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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 28, 1963)
6 C THURSDAY. MARCH 28. 1963 MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON Roosevelt's Veto Credited With.Bcmning Poison Gas By FREDERICK H. TREESH United Preis International New York-flJPI)-It is a wide ly held notion that, for hu manitarian reasons, poison gas was not used in World War II - a sort of gentlemen's agreement on both sides. But a high-ranking official of the wartime Office of Stra tegic Services (OSS) came for ward this week with a sur prising story that the Ameri can military command planned to saturate the Japa nese island fortress of Iwo Jima with nerve gas, fired from Navy snips. Only a per sonal veto by President Frank lin D. Roosevelt spared the Pacific island which cost 20,. 000 American casualties to take by conventional means, said Stanley P. Lovell, for mer director of research and development for the OSS, Lovell also quoted Nazi Marshal Hermann Goering as saying at the time of his war crimes trial, that the allied invasion force at Normandy was spared a gas attack be cause the Germans feared the gas would disrupt their own norse-oriented supply system Goering said the Nazis needed all available gasoline for their mechanized Panzer divisions and Air Force, so material on tne ground was horsedrawn Gas Vitwtd "I tell you, you would have won tne war years ago if you naa usea gas - not on our soldiers but on our transpor tation system," Goering was quoted as telling OSS Chief William J. (Wild Bill) Dono van. These and other heretofore unpublished tales of the su persecret spy and sabotage agency were made known by Lovel In a new book, "Of Spies and' Stratagems," pub lished this week by Prentice Hall. Lovell said he was pledged to secrecy for 20 years after he became "the OSS' "Dr. . Moriarty" .(Sher lock Holmes', sinister adver sary) in 1942. ' ' One thing Lovell claims the OSS tried early ii World War II was to neutralize Hit ler by injecting .female sex hormones into his Berchtes gaden vegetable garden. The Fuhrer was' suspected of be ing close to the male-female line and a heavy dose of hor mones might have further un settled him. v V lies! . . - ouico ne survived. I can only assume that the gardener iook our money and threw the syringes and medications into me nearest thicket," said Lovell. Plot ApproTfd . ' - i Lovell said the plot to use gas on Iwo Jima, the little known "Lethbridge Report," was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pacific Theater Naval commander, Adm. Chester W. Nimilz. It was, Lovell said, a dia bolical scheme to leak to the Japanese phoney radio mes sages about a newly invented "death ray," allow the Iwo Jima garrison to relay the re port to Tokyo and then anni hilate the defenders with gas. American Marines then could take the island without a shot being fired and, hopefully, the Japanese at home would be terror-struck by the enemy's ghastly death ray weapon which, In fact, never existed. The plan was returned to the OSS marked: "All prior endorsements denied - Frank lin D. Roosevelt, commander- in-chief," Lovell said. "Admiral Nimitz probably would deny he ever approved that plan," Lovell told United Press International. "But not one word - so help me God -not one word in that book is not the truth!" Lovell now heads his own chemical firm in Watertown, Mass., work ing, among other things, on k way to develop cement that hardens more slowly and is mure waterproof. Perhaps as far out a plan as the OSS ever dreamt up was the plot to blind Hitler and Mussolini at a secret war conference in northern Italy A waiter at the meeting place was to drop into a flower vase a liquid that would, with water, vaporize into nitrogen mustard gas - colorless, odor less but permanently blind ing. Unfortunately, the ever alert Nazi security changed the meeting place at the last minute and the plot failed, Lovell wrote. Thus Lovell admits, some of the OSS' most grandiose schemes failed. But he told also of devices and stratagems that did work-lumps of "coal" that exploded hundreds of freight trains fireboxes, elec-1 whom gave their lives for us, trie-eye detonators that de railed trains inside Italian mountain tunnels, flashless pistols and corset bone stil letos, oil additives which caus ed Nazi tanks to burst into flame, rifle-bullet booby-traps that protected American Jun gle patrols, and "Who? Me?," a smelly device which morti fied Japanese officers with embarrassment at its artificial human odors. The dedication of Lovcll's book reads, in part: "To the men and women of OSS, working in solitary danger be hind enemy lines, so many of with no hope of recognition or reward ... Uncover Plot They include C-12, a super agent who, Lovell recalls, personally uncovered a Ger man plot to assassinate Roose velt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran conference. And the men of detachment 101 who harassed the Japanese and killed them by the nun dreds In the jungles of Burma. And Jim the Penman, a con victed counterfeiter and forg er, who worked for the OSS with the permission of the Treasury department. xor people a teen-age But especially tion was meant like Marguerite, French girl refugee. Lovell told this story about her: She was a native of a French vil lage, lying directly behind Omaha beach, the principal landing place in the invasion of Normandy. She was smug gled back to france with a suitcase of high explosives to place In a strategic telephone and telegraph exchange. The charge had a 30-minute time delay fuse but it didn't work. The communications center was destroyed on the eve of the dedica- Normandy but the instant blast took the young girl's life. Without Peers Perhaps Lovell's most vivid recollections of the OSS are about its leader. Gen. Dono van, the inspiring but reck less "Wild Bill" who, in repu tation at least, may never have a peer. Sipping bourbon and crunching peanuts in a cock tail lounge, Lovell portrayed Donovan this way: "He was a totally inspira tional leader, although a to tally unmilitary person. He was shaped like a pear and he was all gray - his eyes and his hair. He wore ill fitting clothes. "But, oh, my God, what a leader! He'd take over a group of people and they'd follow him through hell. He had charm, magnetism and hu mor." Lovell, an affable, active and well proportioned man of 72, said the revelations of the OSS in his book and private conversations were "low eche lon information." For a real picture of the OSS, should you read between the lines and multiply by two or three, he was asked. "Multiply by with a grin. X,' 'he said HELP US! We need clothing, shoes, dishes, furniture, end bedding. We Pick Up. HELP OTHERS! The Salvation Army 30 N. Holly 773-7335 Landing on Moon Said Focal Point Los Anglcss - (UPD - Why Is the United Stales spend ing $30 billion or so to put a man on the moon? The aucstion assumnx t' at the lunar landing is the ul timate goal of KDari rnspnrrh New Frontiers, publlcat'nn of x ne iiarrctl corporation, says it is not, but a focal point on which to concentrate the whole rpace research effort. The magazine says the rcHl goal of the proposed lunar expedition is American s p- rcmacy in space for reasons of security, prestige and other benefits. 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