Wild Bill Donovan

by Douglas Waller

  THAILAND HAD MORE pleasurable moments for Donovan than dealing with drugs and thugs. A parade of VIPs came through. California Republican Bill Knowland, the hard-line Senate majority leader who backed Chiang, dropped by and offered over a whiskey and soda to float Donovan’s name with Ike to fill the vacant chief justice seat on the Supreme Court. Donovan thought he was ill-suited for that job and told Knowland not to pursue the matter with Ike. Richard and Pat Nixon arrived at the end of October for a three-day visit as part of a world tour. Donovan escorted the vice president to his meetings with the regime and sent a gushy cable to the State Department afterward, claiming that the “warmth” of Nixon’s personality had bowled over his Thai hosts. But he wrote it only because he knew that was what the administration wanted to hear. Later Ruth confessed to him: “I just didn’t like Nixon.” Donovan agreed that he was a ruthless and charmless man.

  At first, Donovan had boundless energy. He swam and played tennis in the embassy compound, worked on his intelligence history book at night, and took regular French classes from a beautiful instructor named Claire Bouchet. Many evenings he ducked out of diplomatic parties, preferring rounds of bridge with Ruth, Mary, and vanden Heuvel. Ruth and Bill were the happiest they had been together in a long time. Ruth found Thailand more enjoyable than she expected and earned high marks from the embassy staff for her eagerness to explore the country. She attended Thai weddings with Bill, hunted tigers on a safari with Jim Thompson, and rode elephants to an archaeological site with Carleton Coon, Donovan’s OSS agent from North Africa, who came for a visit.

  Mary was erratic throughout her stay in Bangkok. She had bouts of depression over Sheilah’s death. She went on shopping binges in Hong Kong. Sometimes she reverted to her role as Donovan’s confidential assistant, passing along to him intelligence she picked up from the diplomatic circuit on the Viet Minh. Other times she became a party animal; she passed out after dancing through the night at one Thai event and Bill and Ruth stayed up to nurse her hangover. She seemed to vanden Heuvel never to be physically well, always heavily medicated. Sometimes she wore a neck brace to relieve pain from a bad back. Mary, Ruth, and even granddaughter Patricia became Donovan’s traveling partners for the many trips he took outside Thailand. Donovan ignored the restrictions Eisenhower and his secretary of state had placed on him and became a de facto regional diplomat for Southeast Asia, and even beyond. He also routinely bypassed John Foster Dulles and reported directly to Ike on diplomatic initiatives he had not discussed with the secretary. It irritated Foster but Donovan did not care. His contempt for the man only grew as the months passed. At one point he considered complaining to Nixon about what he perceived to be Foster’s weak leadership fighting communism in Southeast Asia, but thought better of it because he did not trust the vice president. Dulles finally demanded that Donovan get State Department approval every time he wanted to set foot out of Thailand. When the department then claimed it had no money for plane travel, hoping that would discourage his wanderlust, Donovan paid for the tickets out of his own pocket.

  The nation outside of Thailand that commanded most of Donovan’s attention was Vietnam. He practically became Washington’s second ambassador there. Donovan traveled frequently to Saigon, touring the battlefields outside the city, huddling with top Vietnamese and French officials, and receiving regular briefings from the man who was its U.S. ambassador, Donald Heath, a career diplomat who had been at the post since 1950. Soon Donovan had a network of military and intelligence sources in the country almost as wide as Heath’s. He became close friends with General John “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, the stumpy, gravel-voiced American military adviser in Vietnam who at first had been optimistic about French prospects for holding on to its colony. On Donovan’s visits to Saigon and secret trips O’Daniel made to Bangkok, the two brainstormed ways to turn the war around and weaken Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Minh’s leader. It wasn’t long before Heath, who could be prickly over protocol, began to resent his intruder, but Donovan continued to poach. He believed Heath lacked the energy and vision to save Vietnam from the communists. Senior officials in Washington agreed. Nixon thought Heath had been in the country too long and had become co-opted by the French. Beetle Smith lamented that the department should have posted Donovan to Saigon instead of to Bangkok.

  Toward the end of World War II, an OSS team code-named “Deer” made brief contact with Ho Chi Minh, who was fighting the Japanese in the north, and had supplied him with a few weapons. An OSS medic even treated the guerrilla leader for malaria and dysentery. Ho pressed for more OSS help and American recognition of his movement, which Donovan relayed to Truman. But after the war, Truman ceded Indochina to the French, who were intent on crushing both its communists and nationalists to restore colonial rule. Eisenhower believed the French had handled Vietnam miserably and refused to rescue them with American troops. But Ike also believed that if the country fell to the communists the rest of Southeast Asia would be imperiled, which was why he dispatched American military aid, Iron Mike, and a large contingent of U.S. trainers to Saigon.

  Immediately after World War II, Donovan felt that Ho was a nationalist and had the potential to be a Tito-like ally of the United States. But he had changed his mind by the time he arrived in Thailand. America’s job, he believed, was finding a graceful exit for the French and not letting the Viet Minh come in as they left.

  On May 8, 1954, vanden Heuvel ordered the Marine guards to lower the Bangkok embassy’s American flag to half-mast the next day to mark the Viet Minh’s capture of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. At Donovan’s staff meeting later that afternoon, the aides around the conference table were gloomy over the news. “I think it is a disgrace that we should sit in this room as Americans and feel so deeply the responsibility for the tragedy of Indochina,” vanden Heuvel finally blurted out. The French had brought this on themselves. They had refused “to recognize the nationalistic aspirations of the Vietnamese” and to get out of the country, he argued. Donovan’s face flushed and his eyes flashed with anger. “It is an American responsibility,” he said coldly, glaring at his young officer. Donovan, like Eisenhower, did not want to send in American forces after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Instead, he pushed for propaganda and covert operations to keep Ho from taking over. He lobbied Phao to commit his secret police to the Saigon government fighting the Viet Minh and pressed the CIA station chief in Bangkok to step up supply flights into Vietnam.

  Donovan also looked for a true nationalist leader to unify the nation. He believed he found that man in Ngo Dinh Diem, who was appointed prime minister of South Vietnam after the Dien Bien Phu defeat by Bao Dai, the puppet emperor for the French. An anti–Viet Minh politician who had lived in exile in Europe since 1950, Diem had become a favorite with conservative Republicans in Washington. He also was a Catholic and came highly recommended to Donovan by clerics. Donovan met with Diem frequently in Washington and Saigon and became convinced he was the Catholic alternative to Ho and worth supporting. He plugged Diem with lawmakers visiting Bangkok and in letters to Eisenhower. South Vietnam’s new leader is “an intense nationalist and an incorruptible man,” he declared in speeches.

  Donovan proved a poor judge of character in this case. Diem, who became president of Vietnam in 1955, turned out to be a corrupt, nepotistic dictator who was eventually assassinated in a 1963 coup given the green light by the administration of John F. Kennedy.

  SIX DAYS AFTER the fall of Dien Bien Phu, vanden Heuvel walked into Donovan’s embassy office and could tell he was in a bad mood that morning. Why, he didn’t know. The first piece of business they had to deal with was a top secret telegram that had come in from the State Department on Donovan’s proposal to have the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command put long-range bombers in Thailand. Accepting the SAC bombers, which were capable of carrying nuclear weapons, would be a politically sensitive move for the Thai government and a provocative one for the region. But Donovan was enthusiastic about a SAC squadron coming to Thailand and J
ohn Foster Dulles backed it. The Joint Chiefs were balking, however. Donovan had drafted a memo to the Pentagon arguing his case and vanden Heuvel began making editing suggestions. Donovan suddenly blew up. He rose from his chair, eyes wide, face flushed, swearing at his Air Force aide for trying to rewrite his copy, and stormed out of the room. The venting was totally out of character for Donovan, who prided himself on keeping his emotions under control, particularly with subordinates. Vanden Heuvel, who worshipped Donovan and had been a devoted aide, was deeply wounded. But lately he had noticed more of these outbursts from the boss—against him, against other members of the embassy staff, even toward Ruth.

  Donovan was starting to look old and weak. The oppressive jungle heat and the strain of constant travel had begun to take a toll on his seventy-year-old body. He tried to exercise in the embassy gymnasium, but the sessions became more infrequent and he had begun to gain more weight. Other diplomats in the region noticed that Donovan’s memory had begun to fade and his mind was not as sharp in meetings.

  Three months earlier, John Foster Dulles had asked his staff for evaluations of the ambassadors in Asia. The Thais had nothing but praise for Donovan. Walter Robertson, the assistant secretary for Asia, sent Dulles a glowing evaluation. “There were many misgivings” about sending the former spy chief to Thailand, Robertson acknowledged, but “I believe Ambassador Donovan has been a stimulating and dynamic factor.” Donovan, however, cared nothing about an evaluation. By the spring of 1954, he was ready to leave Thailand.

  Donovan wrote Eisenhower that he wanted to go on August 1. He had planned to stay in Thailand for only a year, he reminded him. Ike understood all along that it would be a one-year appointment but he was truly distraught when he learned that Donovan intended to keep to that schedule. “It was with a feeling closely akin to dismay when I read your letter,” the president wrote back. Eisenhower and Dulles also worried that Donovan’s abrupt resignation might rattle the Thai government. They asked him to remain at his post longer to give them time to find a replacement with as high a profile. Donovan agreed to stay on until the end of August, although he was not happy about it.

  Predictably, there were murmurs in Thai government circles at the end of August that Donovan had been recalled for being too aggressive in fighting the communists and that his departure signaled Washington was scaling back its commitment to Bangkok and the rest of the region. Donovan knew that would be the reaction and he pressed Eisenhower to keep him as a special adviser to the region. That way he could travel about Southeast Asia as a diplomatic troubleshooter, as he had before, with his expenses paid by the State Department, but he would be free to make money as a lawyer to refill his bank account.

  Once more, he was nearly broke. The law firm’s partners had cautioned vanden Heuvel to keep a careful eye on Donovan’s spending while he was in Thailand but that became an impossible job for the Air Force lieutenant. Donovan often dipped into firm money or his own to pay for his many trips throughout the region and again he owed back taxes to the IRS.

  Donovan eventually settled his tax problems with the IRS. To help replenish his finances he registered as a lobbyist for the Thai government, collecting a $50,000 fee; Eisenhower was irritated that he became an influence peddler for the Thais so soon after his ambassadorship. Ike and John Foster Dulles also cooled to the idea of sending Donovan back to Asia as a roving diplomat. Thailand would be his last major public assignment.

  Chapter 34

  Walter Reed

  WHEN DONOVAN RETURNED to Washington, Eisenhower gave him the attention typically afforded to men put out to pasture. He sent Donovan to Europe to represent him at ceremonies dedicating cemeteries and memorials for the World War II dead, appointed him to a commission studying veterans’ pensions, and made sure he was on the A-list for tickets to his second inauguration in January 1957. Occasionally, Donovan sent Ike notes with foreign policy or political advice. Eisenhower always sent back polite responses.

  Donovan’s relations with Truman, who had retired to Independence, remained in a deep freeze. When Ike made Donovan chairman of the People to People Foundation to promote citizen exchanges with countries overseas, he had him go to Truman to ask him to serve as an honorary chairman. There was bad blood between Eisenhower and his predecessor, but Donovan knew Truman would be no more receptive to him so he sent vanden Heuvel to Independence with the invitation in January 1957. Truman politely listened to the young lawyer but refused to join People to People. The same month, Donovan asked Truman to sign a petition to Russia demanding justice for Hungarians, whose revolt from the Warsaw Pact had just been crushed by Soviet tanks. Truman refused, sending back an insulting letter that these kinds of petitions were worthless and only designed “to get the names of the people who signed them in the papers.”

  Donovan kept traveling in Europe and Asia to drum up business for the law firm. He also continued to pursue his anticommunist causes with a passion. He resumed his work with the International Rescue Committee, a refugee organization that had supplied the OSS with intelligence from European exiles during World War II. Donovan now arranged for the committee to help the CIA as well with refugees bringing out information from the Eastern bloc and joining covert operations to destabilize Soviet rule. He toured Europe for a month as an IRC representative, sounding the alarm over a Soviet program to convince refugees to return home. The bribes and threats from Moscow resulted only in a trickle of redefections, but Donovan condemned it as an intimidation tactic to break resistance movements behind the Iron Curtain. After the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, he tirelessly raised $1.5 million to aid more than ten thousand refugees streaming into Austria. He flew to the Hungarian border to supervise personally the relief operation—a grueling trip that exhausted him.

  Donovan also continued to believe that Diem was Vietnam’s savior. On his Asia trips, he often stopped in Saigon for long talks with the South’s president. Back in Washington he joined Iron Mike O’Daniel, who had retired as chief of the U.S. military assistance group, in forming American Friends of Vietnam. The Friends became a propaganda organ for Diem, extolling the “fine progress” Washington’s “staunch ally” had made.

  BILL AND RUTH retreated to their separate worlds after Thailand. Donovan visited Chapel Hill and Nonquitt only occasionally. Ruth’s trips to New York were rare. David had even less contact with his father and preferred to keep it that way; Donovan’s fame had been too overpowering. “He stole the sun from anyone around him,” a friend of David’s said. After Sheilah’s death, David had demanded that Mary spend more time at home taking care of the other children, but she ignored him, continuing to serve as Donovan’s hostess in New York when he needed her. When she was in Berryville she carved out a social life separate from her husband.

  After she returned from Thailand, Mary, who had never been particularly good with horses, took a bad spill from one. It aggravated the neck pain she had suffered overseas and forced her to wear the brace more. She began taking heavy doses of painkillers during the day and sleeping pills to help her rest at night. By the summer of 1955, her Berryville friends worried that she had an alcohol and prescription drug problem. In July, Ruth, Mary, and the grandchildren took their annual summer vacation at Nonquitt. Mary by then was mixing alcohol and barbiturates in dangerous quantities. She made fewer entries in her appointment diary and the ones that were written were in a nearly illegible scrawl.

  Sunday night, July 24, Mary went to bed doped up on liquor and sedatives. She may have awoken in the middle of the night and swallowed more pills. The next morning, Ruth knocked on her bedroom door but got no answer. She walked in and found Mary dead on the bed. Donovan rushed to Nonquitt the next day. He arrived at the morgue as the medical examiner finished his autopsy. The coroner concluded in his report that this thirty-seven-year-old woman had died of “barbiturate poisoning” under “circumstances undetermined”—a polite way of saying he didn’t know if the overdose had been accidental or intentional. Some friends in Berr
yville, as well as OSS colleagues who knew Donovan’s daughter-in-law, suspected she had committed suicide for a number of reasons: boredom, feelings of unfulfillment, lingering grief over Sheilah’s death. Donovan believed the overdose had been accidental, but the pain for him was no less profound. When he returned to the Nonquitt cottage after visiting the coroner he sat alone on its wide front porch as a warm sea breeze washed over him—and cried.

  Mary was buried in Arlington National Cemetery next to Patricia and Sheilah. Because David had also served in the military, the cemetery allowed his wife and children to be interred there. David, who had not been at Nonquitt, stoically accepted Mary’s death. Ruth now became the grandchildren’s surrogate mother at Chapel Hill. She was kind and gentle with them. She always spoke quietly and never raised her voice to discipline them. But she could be stern when she had to. She demanded obedience and good behavior. Rooms must be clean. Beds made. Grandchildren must arrive well dressed and on time for dinner. They knew not to cross their Num Num. And they never really wanted to because they also knew misbehavior would hurt her feelings.

  Donovan returned to the lonely Sutton Place apartment in New York.

  IN MID-FEBRUARY 1957, Ruth was visiting her brother, Dexter, in Buffalo when a phone call came from Jane Smith, Donovan’s secretary at the law firm, who had been frantic trying to track her down. Donovan is at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Smith told her. You must fly there immediately.

  “What in the world is he doing out there?” Ruth asked. The question startled Smith. Donovan was at the Mayo Clinic because he was gravely ill and his wife appeared to know nothing about his condition. But Ruth’s surprise was understandable. In the past seven months she had rarely seen Bill.