The European Recovery Act passed and was signed into law by President Truman on April 3. On July 17, Donovan was in Berlin to talk with General Clay about the high-handed Soviet actions there, which had shut off the city from all but air traffic. Donovan recommended to reporters that the United States send a tank column to open the land route to Berlin. “If the Russians are determined to have war,” he said, “we might as well have it here as 500 miles farther back.”
Later when defeatists argued that his attitude would only serve to make the Soviets behave more savagely, he replied, “If you’re afraid of the wolves, you’d better stay out of the forest.”
Donovan, himself still very much unafraid of wolves, walked into the forest of intrigue that surrounded the strange murder of George Polk, a CBS news correspondent, in Salonika, Greece. Polk, who was the network’s chief Middle East correspondent, was covering the civil war in Greece. The struggle between Greek rightists and leftists had been complicated by the invasion of Soviet-led Bulgarian forces, and the chaotic situation defied easy analysis. Donovan had sent one of his close friends from OSS days into Greece to observe the fighting in northern Macedonia and determine whether Greece had a chance of remaining free of Soviet dominance or would go the way of its Balkan neighbors.
“Providing Greece remains free and democratic, it doesn’t matter whether the nation prefers a course to the right or the left,” Donovan had instructed his friend. “The real danger to the Greek people comes from across the border. It is important to know whether the Soviets will succeed in taking advantage of the Greek civil war to place the ancient homeland of western democracy under the police surveillance of a Soviet-dominated state.”
After two months in northern Greece in the summer of 1947, Donovan’s agent was convinced that the Greeks would settle their differences in their own time and that the Soviets and Bulgarians had incurred the hatred of both warring parties except for a relative handful of Greek communists who remained partial to their mentors in Moscow.
“Nobody from the outside is going to conquer the Greeks,” Donovan was told, and he acted on this advice, extending activities of the soon-to-be-renamed British American Canadian Corporation into the country with the intention of assisting the Greek economy.
George Polk, considered by his colleagues to be a gifted and objective reporter, set about ascertaining the truth of the situation in Greece. He had published or aired a number of dispatches from Greece that were highly critical of the right-wing government in Athens.
“When a reporter writes this kind of report, he comes under attack by the Royalist right-wingers who are squeezing the country for their own benefit and sending dollars out in diplomatic pouches as fast as possible,” Polk wrote to Drew Pearson.
According to Christian Science Monitor reporter Constantine Hadjiargyris, Polk said that he had received phone calls naming him as a communist and threatening, “We are going to kill you.” Hadjiargyris, a communist agent, may not have reported these calls accurately, but he was at least the man who assisted Polk in his last effort to contact the left-wing guerrillas of Gen. Markos Vafiades. Early in May 1948 Polk, who had been grounded in Salonika when the plane he was taking developed engine trouble, told friends he was going to contact Vafiades. On May 16, fishermen found Polk’s body floating just below the surface of Salonika Bay. He was trussed hand and foot with rope, and there was a single bullet hole in the back of his head. Robbery was apparently not the motive. The money was still in his wallet and his wristwatch was on his wrist; but his correspondent’s press card had been stolen.
“The autopsy showed,” said Leo Hochstetter, a fellow newsman who went to Greece when he heard of Polk’s death, “that his lungs were full of water, indicating that he had died by drowning. Presumably the pistol shot had been made after death. His card case was missing, but it later was mailed to the police.”
The Overseas Press Club in New York, to which Polk belonged, was outraged by his murder, and Walter Lippmann was directed to form a committee to investigate. Lippmann and Ernest K. Lindley, Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief and president of the club, retained Bill Donovan to make the investigation. Donovan, who had close friends from the Greek underground of World War II fighting both with the rightists and the leftists, was in a good position to obtain the facts. He entered the Polk case in June and immediately left for Greece. Secretary of State Marshall cabled the American Embassy in Athens that Donovan had the “blessings of the State Department,” and Donovan got in touch with the American ambassador to Greece.
When Donovan arrived in Salonika, James Kellis, who had been the head of the OSS group working in Greece with the anti-Nazi resistance in the north, had joined him. Donovan conferred with C. Moushountis, who was investigating the Polk murder for the General Security Police. Americans with the American Mission for Aid in Greece and the embassy were convinced that the leftists had killed Polk, but Donovan was not at all sure of that. To begin with, Polk’s widow, Rhea, a Greek herself, believed that the Greek government was responsible, and Donovan, characteristically, had a high opinion of a woman’s testimony. James Kellis was even less certain. On June 18, 1948, he wrote to Guy Martin, who was the assistant counsel to the Lippmann Committee, in Washington, “Up to this moment, I sincerely believed that the Communists were behind the murder . . . now I was not too certain. . . . Many of our officials here were concerned that if the extreme right committed this murder and were discovered, that this may upset our aid program to Greece.”
After several months passed, Gregory Stactopoulos, a reporter for Makedonia, a daily newspaper in Salonika, confessed to the murder and was tried and sentenced to life in prison. But Donovan’s investigators were not convinced that he was even present at the killing. Nevertheless, when Donovan made his report from Salonika on April 21, 1949, he assured Lippmann, “Your committee can be certain that your original purpose has been realized, that no innocent man be framed and no guilty one be whitewashed.”
Donovan had, he said, “impressed on Greek officials the necessity of exploring fully the leads which pointed to the Right as well as those pointing towards the Left,” but after the Lippmann Committee’s report was published, the charge was made that Donovan did his best to block any line of inquiry that would have embarrassed the Greek government. Donovan had undertaken to investigate the Polk case while he was engaged in a number of other important undertakings, which limited the time he spent in Greece. Had he arrived at the truth? He always insisted that he had. Some of George Polk’s friends thought otherwise.
“My impression is that Donovan was far too busy and perhaps too innocent of Greek intrigue to do more than hit the high spots,” said George Weller, who had lent his only blue suit to Polk when he married Rhea and who had been his best man on that happy day one year before he died.
As a founder of the American Committee on United Europe Donovan was working closely with leaders in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands to bring about European union. On March 29, 1948, Donovan invited prominent Americans to a luncheon at New York’s Ritz-Carlton at which Winston Churchill was the off-the-record speaker. Churchill, then out of office, was devoting much of his time to Donovan’s committee. He spoke eloquently about conditions in Europe. The committee decided that it could best achieve its goals by working through the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe at Strasbourg, and Churchill was entrusted with deciding how the funds the committee had raised were to be used toward this purpose. Donovan and Churchill both believed that the political and economic union of Europe was a prerequisite to restoring European prosperity and security. Donovan chaired another meeting in New York in July and then on August 2 left for Strasbourg to attend the Consultative Assembly. He returned from Europe more convinced than ever that only a united Europe could deter Soviet aggression. On March 3, 1950, Donovan told a House committee, “I believe that we have a stake in Western Europe, one that we must not risk losing because we must wage and win the war in w
hich we now find ourselves, none the less dangerous because it is a subversive and not a shooting war. That is why I believe in the necessity of a united Europe.”
Donovan practiced law, but his partners could not help noticing that he no longer made the exhaustive preparations for a case that had so distinguished his work in the 1930s. Nevertheless, when one of his arguments before the Supreme Court did not go well, everyone was complimentary, except for one partner who acidly observed, “You weren’t prepared.”
The remark made Donovan furious, and the next several times he appeared in court, he was brilliantly prepared. Then his work slumped off again. His energies were failing, and friends noted that he even slept for eight hours at night. Sometimes when a case particularly intrigued him, the old Donovan was still in evidence. In the middle of December 1950 he journeyed first to London and then to Hong Kong with law partner Richard Heppner and Heppner’s wife, Betty, to try to prevent the delivery of 71 of Claire Chennault’s China National Aviation Corporation airliners to the Chinese Communists. The planes had found refuge in Hong Kong when the Reds took over China, but the British courts threatened to yield to the Communists’ demands.
“The issue is drawn,” Donovan stated to a group of reporters in Hong Kong, “whether they [the British] are going to support the Communists in their unlegalized position against us, or us in our legal position against them.”
The case dragged on in the courts, and Donovan and the Heppners went to India on business. Here again they encountered delays, and they looked for ways to fill their time.
“General, let’s go see the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful building in the world,” said Heppner, and the three friends went to Agra. As they strolled through the famous mausoleum, Donovan talked about the law case the entire time.
“Gee, wasn’t that wonderful?” he commented about the Taj when they returned to their car.
Back in Hong Kong matters remained at a standstill. There was time to spare, and Donovan went sightseeing. He bought a frieze from a Chinese temple and had it crated so he could send it home by air. It turned out to be a masterpiece. Finally, the courts acted. They dismissed Donovan’s legal moves, and the case seemed certain to be lost. The battle would have to be carried to higher courts in London.
As he moved about the Far East and Southeast Asia, Donovan’s Chinese, Indian, Thai, Burmese, and Japanese friends came to see him, bringing him up to date on what was happening in their part of the world. In Tokyo on his return trip to the United States, Donovan discussed his findings with Douglas MacArthur, commander of Occupied Japan who was also commanding the United Nations forces then engaged in Korea.
On February 12, 1951, Donovan wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and commented:
Experience would indicate that the Philippines should be considered as a part of a strategic unit which would include the area of the Far East as well as of Southeast Asia.
That our assistance be given the Malay Peninsula because the sea lane between the Peninsula and Sumatra forms the traditional channel between India and the rest of the East.
That Indochina be buttressed because it is the bastion of the Malay Peninsula and of Siam [Thailand].
That while chaos exists now in Burma, that it be reconstituted as a bulwark before India.
That Indonesia be considered as the master key since it is a base not connected with the threatening Asiatic Mainland, yet is backed up by Australia. The Indies secure, would form a protective shield for the Philippines. Formosa would be denied to enemy occupation, and Japan would feel that effective aid was within operable distance.
Donovan anticipated Soviet moves in the area and urged that a “Supreme Commander or High Commissioner with authority and discretion to carry out the political and military policy of the United States” should be designated and “should be authorized and directed to employ such countermeasures as he finds necessary to meet acts of subversion against this area.”
Impressed by MacArthur’s performance in helping to guide Japan from defeat to prosperity, Donovan had him in mind; but in Washington some people, after reading Donovan’s ideas for an American policy in Southeast Asia, immediately thought that the best man for the job would be the former OSS director himself. In making this proposal, Donovan opened the way for his last important service to the United States, a service that was to take him to Thailand, nominally as U.S. ambassador, but in reality with responsibilities going well beyond that office.
Donovan had now become preoccupied with events in Southeast Asia, where a onetime OSS agent named Ho Chi Minh had become disillusioned with America’s dalliances with the colonial French and was implementing Soviet policy.
“He was Moscow-trained, of course,” said Donovan of Ho, whose wartime reports had been sent to his own desk, “but he might have remained loyal to the West if mossbacked reactionaries had not refused to listen to OSS intelligence on the area concerning the aspirations of the people of the Asian countries. There was a time that Ho asked our OSS representatives for books about Abraham Lincoln and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Why, one of our OSS medics saved his life! He was sick with malaria and dysentery. Then he became our bitter enemy.”
Donovan continued his work with the American Committee on United Europe. He assembled statements from 32 leading statesmen in 14 European democracies calling for economic and political integration of the Continent as a practical necessity. Among the leaders who endorsed this viewpoint were Churchill, Vincent Auriol of France, Alcide De Gasperi of Italy, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, and Konrad Adenauer of Germany.
“Only the British Labor Government, the traditionally neutral Swiss, and the Russian-occupied Austrians hold back,” Donovan told the press. “Most of the leaders pledge strong support and urge immediate action.” Donovan was also able to report that Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party backed the ideal of unity. He threw the weight of his committee behind the French proposal that the “entire French-German production of steel and coal be placed under a joint high authority, within an organization open to the participation of other European nations.” He again attended the meetings of the European Consultative Assembly at Strasbourg in 1950. He brought various European leaders such as Robert Schuman, French minister for foreign affairs, and Spaak of Belgium to the United States on speaking tours to help convince his fellow citizens of the need for European unity. Donovan agreed with Winston Churchill when he proposed on the floor of the assembly that the Europeans must establish a European army, and he was optimistic as 1950 drew to an end that Europe might yet become united.
Back in the United States Donovan decided that it was about time he learned to speak French well, and he got in touch with Justin O’Brien of the French faculty at Columbia University, who had served him in the OSS. He asked O’Brien to find a French tutor for him.
“The General speaks some French and wants to improve,” O’Brien told prospective tutors. “He has lately even given a speech in French in Lyon, he tells me. Since he is such a dynamo of energy and such a dominant type, he should have someone very good and very sure of himself as a tutor.”
O’Brien sent Donovan a bright young linguist named Carl Viggiani, who ended up spending every morning from nine to eleven in Donovan’s apartment conversing with him in French. Donovan sent his car for Viggiani each morning and returned him to his home when the lesson was finished.
In July 1952, Donovan went to London to attend the Privy Council concerning Chennault’s planes in Hong Kong. Donovan won the case and was jubilant. “This Chennault plane case is the first Cold War victory in the Far East,” he wrote to Sen. Tom Connally. “It could be felt all over London.
“Technically this decision applies to 40 aircraft,” he said, “but it governs 31 more involved in another suit in Hong Kong, which had not yet reached the Privy Council. Therefore, it passes title to a total fleet of 71 planes with spare parts and appurtenances.”
Now Donovan was worried about getting the planes moved from Hong Kong to where the
y could be “used in ferrying operations and Cold War support all over the world.” The planes were at the British military airport on the mainland of China directly across the sea from Hong Kong. “The British and our own people in Hong Kong are afraid they will not be able to protect these planes from Communist sabotage if they have to stay on the field there more than a week or ten days.” Donovan urged the British to speed up their legal processes.
During the summer of 1952, he served on the advisory commission of the Citizens for Eisenhower. He also made speeches calling the U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union “a futile strategy” that “betrays an ignorance of the nature of the enemy.” To Donovan it appeared that the expansion of Communism could not be halted by drawing a political and military ring around the Russians. He likened Communism to a virus that had become endemic in the modern world. Wherever there were poverty and social and political stagnation, Communism would flare up, promising the people freedom and a better life. But it would instead deliver them to Soviet imperialism. The United States and other western nations must, Donovan believed, work to improve conditions throughout the world to prevent new outbreaks of Communism; at the same time captive nations should be encouraged and supported in their struggle against Soviet tyranny.
On October 3, Donovan was happy to receive a letter from Jean Monnet, president of the new European Coal and Steel Community. The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe was being called to draft a constitution for Europe. “In this manner,” Monnet told Donovan, “we are proceeding to build a United States of Europe. Because Americans understand the importance of this, for themselves as well as for Europe, they have supported and encouraged our efforts. The aid and encouragement of Americans which is marshalled by the American Committee on United Europe has done much to strengthen this great undertaking. Your continued support, now more crucial than ever, will help us greatly to advance toward the full realization of our plans.”
Donovan Page 67
