On June 7, 1944—D-day Plus One—General William J. Donovan, the chief of the Office of Strategic Services, America’s wartime spy agency, landed on Utah Beach in Normandy. His presence in the combat zone had been strictly forbidden by his superiors in Washington, in order to protect the spymaster and his secrets from being captured. Donovan, characteristically, ignored the order. As an infantry officer in the First World War, he had won the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism under fire. Now, as he waded ashore, Donovan was wearing the sky-blue ribbon of the medal on his uniform jacket.

On Utah Beach, Donovan and his commander of covert operations in Europe, Colonel David K. E. Bruce, a former businessman and Donovan’s sometime squash partner, came under fire from a German fighter plane. Falling on top of Donovan, Bruce inadvertently cut his boss in the throat with the edge of his steel helmet. Donovan “bled profusely,” Bruce recalled at a dinner of O.S.S. vets many years later, but nonetheless “sauntered inland” to the American front lines.

Advancing toward a hedgerow, the two O.S.S. officers suddenly ran into German machine-gun fire. Flattened on the ground, Donovan turned to Bruce and said, “David, we mustn’t be captured. We know too much.” Bruce mechanically answered, “Yes, sir.” Donovan then inquired, “Have you the pill?” Bruce confessed that he was not carrying the death pellet concocted by the O.S.S.’s scientific adviser, Stanley Lovell. “Never mind,” replied Donovan. “I have two of them.” Still lying flat, the general proceeded to empty his pockets. Hotel keys, a passport, currency of several nations, photographs of grandchildren, travel orders—all tumbled out, but no pills. “Never mind,” said Donovan, “we can do without them, but if we get out of here, you must send a message to Gibbs, the Hall Porter at Claridge’s in London, telling him on no account to allow the servants in the hotel to touch some dangerous medicines in my bathroom.”

“This humanitarian disposition having been made,” Bruce recalled, Donovan then whispered to his subordinate, “I must shoot first.” Bruce responded, “Yes, sir, but can we do much against machine guns with our pistols?” Donovan clarified the situation: “Oh, you don’t understand. I mean, if we are about to be captured, I’ll shoot you first. After all, I am your commanding officer.”

As it turned out, Donovan and Bruce made it safely back to Claridge’s a few days later. Bruce went on to a distinguished diplomatic career, serving as ambassador to England and France. When, at the annual dinner of Veterans of the O.S.S., in 1971, Ambassador Bruce recounted this Normandy adventure, no doubt exaggerating slightly for effect, the 500 or so people at the Statler Hilton got a good laugh. There may have been some eye-rolling and rueful smiles as well, as the Old Boys present that night recalled the brave and gallant—and sometimes reckless or nonsensical—missions they had undertaken for the man known as “Wild Bill” Donovan.

The Central Intelligence Agency regards Donovan as its founding father. When Donovan died, on February 8, 1959, the C.I.A. cabled its station chiefs around the world: “The man more responsible than any other for the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away.” Today, Donovan’s statue stands in the lobby of the C.I.A.’s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, and some old agency hands still celebrate Donovan’s bravado and élan—“an attitude,” says the C.I.A.’s chief historian, David Robarge, “of do it, try it, derring-do.” Robarge, like many of his contemporaries in the U.S. intelligence community, is at once awed by Donovan and wary of his legacy. Presidents have been tempted from time to time to use the C.I.A. as a secret and “deniable” weapon. The lure of covert action “creates an expectation,” says Robarge, choosing his words carefully, “that cannot always be fulfilled.”