The building at 34 East 62nd street in New York which was destroyed by an explosion on July 10 was built in 1882 and was once site of The Room, a secret hideaway complete with a mail slot and an unlisted telephone number. It had no full-time occupant. Access was limited to a select few successful, rich, powerful and patriotic Americans. These were friends, neighbors and confidants of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, both Republicans and Democrats, who kept the President informed on world affairs, carried out intelligence duties for him and delighted in playing secret agent man. It is easy 70 years later to laugh and dismiss these businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and publishers, but in the 1930s and until World War II the United States had no OSS, CIA, DIA or other national intelligence service. (The FBI’s overseas intelligence activities in South America would not come into play until after WWII started.) One of the early visitors to The Room was William Donovan, a Republican lawyer, and contemporary of FDR’s at Columbia Law School. He undertook missions for the President in the mid-thirties, served as Coordinator of Information, director of the Office of Strategic Services, and is remembered today with a life-size statue in the lobby of the CIA headquarters. Members of The Room, it has been reported, gave President Roosevelt, among other things, secret access to banking information and telegraphic communications – similar to two intelligence gathering efforts the current President is catching hell for.
