US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy

Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA, 1945-53

Sarah-Jane Corke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415420778
• eBook ISBN: 9781134104123
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Based on recently declassified documents, this book provides the first examination of the Truman Administration's decision to employ covert operations in the Cold War.

Although covert operations were an integral part of America's arsenal during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the majority of these operations were ill conceived, unrealistic and ultimately doomed to failure. In this volume, the author looks at three central questions: Why were these types of operations adopted? Why were they conducted in such a haphazard manner? And, why, once it became clear that they were not working, did the administration fail to abandon them?

The book argues that the Truman Administration was unable to reconcile policy, strategy and operations successfully, and to agree on a consistent course of action for waging the Cold War. This ensured that they wasted time and effort, money and manpower on covert operations designed to challenge Soviet hegemony, which had little or no real chance of success.

US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy will be of great interest to students of US foreign policy, Cold War history, intelligence and international history in general.

1
Dancing on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel

It is necessary to come to terms with the history of psychological warfare during World War II before discussing Cold War covert operations, in order to understand how and why these operations failed. As Arthur Darling, the CIA’s first in-house historian concluded in 1950, “the seeds of controversy over how the US intelligence community should be planned, managed and operated were planted even before the end of World War II.”¹ Indeed, the gap that developed between policy and operations – aspirations and capabilities – liberation and containment, was rooted in the Office of Strategic Services’ (OSS) wartime experience. It was also during these years that American psychological warriors learned to function without adequate strategic guidance. In its place they developed their own maverick operational culture which reflected the philosophy of one man – William “Wild Bill” Donovan – the legendary Republican lawyer hired by President Franklin Roosevelt to oversee the development of the wartime intelligence service.

I believe that Donovan’s philosophy consisted of a number of interrelated principles, which eventually evolved into an operational ethos that governed the organization and development of the OSS. It served as a unifying force that allowed for the development of an operational culture that guided the actions of psychological warriors, and later covert operators, both domestically (within the bureaucracy itself) and abroad. By the time the service was disbanded, the Donovan Tradition had become an integral part of OSS’s operational culture. It was passed down to the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) through the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) and Office of Special Operations (OSO).

Characterized by one of his subordinates as “the sort of guy who thought nothing of parachuting into France, blowing up a bridge, pissing in Luftwaffe gas tanks, then dancing on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel with a German spy,” Donovan’s strengths were also his weaknesses. Nicknamed “Wild Bill,”² because of the prowess he exhibited while playing football at Columbia, Donovan’s exploits are well known.³ Less frequently discussed, however, are the philosophical roots of his actions. At its core, I believe, his way of life was rooted in a partisan predisposition, which reflected a particular strain of Republican foreign policy that emerged during the Progressive era.⁴ Donovan was a classical liberal, albeit one with strong internationalist tendencies.⁵ As a child, his hero was Theodore Roosevelt.⁶ As an adult, his progressive inclinations predisposed him to reject his party’s isolationist stance and instead adopt a peculiarly Republican manifestation of internationalism that was both interventionist and unilateralist.

Donovan also had a strong belief in American exceptionalism, popular among those schooled at the turn of the century, as well as a robust anti-communism that can, in part, be attributed to his religious upbringing.⁷ He believed that he had a moral obligation to help make the world a better place and assumed that he had the “manifest destiny” to do so.⁸ Bill Donovan was an idealist. Yet his moral code was informed more by normative ethics than philosophical idealism.⁹ In this sense, and in this sense only, his philosophy was more “modern” than “Victorian.” When it came to making tough decisions “there [was] no shilly-shallying about morality.”¹⁰ As a shadow warrior his world was colored grey.

During World War I he received the Medal of Honor for what was later characterized as his “reckless bravery” on the battlefield.¹¹ It was during these early years that he developed a reputation for working outside the traditional lines of command, thumbing his nose at authority, conducting unorthodox operations and employing unconventional methods. After World War I ended he remained active on the international stage, taking part in a number of clandestine operations in Russia, Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and Asia.¹² However, the exact nature of these activities remains a mystery. According to one historian, Donovan “went to a great many places he had no business going, on errands no one asked him to perform.”¹³ As a result, scholars have been divided on what he was doing during these years, and for whom he was doing it. Some suggest that he was working for a private intelligence network, within the United States. Others believe he was working for British intelligence. Whichever the case, these extra-curricular activities were significant for two reasons. First, they gave him certain credentials that not many others at the time had. Second, and perhaps more importantly, they also set the standard for how he approached psychological operations during the war. They predisposed him to the benefits of working outside the traditional bureaucratic structure.

Donovan first met Franklin Roosevelt at Columbia Law School. Despite their political differences they remained cordial after graduation, as both set out to build their respective careers. In 1929, only months before the stock market crashed, Donovan, together with three other men, established the law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Irvine. By the time the Great Depression had ended he had become a millionaire. Not satisfied with the humdrum life of a corporate lawyer, however, during the thirties he began to cultivate a number of important Republican luminaries with strong connections to the Roosevelt Administration. As Donovan worked on his political connections Hitler planned for war.

Beginning in the spring of 1940 Nazi forces moved aggressively across Europe. Within weeks, Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium fell to the Blitzkrieg. In a little over a month German troops reached the English Channel. Although over a quarter of a million British and French soldiers were able to escape the onslaught, it was small consolation as within days Hitler began planning for an invasion of the British Isles.¹⁴ During the summer of 1940 it became increasingly unclear whether Great Britain would survive. American public opinion on the question of intervention was divided. And when continued support for the British came under fire from a number of high profile figures, including the American Ambassador in London, Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt decided to reach outside his own government to secure information. On the advice of Henry Stimson he turned to Bill Donovan. By the time the war in Europe broke out Donovan appeared to be exactly what the President needed. He was the right man, at the right time, with the right skills.

Not surprisingly, the two men immediately hit it off, in part because of the president’s own fascination with unconventional operations. It has been said that during his early political career, “Roosevelt showed a greater interest in intelligence than any president since Washington in the Revolutionary War.”¹⁵ His attraction to clandestine operations was even passed down to his children. His son Jimmy joined Donovan’s outfit in August of 1941 as a liaison officer. And as Life magazine editorialized at the time, “to get Jimmy Roosevelt into your show is as good as a seat at the White House breakfast table.”¹⁶

Aside from his interest in unorthodox operations Roosevelt and Donovan shared another similarity. The President was also notorious for his lackadaisical bureaucratic style. Roosevelt’s decision to approach Donovan, a Republican insider, was indicative of his unorthodox approach to decision-making. And the circumstances surrounding Donovan’s appointment reinforced the lack of structure within the administration.¹⁷ The combination of these two factors – Roosevelt’s fascination with intrigue and his penchant for avoiding the traditional bureaucracy – were evident early on and had repercussions that extended well into the postwar era.

On 3 July 1940 the President asked Donovan to travel to Europe on his behalf. Donovan’s job was to determine whether England could survive Hitler’s air assault. He was also asked to investigate reports of German subversion in Europe.¹⁸ By all accounts the mission was a success. Not only was Donovan able to report that Britain could and would survive the air war, he was able to develop extensive contacts within the British intelligence services. In London Donovan was given the type of high-level access to key decision-makers that was rarely granted to outsiders and when he returned to Washington he immediately began to lobby the President for a wartime intelligence service, based largely on the British model. Although at this point Donovan had no formal status within the American government, his triumph overseas and the relationships that he developed with both the President and British Prime Minister Churchill helped pave the way for his appointment as Coordinator of Information (COI) in July of 1941, six months before the US officially entered the war against Germany, Japan and Italy.

Donovan accepted his new mission on three conditions: he would report only to the president, secret funds would be made available and all government departments would be instructed to give him whatever he wanted.¹⁹ Although Roosevelt agreed to these demands, over the course of the war the President’s advisors carefully limited Donovan’s access to the oval office. Moreover, he never received the cooperation he wanted from the other government agencies. He did, however, have almost unlimited access to unvouchered funds. The potent combination of his own personality, the weak bureaucratic structure that housed the COI, and his unrestricted access to funds meant that Donovan had great freedom to maneuver.

According to in-house CIA historian Thomas Troy he operated on the “oil slick principle, whereby he gave his subordinates only general instructions and told them to carve out their own areas” of responsibility.²⁰ Implicit in Donovan’s style was also an overwhelming faith in individual initiative or “derring-do.” As Michael Burke, the agent who led the American paramilitary operation in Albania, reminisced in his memoirs, the OSS “invited individual initiative. The great attraction was [the] absence of regimentation, the loose structure, the flexibility to try almost anything.”²¹ The emphasis on individual initiative also encouraged the use of methods once considered unorthodox or unconventional. Psychological warfare, as covert operations were termed at the time, fitted neatly into this category. However, it was Donovan’s widely reported exploits that secured him the reputation as a “cowboy” and his tendency to “freewheel” which ultimately came to define his way of doing business.²² The problems caused by his conduct were made worse because he encouraged similar behavior among his own subordinates, often arguing that he would rather have a “young lieutenant with the guts to disobey an order than a colonel too regimented to think and act for himself.”²³ As a result, according to one historian, “insubordination became a way of life” for Donovan’s men.²⁴

Donovan achieved even greater power because the COI’s mandate was vague. As Edward Lilly has pointed out, Donovan’s directive was “cloaked in indefiniteness.”²⁵ Even his title was ambiguous. This type of linguistic artifice was thought to be necessary because, prior to World War II, many Americans still viewed propaganda as “a horrid and sinister word [and] a really un-American activity.”²⁶ As a result, it was necessary that these types of activities be “cloaked in the subterfuge of agency titles.” Apparently, the term “psychological warfare” was also “intentionally dreamed up to conceal” the types of activities employed under its banner. Since both the COI’s directive and the term psychological warfare remained undefined, the types of activities that fell under its responsibilities also remained unclear. For example, while the COI was originally set up to coordinate information, the presidential order governing the organization also charged the agency with conducting “such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the government.”²⁷ Such ambiguous language gave Donovan the flexibility he needed to expand his mandate beyond the collection of information to the execution of psychological and guerrilla warfare activities behind enemy lines, all without explicit official approval or authorization.²⁸

These problems were compounded because Donovan rarely sought or received policy guidance. As I suggested earlier, implicit in the Donovan Tradition was a strong distrust of bureaucracy. During World War II, the COI under Donovan’s direction was able to maintain a degree of independence from the government’s bureaucracy, its customs and its values.²⁹ According to Edward Lilly, it functioned without central leadership, control or integration with other methods of obtaining national objectives.”³⁰ As the head of COI’s propaganda division, Robert Sherwood, argued in 1942:

if we could not get anybody to tell us what US government policy was, in particular instances, we would have to assume responsibility ourselves, for saying what it was. We did so. After a few weeks of this improvisation, the State Department woke up with a start to the realization that one of Donovan’s impertinent little offices was making policy for it.³¹

The central issue, as Adolf Berle had pointed out to Under Secretary of State Sumner Wells, a year earlier, was that the line between propaganda and policy was often blurred because it was very easy to “make foreign policy … with propaganda.”³² To make matters worse, according to the Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long, the COI’s propaganda division often “followed a policy widely divergent from the official policy,” which over the course of the war caused a number of problems abroad.³³ Wit...

Table of contents

• Studies in intelligence series
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Dancing on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel
• 2 A strategic monstrosity
• 3 The inauguration of political warfare
• 4 An elucidation of imponderables that defy close analysis
• 5 A clinical experiment
• 6 A few martyrs
• 7 Ye strategic concept for ye cold warre1
• 8 The War of the Potomac
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index