Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime (but not direct) precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Prior to the formation of the OSS, American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including State, Treasury, Navy and War. They had no overall direction, coordination, or control. The Army and the Navy had separate code-breaking departments (Signals Intelligence Service and OP-20-G) that not only competed, but refused to share break-throughs. Also, the original code-breaking operation of the State Department, MI-8, run by Herbert Yardley, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail". President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, the senior representative of British intelligence in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt directed Stephenson's friend William J. Donovan, a World War I veteran and New York lawyer, to draft a plan for an intelligence service.

The Office of Strategic Services was established in June 1942 to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. During the War, the OSS supplied policy makers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities—the FBI was responsible for intelligence work in Latin America, and the military jealously guarded their areas of responsibility.

The OSS helped arm, train and supply anti-Japanese and anti-German groups in the Second World War, including Mao Tse Tung's Communist Forces in China, and Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Ai Quoc)'s Viet Minh in French Indochina. The OSS also recruited and ran one of the war's most important spies, the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe.

X-2

OSS had a dismal security reputation. Established agencies like the FBI and G-2 believed that Donovan's oddball outfit, built as it was from scratch with not a few corners cut in the hiring of its staff, had to be riddled with subversives and spies. This rap was not wholly fair; OSS headquarters was not in fact penetrated by Axis agents, and its field security (at least in Europe) was adequate. Nevertheless, X-2 hunted the agents of Axis—not Allied—services. Soviet sympathizers and even spies worked in OSS offices in Washington and the field. Some were hired precisely because they were Communists; Donovan wanted their help in dealing with partisan groups in Nazi-occupied Europe. Others who were not Communists, such as Donovan's aide Duncan Lee, Research and Analysis (R&A) labor economist Donald Wheeler, Morale Operations Indonesia expert Jane Foster Zlatowski, and R&A Latin America specialist Maurice Halperin, nevertheless passed information to Moscow. OSS operations in China, moreover, were badly penetrated by Communist agents working as clerical and housekeeping staff, or training in OSS camps for operational missions.

The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material (or Finnish information on them) from émigré Finnish army officers in late 1944. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr. protested that this violated an agreement President Roosevelt made with the Soviet Union not to interfere with Soviet cipher traffic from the U.S. Donovan might have copied the papers before returning them the following January but there is no record of Arlington Hall receiving them, and CIA and NSA archives have no surviving copies.

In October 1945 the OSS was dissolved and its functions were split between the Departments of State and War. State received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) and headed by Alfred McCormack. The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-espionage (X-2) Branches that were housed in a new office created for just this purpose - The Strategic Services Unit (SSU). The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder (formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) as director to oversee the liquidation, and more importantly the preservation of the OSS' clandestine intelligence capability. In January of 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) which was the direct precursor to the CIA. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). In 1947 the National Security Act established America's first permanent peacetime intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, which took up the functions of the OSS.

OSS Branches

US Army units seconded to the OSS

Notes

. The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, Michael Warner, CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Published: United States Central Intelligence Agency, 2000.

OSS in Fiction

Aline Romanos (nee Aline Griffith, aka Aline, Countess of Romanones and Aline Countess Romanones) published a memoir of her OSS work called The Spy Wore Red: My Adventures as an Undercover Agent in World War II. The foreword states that the memoir is somewhat fictionalized. The Countess has also published a novel, The Well-Mannered Assassin, and two post-OSS memoirs, The Spy Wore Silk and The Spy Went Dancing.

Susan Isaacs' book Shining Through features a Jewish OSS operative who goes behind enemy lines in Berlin.

The Musical Kilroy Was Here! Follows several OSS operatives attempting to capture German spies.

In Nelson DeMille's The Talbot Odyssey, a group of former OSS operatives works on their own to prevent a Russian attack.

In the X-Files episode "Triangle", Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) finds his way onto a ship in 1939 located near the Bermuda Triangle. Here he encounters acquaintances of present time (1998) in different roles. One being Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) as an OSS agent protecting a scientist codenamed "Thor's Hammer".

In the Spy Kids trilogy, it is stated the Cortez family works for the OSS. The real initials are never revealed, however it is implied. They refer to the director of the OSS - in the third movie, "Giggles Donovan" is appointed to the position of Chairman of the organization.

In the Medal of Honor computer and video game series, the main characters often are recruited for the OSS

In W.E.B. Griffin's "The Corps" series, set during World War II, main characters are pulled from service in USMC and USN for service in the OSS. Also by W.E.B. Griffin, the series "Men At War" details the work of OSS-agents in Europe, the series "Honor Bound" details the work of OSS agents in Argentina

OSS 117 was the codename of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a French spy whose adventures were written down by the late Jean Bruce until the year of his death, 1963 and later on by Mr Bruce's wife until her death in 1996. The serial, though never reaching a peak, were turned into movies, the last of which was released in 2006, featuring Jean Dujardin in the main role.

In the Alternative History dystopian Draka series of Science Fiction writer S.M. Stirling, the OSS is not disbanded in 1945 but remains the main US inteliigence agency, under that name and with an organizational continuity, for decades afterwards.

In the 1970s, DC Comics published a series of stories based on the OSS. An anthology, the only continuing character was "Control" a bald spy master that sent OSS agents on their missions. The basic plot had to do with a Nazi official that had to be assassinated. The OSS agents would often risk their lives to plant bombs in unuasual locations (riding boots, ventriliquist's dummy etc.) The main artist on the series was E.R. Cruz. The stories appeared in the magazine G.I. Combat.

OSS Facilities

Prince William Forest Park was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945.

External links

1942 establishments | History of the United States government | United States intelligence agencies | World War II politics

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