Washington Post Book Reviews
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Saturday March 5, 2011
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WILD BILL DONOVAN: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage
Douglas Waller
Free Press
ISBN 978-1416567448
466 pages
$30
Reviewed by David Wise
On the eve of the Normandy invasion in 1944, Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Navy secretary James Forrestal all ordered William J. Donovan, the chief of the Office of Strategic Services, to remain behind in London. It would not do for the head of the OSS, the nation's intelligence service, to be shot, killed or captured.
They should have known better. True to his sobriquet of "Wild Bill," Donovan wangled his way onto a heavy cruiser that was part of the invasion armada, hitched a ride on a passing landing craft and went ashore on Utah beach. He was not a man who took no for an answer.
After barely missing being strafed by four German Messerschmitts, Donovan, with a trusted aide, Col. David Bruce, walked inland hoping to make contact with his agents or the French resistance. Suddenly they found themselves in a field close to German soldiers. As they were raked by enemy machine gunfire, Donovan turned to Bruce. "You understand ... that neither of us must be captured. We know too much." Donovan reached for his "L pill," a lethal poison that OSS agents carried in case of capture. He emptied his pockets but couldn't find it; he had left it in his room at Claridge's in London. Bruce did not have his either. The pair ran across the field and managed to make their way back to the American lines.
The episode, recounted by Douglas Waller in this superb, dramatic yet scholarly biography, tells a great deal about the man who built a far-flung intelligence organization from scratch in the midst of World War II. Courageous but reckless, always itching to be in the center of the action, Donovan was smart, tough and seemingly endowed with boundless energy.
Born in Buffalo's Irish First Ward to working-class parents, Donovan realized he was not cut out for the priesthood, and graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School. He was handsome, with a gift for impressing his elders and mentors. He married a rich girl (his entree into Buffalo society), was wounded in World War I, and earned the Congressional Medal of Honor -- although only after political friends intervened to overturn the Army's initial refusal to award him the medal.
Soon established as a successful young lawyer, he moved to New York, lost a race for governor and six months before Pearl Harbor sent a memo to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging the creation of a central intelligence service. "Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless," the memo warned. Roosevelt, who badly wanted better information from abroad and regarded the military and State Department intelligence units as next-to-useless, embraced Donovan's idea. FDR gave him a bland interim title and in 1942 appointed him chief of the OSS.
As the new player in town, Donovan was talented at making enemies, notably J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, but also the chief of G-2 (Army intelligence) and others. What comes through clearly is that Donovan spent as much time battling rival agencies as he did running the wartime spy service. Only his direct access to FDR saved him. And the turf wars among the spy agencies continue to this day.
Although generally admiring of his subject, Waller, a former correspondent for Time and Newsweek, does not hesitate to describe the OSS' failed operations or Donovan's personal flaws. Donovan met with Mussolini in 1935 and congratulated the dictator's army chief on his "great victory" in crushing Ethiopia. Donovan was a famously poor administrator, and despite many OSS successes, Waller notes, he also presided over "horrible mistakes" and "botched missions."
At times Donovan's fascination with spy gadgetry and operations behind enemy lines may have made him neglect the organization's intelligence-gathering mission. He loved the exotic weapons, explosives and schemes hatched by Stanley Lovell, the agency's equivalent of "Q" in the James Bond stories. Lovell plotted to make Hitler's mustache fall off and his voice turn soprano by injecting female hormones into the vegetables der Fuehrer ate. Now where did the CIA get the idea of making Fidel Castro's beard fall out?
A succession of women were unable to resist Donovan's Irish charm -- and as a result, his wife, Ruth, well aware of his extramarital wanderings, struggled to build a life of her own. The Donovans were often apart. He lived through family tragedies -- his daughter was killed in a car crash, his daughter-in-law died of an overdose of sleeping pills, and a 4-year-old granddaughter drank silver polish and died.
Through it all, he persevered. But at the end of the war, his dream of heading a new central intelligence agency was shattered.
President Truman distrusted Donovan, a Republican, and disbanded the OSS. When the CIA was created two years later, Eisenhower, who admired Donovan, nevertheless appointed Allen Dulles, Donovan's wartime chief in Switzerland, director of central intelligence.
"Wild Bill Donovan" is the first carefully researched, in-depth biography of the legendary World War II spymaster. For anyone interested in the history of American intelligence, it is required reading.
David Wise is the author of "Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China," to be published this spring.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE DEATH INSTINCT
Jed Rubenfeld
Riverhead
ISBN 978-1594487828
464 pages
$26.95
Reviewed by Seth Stern
On Sept. 16, 1920, a bomb hidden inside a horse-drawn carriage exploded in the heart of Manhattan's financial district, killing dozens of people. That long-forgotten bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York's history until Sept. 11, 2001, when it became a renewed subject of curiosity.
Jed Rubenfeld has chosen the 1920 crime as the jumping-off point for his second historical thriller, "The Death Instinct." The result is another engaging whodunit that meticulously reconstructs early-20th-century New York.
Rubenfeld brings back the stars of his earlier best-seller, "The Interpretation of Murder": Jimmy Littlemore, still the cleanest cop in New York; and Dr. Stratham Younger, older and a bit coarsened after tending to the wounded in Europe during World War I. Together they must solve the bombing while fighting off a ghoulish band of kidnappers and powerful figures intent on blaming everything on foreign-born anarchists and starting a war with Mexico. (Another star of the first book, Sigmund Freud, is reduced to a supporting role here, but readers might wonder what he would think of the tough-love parenting advocated by Rubenfeld's wife and fellow Yale law professor, Amy Chua, in her new book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.")
The action moves from New York and Washington to Paris and Vienna and back in time to the trenches of World War I, where Younger met his latest beguiling love interest, Colette Rousseau. Once again, Younger must save a bright, beautiful damsel in distress who can't seem to make up her mind whether to love him.
The story is well told, but the dialogue occasionally reads like a dime-store detective novel. Washington readers in particular might roll their eyes at how the capital and its players are portrayed, such as one corny exchange in which Littlemore politely rejects the advances of a seductive congressional aide:
'"There are rules about this kind of thing.'
"'Rules?' She slipped off her shoes, one at a time, and looked up at him, putting her hands on his chest. 'This is Washington, Agent Littlemore. The rules don't apply here.'"
Rubenfeld's attempt to draw parallels between the September 1920 and 2001 bombings can feel somewhat heavy-handed, too. As we approach the 10th anniversary, it's hard not to conclude that Rubenfeld had the more recent attack in mind: "When it happened," Littlemore says, "it was like nothing would ever be the same. The country was frozen. Life was going to be different forever."
Seth Stern is co-author of "Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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