Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  During meetings over the next few days, Donovan learned about Chinese coal resources, efforts being made in South China to produce rubber, British factories being built in Shanghai to supply the Asiatic market, British automobile exports, and the establishment in Dusseldorf of a new German bank that would specialize in trade with and across Holland and in the import of basic raw materials into Germany.

  On Friday he spent the day with an Italian financier visiting in London, who told him how Italian economic conditions were darkening the nation’s future. “There is discontent in every class with the Government,” Donovan wrote at the end of the day. “With the bourgeoisie because of the heavy impost of taxes; with the nationals because of what they consider a weak foreign policy in regard to Fiume; and with the workmen because of the heavy hand that has been placed on the striking of labor. In his opinion, however, while there are many isolated fires, there is no great conflagration. He would not be surprised, though, if the King should abdicate, but evolution, not revolution, would follow.”

  There also was a long talk with an expert on Spain. The key Spanish leather industry was facing bankruptcy, and the Spanish government had embargoed rice, which was in short supply. “It is a badly governed country,” Donovan noted. “There are no constructive measures taken to perpetuate the prosperity of the war. There are strikes among the farm laborers, but due to the fact that the unions are not financially strong enough to take care of the men for more than six days, these strikes last for not longer than that period.”

  Donovan also found it significant to note that before the outbreak of the war, 200,000 people had emigrated from Britain to her colonies every year.

  When his business discussions in London were concluded, Donovan continued on to the Continent. He made another tour of European nations, each of which was trying to repair the terrible damage done by the war not only to its cities and towns and their factories and shops, but also to the social fabric. He particularly valued a stay in Berlin, where Ellis Loring Dressel of the American Commission made it possible for him to see what was happening in Germany from the inside out. He visited the old battlefields of northern France where the Rainbow Divison had fought. He stood again at the graves of Joyce Kilmer and Oliver Ames. He could not help wondering if all the suffering and death, the heroism of the Fighting 69th had been for nothing. His sense of foreboding grew.

  When Donovan returned to America, his report to John Lord O’Brian was anything but optimistic.

  12

  Racket-Busting DA

  FRANK RAICHLE, a premier Buffalo attorney for more than 60 years, remembered the day back in 1920 that he first met Bill Donovan. “Back from Europe, Donovan talked to the dean of the University of Buffalo law school about getting a law clerk. The dean recommended me. I was a 1919 graduate, only twenty at the time, but I still had not passed my bar exams when I went down to Donovan’s law offices for an interview. Donovan took a great interest in encouraging youth, and I was no exception.”

  Raichle saw the law office expand with the passing months. New men kept joining the firm. Among these was Ganson Depew, the brilliant nephew of Chauncey Depew, whom Donovan had come to know at the Republican convention in Chicago. Donovan went off to Europe on confidential business of his own from time to time, but he was, in the main, in Buffalo during 1921. It was a happy family time for Ruth and Bill and the children, an idyll that Ruth at least, knowing the mettle of her husband, recognized could not last.

  Frank Raichle could also see that Bill Donovan—lawyer, clubman, Buffalo civic leader, husband, father—was restless. “He was ambitious but not offensively ambitious,” he remembered of those years, as he himself became a junior partner and then a partner in the firm, which was emerging as one of the most important in western New York. Donovan was by then counted among the state’s foremost trial lawyers.

  In early 1922 the nation’s coal miners went out on strike, and fuel rationing proved necessary in New York State. All sorts of legal problems arose, and on September 6, Gov. Nathan L. Miller appointed Bill Donovan counsel to William H. Woodin, the New York State fuel administrator. Donovan was to prosecute coal dealers who tried to profiteer in the emergency. The rich were not to stock their cellars with more coal than they needed while the poor went cold. He received no salary, but the job appealed to him.

  Governor Miller was not the only man in public life who had his eye on the war hero, who was as able and honest as he was popular. Stephen T. Lockwood, U.S. district attorney for western New York, for the last eight years had been accused by the New York State Anti-Saloon League of a lack of zeal in enforcing Prohibition in the Buffalo area. Buffalo, being close to the Canadian border, was notorious both for rum-running and opium and heroin smuggling. Lockwood refused to resign under fire, but the Harding administration believed that he had become a political embarrassment. Senator James Wadsworth, who had come to appreciate Bill Donovan’s qualities when they were together in Chicago, suggested to the attorney general and the President that Donovan would be a fine choice for the job, once Lockwood could be eased out of it.

  Donovan was first approached about the matter in late autumn 1921, but he refused even to consider the post. He was, he claimed, entirely happy to be in private law practice. By December 20, reports came out of Washington stating that Donovan was not only willing but eager to accept the office. On February 7, 1922, President Harding appointed Donovan U.S. district attorney for western New York.

  “I’m going to do whatever is my job,” Donovan replied when newspapermen demanded to know what he was going to do as the DA.

  Wets and dries alike applauded the new appointment, because each group felt that the new DA was bound to look upon its position with favor. On February 15 Donovan was sworn in at the Federal Building in Buffalo. Although a teetotaler himself, he did not believe in Prohibition. Yet after he had taken his oath, he informed the crowd that had gathered for the occasion, “The Prohibition law, as well as all other laws, will be strictly upheld.” Donovan called attention to his oath of office to uphold the Constitution. When newspapermen pressed him on his position on Prohibition, he snapped, “This office is neither the side door of a saloon nor the anteroom of the Anti-Saloon League.”

  Donovan surrounded himself with capable young lawyers. At the same time, he paid close attention to the viewpoints of senior lawyers. He would sit late at night listening to leaders of the bar reminisce. “He was making an intellectual pattern, in which coming experiences would fall into their relationships,” an older lawyer later told Anne Hard of the New York Herald Tribune, “and not be, as for so many young minds, entirely new. He had worked at war. Now he was working at law.”

  Frank Raichle had a burning desire to be a trial lawyer. “I wanted to be Bill’s assistant,” he remembered. “He only appointed Depew from our office.”

  Donovan’s five young assistants were devoted to him. “There’s no such thing as passing the buck with the Colonel,” one told a reporter from the Buffalo Times. “So long as you do your best, it is always the right thing to do.”

  From his office in the Federal Building on Washington Street, Donovan set out to enforce the law without reservation. He reorganized the district attorney’s office. He decided to start his reforms with the mayor of Buffalo.

  Mayor Frank X. Schwab owned a brewery. When the Volstead Act was passed, forbidding the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, he ignored it. Buffalonians applauded, bought his beer, and elected him mayor, despite charges brought against him by Donovan’s predecessor. Donovan moved Mayor Schwab’s case to trial.

  “It’ll be political suicide to prosecute,” he was advised. “If guilty, let him be given the extreme penalty,” Donovan told the press. Schwab raged. Buffalo newspapers asserted that his indictment by the former district attorney had helped rather than hindered his election. Now confronted with Donovan, the mayor blustered but finally pleaded nolo contendere and accepted punishment. Donovan, who appreciated the le
gal tangle that would result from the conviction of the mayor on federal charges, accepted the plea.

  Schwab agreed to a civil penalty of $10,000 and a criminal fine of $500. After he lost the next election, Buffalo’s bootlegger mayor never forgave Donovan. Donovan’s view on the matter was made clear in a letter to his friend Alexander Woollcott. “I think you agree with me that we do not want people in this country to think that they are above the law, and if you and I sweated and sloughed around France we did not do it in order to establish a ‘Mandarin’ government.”

  Donovan enforced the Prohibition laws against big and small rumrunners and bootleggers with impartiality. Rumrunners used the same routes across Lake Erie and the Niagara River from Canada that his grandfather had once used to smuggle Irishmen into the country, and from boyhood he had known exactly how things were done. Night interceptions by the Coast Guard were easy for him to arrange, and the flood of liquor across the Niagara frontier soon was reduced to a trickle.

  “Are these men and is the invisible power behind these defendants, which is disclosed by their very attitude on the stand, to be the government of America?” Donovan demanded as he confronted bootleggers in court. “Are they to be able to invade our very courts of justice and there to break down by fraud, by intimidation, and by bribery the principles on which the entire structure of our government rests? Or are they to be made to feel that the forces of law have the courage to stand up and say that a reign of this kind—such a reign of terror as this—is at an end?”

  The new district attorney cracked down even harder on narcotics smuggling. The narcotics ring for 17 western New York counties was controlled from Buffalo. The ring had bought protection from the Buffalo police and had so far been immune to prosecution.

  A few hundred Chinese then lived in Buffalo on lower Michigan Avenue. Harry Chinn, known as the mayor of Chinatown, ruled over them with patriarchal authority. He was chief of the narcotics ring and openly operated an opium den on Michigan near William Street. He claimed that he could effect the transfer of any policeman who threatened to interfere. Donovan persuaded a police lieutenant, Austin J. Roche, to assist in cracking down on the narcotics ring, but Roche was soon transferred to a remote part of the city where he could do no damage. Despite his transfer, Roche continued to work in plain clothes during his off-duty time. He gained evidence that Chinn not only dealt in opium but also trafficked in morphine and cocaine.

  Dissatisfied with the slow pace of the inquiry, Donovan telephoned Ralph Oyler, a nationally known federal narcotics agent in New York City, and asked him to come to Buffalo. He urged Oyler to bring Raphael Ray Connelly with him, because Connelly had ferreted out drugs in New York’s Chinatown. Donovan also secretly brought a young Chinese named Chung Su to Buffalo. In the Buffalo Chinatown the youth claimed to be from San Francisco, and nobody guessed he was Donovan’s man. He lost no time in working himself into Chinn’s confidence. Chung Su discovered that Chinn not only headed the dope ring, but he also operated the fan-tan gambling network and smuggled Chinese aliens into the country.

  Chung Su came to Donovan’s office late one evening to report that Chinn was expecting a large shipment of opium from across the border. When Donovan directed him to try to buy a large portion of it, Chung Su succeeded in setting up the purchase at Harry Chinn’s opium den. On the night of the deal, with opium and cash on the table before them, Chung Su and Chinn talked about future plans. At 6:00 P.M. Donovan and his men left the Federal Building and walked through a drizzling rain, their coat collars drawn up against the chill. They sauntered into Donovan’s old neighborhood, attracting little attention as they blended in with the workmen from the railroad yards and the grain docks, who were going home from work.

  When they reached Chinn’s opium den, Donovan shouldered the door open and burst into the room, followed by his men. Chinn tried unsuccessfully to escape through a trapdoor that led underground through a secret tunnel.

  The raid cracked the narcotics ring. Donovan’s investigators had done such a thorough job that it proved possible to obtain indictments not only against Harry Chinn but also against Joe DiCarlo, who Donovan established was the actual leader of the gang. DiCarlo was also linked to the gangland slaying of “Busy Joe” Pattituccio at the Niagara Street Cafe some months before and was sentenced to a jail term in the U.S. Penitentiary at Atlanta. Chinn too went to jail. Bill Giallela and Lester Cameron, gangland chieftains, were convicted as well. The drug racket in Buffalo had come to an abrupt end.

  For years a ring of burglars had looted the Buffalo freight yards of the New York Central Railroad. The railroad police and the Buffalo police refused to stop the thievery because they shared in the profits, which every year amounted to $2 million to $3 million. When Donovan’s men began to investigate, a ringleader dropped in to see the DA. He pointed out that a minister who had spoken out against the racket had been repaid for his sermon: One night a blast had wrecked his house and seriously injured his children. The hoodlum threatened that Donovan’s children would be kidnapped, his house dynamited, and he himself murdered.

  “You fellows need a good adviser,” Donovan replied. “You can’t threaten me. I’ll see you in jail.” That day, Donovan characteristically worked late, ate a snack in a nearby beanery, and then walked the 3 miles home along Delaware Avenue. He refused to change his habits despite the threat.

  “I’d much rather have had those criminals shoot me down than to hurt Ruth and the kids,” he said later, “so I made myself an easy target.” Nothing happened, not then or later.

  Donovan drew up indictments of 36 men—including railroad policemen, yardmen, engineers, and fences—for having conspired to steal large quantities of goods from the railroad. Among the ringleaders was a prominent Buffalo Catholic. As the Jersey City lawyer Peter Bentley, who was in Buffalo at the time, reported, “When one of the representatives of the highest standing in the community or the Church approached Colonel Donovan on the subject of releasing this man, he was promptly shown the door and told never to return upon such a mission.”

  One of Ruth’s maids also attempted to intercede with Donovan on behalf of the same defendant. “The Colonel asked the domestic what he ought to do if someone stole the money which the domestic had in a bank,” wrote Bentley. “The reply was that the Colonel should send the criminal to jail. Colonel Donovan thereupon replied that that was what he was going to do to the man in question.”

  Donovan did send the gang to jail. Thirty-two in all went to the penitentiary.

  Throughout 1922 Donovan attacked crime in western New York with a zeal that drew national attention. He broke up a crooked labor union, and he prosecuted the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company for accepting rebates on freight rates from the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway Company in violation of the Elkins Act. Each company paid a fine of $40,000. Donovan also prosecuted the New York Central, the Erie, and the Lehigh Valley railroads for violating the extension-of-credit provisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

  That summer, workers struck the International Railway Company, which then operated high-speed electric trolley cars to Niagara Falls. On August 17, just as a train was crossing a trestle, a charge of dynamite went off and a number of passengers, including women and children, were maimed. Local authorities were slow to arrest the responsible strikers, and the nation’s newspapers editorialized about the lack of law enforcement in western New York. Donovan entered the case and in a few days had the ringleaders and the actual “dynamitards” behind bars. He prosecuted them, and they were given sentences.

  District Attorney Donovan forced an investigation of the Buffalo Police Department, and he prosecuted a state senator for perjury because of his false testimony about the train dynamiting. When the senator chose to run for reelection despite his conviction, Donovan asked President Harding to pardon him so that he would be eligible for office. “I don’t want him to claim to be a martyr,” he said. “I want the voters to defeat him.”

&nbs
p; The senator lost the election.

  Donovan was himself a candidate for public office in the fall of 1922. Republican Gov. Nathan L. Miller, up for reelection, decided that he wanted Bill Donovan as his running mate for the office of lieutenant governor. When the party convention met in Albany at the end of September, the delegates judged that Donovan the war hero would lend strength to the ticket. On September 29, former Justice John Woodward of Buffalo arose on the convention floor to nominate Donovan. “I say that Colonel Donovan is the best equipped man in the state of his years,” he orated.

  Senator Wadsworth arose to loud cheers to second the nomination. “Donovan believes in being prepared to perform any service that comes to him,” he remarked. “No lawyer in Buffalo has worked so hard to prepare himself for his profession. He fitted himself for service for the defense of his country in case of need long before the Great War. He is always ready.”

  Bill Donovan was nominated unanimously. On October 11 the Buffalo Commercial editorialized:

  It looks as though the Republican State Convention made no mistake when it put Colonel William J. Donovan on the ticket for Lieutenant Governor. If it were not for the overshadowing prominence of Nathan L. Miller and the imperative necessity of continuing him in office to carry out his plans and policies, Colonel Donovan might easily have secured first place on the ticket.

  The popularity of the man is boundless. He sprang from the common people. He is a self-made man in every sense of the word. Although he does not care to be exploited upon his record as a soldier, he nevertheless did his duty so strikingly and so effectively as to attract public notice. He is likeable and talented, level-headed and conservative.

  Buffalonians were dismayed when the next month Alfred E. Smith defeated Nathan Miller. Miller had run a frugal administration and had killed popular programs in order to balance his budget. Al Smith promised a more openhanded approach to the governor’s office. Donovan lost alongside his running mate, but he did attract 100,000 more votes than did Governor Miller. At the end of the year, Donovan and William Woodin both resigned from the Fuel Administration.