Super Spy Unit?

The failure of the FBI and the CIA to work together to perhaps prevent a tragedy such as the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington finds its root cause in the lust for power, and the politicizing of intelligence agencies, for whatever reasons, including ego and megalomania, by men too comfortable in their jobs. That was also true in 1941. When one examines the times, and politics, just prior to the WW II, one can see how the many intelligence agencies of our government failed to act. They were satisfied with the job they thought they were doing well. But their "contentment" caused all of them to ignore the abundance of information that enabled the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

Now, go back with me to the New York Polo Grounds and a football game between the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a cold Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941. Just after two o'clock Pug Manders had thrilled the crowd when he gained twenty-nine yards for a first down on the four-yard line. Somewhere in that noise, Colonel William J. Donovan heard his name on the loudspeakers. "Attention, please! Attention! Here is an urgent message. Will Colonel William J. Donovan call Operator nineteen in Washington, D.C." (Richard E. Goldstein, "Football Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941 . . . ," The New York Times, December 7, 1980, and from Edmond Taylor's, "Awakening from History," Boston: Gambit, 1969, pp. 350-51). By the way, the Dodgers beat the Giants that foreboding day, 21-7.

Donovan arrived in Washington in the evening of that same day, and went to the National Institute of Health building where his newly composed, and unique, Board of Analysts was meeting. Donovan called them his "College of Cardinals." The members of his board were some of the best minds in the nation: James Baxter, president of Williams College; Edward Earl, of Princeton; William Langer, Harvard; Edward Mason, Harvard; Donald McKay, Harvard; Joseph Hayden, University of Michigan and Calvin Hoover, Duke University.

The "College of Cardinals" were supposed to have seen all intelligence having a bearing on national security. But, the Army and Navy did not trust this new "civilian" organization with "its" secrets. So, with vital intelligence withheld from the Board of Analysts, Donovan's new agency was unable to make an assessment of Japanese intentions before, and immediately after, Pearl Harbor.

William J. Donovan was America's new, and first, director of a board for central intelligence scrutiny. He was the founding father of the OSS, later to become the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). It's not possible to cover in this article Donovan's remarkable career, and his outstanding contribution to the victory over Germany and Japan. My goal here, is an attempt to discuss how jealousy and turf protection among our various intelligence agencies in 1941, and now, are at work, to the peril of our nation's security.

So let's fast forward from Pearl Harbor to 1944. Let's start with October 25, 1944. Donovan, Head of Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner, remember, of the CIA, sent a memo to President Roosevelt, through FDR's White House economist, Isadore Lubin, outlining the "Basis for a World Wide Intelligence Service," after the war. (Otto Doering, OSSDF, September 26, 1944, in No. 12,733 declassified). FDR, a man who learned from mistakes, his and others, thought a Central Intelligence Agency would be a good postwar idea. However, only a few months later J. Edgar Hoover, who had plans of his own to enlarge the FBI to a world organization, launched an attack on Donovans's idea with all his force and cunning.

On February 9, 1945, the Washington Times-Herald, the New York Daily News, and the Chicago Tribune, vented the "astonishing, "according to them, news with burning headlines: "Donovan proposes super spy system for post-war New Deal; would take over FBI, Secret Service, ONI and G2 Project for U.S.; super-spies disclosed in secret memo; New Deal plans super spy system; sleuths would snoop on U.S. and the world; order creating it already drafted; New Deal plans to spy on world and home folks, and super Gestapo agency is under consideration." It should be mentioned that FDR's raging enemies, the McCormick-Patterson empire, owned the three newspapers. "New Deal," as McCormick used it, was a derogatory label used by FDR's enemies, ignoring the "New Deal" successes. A great mass of American people was saved from hunger and homelessness by FDR's heroic and brilliant "New Deal" concepts, and our nation was saved from socialism, or worse.

One of FBI Director Hoover's buddies wrote the stories. His name was Walter Trohan, and he had a copy of the then highly secret proposal, most likely furnished to him by the jealous Hoover.

By this time, the Nazis were desperate to rally the German people for a war that seemed already lost. The Nazis had received copies of the McCormick-Patterson bombshell, and lost no time in publishing it in the Nazi propaganda sheet, Tagespost. That "newspaper" told the German people that, "The United States, along with the Russian NKVD, using a network of Jewish informers throughout the world, was creating a network to dominate the whole world, and to enslave the German Volk for all time to come." (Tagespost, February 10, 1945)

Donovan wrote to President Roosevelt saying the highly secret document concerning the formation of the CIA was "not leaked, but a deliberate plan to sabotage" any reorganization of the intelligence networks of our government. (Letter, WJD to FDR, Feb. 23, 1945, in OSS 12,733M OSSDF, unclassified) Of course, Hoover was the prime suspect. Hoover saw Donovan as his only competitor in forming his own world wide "FBI." Hoover, as early as 1942, had been running an operation in South America, contrary to the FBI "charter." And when Donovan placed his own (OSS) men there, Hoover and Nelson Rockefeller (who, as head of an inter-American activities office had been running an "intelligence" office of his own) and Attorney General Francis Biddle, and others complained bitterly to FDR about Donovan. How did Hoover know so much about Donovan's activities? He had infiltrated the OSS with his own men. Hoover was a dangerous man. He apparently felt that the FBI "belonged" to him, and with his FBI files he had successfully manipulated every president from FDR to Nixon. The Kennedy family feared his "files."

Anyway, the CIA was formed after the war, but Hoover made sure that Donovan was not its director. Hoover was aided in his attacks on Donovan by every intelligence branch of our army and navy, and many foreign "friendly" governments. Donovan knew too much.

Hoover's fifty year practice of withholding information from everybody, including the CIA, until it benefitted him personally, has infected the FBI to this day. And the excuse that "FBI computers can't 'talk' to CIA computers" is nonsense. Back-channeling among various U.S. intelligence agencies has been going on via a federal government secured "Internet"system for years. It's the jealously "protected" product that's the problem. The FBI "doesn't play well with others, and often runs with scissors," as they say.

The FBI should be rolled into, and placed in the control of, a strengthened CIA. From the time of FDR's ordering its establishment, the CIA has been the best functioning intelligence, and counterintelligence, force in the world, with very little help from Hoover and the modern FBI. The vehicle for empowering the CIA could be the Office of Homeland Security, aided by an improved "Patriot Act," now up for renewal. Director Mueller's FBI failed to infiltrate mosques, and churches, and groups likely to be hostile to the United States. His position could be eliminated, and his present "deputies," rolled into the CIA, thus increasing and streamlining the flow of intelligence analyzation and action.

The failures of the FBI, including the failure to uncover spies in its own agency, are too many to list here. It's time to say goodbye to the old FBI, and its bloated, and often paralyzed and timid, bureaucracy, and utilize its best people, the agents in the field, in the "time tried and panic tested" CIA. What do you think?

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.