OSS Quotes
Precursor to CIA. While his letter did not mention it, Donovan also recruited women with the same characteristics.
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. 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.
Smithsonian: “Donovan, the chief of the OSS, was so eager to show off his agency’s latest lethal gadget—a pistol with a total silencer—that he took one and a sandbag to the Oval Office. While President Franklin D. Roosevelt was busy dictating to his secretary, Donovan fired ten rounds into the sandbag. FDR gave no notice and never stopped talking, so Donovan wrapped his handkerchief around the still-hot barrel and presented the weapon to the president, telling him what he had just done.” Donovan, Medal of Honor recipient and a wealthy Wall Street Businessman who recruited socialites, baseball players and other usual candidates, was a great favorite of Roosevelt’s, but his unorthodox methods and creative approaches tended to alienate him from J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and the Military Intelligence Officers. Yet he had amazing successes—especially in Europe. When Roosevelt died Donovan’s conservative enemies successfully lobbied President Truman and his cabinet to terminate the OSS, create the CIA and keep Donovan out of the CIA leadership.
He felt that he couldn’t explain why he was awarded the medal so it would be a continuous source of embarrassment. An iconoclastic individual, Berg turned down the medal, apparently the only person to have ever done so. His exploits for which he was recognized included photographing Tokyo Harbor and determining that the Nazi’s were no far advanced in the development of the atomic bomb. He was the agent who was to assassinate Werner Heisenberg the German nuclear physicist if there was any significant progress towards a working bomb. He determined that is was not necessary by pretending to be a European scientist and actually interviewing Heisenberg and many other European scientists in Nazi occupied Europe.
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.
The CIA did not have a long tradition. It was created after WWII when the OSS was are espionage organization had been disbanded In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA went rogue and engaged in covert activities without the knowledge and approval of the President and his cabinet. General Maxwell Taylor conducted a thorough investigation and the agency was brought under control. There hav been several more incidents since then and every few years there have been additional scandals of unauthorized operations which were harmful to American interests and values. In a democracy it is always hard to control a secret organization. Actually, at the beginning of WWII, we had almost no espionage capability and President Roosevelt had a series of friends who provided him with intelligence until William Donavan had time to establish the OSS which did such a wonderful job.
An independent, civilian intelligence agency reporting directly to the president Both the military and the FBI opposed any “new” intelligence agencies to compete with their efforts. President Roosevelt did not accept their argument being a great believer in multiple sourcing about everything. The OSS went on to produce a large proportion of the major WWII intelligence successes in spying, analysis and covert action with minimum assistance from the military and the FBI.
Berg, one of the early OSS recruits, was a brilliant loner and somewhat paranoid. His early modus operandi was to work with no partners, never as part of a team, and only report to the head of the agency and a deputy or two and otherwise never reveal where he was or how he did things. Berg however was brilliant and multilingual, and even was able to have discussions with the best Physicist left in Germany--Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg. Berg determined that Heisenberg was not working on an atomic bomb with some clever technical discussions and listening to some of Heisenberg's presentations. Therefore, following his orders, he did not assassinate the German Scientist whuch he was prepared to do. Other than OSS officials, many in America did not believe that the Germans would not have their best scientist working on Nuclear Energy. However, Hitler was biased against what he called "Jewish Sceince" and bet on jet planes. After the war, The CIA reorganized the American espionage effort and there was no place for Berg’s old school style.
as agents in the OSS Office of Strategic Services—forerunner to the CIA
