Office of Strategic Services (OSS), one of several American intelligence agencies during
World War II, is inextricably linked with William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a Republican but also an associate of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.In 1940, as one of Roosevelt's contacts with Winston Churchill, Donovan established close ties with British intelligence. He wished to become coordinator of American intelligence as a whole, but instead, in 1942, FDR appointed him director of the newly established OSS, which was placed under the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and ordered to analyze strategic intelligence, conduct covert action, and run agents in Asia and Europe. The OSS's three‐year history was marked by political controversy, a search for missions and successes to justify its existence, and some real achievement. The OSS's exploits have been romanticized. Some of its undertakings were extravagant failures, and it often functioned as a junior partner to British intelligence. Still, it proved a competent espionage service, with particular successes in running agents in Germany, and in providing tactical intelligence to U.S. field commanders in Europe. American academics figured prominently in the OSS's analytical branches, where they pioneered new techniques of strategic analysis. Nonetheless, the OSS was less significant to the war effort than the signals intelligence services of the army and the navy, and in September 1945, President Harry S.
Truman disbanded it. Contrary to OSS mythology, Truman did so not out of a naïve opposition to intelligence—he preserved the code‐breaking agencies of the army and the navy, and retained some other intelligence organizations—but because he distrusted Donovan and regarded the OSS as being penetrated by the British. Many leading figures of the early
Central Intelligence Agency were OSS veterans. The OSS tradition, with its focus on action, bureaucratic and operational buccaneering, covert operations, and links with the academic community, influenced the CIA, and the two agencies' functions in the American intelligence community were similar.
Bibliography
Thomas F. Troy , Donovan and the CIA, 1981.
Bradley Smith , The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA, 1983.
Thomas F. Troy , Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of the CIA, 1996.
John Ferris