On May 24, 1979, a 14 ft. bronze statue of General William J. Donovan was dedicated in front of Columbia University’s Law School.  The dedication speech was delivered by John J. McCloy, who had been Asst. Sec. of War when Donovan founded the Office of Strategic Services in World War II.  When Donovan died on Feb. 8, 1959, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen W. Dulles, sent a message to all CIA stations around the world, “Bill Donovan was the father of central intelligence.  He was a great leader.”

International intelligence, or, as it was formerly known, espionage, was not founded by either Donovan or Dulles, who were merely employees of the World Order.  The Order founded international espionage to protect their far reaching investments and dealings in slaves, drugs and gold, the commodities on which their wealth was built.

On Nov. 17, 1843, the Port of Shanghai was opened to foreign traders.  Lot No. 1 was rented by Jardine Mathieson & Co.  Other entrepreneurs were Dent & Co., and Samuel Russell, an American who represented Baring Brothers.  Captain Warren Delano, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grandfather, became a charter member of the Canton Regatta Club, and entered into dealings with the Hong Society.  Dr. Emmanuel Josephson states, “Warren Delano, Frederic A. Delano’s father, founded his fortune on smuggling opium into China.”  His son, Frederic A. Delano, was born in Hong Kong, and later became the first vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1914.

Although he was the son of an Irish wardheeler, William J. Donovan studied law at Columbia from 1903 to 1908.  His grades were said to be “atrocious”, but one of his professors, Harlan F. Stone, took a liking to him.  Another protege of Stone was J. Edgar Hoover.  As Attorney General Stone shocked Washington by naming Hoover director of the Bureau of Investigation.  Another Columbia professor who liked Donovan was Jackson E. Reynolds, later president of the First National Bank of N.Y. who backed Donovan’s selection as head of OSS.  One of Donovan’s Columbia classmates was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1910, Donovan met Eleanor Robson, an actress who later married August Belmont, American representative of the Rothschilds.  There was no question of their marriage – he was looking for a rich wife, she was looking for a rich husband – they began a relationship which lasted for years.  Donovan also courted Blanche Lopez, of a wealthy tobacco family, who lived in Rumson, N.J.  He then returned to Buffalo, where he opened a law practice.  He met Ruth Rumsey, and abruptly dropped Blanche Lopez, never contacting her again.  Ruth Rumsey was heiress of one of the richest families in America.  Her father, Dexter Rumsey, and her uncle Bronson owned 22 of Buffalo’s 43 square miles.  In 1890, Dexter Rumsey was worth $10 million.  His wife was a member of the wealthy Hazard family of Rhode Island, who had owned one thousand slaves, and were the largest slave owners in America.  The Rumseys were Masters of the Genesee Valley Hunt, the most exclusive hunt club in the U.S.  Dexter Rumsey died in 1906, leaving his son and daughter 12½% each of his fortune in trust.  Bill Donovan’s courtship of Ruth Rumsey was complicated by the reappearance in Buffalo of Eleanor Robson, now Mrs. August Belmont.  She turned up at the Studio Club, an acting group run by Katharine Cornell’s father, where Donovan had the juvenile lead.  La Robson requested that Donovan come to her suite in New York each weekend for “drama lessons”.  Donovan then took the long train ride to New York City each weekend, causing considerable gossip in Buffalo, where he was already widely known for his philandering.  Nevertheless, Ruth Rumsey had determined to marry him, probably because her family was so strongly opposed.  Friends of the family stated that had Dexter Rumsey lived, he would never have allowed this marriage to take place, because of Donovan’s age;  he was 31;  his religion, Irish Catholic;  and his philandering.  The Rumseys were Episcopalian, but Donovan persuaded his wife to bring up their children as Roman Catholics.  His brother was a priest.  After the marriage, Donovan and his wife moved into the Rumsey family mansion at 742 Delaware Ave. in Buffalo.

Because of his New York connections, the Rockefeller Foundation selected Donovan to go to Europe on a “War Relief Mission” in 1915, the first of many assignments from the World Order.  He was to be separated from Ruth Donovan continually during the next three years.  While in London, he worked with Ambassador Walter Nelson Page, William Stephenson, who later “advised” him on setting up the OSS, and Herbert Hoover.  Donovan spent five weeks in Belgium as an observer with Hoover’s Belgian Relief Commission.

When the U.S. entered World War I, Donovan helped organize the “Rainbow” Division, and was given command of the “Fighting 69th”.  He fought at Landes et Landes St. George, in the Meuse-Argonne sector, where, although wounded, he charged a German machine gun squad on Oct. 15, 1918 with his bayonet.  For this feat, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.  His bravery was the subject of wide publicity in the American press, and Current Biography later stated he was the most famous man in the A.E.F.  He was with Joyce Kilmer, the poet, when Kilmer was shot down.  In 1919 and 1920, Donovan was sent on secret missions to China and Siberia.

After the war, J.P. Morgan established the Foreign Commercial Corp. to float $2 billion in bonds in postwar Europe.  In February, 1920, he asked Donovan to make a secret tour of Europe to obtain intelligence relating to these bonds.  Cave Brown described this mission, “Having helped to finance the war, Morgan wished to help finance the peace by expanding the House of Morgan’s interests widely ..... These activities required the best intelligence from the best sources in Europe.  Donovan and the Rainbow Division intelligence officer, Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, had been retained by John Lord O’Brian’s firm to obtain that intelligence, working in secrecy.”  Morgan reportedly paid Donovan $200,000 for this operation.

During his European reconnaissance, Donovan met Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, and spent an evening with him in his room at Pension Moritz.  Donovan later claimed he had not known who Hitler was, but that he found him a “fascinating talker”.

In 1922, Donovan was appointed U.S. District Attorney for New York.  In 1924, Atty. Gen. Harlan F. Stone, Donovan’s Columbia law professor, asked him to come to Washington as Asst. Atty. Gen.  Donovan and his wife bought a house in Georgetown (later the home of Katharine Meyer) at 1637 30th St.  Donovan’s first official act was to demand that Stone fire J. Edgar Hoover from the Bureau of Investigation.  Instead, Stone, who was Hoover’s patron as well as Donovan’s, appointed Hoover Director of the Bureau of Investigation Dec. 18, 1924. Donovan also became involved in another political football, the prosecution of Senator Burton K. Wheeler.  Wheeler was defended by Senator Tom Walsh, one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, but Donovan, against all advice to the contrary, insisted on proceeding with the prosecution.  It was said that the charges against Wheeler were “ludicrous”, and Stone asked Donovan to drop the case, but he stubbornly proceeded to indict Wheeler before a District of Columbia grand jury.  When the case was tried in Great Falls, the jury deliberated only ten minutes before bringing in a verdict of acquittal for Wheeler.

Such a boner would have destroyed the careers of most men in Washington, but Donovan was under the protection of Herbert Hoover, his associate from World War I.  Between 1924 and 1928, he was Hoover’s closest associate.  Hoover took him to the Bohemian Club, the sacrosanct West Coast powerhouse where he was the directing figure.  Hoover then persuaded President Coolidge to appoint Donovan to the Colorado River Commission, a seven state authority which organized the proposals for the Hoover Dam (later renamed the Boulder Dam by FDR, and still later, renamed the Hoover Dam by Act of Congress in 1947.)  During the 1920s, Republican politicians favored the nomination of Dawes for president.  Although it seemed that he was backing a sure loser, Donovan worked as Hoover’s top strategist for four years.  When Hoover was nominated on the first ballot at the Republican Convention (a tribute to the power of the Rothschilds), Donovan wrote his acceptance speech.  It was understood that Donovan was to be Hoover’s running mate.  However, Hoover immediately realized that because he was running against Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, he would lose the massive anti-catholic vote if he picked Donovan, also a Roman Catholic, as his running mate.  Hoover had no intention of losing his trump card in the forthcoming election.  He cast Donovan aside without a second thought, and even refused to consider him for a cabinet post, such as Attorney General, probably the only time in American politics that the architect of a successful Presidential campaign was denied a position on the team or in the Cabinet.

The disheartened Donovan decided to forego political life.  In 1929, he organized the law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Irvine, with offices at 2 Wall St.  He also took a 23 room suite at the Shoreham Hotel for the firm’s Washington offices.  During ensuing years, Donovan rarely saw his wife, although they were never legally separated.  Dunlop’s biography of Donovan notes that “He always had his pick of feminine admirers.  To many of the women he met, Donovan was irresistible.”  Ruth Donovan stayed at their summer home on the South Shore of Massachusetts, or at their New York apartment on Beekman Place.

Despite his disappointment with Hoover, Donovan continued to take an active role in national politics.  He ran Knox’s campaign for the Republican nomination in 1936, and his firm defended American Telephone and Telegraph in an anti-trust suit by the government.  Donovan won handily, which brought in a new influx of business to his firm.

In 1937, Donovan renewed his association with the Rothschilds.  The Viennese branch of the family had lost extensive holdings in Bohemia when the Nazis moved into Czechoslovakia.  Because Donovan had already established a network of informants in the highest echelons of the Nazi government, including Admiral Canaris, the Rothschilds asked him to salvage their interests.  He went to Germany to argue their case, but despite his important contacts, he was defeated by Hitler’s view of the Rothschilds as a symbol of what he hoped to achieve in his battle against “the international bankers”.  The Rothschilds were not overly concerned;  they knew that World War II was on its way, and that the outcome had been decided in advance.

Donovan won another important legal victory in 1937, when he and a staff of 57 lawyers defended 18 oil firms against anti-trust charges.  His clients were let off with nominal fines, and once again Donovan was considered the winner.

His German contacts now invited him to observe the Nuremberg maneuvers, as a guest of the German General Staff.  He also accompanied them on a trip to observe the progress of the Spanish Civil War.  Although he was there as an invited guest of “the Fascists”, Donovan was soon to build the OSS around the hard core of the Communist Lincoln Brigade.  He met Kim Philby in Spain, who was writing about the Civil War as a “pro-Nazi” journalist, a pose he carried off successfully despite his recent marriage to Litzi Friedmann, a fanatical Communist and Zionist provocateur.

On April 10, 1940, Donovan’s daughter, Patricia wrecked her car near Fredericksburg, Va. and was killed.  She was his only daughter;  there was also one son, David, who married Mary Grandin, Patricia’s roommate at boarding school, and heiress of a wealthy Philadelphia family.  Associates said that Donovan never got over his daughter’s death.  Because he had received the Congressional Medal of Honor, Patricia was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  His grief-stricken wife left for a round the world cruise on Irving Johnson’s ship, Yankee.

On May 29, 1940, William Stephenson arrived in New York with a letter to Donovan from Admiral Blinker Hall, a British Naval Intelligence officer whom Donovan had met in 1916.  The letter proposed an American intelligence agency, although we were not at war.  Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Donovan to London with orders to develop this program, as an “unofficial observer”.  Despite efforts at secrecy, there was widespread journalistic speculation about his mission for Roosevelt.  He then made a tour of southeast Europe for the President, gauging the status of the German occupied countries.  Although this was an obvious espionage mission, the Germans placed no obstacles in his path.  They were anxious to maintain good relations with the United States.

After Donovan delivered his report to the President, he was named Coordinator of Information by the White House.  Because he had had no experience in propaganda work, the office was later split into the Office of War Information, Executive Order 9128, and the Office of Strategic Services, Military Order of June 13, 1942.  Donovan was placed in charge of the OSS.