Summary of The Dirty Tricks Department By John Lisle: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Dirty Tricks Department By John Lisle: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare

 

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
• Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

 

The Dirty Tricks Department was a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, including bat bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. John Lisle tells the story of these scheming scientists, exploring the moral dilemmas they faced and their dark legacy of directly inspiring the most infamous program in CIA history: MKULTRA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215789384

Willie M. Joseph

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Donovan’s Dragoons

William Wild Bill Donovan was a U.S. Army soldier who had been fighting along the Western Front for less than a year. On October 15, 1918, he and his men of the 69th Infantry Regiment, the Fighting Irish, found themselves bunkered down in shell holes while an onslaught of German bullets grazed the ground. Donovan leapt out of his hole to lead the advance, but a machine-gun bullet ripped through his right knee, destroying his tibia. Despite the pain, he continued to yell orders at his men, and despite his injury, he was known to sock them in the jaw for less.

A German artillery shell exploded in the hole beside him, and Donovan was showered with the remnants of their bodies. He inhaled the noxious fumes, and five hours later, a group of soldiers carried him more than a mile through exploding shells and whizzing bullets to a makeshift hospital. They arrived to find a harrowing scene: one officer had been shot through the stomach and was bleeding out on the floor, two more had undergone surgery and were begging their nurse to hold their hands. Another man died while crying for his wife and children. Bill Donovan was a star athlete from a tough, working-class neighborhood in Buffalo, New York who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions in World War I. After the war, he worked in the Department of Justice as an attorney for the Western District of New York and enforced Prohibition with a vigor that rivaled his appetite for war. During the 1928 presidential election, he campaigned and wrote speeches for Herbert Hoover, who promised to make him the attorney general if he won, but he reneged on the promise under pressure from a wealthy businessman.

Donovan resigned from the Department of Justice and opened a private law firm, then ran to succeed Franklin Roosevelt as governor of New York. He was a Republican, but he wasn't against cooperating with the Democrats. He sent Roosevelt on a series of trips to Europe to gather information on the state of international affairs. On September 1, 1939, a blitzkrieg of German tanks, planes, and soldiers poured east into Poland, initiating World War II. Donovan urged Roosevelt to create a centralized intelligence organization to oversee the collection of intelligence abroad and engage in espionage, sabotage, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns against America's enemies. Bill Donovan was appointed Coordinator of Information (COI) by President Roosevelt in 1941, responsible for collecting intelligence related to national security and performing other supplementary activities as necessary.

In September 1941, he moved COI headquarters to a three-story limestone building near the Potomac River in the Foggy Bottom district of Washington, D.C., a quarter mile north of the Lincoln Memorial. The area contained a skating rink, a row of dilapidated warehouses, and a brick brewery with a green copper roof that emitted the telltale stench of fermenting yeast. Donovan's organization was chaotic and chaotic, with cubbyhole offices filled with filing cabinets, walls plastered with maps of Europe and Asia, desks stacked with piles of paper, and COI workers who were unromantic and unromantic. Three months after its creation, a German newspaper announced that a secret bureau had been formed in Washington and that Donovan had first come to Germany's attention when Roosevelt sent him as his special envoy to Europe to incite the people of those countries to rebellion against Germany. Donovan's organization quickly came to resemble his own restless personality, with rivalries, jealousies, mad schemes, and everyone trying to get the ear of the director.

He had unlimited power and was able to spend any sum of money he wanted, have as many assistants as he desired, and get any information he desired. However, disinformation was spreading about the COI before he even had a chance to spread it himself.

On December 7, 1941, Colonel William J. Donovan attended a rivalry game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers football teams. The Giants looked like dismal cellar tenants compared to the nimble Dodgers, in part due to the injuries that the Giants sustained on the gridiron. In the middle of the game, a curious announcement came over the loudspeaker: Attention, please! Attention! Here is an urgent message. Donovan, surprised, walked to a nearby phone booth and called the operator, who patched him through to James Roosevelt, President Roosevelt's son and an early member of the COI. Donovan was informed that at that very moment, six time zones to the west, Japanese aircraft were attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii.

Eleven hours later, Donovan entered Roosevelt's private study and found him exhausted from the torrent of generals, admirals, and aides who had been vying for his attention all day. His stamp album, which he had been working on when he first learned of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, had been moved to a far corner of the room. The COI's payroll included six hundred personnel, known among old-line military men as Donovan's Dragoons. The organization generated a slew of epithets around Washington, D.C., such as the Bad Eyes Brigade or Draft Dodger Heaven. Donovan bitterly defended his organization against the insults, and Admiral Horace Schmahl called the COI a Tinker Toy outfit, spying on spies. Donovan overheard the slight and said, I don't know, Admiral, I think that we could get your secret files and blow up your ammunition dump on Christmas Eve. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established by President Roosevelt in 1942 as a successor to the COI and the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite its name, the OSS was seen as elitist and snobbish due to its hiring of members of the wealthiest families in the United States.

Austine Cassini, a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald, commented on its composition, which included ex-polo players, millionaires, Russian princes, society gambol