Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  When war came with Japan, the Aleutians and Alaska would be open to attack, and Donovan told Stefansson that a military road must be built across Canada into Alaska as soon as possible. Stefansson was to study the route. Alaskan and Aleutian weather would also be critical. The Soviet Union, said Stefansson, controlled most of the important stations for forecasting the weather of mainland Alaska, the Bering Sea, and the Aleutian Islands, as well as portions of the North Pacific. Soviet reports would also help to improve the forecasting in the Yukon Territory, British Columbia, and the U.S. Northwest. Donovan and Stefansson discussed how the Soviet Union could be persuaded to share weather information with the United States while denying it to the Japanese. “We would have to agree with the Soviet government upon some secret code, and upon changes of code as frequent as seems necessary,” said Stefansson.

  On November 17, Donovan reported his arrangements with Stefansson to the President.

  In accordance with your instructions, I have talked with Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson. He is ready to make available to us his services, as well as those of his staff, which would include the use of his 15,000 volume library and extensive files. His field would be all of Alaska; Canada north of 60 degrees; all of Greenland; all of Iceland; the Scandinavian countries and Finland north of 60 degrees; the shores of Hudson Bay, and Labrador as far south as Hamilton Inlet. He would also cover Okhotsk Sea, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, the North Atlantic, and the entire Polar Sea with its islands.

  Dr. Stefansson would attempt to supply any kind of information from the geographic area described, including not merely sciences like geography and oceanography, but information regarding such things as religion, language, clothing, food, economics, etc.

  Donovan pressed Stefansson for answers to puzzling questions. Stefansson wrote to him: “Yesterday you expressed interest in the double situation (a) that the Germans used glaciers for airplane landings in northern Norway and (b) that the possibility of glacier landings was apparently unknown and undreamed of by those British who were in that part of Norway.” Stefansson had turned up Peter Rhodes, a Chicago Daily News correspondent, who had been in northern Norway at the time and who could give Donovan information.

  By the end of November, the Center of Arctic Studies was a reality, and it was to have an important influence on the conduct of the war with Japan, which was by then little more than a week away.

  President Roosevelt continued to find domestic political problems blocking his path. It was certainly in America’s interest to supply the Russians to help them blunt the German invasion, which was sweeping ahead on all fronts. Nevertheless, many Americans were outraged that their country should support the Red dictatorship, which to most people seemed little better than those of the Nazis and Fascists. In this instance, the Pope in Rome also feared that U.S. assistance to Russia would only strengthen Communism. Donovan’s agents sought information that would help Roosevelt placate both American voters and the Pope. They found it in Russia, where Polish captives of the Soviets were forming to fight Hitler. Corroboration came from Jan Ciechanowski, Polish ambassador in Washington, in a letter to Donovan on September 27:

  I am very glad to be able to tell you on the basis of information just received from London that the enthusiasm of the Poles in Russia actively to resume the fight against Hitlerite Germany is so great, that the Polish Army in Russia will be virtually an army of volunteers. Great numbers of Poles of military age apply daily demanding to be enrolled immediately in the Polish Forces, thus swelling the ranks of units which are being formed from our regular soldiers who had been interned in Russia.

  The Polish Government is confident that it will be able to put in the field very shortly an army of well over 100,000 men, provided they can be supplied with the necessary material and equipment from Great Britain and the United States. I hear that two divisions are already formed and the third is nearing completion.

  What will interest you especially, I am sure, is that the U.S.S.R. has—in the same way as in the case of our army in Great Britain—granted us full rights of an independent National Army, giving it likewise the right of opening its own schools, full cultural freedom, and freedom of worship for both Christians and Jews. We have already got our own Catholic military chaplains.

  In the long tide of history, the Russian assurances proved to be illusory, but for the moment, Donovan’s report on the Soviet show of tolerance of the Catholic and Jewish faiths allowed Roosevelt to send supplies to the Russians with political impunity.

  The consolidation of G-2 and ONI intelligence operations under the COI was reported to the President on October 10. Donovan accompanied his memorandum on the subject with a secret intelligence plan for North Africa. His lengthy trip through the Mediterranean earlier in the year had left him convinced of the pivotal nature of the area, and in September he had put R&A to work on in-depth studies of North Africa. Now he was making plans for intelligence operations. On the same day that Donovan sent his report to Roosevelt, he established a section labeled Special Activities–K and L Funds, which was intended to carry out espionage, subversion including sabotage, and guerrilla warfare.

  To Donovan modern warfare seemed to call for three phases of softening up the enemy before an attack in force was made. First, secret intelligence was to infiltrate and discover any information that must be known in order to pave the way for the second phase, which was sabotage and subversion operations. Resistance groups and guerrilla or commando operations were to follow. All of these activities required different techniques and training, but Donovan saw them as tightly related, one preparing the way for the next. “As a concrete illustration of what can be done,” Donovan told FDR, “we are now planning to deal with a very present problem in North Africa by setting up at once a wireless station in Tangier and having stationed there an assistant naval or military attaché who can unify the activities of the vice-consuls [actually 12 COI agents] in North Africa and stimulate efforts in the selection of local agents of information.”

  On the day before he reported to the President, Donovan had appointed Lt. Col. Robert A. Solborg to head Special Operations. Solborg had been born in Warsaw, the son of a Polish general in the service of the Russian czar. He himself had served in the Russian Army. When he was seriously wounded, he was assigned to the Russian military purchasing mission in New York City. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, he became an American citizen by joining the U.S. Army. Later he was a military attaché in Paris and then became an executive of Armco Steel Company, for which he traveled throughout Germany and North Africa. Solborg had carried out intelligence missions successfully, first for the British and then for the American G-2. Donovan ordered Solborg to organize his Washington office and then travel to London to get the advice and assistance of British SOE in establishing COI’s Special Operations. He was to report directly to Donovan.

  At about this same time, Donovan had to ask Roosevelt to be more specific about the role of the COI. The original order of July 11 had been kept vague on purpose. Now, on October 21, Donovan wrote to the President, “While originally we both considered it advisable to have no directive in writing, it now seems necessary to do so to avoid misunderstanding with other departments.”

  Donovan had already selected Wallace B. Phillips as chief of the COI’s Secret Intelligence unit. He had headed the ONI’s secret intelligence and by October was already reporting to Donovan on the activities of the 12 vice-consuls in North Africa. The vice-consuls were presumably checking up on American supplies sent to the region, but actually they were observing German and Italian activities. “The main problem,” Donovan said after the war, “was to take care of the intellectual side—getting data on the railroads, tides, and any other details that would affect the getting in of arms and other military equipment.”

  On November 17, Donovan made Phillips director of Special Information Service, which was tantamount to heading up Secret Intelligence (SI).

  Donovan also took steps to establish a COI
office in London. On October 24, President Roosevelt wrote to Winston Churchill by diplomatic pouch, “Colonel Donovan tells me that he has had most helpful cooperation from the officers of His Majesty’s Government who are charged with direct responsibility for your war effort. In order to facilitate the carrying out of the work of the Coordinator with respect to Europe and the occupied countries, I have authorized Colonel Donovan to send a small staff to London.” Donovan already had chosen William D. Whitney to be chief of the London bureau, and Whitney was soon off to his new post.

  In October and November, Donovan was a frequent caller at the White House. He breakfasted with the President, and he dined with him. Whenever he went to the White House, he took with him information of great import and also little tidbits that entertained FDR. On October 21, Donovan gave Roosevelt a Nazi map that, he explained, the British had “purloined from a German courier.” The map showed South America as it would be restructured after the German conquest. Roosevelt was fascinated and a few days later made it public as proof of Hitler’s baleful ambitions. That same day Donovan explained again to the President his concept for an American commando unit of some 2,500 men, talked about John Ford’s movie-making for the COI, and showed FDR an article from the German press entitled “The Jew-Roosevelt Names War Maker Donovan as Super-Agitator.” Both men chuckled over what they considered a piece of unintended German drollery.

  Some of Donovan’s meetings with FDR were more significant. On November 13, he informed the President about a secret protocol to the Japanese-Indochina Treaty, and on November 17 they discussed not only Donovan’s report on the Center of Arctic Studies but also a clandestine expedition to Central Africa, ostensibly to study the great apes, but actually to observe German spies at work in the area.

  Often, early riser that he was, Donovan arrived in the morning before the President got out of bed to begin his official work day. On Friday, November 28, War Secretary Stimson had reason to complain about this. “G-2 had sent me a summary of the information in regard to the movements of the Japanese in the Far East, and it amounted to such a formidable statement of dangerous possibilities that I decided to take it to the President before he got up. I had some difficulty getting in because he had already given an appointment to Bill Donovan, but I persisted on it and finally got there.”

  Roosevelt had already heard Donovan outline the increasingly dangerous developments in the Pacific. Stimson recorded in his diary what followed: “He [Roosevelt] branched into an analysis of the situation himself as he sat there on his bed, saying there were three alternatives and only three that he could see before us. I told him I could see two. His alternatives were—first, to do nothing; second, to make something in the nature of an ultimatum again, stating a point beyond which we would fight; third, to fight at once. I told him my only two were the last two because I did not think anyone would do nothing in this situation, and he agreed with me.”

  Before Stimson arrived the President had confided in Donovan that “it was difficult now to find a formula in dealing with Japan.” He approved plans Donovan showed him for checking into America’s West Coast defenses.

  By the end of November 1941 the COI was functioning well. General Strong, soon to become head of G-2, thought perhaps it was working too well, and he began to make political moves to block its growth. On December 3, he succeeded in winning White House approval for a Joint Army and Navy Intelligence Committee, which was to receive Donovan’s reports. Donovan was to serve on the committee. The idea was to prevent the free-wheeling Donovan from consolidating his position as America’s master spy. Julius C. Holmes, who became the executive secretary for the committee, later observed, “The Military Intelligence leaders all looked on Donovan like the fox in the hen house who was intent on usurping their ‘hens’ in pursuit of intelligence for someone’s organization other than their own.” Obligingly enough, Donovan at first sat in with the committee, but he continued to send his reports directly to FDR and to the British when he felt it served America’s interests.

  American naval cryptographers had solved the cipher machine that the Japanese used to encipher their diplomatic communications. The resulting intercepts were given the code name Magic. Washington knew that the Japanese were planning a major assault somewhere in the Pacific, but when the intercepts indicated that a huge striking force of carriers had set sail for a secret destination, the U.S. Navy assumed that it was bound for the Dutch East Indies. The navy, complacent in its overwhelming strength, did not alert either its commanders at Pearl Harbor or Manila, for surely the Japanese would not dare to risk complete disaster in a head-on collision with U.S. might.

  The Japanese had sent Saburo Kurusu as a special envoy to Washington, and he was now negotiating with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Donovan determined to find out what was going on behind the Japanese move, and he believed that Kurusu was the man who might tell him. It was Ferdinand Lammot Belin, a former ambassador to Poland and a millionaire industrialist, who suggested a way to reach Kurusu.

  Kurusu’s wife, Alice, was an American woman from Chicago, where Kurusu had served in the Japanese consulate for six years. When, in 1930, he was stationed in Peru, he had made close friends with Americans living in Lima. Among these was the diplomat Ferdinand Mayer, a Hoosier from Indianapolis, who before retiring had served the United States in Japan, China, Germany, and then in Peru. Mayer and Kurusu had gotten along very well, and now Belin, in turn a close friend of Mayer, was urging Donovan to bring the 59-year-old diplomat out of retirement. Perhaps Kurusu, known during South American days for his pro-American sentiments, would talk to his old friend Mayer. Donovan approved the idea, and Belin got in touch with Mayer.

  On Saturday morning, December 6, Mayer breakfasted at Belin’s Evermay estate in Georgetown. James Dunn of the State Department was also present. He agreed that Kurusu seemed to have something on his mind that he was not expressing in the talks with Hull. Mayer picked up the phone and called the Japanese Embassy.

  A hostile crowd had formed in front of the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Kurusu was watching the Americans outside when he was called to the phone. It was Ferdinand Mayer, who said he wanted to see him. Kurusu replied that he would be happy to see Mayer but “would hate to inconvenience him,” since there was an angry crowd outside. From the sound of Kurusu’s voice, Mayer realized that the Japanese diplomat was “quite overwhelmed and in the deepest sort of despair.”

  At 11:00 A.M., Mayer arrived at the Japanese Embassy. He shook hands with Kurusu and talk turned to old times in Chicago and Lima. Kurusu then indicated that he was anxious to discuss his present mission but, as Mayer later reported, he kept “repeatedly turning his head to see if anyone were approaching.”

  Finally Kurusu whispered, “Fred, we are in an awful mess. In the first place, I was delayed in coming on this mission through an attack of conjunctivitis when I could neither read nor write. This complicated the situation because time was running out, from the point of view of restraining the military element, and it had been planned that I should have left for the United States in August or September.”

  Kurusu told Mayer that the Japanese government had yielded to the military and given the go-ahead for the invasion of Indochina as the “least harmful alternative.” He went on to express his chagrin at the Japanese embroilment in China, the mounting disenchantment with the Nazi partnership, the arrogant behavior of the Germans in Tokyo, and the extreme danger of war between his nation and the United States. He himself opposed the war because he was certain Japan would lose, but he commented that “hotheads could upset the applecart at any time.”

  As they parted, Mayer asked Kurusu to dine with Belin and himself at eight. He walked out of the Japanese Embassy onto Massachusetts Avenue, where traffic was moving as if nothing whatsoever were going on. It was a strange, unreal world that he hurried to discuss at Evermay. Nothing came of Mayer’s talk with Kurusu. It was already too late.

  26

  Conducting Ungentl
emanly Warfare

  ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, the New York Giants were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. In the second quarter the Giants were trailing 7–0. Bill Donovan, a football fan since his boyhood on the Buffalo waterfront, grumbled to his friends; he was not at all satisfied with the performance of the Giants. The Dodgers had just driven again to the Giants’ four-yard line when the public-address system cut through the noise of the screaming crowd.

  “Colonel William Donovan, come to the box office at once. There is an important phone message.”

  After shoving his way through the crowd to the box office, Donovan heard James Roosevelt’s excited voice on the phone. Roosevelt told him that the President wanted to see him at once. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and the first thing the President had said when the dread news reached him was “Phone Bill Donovan.” He was to go to La Guardia, where an air force plane was waiting to fly him to Washington. Donovan rushed by cab from the Polo Grounds to the airport, joining Vice-President Henry Wallace, Postmaster General Frank Walker, and presidential adviser Judge Samuel Rosenman for the flight.

  At the capital, Donovan conferred briefly with Roosevelt and hurried to COI headquarters. He was already there when Turner McBaine arrived.

  “Stark horror filtered through the COI as the magnitude of what had happened became clear,” McBaine recalled.