The Office of Strategic Services was a United
States intelligence agency formed during World
War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency,
and a predecessor of the Central Intelligence
Agency. The OSS was formed in order to coordinate
espionage activities behind enemy lines for
the branches of the United States Armed Forces.
Other functions of the OSS included the use
of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
Origin
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 the State, Treasury, Navy,
and War Departments. It had no overall direction,
coordination, or control. The US Army and
US Navy had separate code-breaking departments:
Signals Intelligence Service and OP-20-G.
The FBI was responsible for domestic security
and anti-espionage operations.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned
about American intelligence deficiencies.
On the suggestion of William Stephenson, the
senior British intelligence officer in the
western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that
William J. Donovan draft a plan for an intelligence
service based on the British Secret Intelligence
Service and Special Operations Executive.
Colonel Donovan was employed to evaluate the
global military position in order to offer
suggestions concerning American intelligence
requirements because the U.S. did not have
a central intelligence agency. After submitting
his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of
Service of Strategic Information," Colonel
Donovan was appointed as the "Co-ordinator
of Information" on July 11, 1941 heading the
new organization known as the office of the
Coordinator of Information. Thereafter the
organization was developed with the assistance
of the British; Donovan had responsibilities
but no actual powers and the existing US agencies
were sceptical if not hostile. Until some
months after Pearl Harbor, the bulk of OSS
intelligence came from the UK. The first OSS
agents were trained by British Security Coordination
in Canada, until training stations were set
up in the US with guidance from BSC instructors,
who also provided information on how the SOE
was arranged and managed. The British immediately
made available their short-wave broadcasting
capabilities to Europe, Africa and the Far
East and provided equipment for agents until
American production was established.
The Office of Strategic Services was established
by a Presidential military order issued by
President Roosevelt on June 13, 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 left responsible for
intelligence work in Latin America, and the
Army and Navy continued to develop and rely
on their own sources of intelligence.
Activities
For the duration of the World War II, the
Office of Strategic Services was conducting
multiple activities and missions, including
collecting intelligence by spying, performing
acts of sabotage, waging propaganda war, organizing
and coordinating anti-Nazi resistance groups
in Europe, providing military training for
anti-Japanese guerrilla movement in Asia,
among other things. At the height of its influence
during WWII, the OSS employed almost 24,000
people.
From 1943–1945, the OSS played a major role
in training Kuomintang troops in China and
Burma, and recruited Kachin, and other indigenous
irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides
for Allied forces in Burma fighting the Japanese
Army. Among other activities, the OSS helped
arm, train and supply resistance movements,
including Mao Zedong's Red Army in China and
the Viet Minh in French Indochina, in areas
occupied by the Axis powers during World War
II. OSS officer Archimedes Patti played a
central role in OSS operations in French Indochina
and met frequently with Ho Chi Minh in 1945.
In the "40th Bomb Group Association Memories
Issue # 14 March,1987 Date of event: Summer
of 1944 to early Spring, 1945 Date written:
September, 1986 Written by: Louis Jones":
The Dixie Mission in China was composed of
approximately 20 people, including two OSS
officers.
One of the greatest accomplishments of the
OSS during World War II was its penetration
of Nazi Germany by OSS operatives. The OSS
was responsible for training German and Austrian
individuals for missions inside Germany. Some
of these agents included exiled communists
and Socialist party members, labor activists,
anti-Nazi prisoners-of-war, and German and
Jewish refugees. The OSS also recruited and
ran one of the war's most important spies,
the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe.
In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services
set up operations in Istanbul. Turkey, as
a neutral country during the Second World
War, was a place where both the Axis and Allied
powers had spy networks. The railroads connecting
central Asia with Europe as well as Turkey's
close proximity to the Balkan states placed
it at a crossroads of intelligence gathering.
The goal of the OSS Istanbul operation called
Project Net-1 was to infiltrate and extenuate
subversive action in the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
Empires.
Head of operations at OSS Istanbul was a banker
from Chicago named Lanning "Packy" Macfarland
who maintained the cover story as a banker
for the American lend-lease program. Macfarland
hired Alfred Schwarz, a Czechoslovakian engineer
and businessman who came to be known as "Dogwood"
and ended up establishing the Dogwood information
chain. Dogwood in turn hired a personal assistant
named Walter Arndt and established himself
as an employee of the Istanbul Western Electrik
Kompani. Through Schwartz and Arndt the OSS
was able to infiltrate anti-fascist groups
in Austria, Hungary and Germany. Schwartz
was able to convince Romanian, Bulgarian,
Hungarian and Swiss diplomatic couriers to
smuggle American intelligence information
into these territories and establish contact
with elements antagonistic to the Nazis and
their collaborators. Couriers and agents memorized
information and produced analytical reports;
when they were not able to memorize effectively
they recorded information on microfilm and
hid it in their shoes or hollowed pencils.
Through this process information about the
Nazi regime made its way to Macfarland and
the OSS in Istanbul and eventually to Washington.
While the OSS "Dogwood-chain" produced a lot
of information, its reliability was increasingly
questioned by British intelligence. Eventually
by May 1944 through collaboration between
the OSS, British intelligence, Cairo and Washington
the entire Dogwood-chain was found to be unreliable
and dangerous. Planting phony information
into the OSS was intended to misdirect the
resources of the Allies. Schwartz's Dogwood-chain,
which was the largest American intelligence
gathering tool in occupied territory, was
shortly thereafter shut down.
The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material
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 United States. General Donovan might
have copied the papers before returning them
the following January, but there is no record
of Arlington Hall's receiving them, and CIA
and NSA archives have no surviving copies.
This codebook was in fact used as part of
the Venona decryption effort, which helped
uncover large-scale Soviet espionage in North
America.
Weapons and gadgets
The OSS espionage and sabotage operations
produced a steady demand for highly specialized
equipment. After realizing that, General Donovan
invited experts, organized workshops and funded
labs that formed a core of the later established
Research & Development Branch. Boston chemist
Stanley P. Lovell became its first head, and
Donovan humorously called him - "his Professor
Moriarty". Throughout the war years, the OSS
Research & Development was successfully adapting
Allied weapons and espionage equipment, and
producing its own line of novel spy tools
and gadgets, including: silenced pistols,
lightweight sub-machine guns, "Beano" grenades
that exploded upon impact, explosives disguised
as lumps of coal or bags of Chinese flour,
acetone time delay fuses for limpet mines,
compasses hidden in uniform buttons, playing
cards that concealed maps, a 16mm Kodak camera
in the shape of a matchbox, tasteless poison
tablets, and cigarettes laced with tetrahydrocannabinol
acetate to induce uncontrollable chattiness,
among others. In addition, innovative communication
equipment was developed, such as wiretap gadgets,
electronic beacons for locating agents, and
the "Joan-Eleanor" portable radio system that
made possible for operatives on the ground
to establish secure contact with a plane that
was preparing to land or drop cargo. The OSS
Research & Development also printed fake German
and Japanese-issued identification cards,
various passes, ration cards and counterfeit
money.
On August 28, 1943, Stanley Lovell was asked
to make a presentation in front of a not very
friendly audience of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
since the U.S. top brass were largely skeptical
of all OSS plans beyond collecting military
intelligence and were ready to split the OSS
between the Army and the Navy. While explaining
the purpose and mission of his department
and introducing various gadgets and tools,
he reportedly casually dropped into a waste
basket the Hedy, a panic-inducing type of
a device in a shape of a firecracker, which
shortly produced a loud shrieking sound followed
by a deafening boom. The presentation was
interrupted and did not resume since everyone
in the room fled. In reality, the Hedy, jokingly
named after a Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr for
her ability to distract men, saved lives of
some trapped OSS operatives.
Not all projects worked. Some ideas were outright
goofy, such as producing pathogenic synthetic
goat dung in PROJECT Capricious to spread
anthrax by using flies among German troops
in Spanish Morocco to prevent Spain from joining
the Axis powers. Donovan was not informed
about PROJECT Capricious due to its uttermost
secrecy, the Germans eventually evacuated
and Operation Capricious was aborted. There
were also ideas to introduce estrogen into
Hitler's food to deprive him of his trademark
mustache and — recognizable by all Germans
— baritone voice. A more deadly plot included
hiding a capsule with mustard gas in flowers
to cause blindness among Nazi generals inside
the German High Command Headquarters. All
in all, Stanley Lovell worked hard to level
the playing field for the OSS in the WWII
arena of espionage, and was later quoted saying,
"It was my policy to consider any method whatever
that might aid the war, however unorthodox
or untried".
In 1939, a young physician named Christian
J. Lambertsen developed an oxygen rebreather
set and demonstrated it to the OSS–after
already being rejected by the U.S. Navy–
in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. in
1942 The OSS not only bought into the concept,
they hired Lambertsen to lead the program
and build up the dive element for the organization.
His responsibilities included training and
developing methods of combining self-contained
diving and swimmer delivery including the
Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit for
the OSS "Operational Swimmer Group". Growing
involvement of the OSS with coastal infiltration
and water-based sabotage eventually led to
creation of the OSS Maritime Unit.
Dissolution into other agencies
After victory in Europe in May 1945, the OSS
was better able to concentrate on operations
in Japan. One month after the war was won
in the Pacific Theater of Operations, on September
20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive
Order 9621, which came into effect as of October
1, 1945. Thus in the following days from September
20, 1945, the functions of the OSS were split
between the Department of State and the Department
of War. The State Department received the
Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which
was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence
Service or and headed by U.S. Army Colonel
Alfred McCormack. This was later renamed the
Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence
and Counter-Espionage Branches, which were
then housed in a new office created for just
this purpose—the Strategic Services Unit.
The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General
John Magruder as the director to oversee the
liquidation of the OSS, and more importantly,
the preservation of the clandestine intelligence
capability of the OSS.
In January 1946, President Truman created
the Central Intelligence Group 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. Next,
the National Security Act of 1947 established
the United States's first permanent peacetime
intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence
Agency, which then took up the functions of
the OSS. The direct descendant of the paramilitary
component of the OSS is the Special Activities
Division of the CIA.
Facilities
Prince William Forest Park was the site of
an OSS training camp that operated from 1942
to 1945. Area "C", consisting of approximately
6,000 acres, was used extensively for communications
training, whereas Area "A" was use for training
some of the OGs. Catoctin Mountain Park, now
the location of Camp David, was the site of
OSS training Area "B." Congressional Country
Club in Bethesda, MD was the primary OSS training
facility.
The London branch of the OSS, its first overseas
facility, was at 70 Grosvenor Street, W1.
The Facilities of the Catalina Island Marine
Institute at Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island,
Calif., are composed of a former OSS survival
training camp.
The National Park Service commissioned a study
of OSS National Park training facilities by
Professor John Chambers of Rutgers University.
At Camp X, at Ajax, near Oshawa, Ontario,
Canada, an "assassination and elimination"
training program was operated by the British
Special Operations Executive such as William
E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes. Many members
of the US Office of Strategic Services also
were trained there. It was dubbed "the school
of mayhem and murder" by George Hunter White
who trained at the facility in the 1950s.
Personnel
The names of all OSS personnel and documents
of their OSS service, previously a closely
guarded secret, were released by the US National
Archives on August 14, 2008. Among the 24,000
names were those of Julia Child, Ralph Bunche,
Arthur Goldberg, Saul K. Padover, Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr., Bruce Sundlun, and John Ford. The 750,000
pages in the 35,000 personnel files include
applications of people who were not recruited
or hired, as well as the service records of
those who were.
Major League Baseball player Moe Berg was
recruited by the OSS in 1943 because of his
language skills, assigned to the Secret Intelligence
branch, and took part in missions in the Caribbean,
South America, France, England, Norway, Italy,
and the Balkans. Later, Berg was briefed in
nuclear physics, and sent to Zürich, Switzerland
posing as a Swiss physics student, with the
mission of attending a lecture at the Technische
Hochschule by Germany's top nuclear scientist,
Werner Heisenberg. His orders were to kill
the scientist if he determined that the Germans
were far along in their efforts to build an
atomic weapon; he found that the scientist
was not a threat. Berg was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, but declined to accept it
as he was forbidden from saying what he had
done to receive the award. He is the only
former Major League Baseball player whose
baseball card is displayed at CIA headquarters.
One of the forefathers of today's commandos
was Navy Lieutenant Jack Taylor. He was sequestered
by the OSS early in the war and had a long
career behind enemy lines.
Taro and Mitsu Yashima, both Japanese political
dissidents who were imprisoned in Japan for
protesting its regime, worked for the OSS
in psychological warfare against the Japanese
Empire.
Branches
Detachments
In popular culture
Films
The 1946 Paramount film O.S.S., starring Alan
Ladd and Geraldine Fitzgerald, showed agents
training and on a dangerous mission. Commander
John Shaheen acted as technical advisor.
The 1946 film 13 Rue Madeleine stars James
Cagney as an OSS agent who must find a mole
in French partisan operations. Peter Ortiz
acted as technical advisor.
The 1946 film Cloak and Dagger stars Gary
Cooper as a scientist recruited to OSS to
exfiltrate a German scientist defecting to
the allies with the help of a woman guerrilla
and her partisans. E. Michael Burke acted
as technical advisor.
In the 2001 film franchise Spy Kids, the Cortez
family is working for an organization called
the OSS.
In the 2006 film The Good Shepherd Matt Damon
plays Edward Wilson, a Skull and Bones recruit
who joins the OSS to help with a mission in
London. He quickly gains rank as the head
of the newly formed CIA's counterintelligence
service.
The 2008 biolgraphical film Flash of Genius
is about famed American inventor and OSS veteran,
Robert Kearns.
In the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull, it is indicated that
Indiana Jones worked for the OSS, attaining
the rank of Colonel.
In the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds by Quentin
Tarantino, the "basterds" are members of OSS,
although no such OSS unit ever actually existed.
The 2009 film Julie & Julia includes flashback
scenes depicting Julia Child's wartime service
with the OSS.
Television
In 1957-1958 Ron Randell starred in the series
O.S.S.
In the Season 6 X-Files episode "Triangle",
the woman from the 1939 scenes portrayed by
Gillian Anderson as Scully is a member of
OSS.
In Season 3, episode "Lange, H." of NCIS,
Los Angeles, the O.S.S. is mentioned as the
predecessor of the C.I.A.
Literature
The 1976 book A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret
War by William Stevenson describes the operations
of the OSS, particularly the role of Sir William
Samuel Stephenson, head of British Security
Coordination in New York, in its formation.
He also authored a 1986 book entitled Intrepid's
Last Case.
The 1957 book You're Stepping on My Cloak
and Dagger by Roger Wolcott Hall is a witty
look at Hall's experiences with the OSS.
The 1986 book "Camp X" by David Stafford is
the most accurate account of the activities
and personnel of Camp X the secret agent training
camp for sabotage and guerrilla warfare at
Ajax near Oshawa Ontario, Canada, that was
administered by the British Special Operations
Executive.
Author W.E.B. Griffin's Honor Bound and Men
At War series revolves around fictional OSS
operations.
A French pulp fiction series OSS 117, by author
Jean Bruce, follows the adventure of Hubert
Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117, a French
operative working for the OSS. The original
series lasted from 1949 to 1963, until the
death of Jean Bruce, and was continued by
his wife and children until 1992. Numerous
films were made from it in the 1960s, and
in 2006 a nostalgic comedy was made, celebrating
the spy movie genre, Cairo, Nest of Spies,
with Jean Dujardin playing OSS 117. A sequel
followed in 2009 called OSS 117: Lost in Rio.
Comics
The OSS was a featured organization in DC
Comics, introduced in G.I. Combat #192. Led
by the mysterious Control, they operated as
an espionage unit, initially in Nazi-occupied
France. The organization would later become
Argent.
DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman alter
ego Diana Prince works for Major Steve Trevor
at the OSS. In this position, she found herself
privy to intelligence on Axis operations in
the United States, and many time foiled agents
of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist
Italy in their attempts to defeat the Allies
and achieve world domination.
Video games
In the Wolfenstein series of video games,
the main character is a member of a fictional
organisation called the OSA,which is inspired
by the OSS.
Most games in the Medal of Honor video game
franchise feature a fictional OSS agent as
the main character.
In the 2012 game Sniper Elite v2 the main
protagonist is an OSS agent sniper.
In Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine,
the main female character, Sophia Hapgood,
is an OSS agent.
See also
Operation Halyard
Operation Jedburgh
Operation Paperclip
OSS Detachment 101 operated in the China Burma
India Theater of World War II.
Paramarines
Special Forces
Special Operations Executive
X-2 Counter Espionage Branch
References
Notes
Bibliography
Albarelli, H.P. A Terrible Mistake: The Murder
of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold
War Experiments ISBN 0-9777953-7-3
Aldrich, Richard J. Intelligence and the War
Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics
of Secret Service
Alsop, Stewart and Braden, Thomas. Sub Rosa:
The OSS and American Espionage
Bank, Aaron. From OSS to Green Berets: The
Birth of Special Forces
Bartholomew-Feis, Dixee R. The OSS and Ho
Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War against
Japan
Bernstein, Barton J. "Birth of the U.S. biological
warfare program" Scientific American 256:
116 – 121, 1987.
Brown, Anthony Cave. The Last Hero: Wild Bill
Donovan
Casey, William J. The Secret War Against Hitler
Chalou, George C. The Secrets War: The Office
of Strategic Services in World War II
Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher was a Spy:
The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
Dulles, Allen. The Secret Surrender
Dunlop, Richard. Donovan: America’s Master
Spy
Ford, Corey. Donovan of OSS
Grose, Peter. Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen
Dulles
Hassell, A, and MacRae, S: Alliance of Enemies:
The Untold Story of the Secret American and
German Collaboration to End World War II,
Thomas Dunne Books, 2006
Hunt, E. Howard. American Spy, 2007
Jakub, Jay. Spies and Saboteurs: Anglo-American
Collaboration and Rivalry in Human Intelligence
Collection and Special Operations, 1940–45
Jones, Ishmael. The Human Factor: Inside the
CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
Katz, Barry M. Foreign Intelligence: Research
and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services,
1942–1945
Kent, Sherman. Strategic Intelligence for
American Foreign Policy
Lovell, Stanley P. Of spies & stratagems.
Pocket Books. ASIN B0007ESKHE. 
McIntosh, Elizabeth P. Sisterhood of Spies:
The Women of the OSS
Melton, H. Keith. OSS Special Weapons and
Equipment: Spy Devices of World War II
Moulin, Pierre. U.S. Samurais in Bruyeres
Persico, Joseph E. Piercing the Reich: The
Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret
Agents During World War II
Peterson, Neal H. From Hitler’s Doorstep:
The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen
Dulles, 1942–1945
Pinck, Daniel C. Journey to Peking: A Secret
Agent in Wartime China
Pinck, Daniel C., Jones, Geoffrey M.T. and
Pinck, Charles T. Stalking the History of
the Office of Strategic Services: An OSS Bibliography
Roosevelt, Kermit War Report of the OSS, two
volumes
Rudgers, David F. Creating the Secret State:
The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency,
1943–1947
Smith, Bradley F. and Agarossi, Elena. Operation
Sunrise: The Secret Surrender
Smith, Bradley F. The Shadow Warriors: OSS
and the Origins of the CIA
Smith, Richard Harris. OSS: The Secret History
of America’s First Central Intelligence
Agency
Steury, Donald P. The Intelligence War
Troy, Thomas F. Donovan and the CIA: A History
of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence
Agency
Troy, Thomas F. Wild Bill & Intrepid
Waller, John H. The Unseen War in Europe:
Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World
War
Warner, Michael. The Office of Strategic Services :
America’s First Intelligence Agency
Yu, Maochun. OSS in China: Prelude to Cold
War
External links
"The Office of Strategic Services: America's
First Intelligence Agency"
National Park Service Report on OSS Training
Facilities
Collection of Documents at the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Library,
Part 1 and Part 2
The OSS Society
OSS Reborn
