What the Hell happened in 1947? Why did Harry Truman authorize a new, comprehensive national security apparatus – even though he hated the very concept of spy craft?
Our Patrician US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies in 1945. His inspired leadership through World War II lays the groundwork for Harry Truman’s “big decision”: dropping the A-Bomb on Japan. Vice President Truman has no idea the A-Bomb is being readied for use – but, when told about it, quickly decides he has no qualms about using it. He and FDR didn’t have a close rapport and he’s not privy to FDR’s inside strategems – but he soldiers on……
One Roosevelt brainstorm, however, that (now President) Truman is acquainted with is the Office of Strategic Services (“OSS”), America’s clone of British MI5 and MI6. It’s a spying and counter-intelligence office staffed by the privileged scions of FDR’s upper-class, East Coast blue-blood friends. US Army Intelligence and US Navy Intelligence officers hate them, calling them “Yalie Interlopers” and “spoiled brats”, poseurs thrust into the war effort with little regard for how traditional services wrestle or finesse the challenges of domestic and wartime security.
Harry Truman absolutely loathes the OSS – and especially the man who FDR has personally appointed to lead it: William “Wild Bill” Donovan. In fact, exactly one month after World War II ends, Truman signs an Executive Order disbanding FDR’s nascent intelligence agency. “Wild Bill” is ultimately sent out to pasture – and winds up his career as Ambassador to Thailand. But when he’s fired, Ex-General Donovan is devastated. His loyal minions that work for the OSS are unceremoniously shown the gate. The Brits – who’d infiltrated the OSS early on and were eyeing this perch to eavesdrop on and influence American intelligence-gathering in the post-war years – are fuming. They’ve just lost their best opportunity to keep tabs on what is now the most powerful country in the world. Their buddy Donovan was an Anglophile – he’d even adopted the British Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife as standard “kit” for the OSS and countless other “dirty tricks” and gadgets later made famous by Ian Fleming’s fictional James Bond character. OSS was essentially a plagiarized MI5. Now it’s in ruins.
So who is this polarizing man? Who is William Donovan? And what does he have to do with 1947?
America’s first true modern spymaster, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, was born in was born in 1883, worked his way through law school, was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor in World War I and later earned a ton of money as a Wall Street lawyer. While setting the New York legal world on fire, Donovan brushed elbows with the blue-blood East Coast elite families that made the American economy the envy of the world. There he met – and relentlessly charmed – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the advent of World War II, Donovan re-upped with the US Army and saw a meteoric rise through the ranks and War Department bureaucracy due to his Medal of Honor status, pluck and connections. He became a General. FDR tapped him to lead a new avant-garde spy agency in 1942 called the Office of Strategic Services (“OSS”). Kudos to Douglas Waller’s book “Wild Bill Donovan”. It’s a fascinating read.
Donovan was a real character. He slept less than five hours a night, would read no fewer than three books a week, was fearless under fire and was a deeply religious Roman Catholic. An accomplished ballroom dancer, Donovan didn’t drink, smoke or back down from a challenge. He was a charismatic leader of men – but he also had a dark side. He was a notorious philaderer and was known in Washington, DC as a man unfaithful to his wife. Back in the 40’s, that was no compliment.
FDR was gaga over him. Roosevelt was especially seduced by Donovan’s predisposition to hire Ivy League – mostly Yale – scions of America’s “best” and wealthiest families for his secretive, cloak and dagger cadres. Dononvan’s early national security success stories could not be shared with the military services – the nature of spywork prohibited such revelations. Accordingly, Army and Navy Intelligence departments grew wary and skeptical of “Donovan’s Gestapo” and the “Spoiled Brats” that he hired.
Donovan frequently came to blows with Supreme European Theatre Commander, Dwight Eisenhower – who eventually scratched him from the US D-Day flotilla that landed on Normandy Beach. Donovan’s boss, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal telegraphed him special orders to stay away from the big event. Forrestal detested the man. Donovan pocketed the telegram and announced, “I’ll read it later”. This was moments before he was steaming across the English Channel towards the historic allied invasion on a British ship he’d pinched a ride on “with his boys”. Everybody was armed to the teeth. Harold “Betty” Stark, Commander of US Landing Forces – a friend of Donovan’s – flat out refused Donovan and his cohort of commandos passage to the beach-head; Eisenhower’s orders were clear. As soon as Donovan and his boys jumped off the British ship onto French sand, Donovan signaled the Brit captain to dispatch a telegram to his boss, US Secretary of Defense Forrestal: “Greetings. Just arrived – Donovan.” He couldn’t resist rubbing Forrestal’s nose in it.
The most consequential of the FDR Administration who absolutely despised WIld Bill Donovan was Harry Truman, Vice President of the United States. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, “Give ’em Hell Harry” bided his time. One month after the end of WWII (Sept. 2, 1945), President Truman officially disbanded the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) forever. Truman couldn’t wait to geld Donovan. He didn’t trust him or his “spoiled brats”. Truman hated the whole idea of a specialized spy “agency” and preferred letting the US Army and Navy handle all aspects of America’s national security. He also hated Donovan’s reputation as a womanizer.
After Donovan got the ax, “Wild Bill” contacted his OSS minions and instructed them to destroy “embarrassing documents” in his personal files, fearing he would be prosecuted for numerous violations of American and international laws. Throughout Wasington, DC, “Wild Bill” Donovan was viewed as a tyrannical power grabber who threw his weight and connections around with abandon. In late 1945 a group of US Generals submitted to President Truman a fifty-nine page “eyes only” memo accusing Donovan of essentially running a “rogue” operation during the later part of the wartime European Campaign. His philandering was also documented.
Donovan’s biggest detractor was J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had an FBI agent pass a tip to President Truman that “Wild Bill” Donovan was sleeping with Truman’s daughter-in-law, Mary Gardiner James. Truman was so incensed by these and other derogatory reports that he soon axed Donovan, dismembered the OSS and parceled out its national security functions to other agencies, such as the FBI and the Army and Navy Intelligence Offices. Truman had no stomach for “spying” of any kind. He thought it a “dishonorable undertaking” that offended his strict, Bible-thumping Christian beliefs. Dononvan and the entire OSS wartime experience – it appeared – soured President Truman on spy agencies like the British MI5 and MI6 for good.
Truman knew full well that the world was a dangerous place – and that the USA needed a vigorous National Security Apparatus. From the day the Rosenbergs were arrested, Truman also knew it was only a matter of time until the Russians had their own A-bomb. Truman believed, however, that the FBI and US Army and Navy Intelligence Agencies were more than up to the challenge.
After Truman dismantled the OSS and threw its Commander Donovan out, “Wild Bill” struggled to stay relevant. He worked with the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal and then resumed the practice of law in New York. He was ultimately appointed Ambassador to Thailand and died in 1959.
Then – surprise, surprise! 1947 Changed everything. Truman did a shocking “one-eighty”.
On July 26, 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act in a midnight ceremony at the White House creating the Central Intelligence Agency with Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter as its Director. At the festivities Truman allegedly presented Director Hillenkoetter and his deputies – John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles – with a cloak and dagger for dramatic effect. Soon the President would come under pressure to name a “civilian” Director of the CIA. Predictably, insider Allen Dulles was quickly confirmed by Congress. Read Stephen Kinzer’s book “The Brothers” about John Foster and Allen Dulles for the complete story. The “fix” was in from the beginning.
What happened in the years following the demise of the OSS that changed Truman’s mind about national security? Days before Truman signed the 1947 National Security Act and staged his comedic “Cloak and Dagger” charade, something huge happened. An epochal event. Something that shocked the wits out of “Give ’em Hell Harry” and probably caused much of our military to soil their drawers, too. Years before, FDR had been briefed about a similar incident by his then Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. But – like the A-bomb – Roosevelt never allowed his Vice President to see the reports and pictures. FDR’s epiphany was a super-secret crash of a circular disk at Cape Girardeau in Missouri in 1941. Truman would later learn of it and cuss out loud. Being from Missouri, he was all the more infuriated that he’d been kept in the dark.
What alarmed Truman enough to establish a National Security superagency in 1947?
On or about July 8, 1947, Major Jesse Marcel, the Intelligence Officer of the 509 th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Field in Rosewell, New Mexico issued a press release that the US Army Air Corps. (the US Air Force had not yet been established as a service branch) had recovered a crashed flying disc of unknown origin. The disk was reported to have been “flown” (in pieces) to “higher headquarters” in a military transport plane.
Thus began the legend of the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash.
As the incident unfolded, further unverified allegations would surface about the crash, including rumors that biological entities were recovered at the Roswell debris site – entities that were as small as children, were frail and had oversized heads. Also, whispers of exotic, never before seen metallurgy were filtering through the ranks – recovered debris that was taken to Alamagordo and then White Sands for further examination by America’s top scientists. Oppenheimer and von Braun were allegedly involved.
Major Jesse Marcel, the Roswell Intelligence Officer flew to the Headquarters of Army Air Corps in Fort Worth, Texas, where he met General Roger Ramey, Senior Commanding Officer, Southwest USA. On July 11, 1947 a hasty retraction of the earlier press release was prepared and released over the national news wire under Ramey’s signature. The “disk” was nothing more than a weather balloon that had crashed and was misidentified. Any “exotic” metals or debris from the crash site was just cellophane and balsa wood. Major Marcel was phographed with General Ramey, both handling the alleged debris. They were smiling as they announced to the public – “Nothing to see here! It’s all a big mistake!”. Ramey left immediately thereafter for Washington, DC. Marcel was ordered not to mention the event again.
Major Marcel dutifully never deviated from his retraction “story” that he helped prepare on July 11, 1947. But on his deathbead years later (from cancer) he told his son – a Veterinarian in Montana, Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr. – that he lied under orders from General Ramey. “It’s what we did then as loyal Americans”, he said with tears in his eyes. The object that crashed was a disc – that didn’t come from any country on Earth. The 509th Bombardment Group of Roswell Army Air Field had dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They knew every plane that every country had in the air. Major Marcel said that the object was from “outer space” and that he saw the small occupants it contained.
Back in Washington, DC there was a flurry of activity at the Pentagon. Anyone who watched the rhythms and comings and goings of the brass hats – especially the Press – noticed a frantic tempo of military personnel, all looking grim and tight-lipped. The US Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, suddenly took “ill” – and was installed on the top floor of Bethesda Naval Hospital, allegedly for “exhaustion”. He never left and was kept virtually incommunicato, sealed off from the outside world. He wasn’t even allowed to see his priest. His own brother had to threaten to go to the Washington Post before he was allowed a brief visit with his sibling. Forrestal was kept on “ice”.
Finally, in 1949 James Forrestal threw himself out the window of his hospital room at Bethesda Naval Hospital and died a horrible death on the cement sidewalks below. He’d been “extremely aggitated” and imploring any hospital staff who would listen to him that the United States was being “invaded”. He said the military was “helpless” to defend against “the enemy”.
Forrestal was a devout Roman Catholic – not the type of man to commit suicide. It’s a mortal sin.
Of course, by that time The Central Intelligence Agency was in the firm grip of the Dulles brothers – John Foster and Allen – and a schizophrenic psychopath named James Jesus Angleton. The United States was on the road to becoming addicted to compartmentalized government secrets – all in the name of “National Security”.
There would follow an unbroken series of “Cold War” conflicts throughout the fifties – all orchestrated by Allen Dulles and his indominable CIA. From his pre-World War II days as an Embassy attache in Switzerland Dulles knew all the players on the world stage. He’d met Benito Mussolini and the Pope. He’d had discussions with Vladimir Lenin, Adolph Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Stalin and Litvinov. Dulles knew and cultivated Nazi spymaster Rheinhardt Gehlen. He ultimately adopted Gehlen as the Central Intelligence Agency’s sole authoritative source for Intelligence in post-World War II Europe. Dulles used Gehlen in the closing days of WWII to expedite the transfer of hundreds of Nazi scientists to the USA, scrubbing their records so Truman would sign off on them – a program called “Operation Paperclip”. He and Werner von Braun would become a close friends.
The Nazi (and former Abwehr General) Rheinhardt Gehlen would spend the next three decades bullshitting America’s communist-hysterical Pentagon that Russia was lightyears ahead of the USA in heavy rocketry, jet propulsion and space satellites – and utilizing “Red Mercury” for Hydrogen bomb miniaturization. Allen Dulles was a President of the Council of International Relations – a true globalist. A “Proto-Neocon”. No one questioned his grasp of the international scene.
In the fifties the CIA engineered coup after coup – the assassination of Mossadegh in Iran, turmoil in Syria and launched America’s involvement in Vietnam after the French got their asses kicked in Diem Bien Phu in 1954. Dulles commissioned Kelly Johnson at Lockheed Skunk Works to design an ultra-high altitude spy plane called the U2 that he used to fly over Russia with impunity. He launched “Operation Gladio” in Italy to steer Europe away from Russia-sympathizing and socialist political leaders (by fair means or foul). Dulles oversaw American efforts to quash Marxist movements in South America and backed coups in Peru and Guatemala. Dulles had Che Guevarra hunted down, executed and buried under a parking lot. He endlessly fantasized about killing Fidel Castro and was instrumental in planning and executing the Cuban Bay of Pigs debacle. Under Dulles the CIA contracted with scientists to explore brainwashing techniques – like MKULTRA – and financed a serious program to explore the phenomenon of “Remote Viewing” (Project Stargate). His spook eggheads regularly experimented with LSD and documented its potential use in special operations assignments.
Even as Dwight David Eisenhower warned us in his Presidential Farewell Speech of the “Military Industrial Complex” that was eroding our freedoms and rights, he was nursing a reputational black eye from a U-2 being shot down over Russia after having publically swore the US was not engaging in high-altitude overflights. Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev had a field-day humiliating the President (and decorated former four-star General) for lying to the world, showcasing the shot-down U-2 airframe with its American markings for maximum effect. It was Ike’s lowest moment as Chief Executive of the USA. The Russians even had Francis Gary Powers – the U-2 Pilot – in custody and later prosecuted him in a soviet show-trial. Ike’s embarrassment was complete.
President John F. Kennedy was humiliated by the failed Bay Of Pigs incident – when CIA orchestrated Cuban nationals were financed and trained to “invade” Castro’s Cuba in April of 1961. Castro’s military was waiting for them and cut them to ribbons on the beaches. Thoroughly confounded by the disaster, Kennedy vowed that he would “smash the CIA into 1000 pieces”. JFK only managed to orchestrate superficial changes at the Agency and the Dulles brothers and James Jesus Angleton’s influence continued to reign supreme. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t live long afer that. Some “lone gunman” in Dallas………..
Next up…….The Warren Commission. CIA’s Dulles was front, right and center. All Commission members were deep state pols. Their conclusions? Reams of paperwork and hearings – testimony from everybody except Jack Ruby.
And how about Watergate? Everybody involved were CIA employees or operatives. Then the disastrous Vietnam evacuation……..recall the helicopter taking off from the US Embassy roof video? Classy.
Did the CIA warn us about 9/11? Not so much. “Weapons of Mass Distruction” in Iraq? Don’t make me vomit.
How about the money laundering operation that is Ukraine? Is this what winning looks like? Are we throwing money at the CIA’s dull-witted, cross-dressing Presidential patsy to keep buried smoking-gun evidence on Joe Biden and his corrupt, drug-addled son? Does Ukraine “got us by the balls?” Are they squeezin’?
Here’s the real question: Is the Central Intelligence Agency worth the billions of dollars we shovel down it’s gaping maw?
I’d like to hear more about the successes of the CIA – but they always say “we can’t tell you our successes because of National Security”. How convenient. A self-licking ice cream cone.
And how about the CIA’s recent “woke” recruitment ads? Why don’t they just run this one: “Hi…I’m Rachel, a bisexual, bi-racial, non-binary Fluffy who’s been obese since I gestated in my birthing-vessel twenty-seven years ago……I celebrate my size and don’t consider my wheelchair a challenge. My lesbian metro-ubesian life partner and I share a polyamorous lifestyle and worship at the hooves of our Lord, Baphomet. We enjoy video-gaming and shrooms until early AM hours most nights. I am a Senior Russian Analyst at the CIA, where I use my Affirmative Action program, Public Inclusivity degree skills earned at Brown University and my Russian-English dictionary I bought on Amazon to study the Slavic mind and discern social and political trends in Putin’s Russia. My pronouns are they and we. I am CIA – come join us!”
On balance – considering what we’re allowed to see – the CIA’s track record is rather poor. I’d venture to say that these days most Americans think the CIA has drunk-stumbled off the same cliff the FBI has.
Have these shady police-state dinosaurs outlived their usefulness? Lost their palatability? Why must we all roll our eyes and cringe when their frequent, latest faux-pas come to light? Why are we bullshitted by endless, faceless suits presenting redacted reports to Congress and testifying in “Executive Sessions” that we never get to see? Maybe we’ve all had enough of this shit. If we’d listened to George Washington hundreds of years ago when he warned us against getting involved in the conflicts of foreign countries, we wouldn’t be pissing away billions of dollars on “security” agencies that don’t make us feel secure.
Before he died in 1972, Harry Truman said that he regretted ever having signed the National Security Act and green-lighting the CIA in 1947. He said that – in hindsight – the Army and Navy Intelligence Services could have done a better job after all. I’m inclined to agree.
Yup. 1947 was a hum-dinger.
