William J. Donovan Quotes
Prior to the present war [WWII], the United States had no foreign intelligence service. It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence service.
Precursor to CIA. During WWII Donovan’s OSS, the FBI and the State Department had the three civilian intelligence organizations while each of the 4 Armed Services had their own intelligence services. Rarely did any of these 7 organizations communicate with any of the others. In the case of the OSS, the FBI and the military services tended to try and obstruct many of their operations. This was the first call for what became the CIA.
William J. Donovan, 1883-1959, Director, Office of Strategic Services Warning to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, August 1945
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
When Bob Casey was the CIA Director, he the declassification of all the operational files of the WWII Office of Strategic Service. The huge collection is referred to as Record Book 2.6
Precursor to CIA. Stephenson was the British leading intelligence and espionage expert who served as the Intelligence Advisor to Winston Churchill in WWII. He was very forthcoming in teaching Donavan and the new OSS much of what they learned about spy-craft and intelligence operations.
This quotation comes as a major surprise to most people who perceive modern CIA as the MAJOR U.S. spying and covert action organization. It is a marvelous case study of agency “mission creep”.
The American Embassy in Berlin had wiretapped the telephone and telegraph wires of the German Foreign Ministry. The man who did that was hired by Secretary of State Lansing as the first employee of the new unit.
William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat, best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. He is regarded as the founding father of the CIA, and a statue of him stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia.
