by Kai Bird
73. McCloy interview.
74. NYT, April 26, 1930.
75. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
76. Ibid.
77. John Zinsser to Douglas, May 15, 1930, LD.
78. John Zinsser to Douglas, May 24, 1930, LD.
79. Plimpton interviews, March 16, 1982, June 23, 1982.
80. “Period Piece Fellow,” New Yorker, Dec. 4, 1971, p. 6.
81. Mrs. Mary Paulsen (formerly Mrs. Mary Weicker) interview, Aug. 7, 1985.
82. Douglas to F. C. Brophy, Nov. 26, 1930, LD.
83. Amos Peaslee and Admiral Reginald Hall, Three Wars with Germany (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1944).
84. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
FIVE: BLACK TOM: MCCLOY’S WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS
1. Lincoln Steffens letter to Laura Steffens, Aug. 1, 1916, in Ella Winters and Granville Hicks, eds., The Letters of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), vol. I, p. 382; Amos Peaslee and Admiral Reginald Hall, Three Wars with Germany, p. 72.
2. McCloy memo: “Chronology Re Filing of Lyndhurst Testimony,” 1/24/39, NA (Suitland).
3. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983; Robert T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819–1948, vol. II, p. 638.
4. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 123.
5. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
6. Liberty Magazine, April 4, 1931, p. 56.
7. Martin to Friedman, May 13, 1931, NA (Suitland).
8. Testimony of Fred Herrmann, April 4, 1930, NA (Suitland).
9. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, vol. II, p. 638.
10. Ibid.
11. Martin to McCloy, May 28, 1931, NA (Suitland).
12. McCloy interview. July 10, 1986.
13. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
14. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983.
15. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
16. Henry Stimson diary, Jan. 14, 1933, LOC.
17. Martin to McCloy, Dec. 12, 1933, NA (Suitland).
18. McCloy affidavit, contained in Oral Arguments, May 15, 1936, pp. 250–63, NA (Suitland); see also Oral Argument, Jan. 1939, p. 490, NA (Suitland).
19. McCloy affidavit.
20. Franz Ernst Hanfstaengl, The Unheard Witness (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1957) p. 197.
21. NYT, July 5, 1936; McCloy interview.
22. Langbourne M. Williams letter to the author, Aug. 10, 1983; Langbourne M. Williams interview, April 1, 1986.
23. Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Chapel Hill Press, 1989), p. 301.
24. NYT, Aug. 14, 1936.
25. Martin to McCloy, Feb. 2, 1937, NA (Suitland).
26. Memo for Assistant Attorney General McMahon from William Ramsey, July 10, 1937, file 227675, Record Group 60, Department of Justice Straight Numerical files, NA.
27. Ramsey memo to Assistant Attorney General McMahon, October 19, 1937, file 227675, RG 60, Department of Justice Straight Numerical, NA.
28. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
29. Peaslee to McCloy, July 30, 1938, with attached memo, “The Collapse of Carl Ahrendt’s testimony,” NA (Suitland).
30. Mrs. Mary Paulsen interview, Aug. 7, 1985.
31. Mrs. Pauline Plimpton interview, March 16, 1982.
32. Peaslee to McCloy, August 25, 1938, NA (Suitland).
33. “Proposed Outline of Sabotage Brief,” July 21, 1938, NA (Suitland).
34. Final Oral Arguments, Jan. 16, 1939, vol. I, p. 12, NA (Suitland).
35. McCloy to Martin, May 12, 1939, with attached memo, NA (Suitland).
36. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
37. Martin to Christopher B. Garnett, May 3, 1941, NA (Suitland).
38. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986; Personal Affairs, JJM.
39. Witcover, Black Tom, p. 308.
SIX: CRAVATH, THE NEW DEAL, AND THE APPROACH OF WAR
1. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
2. Howard Petersen interview, Aug. 30, 1982.
3. Jean Monnet, Memoirs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), p. 109.
4. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
5. George Ball interview, Dec. 5, 1985.
6. Lewis Douglas to Evan S. Stallcup, 12/4/30, LD.
7. Thomas Ferguson, “From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition, and American Public Policy in the Great Depression,” International Organization, vol. 38, no. 1 (Winter 1984).
8. Ted Morgan, FDR (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 361.
9. Douglas had a poor opinion of FDR. Prior to the convention, he had sent out to the Arizona delegation copies of a column in which Walter Lippmann called Roosevelt “a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for office, would very much like to be President.” (Robert Paul Browder and Thomas G. Smith, Independent: A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas, p. 73.)
10. McCloy to Douglas, 2/24/33, LD.
11. Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 78.
12. McCloy to Douglas, 3/7/33, LD.
13. Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 96.
14. Morgan, FDR, p. 382.
15. Robert T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819–1948, p. 469.
16. Leon Harris, “Clubs for the Cognoscenti,” Town & Country, Sept. 1982.
17. McCloy to Hoover, 11/13/40, PPS File, Anglers’ Club; Anglers’ Club Membership Book, PPS, Subject: Anglers’ Club of New York, HH.
18. McCloy to Herbert Hoover, 6/5/63, HH.
19. Dean Acheson to Douglas, 6/15/35, LD.
20. Douglas to Honorable Leonard P. Moore, 12/31/63, LD.
21. Browder and Smith, Independent, pp. 106–7.
22. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 452.
23. Ibid., p. 557.
24. McCloy interview.
25. Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 111.
26. Douglas to W. R. Matthews, 9/6/34, LD.
27. Morgan, FDR, p. 408.
28. Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 119.
29. Frankfurter Memo regarding Crimson Dinner, 5/8/35, Ballantine Correspondence, reel no. 13, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
30. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, p. 453.
31. Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 128.
32. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
33. Thomas Ferguson, “From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition and American Public Policy in the Great Depression,” International Organization, vol. 38, no. 1 (Winter 1984), p. 91.
34. Swaine, The Cravath Firm, pp. 546–47.
35. U.S. Senate, Committee on Interstate Commerce, Investigation of Railroads, Holding Companies, and Affiliated Companies: Hearings Before a Subcommittee, 75th Cong., pt. 13, Nov. 4–5, 1937, Feb. 17, 1938, p. 5604.
36. Ibid., p. 6777.
37. Ibid., p. 8838.
38. Ibid., pp. 8376–77.
39. U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, Stock Exchange Practices: Hearings, 73rd Cong., pt. 3, June 27–30, July 5, 1933, p. 1011.
40. U.S. Senate, Investigation of Railroads, Holding Companies, and Affiliated Companies, p. 8379.
41. Lewis Strauss cable, 10/21/37, Strauss Papers, Warburg, Felix M. & Frieda, Funeral of Felix, HH.
42. McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.
43. Ibid.
44. Lawrence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), p. 130.
45. Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network (New York: Dial, 1978), p. 90.
46. Thomas Schwartz, “From Occupation to Alliance: John J. McCloy and the Allied High Commission in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–52,” unpublished thesis, Harvard University, June 1985, p. 15; Browder and Smith, Independent, pp. 148–56.
47. Thomas Ferguson interview.
48. Howard Petersen interview, Aug. 30, 1982.
49. Henry L. Stimson a
nd McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Row, 1947), p. 303.
50. Morgan, FDR, p. 534.
51. Philip H. Burch, Jr., Elites in American History: The New Deal to the Carter Administration (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), p. 66.
52. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, p. 386.
53. Benjamin Shute interview, June 24, 1983.
54. Morgan, FDR, p. 540; Browder and Smith, Independent, p. 152; Langbourne M. Williams interview, April 1, 1986.
55. Morgan, FDR, p. 535.
56. McCloy to Dean Acheson, 9/13/40, folder 261, box 21, Acheson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University; Schwartz, “From Occupation to Alliance/’ p. 16.
57. Shoup and Minter, Imperial Brain Trust, p. 123; Robert Divine, Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II (New York: Wiley, 1965), p. 90.
58. Lewis Douglas to James Conant, 10/9/40, LD.
59. James Conant to Lewis Douglas, 10/4/40, LD.
60. Morgan, FDR, p. 539.
61. Henry Stimson diary, 10/23/39, LOC.
62. Henry Stimson diary, 9/16/40, LOC.
63. PM, Oct. 1, 1940, Sept. 2, 1940, Sept. 15, 1940.
64. Henry Paynter, “What Set Off Power Blast?,” PM, Sept. 13, 1940.
65. Morgan, FDR, p. 540.
BOOK TWO
SEVEN: IMPS OF SATAN
1. Henry Stimson diary, 9/25/40, LOC.
2. Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Washington, D.C.: Altheia Books, University Publications of America, 1981), pp. 14–15.
3. McCloy had been briefly consulted sometime that summer regarding the establishment of Hoover’s SIS. See J. Edgar Hoover to McCloy, 2/4/41, folder ASW 044.2, FBI, RG 107, Formerly Security Classified, box 11, NA.
4. McCloy to Miles, 11/2/40, folder ASW 000.24, Propaganda, RG 107, box 1, NA.
5. Miles to McCloy, 2/26/41, folder ASW 000.24, Propaganda, RG 107, box 1, NA.
6. McCloy memo, 11/7/40, folder ASW 000.24, Propaganda, RG 107, box 1, NA.
7. McCloy to Marshall, 2/2/41, folder ASW 000.24, Propaganda, RG 107, box 1, NA.
8. McCloy to Hoover, 11/18/40, folder ASW 044.2, FBI, RG 107, box 11, NA.
9. Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 87.
10. “Sabotage, Spying and Plotting Found Rife on West Coast,” PM, Nov. 8, 1940.
11. McCloy to Hoover, 11/18/40, folder ASW 044.2, FBI, RG 107, box 11, NA.
12. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, p. 342.
13. Arthur E. Palmer to McCloy, 11/22/40, folder ASW 021, Air Force, RG 107, box 10, NA.
14. John Morton Blum, Years of Urgency, p. 209.
15. McCloy picked up the phrase from his friend Jean Monnet, who was then working with the British Supply Council in Washington.
16. Max Freedman, Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence 1928–1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 573–74. Freedman reports that Jean Monnet also used the phrase at lunch one day with Frankfurter.
17. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), p. 44.
18. Walter Isaacson and Thomas Evans, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, pp. 192–95.
19. Ibid., p. 194.
20. Henry Stimson diary, 12/18/40, NA.
21. McCloy testimony, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, Washington, D.C., 11/3/81.
22. Accountant’s statement, Personal Affairs, JJM; McCloy to Douglas and Brunie, 2/24/41, LD.
23. Memorandum for the secretary of war from JJMcC, 12/28/40, folder ASW 004.401, Overall Balance Sheet, RG 107, box 4, NA.
24. Henry Stimson diary, 12/17/40, LOC.
25. Henry Stimson diary, 12/29/40, LOC.
26. John Morton Blum, Years of Urgency, p. 212; Warren F. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 135; Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 217–18.
27. Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 1938–1980 (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 34.
28. Henry Stimson diary, 3/3/41, 3/4/41, LOC; Blum, Years of Urgency, p. 227.
29. Henry Stimson diary, 3/7/41, 3/8/41, LOC; Blum, Years of Urgency, pp. 227–28.
30. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act, p. 233.
31. Merlo J. Pusey, Eugene Meyer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), p. 310.
32. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
33. Ibid.
34. McCloy to Lippmann, 6/26/42, box 48, RG 107, NA.
35. Bruce A. Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter p. 227.
36. Ibid., p. 204.
37. Henry Stimson diary, 3/21/41, LOC; Elliot Roosevelt, ed., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928–194$ (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1950), vol. II, p. 1151.
38. Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, p. 193.
39. Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 147.
40. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 344.
41. Leon Pearson, “Did You Happen to See—John J. McCloy?” Washington Post (hereafter WP), April 23, 1941.
42. McCloy memorandum of conversation with Mr. J. Edgar Hoover on April 26, 1941; memorandum for the secretary of war, “Subject: Proposed sabotage investigations, 5/1/41,” ASW, 383.4, Espionage & Sabotage General, RG 107, box 36, NA.
43. Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978), pp. 98–99. Hoover himself was on record as having disapproved of wiretapping as an investigative tool. In a letter dated Feb. 9, 1940, he wrote that wiretapping “has proved a definite handicap or barrier in the development of ethical, scientific, and sound investigative technique.” (Harvard Law Review, vol. 53 [March 1940], p. 870.)
44. McCloy, memorandum for the secretary of war, “Subject: Proposed sabotage investigations, 5/1/41,” ASW 383.4, Espionage & Sabotage General, RG 107, box 36, NA.
45. Jackson memorandum for the president, 4/29/41, ASW 383.4, Espionage & Sabotage General, RG 107, box 36, NA.
46. McCloy to attorney general, 5/6/41, ASW 383.4, Espionage & Sabotage General, RG 107, box 36, NA.
47. Jackson to McCloy, 5/16/41, ASW 383.4, Espionage & Sabotage General, RG 107, box 36, NA.
48. Perrett, Days of Sadness, p. 101.
49. David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 331–33.
50. Ibid; Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, Sabotage: The Secret War Against America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), pp. 16–17, 24–32.
51. McCloy to La Guardia, 6/20/41, ASW 383.4, Fifth Column Activities, RG 107, box 35, NA.
52. Troy, Donovan and the CIA, pp. 55–56, 59, 81.
53. “Charges Contained in Letter of February 10, 1941,” ASW 371.1, General, RG 107, box 34, NA.
54. Troy, Donovan and the CIA, p. 42.
55. McCloy to Stimson, 6/3/41, ASW 371.1, General, RG 107, box 34, NA.
56. Henry Stimson diary, 7/3/41, LOC.
57. Troy, Donovan and the CIA, p. 68. Even as he was negotiating the formation of the country’s first centralized intelligence service, he established a new branch within G-2 called the “Special Study Group” (SSG) to “study the psychology of Americans, neutrals, and conquered peoples and the impact on them of certain proposed operations.” (Troy, Donovan and the CIA, p. 130.) SSG never really became an operational unit, but its existence was yet another indication of the priority McCloy placed on counterintelligence and propaganda.
58. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp. 343–44.
59. McCloy to Jesse H. Jones with attached memo, “The Problem of War Organization and Post-War Readjustment,”
4/23/41, ASW 388, Peace Preserving, RG 107, box 39, NA.
60. Ibid.
61. Ted Morgan, FDR, p. 666.
62. Douglas to Frankfurter, 6/19/41, LD.
63. Perrett, Days of Sadness, p. 116.
64. Gordon W. Prange, Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 138; Henry Stimson diary, 7/2/41, LOC.
65. Douglas to Connally, 8/19/41; Connally to Douglas, 8/23/41; Robertson to Douglas, 7/25/41; Douglas to Robertson, 7/18/41, LD.
66. McCloy to Clark, 8/14/41, ASW 014.3, Civil Status and Relations—Public Relations, RG 107, box 6, NA. McCloy had sent an army lawyer, Captain Karl R. Bendetsen, to work with Rayburn on the draft-bill vote. In the midst of the debate, Bendetsen reported to McCloy on the phone that an amendment had been proposed that would bar the president from sending any of the draftees outside of the forty-eight continental states. McCloy told Bendetsen to tell Rayburn that the amendment was unacceptable, saying, “If the Congress wants to terminate our defenses, it will be their responsibility.” (Karl R. Bendetsen interview, Nov. 10, 1983.)
67. “All U.S. Defense Efforts Aimed at Nazis, McCloy Says,” WP, Sept. 20, 1941.
68. NYT, Sept. 20, 1941.
69. Perrett, Days of Sadness, pp. 194–95.
70. Ibid., p. 189; “From McCloy, Additional Notes on Reduction of Size of Army, 10/1/41?,” LD.
71. “Notes on the Lippmann-Lindley theory,” n.d., LD.
72. Ibid.
73. McCloy to Gerow, 7/31/41, ASW 004.401, Victory Program, RG 107, box 4, NA.
74. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports (New York: Henry Holt, 1958), p. 73.
75. Gerow to McCloy, 8/5/41, ASW 004.401, Victory Program, RG 107, box 4, NA.
76. Stimson to Roosevelt, 8/18/41, ASW 004.401, Victory Program, box 4, RG 107, NA.
77. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports, p. 21; Albert C. Wedemeyer interview, Nov. 11, 1983.
78. McCloy memo, n.d., 8 pages, ASW 004.401, Victory Program, box 4, RG 107, NA.
79. Henry Stimson diary, 8/12/41, LOC.
80. McCloy to Hugh A. Moran, 11/15/41, ASW 014.3, Civil Status and Relations—Public Relations, RG 107, box 6, NA.
81. John U. Terrell, “Naval Officer Warns of Threat of Japanese Agents on the Coast,” PM, Aug. 14, 1941.
82. Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 5.
83. Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 58.
