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William Donovan

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For the baseball pitcher and manager, see Bill Donovan (baseball).
Major General William Joseph Donovan, KBE, United States Army (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) was an American soldier, lawyer and intelligence officer, best remembered today as wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Contents

Early Life

Born in Buffalo, New York, "Wild Bill" Donovan was a college football star at Columbia University, graduating in 1905. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. On the football field, he got the nickname that he would earn over and over again in a long and eventful life: "Wild Bill" Donovan.

Donovan was a member of the New York City "Establishment," a powerful Wall Street lawyer and a Columbia Law School classmate (1908) (but credited to 1907) of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although they were not close at the time.

In 1912, Donovan formed and led a troop of cavalry of the New York State Militia, that in 1916 served on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Pancho Villa campaign.

World War I

During World War I, Donovan organized and led a regiment of the United States Army, the 165th Regiment of the 42nd Division, on the battlefield in France. As a lieutenant colonel, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest American valor award, for leading a successful assault, despite serious wounds. By the end of the war he was a full colonel and his other awards included the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award, and three Purple Hearts. 
Between the Wars


After the war, he was the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, famous for his energetic enforcement of Prohibition, and he ran unsuccessfully for public office. President Calvin Coolidge named him to the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.



World War II

After the start of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt began to put the United States on a war footing. After Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox recommended Donovan, Roosevelt gave him a number of increasingly important assignments, trusting him absolutely until Roosevelt's death in 1945, even though they were political opponents — Roosevelt was a  Democrat and Donovan a lifelong Republican.


In 1940 and 1941 he served as an emissary and information gatherer for Knox and President Roosevelt, traveling to Britain and parts of Europe that were not under Nazi control. 



OSS

In June 1941, Donovan received what would be his most important assignment: Roosevelt named him Coordinator of Information (COI). This made him the first overall chief of the United States Intelligence community, which at the time was fragmented into Army, Navy, FBI, State Department, and other interests. The FBI retained its independence, and control of intelligence in South America, at the insistence of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. 


The COI became the OSS and Donovan was returned to active duty in his WWI rank of Colonel (by war's end he would be Major General). The OSS was responsible for espionage and sabotage in Europe and in parts in Asia. The OSS was kept out of South America by Hoover's hostility to Donovan, and out of the Philippines by Douglas MacArthur's. 


For many years the exploits of the OSS remained under wraps, but in the 1970s and 1980s significant parts of the OSS history were declassified, making Donovan a household name to a new generation. 


After Roosevelt's death, Donovan's political position, which depended on his personal connection to the President, was substantially weakened. He argued forcefully for the retention of the OSS in the years after the war, but President Harry S. Truman was not interested (although the subsequent formation of the CIA did generally follow a related proposal initiated by Donovan). After the war, he reverted to his lifelong role as a lawyer to perform one last duty: he served as special assistant to chief prosecutor Telford Taylor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. 


There he got the personal satisfaction of seeing Nazi leaders who were responsible for torturing and murdering OSS agents brought to justice. For his WWII service, Donovan received the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award the United States military gives for service (rather than valor). He also received an honorary British knighthood.


At the conclusion of the trial, he returned to Wall Street where his firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Irvine, was a powerhouse. He remained always available to the postwar Presidents who needed his counsel — or his intelligence management experience.  


In 1949, he became chairman of the newly-founded American Committee on United Europe, which worked to counter the new Communist threat to Europe by promoting European political unity.


Donovan's son, David Rumsey Donovan, was a naval officer who served with distinction in WWII. His grandson William James Donovan served as an enlisted soldier in Vietnam. 


Donovan died on February 8, 1959, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. at the age of 76, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. 


President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to him as "the Last Hero," which later became the title of a biography of him. After his death, Donovan was awarded the Freedom Award of the International Rescue Committee (not, as some biographies state, the "Medal of Freedom," a different award). 


The law firm he founded, Donovan & Leisure was dissolved in 1998.


General Donovan is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.



List of Honors and Decorations

American Awards
Foreign Awards


Quotes

"Espionage is not a nice thing, nor are the methods employed exemplary. Neither are demolition bombs nor poison gas...  ...We face an enemy who believes one of his chief weapons is that none but he will employ terror. But we will turn terror against him..."


"The door for intelligence work opened for me when I undertook my first secret mission while on my honeymoon in Japan in 1919. The United States Government asked me to take a two-month trip to Siberia to report on the anti-Bolshevik movement in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Well, it wasn't your usual honeymoon, but Mrs. Donovan was very understanding. The mission was successful and opened doors to many more missions for the government. I was heading down the intelligence path and I was loving it."



References

Father Duffy’s Story, by Fr. Francis Patrick Duffy, George H. Doran Company, 1919.


A Doughboy with the Fighting 69th, by Albert M. and A. Churchill Ettinger, Simon & Schuster, 1992.


The Shamrock Battalion of the Rainbow: A Story of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth, by Martin J. Hogan, D. Appleton, 1919.


Into Siam, by Nicol and Blake Clark, Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.


No Banners, No Bands, by Robert Alcorn, D. McKay, 1965.


Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency by Thomas F. Troy, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1981.


Wild Bill Donovan: The Last Hero, by Anthony Cave Brown, N.Y. Times Books, 1982.


Americans All, the Rainbow at War: The Official History of the 42nd Rainbow Division in the World War, by Henry J. Reilly, F.J. Heer, 1936.


OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency, by R. Harris Smith, University of California Press, 1972.



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