William J. Donovan

General William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan (January 1, 1883 - February 8, 1959) was the founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from June 1942 to October 1945. He established the first centralized American intelligence agency capable of conducting covert operations, psychological warfare, and clandestine intelligence collection, doing so substantially on templates and training provided by British Security Coordination (BSC) director William Stephenson. His organizational concepts and personnel networks formed the foundation for the Central Intelligence Agency when it was created in 1947, though Donovan himself was not involved in the CIA's creation.¹

Military Career

Donovan served in the U.S. Army during World War I, commanding the 1st Battalion, 165th Infantry Regiment (the "Fighting 69th"). He received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October 1918. Between the wars he practiced law in New York and maintained intelligence-adjacent contacts through his Republican political connections and legal work. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York and ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York in 1932.¹

Creation of the OSS

In mid-1940, President Roosevelt asked Donovan to travel to Britain to assess whether Britain could survive the German onslaught. Donovan met with senior British officials including Winston Churchill and returned with a positive assessment that was partly responsible for Roosevelt's decision to extend Lend-Lease support to Britain. During subsequent trips he developed a personal relationship with Stephenson, who was simultaneously running BSC from New York. Stephenson provided Donovan with access to British intelligence methods and, critically, persuaded Roosevelt to task Donovan with creating an American intelligence organization on the BSC/SOE model.

Donovan submitted his organizational plan to Roosevelt in July 1941, leading first to his appointment as Coordinator of Information in July 1941 and then, when that office was formalized with expanded powers, to the OSS in June 1942. BSC and SOE provided training templates, trained the first OSS agents at Camp X in Ontario, and seconded British officers to OSS training programs. Donovan described BSC as "the greatest integrated secret intelligence and operations organization that has ever existed anywhere."¹

OSS Operations

Donovan ran the OSS as a relatively decentralized operation that drew heavily on academic talent - the Research and Analysis Branch was staffed with professors from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other major universities - and on the social and professional networks of the American East Coast establishment. The OSS conducted covert operations, resistance support, and psychological warfare across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Allen Dulles ran the OSS Switzerland station from 1942 onward, developing the European network that became the CIA's clandestine service foundation.¹

Mobilizing Science for War

Donovan, who believed World War II was in large measure a battle of science and organization, named Boston industrialist Stanley Lovell to head OSS Research and Development and serve as the agency's liaison to the scientific community, charging him: "I need every subtle device and every underhanded trick to use against the Germans and Japanese ... You'll have to invent them all, Lovell, because you're going to be my man." He commissioned a psychoanalytic study of Adolf Hitler from psychoanalyst Walter Langer (brother of OSS Research and Analysis chief William Langer) and adapted a British officer-selection method into an OSS psychological assessment system, giving Harvard psychologist Henry Murray only fifteen days to build a program that tested recruits' ability to withstand pressure, lead, hold liquor, and lie skillfully.²

Truth Drug Research

One of Donovan's most persistent research interests was a pharmacological truth serum. By spring 1943 the OSS truth drug committee, working with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, had settled on cannabis extract (tetrahydrocannabinol acetate, designated "TD") as the most promising of candidates that also included mescaline and scopolamine, testing it on volunteer personnel who became known informally as "Donovan's Dreamers." TD induced loquacity but did not reliably compel truth. The first field test was conducted by narcotics agent George White on New York mobster August Del Gracio on May 27, 1943, on the logic that a criminal could not safely complain. The work, ultimately inconclusive, seeded the CIA's postwar ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA programs.³

Dissolution and the CIA

Truman dissolved the OSS by executive order in October 1945, distributing its functions between the State Department and the War Department. Donovan had submitted his own proposal for a permanent postwar intelligence organization to Roosevelt in 1944, but Roosevelt's death in April 1945 and Truman's different instincts ended that initiative. Truman was wary of a "Gestapo" and was also reportedly influenced by Hoover's opposition to a competing domestic intelligence organization. The CIA was created in 1947 largely along lines that the OSS had established, incorporating much of the OSS's clandestine service personnel and methodology, but Donovan played no role in its creation or subsequent leadership.¹

Later Career

Donovan returned to law practice after the OSS's dissolution. He remained active in Republican Party circles and was proposed for various government positions, including ambassador, by the Eisenhower administration. He served briefly as U.S. Ambassador to Thailand from 1953 to 1954. He died in Washington on February 8, 1959.¹