He got President Roosevelt to agree that the FBI should retain its intelligence and counterintelligence roles, not only within the United States but in Latin and South America as well. And he got Roosevelt to keep Bill Donovan's agents in South America under his own control by claiming the right to "coordinate" all their activities. Clearly, he could not coordinate their activities unless they made frequent and detailed reports of their activities to the FBI.
Donovan, because he acknowledged the battle as lost, or perhaps because Latin and South America were low in his priorities, gave Hoover his way. Not completely, of course, but he paid lip service to the notion that Hoover had been given North and South America as his area of operations.
Hoover saw Donovan for what he was: a highly competent man with a sense of morality and patriotism that was close to his own--and a good friend.
But he also saw Donovan as someone who was challenging his (the FBI's) authority in all things concerned with espionage. And this was especially galling because Donovan had the same access to the President's ear that Hoover did. Despite their sharp political and ideological differences, Donovan and Roosevelt had been friends since they had been students at the Columbia School of Law.
And, with consummate skill, Roosevelt played games with them--Hoover and Donovan--sometimes pitting one against the other, and other times assuring one that the other regarded him as the greatest patriot and most efficient employee on the government payroll.
And both Hoover and Donovan understood that the most dangerous thing that could happen to either was to force Roosevelt to choose between them.
As confident of their own ability and their own influence with Roosevelt as they each were, neither was assured that the other would ever be asked for his resignation.
Tonight, with nothing specific on the agenda, they exchanged tidbits.
Hoover told Donovan and Douglass what his agents had uncovered in Latin and South America. Donovan heard nothing he thought was very important.
Much of what Hoover told him, he had heard before.
Hoover, only half joking, said that he was on the edge of doubling his security force at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the refining of uranium was getting under way in a top-secret plant. He would use half the force, he said, to keep the Germans from finding out what was going on, and the other half to keep the scientists--fifty percent of whom, he said, were "pinkos"--from passing what they knew and were learning to the Soviets. There was no question in his mind, Hoover said, that the scientist in charge, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was as left of center as Vladimir Lenin.
"And it's delicate, you know, Bill, with the Boss," Hoover said.
"If he has one flaw in his political judgment, it has to do with the Russians. He thinks Joe Stalin is sort of the Russian senator from Georgia. And that he can buy him off with a dam or a highway."
Donovan laughed.
"You think there's a genuine danger of somebody actually spilling the beans to the Russians? "he asked.
"Not so long as I'm in charge of security," Hoover said.
"Instead of, for example, Henry Wallace."
He said it with a smile, but Donovan understood that Hoover regarded the Vice President and several of the people around him as bona fide threats to the one great secret of the war: that the United States was engaged in building a bomb that would use as its explosive force nuclear energy, a force-presuming theory could be turned into practice--that would give one five thousand-pound bomb the destructive force of twenty thousand tons of "Henry doesn't know about Oak Ridge," Donovan said.
"And the President tells me he has no intention of telling him."
"Franklin Roosevelt has been known to change his mind to fit the circumstances of the moment," Hoover said, adding dryly, "I'm surprised you haven't noticed."
Donovan chuckled appreciatively.
"On the subject of Oak Ridge, Edgar," Donovan said, "there's something coming up--" "Oh?" Hoover interrupted.
"We are going to try to bring some German scientists here," Donovan said.
"You mean, get them out of Germany?" Hoover asked, surprised.
"Can you do that?"
"In the next couple of days," Donovan said, "we're going to make sort of a trial run." He waited for Hoover to interrupt him again, and when he didn't, went on.
"The first man we're going to bring out is a metallurgist--" Now Hoover obliged him.
"Why a metallurgist?"
"I've told you about the German flying bombs, and jet-propulsion engines," Donovan said.
"I finally managed to convince the President that they pose a real threat, no matter what the Air Corps says, to our plans for the massive bombing of Germany. I have permission to do what I can to at least slow down the production of jet-propulsion and rocket engines. Both require special metal alloys and special techniques to machine the special alloys. The idea is that when we find out what kind of special metal and what kind of special techniques are required for the necessary machining, we will just put those locations on the top of the bombing priority list."