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Then there was the turf-fighting FBI. J. Edgar Hoover and Company didn’t want any Allied spies snooping around in their backyard.
It followed then that if the agencies had their own agendas, they were not prone to share with others the information that they collected. The argument, as might be expected, was that intelligence shared was intelligence compromised.
There was also the interagency fear, unspoken but there, as sure as God made little green apples, that some shared intel would be found to be wanting. If that should happen, it would make the particular agency that had developed it look bad. And that, fear of all fears, would result in the reduction of funds, of men, of weapons, et cetera, et cetera. In short, the loss of importance of the agency in the eyes of the grand political scheme.
Thus among the various agencies there continued the endless turf battles, the duplications of effort—even the instances, say, of undercover FBI agents arresting undercover ONI agents snooping around Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Roosevelt had had enough. A master of political maneuvering, he had an answer.
On July 11, 1941, the President created a new department. He said it would collect all information critical to national security—from the FBI, ONI, MID, from anyone and everyone—analyze it, and act on such information as necessary.
This new office, logically, was named Coordinator of Information.
And he appointed William J. Donovan as its director.
Donovan would report directly to the President. His pay: one dollar per annum.
Roosevelt was quite pleased with himself. This was a natural extension of what Donovan had very much been doing for FDR for years, dating back to when FDR first had attached Donovan to ONI.
But not everyone could be described as being overjoyed.
If the existing intelligence organizations did not play happily together before, there was certainly no reason to expect them to embrace the new kid on the playground. Particularly with the new kid answering only to the President and having access to the vast secret funds of the Office of the President.
There were howls of protest, which Roosevelt more or less managed. But the top brass that made up the Joint Chiefs of Staff eventually prevailed upon the President that an organization evaluating intelligence of the military and for the military should not be outside the military. And certainly not answerable to a civilian. (Donovan’s unquestionable credentials be damned, this was bureaucratic battling at its best.)
And so on June 13, 1942, the COI evolved into the OSS—the Office of Strategic Services—and was duly placed under the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On paper, Donovan now answered to General George Catlett Marshall, the Chief of Staff, who in turn answered to the President.
In reality, however, the door to the Oval Office—and any other place the President of the United States might be—was always open to FDR’s old friend and confidante.
The President released Donovan’s forearm, then his hand, and then rolled the chair back two feet, the high spirits seeming to drain from him as he did so.
Roosevelt quietly spun his chair, and began wheeling it toward the ornate, wooden presidential desk—what was known as the Resolute desk, as on the orders of the Queen of England it had been finely crafted from timbers taken from the retired HMS Resolute and then in 1880 given by Her Majesty Queen Victoria to Rutherford Hayes, who was then the President of the United States.
Donovan saw that spread across this magnificent desk, next to the wire baskets holding decrypted secret messages and a half-full water glass, were the tools of FDR’s lifelong hobby of stamp collecting. There were scissors, a magnifying glass, a thick album, and, next to a well-worn guidebook with dog-eared pages, an eight-by-ten-inch manila envelope torn open to give ready access to its mass of stamps from around the world, newly collected and packaged for him by an admirer in the State Department.
Bright sunlight filtered into the Oval Office through the tall windows and doors, gloriously lighting the great two-story interior of the thirty-five-by-twenty-nine-foot room. The glossy white walls shined. The intricately patterned woodwork of the floor glowed. The details practically popped in each of the representations of the Presidential Seal on the room’s ceiling and in its floor.
Roosevelt stopped at the windows. He thoughtfully looked out at the Rose Garden and its fanciful foliage beginning to bloom, then across the well-manicured grounds of the South Lawn. He grunted and nodded appreciatively, puffed his cigarette, then finally maneuvered his chair around the b
ig, royal blue banner that was the President’s Flag. It hung from an eight-foot-tall staff standing near the wall behind the desk, opposite the flag of the United States of America, also on a tall staff.
Donovan followed the President across the Oval Office. He stopped at the three finely patterned silk-upholstered armchairs arranged in an arc in front of the desk and sat down in the center one.
After a moment, the President looked across the desk and straight into Donovan’s concerned eyes.
“What is it, Bill?” Roosevelt asked. “May I ask about the family?”
Roosevelt knew that he could of course ask about Donovan’s family; as friends for decades, and as both husbands and fathers, they felt a genuine fondness for one another’s family.
Still painfully fresh in their minds was the memory, not quite three years earlier, of Donovan’s beloved daughter Patricia having died when her car overturned near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Roosevelt had made sure then that every arrangement for her final resting went without difficulty for Donovan, including Patricia’s place of burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
“The family is fine,” Donovan said, “as I hope is yours.”
“Yes, yes. Quite,” the President said. He coughed twice, puffed his cigarette, then pursued, “And Dave?”
Lieutenant David Rumsey Donovan, United States Navy, was twenty-eight; he had been born two years before Patricia. Roosevelt was particularly fond of him—he was close in age to FDR’s son James, and the three of them were products of Harvard.
