William Lane Rehm

William Lane Rehm studied at the University of Chicago. He married Janet Flanner, a fellow student, in 1918. The marriage lasted for only a few years and they divorced amicably in 1926. Flanner went on to become a highly successful journalist.

Rehm was editor of a small financial journal when he met Averill Harriman and David Bruce. With their encouragement he began a career in investment banking. However, he wanted to become a painter and in his forties he remarried and purchased a farm near Kent in Connecticut. One of his friends recalled: "Lane, between chopping wood and shovelling snow, began to paint seriously. Big salaries couldn't lure him back."

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Rehm joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). At first he was based in Washington and worked under William Donovan and George K. Bowen, the head of Special Activities. Other senior figures he worked with included David Bruce (head of intelligence) and Allen Dulles (head of the New York office).

Rehm became the head of finance. Donald Chase Downes, the author of The Scarlett Thread (1953) has argued: "Lane Rehm, OSS Finance Officer, was recommended for his job by Averill Harriman and David Bruce. They recommended him because earlier in his life he had been called upon to handle large sums of money when what was needed was incorruptible integrity and a lasting contempt for money, and those who worship it.... There was never a scandal with the hundreds of millions of dollars which passed through Lane Rehm's hands. A man in whom he and Donovan had confidence was never, to my knowledge, refused funds or badgered about his expenditure." Downes, who worked with Rehm at the OSS: "Lane Rehm... has hard, blue eyes, impossible to look into while telling a lie. A straight, closed mouth, with almost no lips. The stern face of a puritan until he smiles, and when he smiles he couldn't look less like a puritan - for he is gay and jolly and civilized - three most unpuritan vices."

Robin Winks, the author of Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America's Secret War (1987), has remarked the good relationship Rehm had with Downes when he was in Spain: "Downes wanted independent means of suborning Spanish officers... and had persuaded Lane Rehm, the OSS finance officer with whom he often had worked, to provide him with $6 million is untraceable old European gold coins, to be deposited with the OSS finance officer in Gibraltar."

Primary Sources

(1) Donald Chase Downes, The Scarlett Thread (1953)

Lane Rehm, OSS Finance Officer, was recommended for his job by Averill Harriman and David Bruce. They recommended him because earlier in his life he had been called upon to handle large sums of money when what was needed was incorruptible integrity and a lasting contempt for money, and those who worship it....

There was never a scandal with the hundreds of millions of dollars which passed through Lane Rehm's hands. A man in whom he and Donovan had confidence was never, to my knowledge, refused funds or badgered about his expenditure. But he was highly critical of that small minority of useless OSS colonels who sat in requisitioned villas in Cairo and Algiers and Caserta with little to do but drink and whore and decorate one another's breasts. He made it difficult for them to come by unvouchered funds.

Lane Rehm... has hard, blue eyes, impossible to look into while telling a lie. A straight, closed mouth, with almost no lips. The stern face of a puritan until he smiles, and when he smiles he couldn't look less like a puritan - for he is gay and jolly and civilized - three most unpuritan vices.