time this ancient
kingdom of Siam was a main target for Communist subversion. With a
vigor that belied his years, Bill Donovan threw himself into assisting
the Thais in bolstering their defenses against the Communists so that
this keystone of anti-Communism in Southeast Asia could continue
free.
Upon his return to the United States one might have expected him
to seek retirement, but nothing could have been further from his mind.
He became National Chairman of the International Refugee Committee
and the director of that group's fight against the Soviet program to induce
Russians who escaped from Communism to return home. At the time of
the Hungarian Revolution he threw his energies into aiding the refugees
who were forced to flee after their unsuccessful effort to win freedom
from Soviet tyranny.
From its inception in 1949, General Donovan had been Chairman
of the American Committee on United Europe and through this organization
he continued to further the efforts of our major allies in Western Europe
to achieve a greater unity in face of the Communist danger.
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Even after ill health forced General Donovan to retire to Walter
Reed Hospital in Washington, he continued his interest in the fight against
Communism and the development of our intelligence work. In recognition
of Donovan's role in the intelligence field, President Eisenhower in 1957
awarded him the National Security Medal. The citation reads:
"Through his foresight, wisdom, and experience,
he foresaw, during the course of World War II, the problems
which would face the postwar world and the urgent need for a
permanent, centralized intelligence function. Thus his wartime
work contributed to the establishment of the Central Intelligence
Agency and a coordinated national intelligence structure. "
His dream of years had been achieved.
In February 1959 General Donovan passed away at Walter Reed
hospital among the men he had led. As soldier, public prosecutor, leader
of the bar, director of the Strategic Services in wartime, public servant
in time of peace, he had left his record with the nation he served so well.
He was a rare combination of physical courage, intellectual ability, and
political acumen. He was a mild-mannered man, with an insatiable
curiosity, an unflagging imagination, and the energy to turn his ideas
into action.
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The heritage of Bill Donovan is written in the national security.
He awoke the American people to the need of a permanent peacetime
intelligence service.
He bestirred Washington into creating a mechanism whereby all
of the components of the government which receive information on what is
going on anywhere in the world pool their knowledge, share their interpreta-
tions, and work together to make one unified estimate of what it means.
He helped place intelligence in its proper perspective and
stimulated the policy makers to recognize its role in determining
American policy abroad. He was one of the architects of an organization
that should keep our government the best informed of any in the world.
History's epitaph for William J. Donovan of Buffalo, New York,
will be: He made his nation more secure.
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