‘Before the Colonel Arrived’: Hoover, Donovan, Roosevelt, and the Origins of American Central Intelligence, 1940–41

Abstract

Credit for the origins of American central intelligence are commonly placed solely with Colonel William Donovan who visited Great Britain in 1940–41 and, based upon these experiences, subsequently reported to the Roosevelt White House on the need for a centralized American intelligence organization. Yet evidence indicates that prior to Donovan's overseas visit and report to the White House, representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation traveled to Britain, surveyed its intelligence apparatus, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted a report to President Roosevelt pre-dating Donovan's. Historians, therefore, must reconsider the origins of American central intelligence as not influenced by any one individual but by multiple individuals with bureaucratic interests.

Notes

See Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, ‘The Role of British Intelligence in the Mythologies Underpinning the OSS and Early CIA’, in David Stafford and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (eds.) American–British–Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939–2000 (London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass 2000) pp.5–19; Douglas M. Charles, ‘American, British and Canadian Intelligence Links: A Critical Annotated Bibliography’, in ibid., pp.259–69. See also Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, ‘The Stirrings of a New Revisionism?’, in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie (eds.) North American Spies: New Revisionist Essays (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 1991); B. Nelson MacPherson, ‘CIA Origins as Reviewed from Within’, Intelligence and National Security 10 (April 1995) pp.353–9; and John Ferris, ‘Coming in From the Cold War: The Historiography of American Intelligence, 1945–1990’, Diplomatic History 19 (Winter 1995) pp.87–115.

See Douglas M. Charles, ‘The FBI, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Anti-interventionist Movement, 1939–1945’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh 2002); idem, ‘Informing FDR: FBI Political Surveillance and the Isolationist-Interventionist Foreign Policy Debate, 1939–45’, Diplomatic History 24 (Spring 2000) pp.211–32.

See W.B. Fowler, British-American Relations, 1917–1918: The Role of Sir William Wiseman (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1969).

Letter, Vincent Astor to Franklin Roosevelt, 18 April 1940, President's Secretary's File – Vincent Astor, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library [FDRL], Hyde Park, New York. British intelligence officials at this point preferred that Paget coordinate with the State Department and not the FBI.

Nigel West, ‘Introduction’, in British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940–45 (London: St Ermin's Press 1998); Thomas Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of CIA (New Haven: Yale University Press 1996) p.36.

Biographical information on Stephenson can be found in H. Montgomery Hyde, Room 3603: The Story of the British Intelligence Center in New York during World War II (New York: Farrar Strauss 1963) pp.5–24. See also J.L. Granatstein and David Stafford, Spy Wars: Espionage and Canada from Gouzenko to Glasnost (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990) pp.77–8.

Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid (note 5) pp.36–7.

British Security Coordination (note 5) p.xxv.

Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid (note 5) p.39; H. Montgomery Hyde, Secret Intelligent Agent: British Espionage in America and the Creation of the OSS (New York: St Martin's 1982), p.82.

British Security Coordination (note 5) p.xxv. The official BSC history does not identify Astor by name. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper's 1948) p.270. Hyde borrowed the phrase ‘quiet Canadian’ from Sherwood. On the Roosevelt–Astor intelligence relationship see Jeffrey M. Dorwart, ‘The Roosevelt–Astor Espionage Ring’, New York History (July 1981) pp.307–22.

Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid (note 5) p.34.

Letter, British Ambassador to US Secretary of State, 15 June 1940, State Department Central Files, Record Group 59, 702.4111/1608, National Archives and Records Administration [NARA], College Park, Maryland; letter, assistant to the treasury secretary to secretary of state, 19 June 1940, RG 59, 702.4111/1608, NARA.

Memorandum, Winthrop Crane to Adolf Berle, 29 November 1941, RG 59, 800.01B11 registration/1140, NARA; letter and list of BSC employees, Crane to Gordon, 12 February 1941, RG 59, 800.01B11 registration/1209, NARA; letter, R.L. Bannerman to Clark, 6 February 1941, RG 59, 841.01B11/191, NARA; letter, Berle to Sumner Welles, 31 March 1941, RG 59, 841.20211/23, NARA; British Security Coordination (note 5) pp.xxvi–xxviii.

British Security Coordination (note 5) p.3. For Hoover's character see Athan Theoharis and John Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1988); Athan Theoharis, J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 1995); Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: The Free Press 1987); Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: Norton 1991).

British Security Coordination (note 5) pp.3–4; memorandum for file, Adolf A. Berle, 3 September 1941, Adolf Berle diary, 2:110 (microfilm ed., reel 3); Hyde, Secret Intelligence Agent (note 9) pp.82–84, 184, 203. On the writing of the BSC history see David Stafford, Camp X: SOE and the American Connection (London: Viking 1986) pp.251–57.

Email, Francis MacDonnell to Douglas M. Charles, 4 July 1999; email, Francis MacDonnell to Douglas M. Charles, 2 August 1999.

Personal and confidential letter, Hoover to Watson, 28 May 1941, Official File 10-B, FDRL.

See Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London: Harper Collins 1995) p.100; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press 2002) pp.140–42; Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Basic Books 1983) pp.63–5; Arthur Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to 1950 (University Park: Penn State Press 1990); Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA (Frederick, MD: University Press of America 1981) p.40; Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, Sub Rosa: The OSS and American Espionage, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press 1962) pp.9–17; Allen W. Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper and Row 1966) pp.4–9; Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, The Real CIA (New York: Macmillan 1968) pp.14–17.

British Security Coordination (note 5) p.4.

Memorandum, Hoover to Tolson, Clegg, and Tamm, 12 November 1940, FBI 66-HQ-2047; memorandum, Hince to Hoover, 6 November 1940, FBI 67-11757-264.

Letter, Justice Department to Adolf A. Berle, 30 October 1940, RG 59, 102.31/168, NARA. This document is missing in the State Department Decimal File, but see summary in RG 59 Purport List, reel 973-436.

Letter, Hoover to Ruth Shipley, Chief of Passport Division, State Department, 13 November 1940, FBI 67-6524-435; letter, Hoover to Shipley, 8 November 1940, FBI 67-11757-265; memorandum, Clegg to Hoover 18 November 1940, FBI 66-2047-1449; memorandum, Clegg to Hoover, 22 November 1940, FBI 66-2047-1450; Strictly confidential telegram, Sumner Welles to American Legation, Lisbon, 20 November 1940, RG 59, 102.31/178A, NARA.

Telegram, Clegg and Hince to Hoover, 20 January 1941, RG 59, 102.31/191, NARA; memorandum, S.J. Tracy to Hoover, 14 January 1941, FBI 66-2047-1459.

F.H. Hinsley, et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 1 (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office 1979) p.313.

Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals and the Most Secret Special Relationship, 1940–1946 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1992) p.55; David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 2000) p.73.

David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets (London: Little, Brown, and Co. 1999) pp.48–50; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (note 10) pp.248–50.

Letter and paraphrase of Clegg and Hince telegram, Berle to Hoover, 21 January 1940, FBI 66-2047-1458; telegram, Clegg and Hince to Hoover, 20 January 1940, RG 59, 102.31/192, NARA.

Personal and confidential letter, Hoover to Watson, 5 March 1941, Official File 10-B, FDRL; blind memorandum, 3 March 1941, Official File 10-B, FDRL.

Personal and confidential letter and memorandum, Hoover to Watson, 6 March 1941, Official File 10-B, FDRL.

Ibid.

Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid (note 5) pp.48–61, 77–92; Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar (note 18) p.140.

As quoted in Troy, Wild Bill and Intrepid (note 5) p.115.

Ibid., pp.115–33.

Memorandum, Sherman Miles, head of MID, to Hoover, 23 July 1940, War Department files, Records of the Special and General Staffs, RG 165, 9794-186B/3, NARA; personal and confidential letter, Hoover to Miles, 3 August 1940, RG 165, 9794-186B/4, NARA.

See also John Bratzel and Leslie Rout, The Shadow War: German Espionage and U.S. Counterespionage in Latin America during World War II (Frederick: University Publications of America 1989).

As quoted in Theoharis and Cox, The Boss (note 14) p.188. (From FBI file 63-116758.)

Theoharis, The Boss (note 14) pp.189–90.

British Security Coordination (note 5) pp.3–4.

New York Times, 20, 23 August 1940.

Memorandum for the director, 29 November 1941, FBI 62-64427-76.