THE SECRET WARRIORS

THE ST.REGIS HOTEL,NEW YORK CITY,APRIL 4,1942
When the gentlemen-the group known as the Disciples-gathered to brief and be briefed by Colonel William Donovan ,they found him in pain in bed in his suit at the hotel.He had a glass dark with Scotch in his hand,and there was a Scotch botle on his bedside table.
Though Colonel Donovan ,a stocky,silver-haired,ruddy faced Irishman,was not a professional soldiar,neither was he a Kentucky colonel ,nor the commanding officer of a National Gurad regiment.He had earned both his silver eagle and the Medal of Honor for valor on the battlefields of France in Word War I.Between wars,he had become a very succsessful-and,it logically followed,very wealthy-attorney in New York City,and a power behind the scenes in the Democratic Party,not only in New York but,even perhaps in Washington.
He was again in govenment employ,this time at an anual stipend of one dollar,as the Coordinator of information,wich meant he ran a relatively new government agency.Donovan reported directly to president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Most people,to Donovan's joy,belived the COI was the United States,government's answer to Joseph Goebbels 's propagandaMinistry.