Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan
Language: English
Pages: 592
ISBN: 1451693729
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“A fantastic book, one of the very finest accounts of wartime spookery...a hell of a good tale.” —The Wall Street Journal
The author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Wild Bill Donovan, tells the story of four OSS warriors of World War II. All four later led the CIA.
They are the most famous and controversial directors the CIA has ever had—Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Disciples is the story of these dynamic agents and their daring espionage and sabotage in wartime Europe under OSS Director Bill Donovan.
Allen Dulles ran the OSS’s most successful spy operation against the Axis. Bill Casey organized dangerous missions to penetrate Nazi Germany. Bill Colby led OSS commando raids behind the lines in occupied France and Norway. Richard Helms mounted risky intelligence programs against the Russians in the ruin of Berlin after the German surrender.
Four very different men, they later led (or misled) the successor CIA. Dulles launched the calamitous operation to land CIA-trained, anti-Castro guerrillas at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Helms was convicted of lying to Congress about the CIA’s effort to oust Chile’s president. Colby would become a pariah for releasing to Congress what became known as the “Family Jewels” report on CIA misdeeds during the 1950s, sixties and early seventies. Casey would nearly bring down the CIA—and Ronald Reagan’s presidency—from a scheme to secretly supply Nicaragua’s contras with money raked off from the sale of arms to Iran for American hostages in Beirut.
Mining thousands of once-secret World War II documents and interviewing scores of family members and CIA colleagues, Waller has written a brilliant successor to Wild Bill Donovan.
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shoved tumbled out of the Liberator’s hole. Even wearing a facemask, Colby was stunned by the frigid blast. Europe had experienced its coldest winter in forty years. Though spring had started, the night air above Norway was twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The mission had begun—code-named “Rype” (the Norwegians pronounced it “Reepay”) after a local bird that changed colors with the season. • • • • After the Germans’ failed Ardennes counteroffensive in December 1944, Eisenhower worried
“That is certainly a lovely view.” Helms and the others spun around to see Hitler stepping onto the battlement. An SS aide introduced the dictator to each of the correspondents, who formed a half circle around him. Helms found the hand he shook soft and delicate with tapered fingers, not the hand of a worker but of someone who held a pen all day. His hair in the bright sunlight had a russet tone to it and Helms thought the blue eyes everyone claimed were hypnotic were actually a dull slate blue
170; Dreux, p. 22; Alsop, pp. 148–49; Dreux, p. 57. their eyes: Beavan, pp. 84–87, 92–93; John Colby, July 30, 2012; Carl Colby, July 16, 2012; Report on Seventy-five SO Agents (Mostly Jedburghs) Dropped by Parachute into France, B: 69, WJCP, HIA; Cyrus Manierre memo to CO US Contingent, Training Detachment, M.E. 65, April 15, 1944, Statements by Major Fuller–U.S. Army April 15, 1944, and by Maj. Johnson, F.P., British Army, Lt. Col. Musgrave memo to Carleton Smith April 16, 1944, B: 9, E: 128,
10–11, 81–85, 157–67, 182, 184–85, 189, 190, 191–92, 194, 195, 208, 209, 225, 252–53, 264–90, 292–321, 323, 324, 342, 375, 379, 380, 383–84, 389–91 “OSS Program for Germany,” 271 OSS promotions, 252–53, 289–90 postwar Germany intelligence operations, 271, 281–84, 288–90, 292–321, 323, 324, 342, 375, 379, 380, 383–84, 390–91 president of Veterans of OSS, 422 resignation from OSS, 392–93 as RIA analyst, 33–34, 79–80 with SEC, 436 as social worker, 31–33 Supreme Court visits, 32 in U.S.
newspapers. After three months as Mayer’s aide, Helms moved to the Secret Intelligence Branch’s Central European and Scandinavian section. He still looked for ways to penetrate Germany, just not under Mayer’s direct supervision. Helms had come to the conclusion that Mayer was past his prime. His operation to infiltrate Germany with spies seemed listless to the young Navy lieutenant. What’s more, though Mayer spoke German and had spent time in Berlin, Helms believed he did not really understand
