The OSS,
the United States’
first full-service intelligence organization, left a legacy of daring and
innovation that has influenced American military and intelligence thinking
since World War II. In fact, today’s Central Intelligence Agency derives a
significant institutional and spiritual legacy from the OSS.
In some cases, this legacy
descended directly. Key personnel, files, funds, procedures, and contacts
assembled by the OSS
found their way into the CIA more or less intact. In other cases, the legacy is
less tangible but no less real—as exemplified by the increasing professionalism
of intelligence and the essential role of national intelligence in policymaking
and war fighting.
Before World War II, the US government
traditionally left intelligence to American foreign-policy experts in the
Department of State and the armed services. Important and timely intelligence
information went up the chain of command, perhaps even to the President, and
was sometimes shared across departmental lines. But no one—short of the White
House—tried to collate and assess the full spectrum of vital information.
FDR Creates COI
The outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 prompted President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to ask for greater coordination by the departmental intelligence
arms. On July 11, 1941, the President appointed William J. Donovan to tackle
the problem as the Coordinator of Information (or COI), the head of a new
civilian office attached to the White House.
The office was the nation’s
first peacetime, nondepartmental intelligence organization. The office grew
quickly in the autumn before Pearl Harbor,
with Donovan accumulating various offices and staffs orphaned in their home
departments.
America Enters World War II
America’s entry into the war in December 1941 provoked new
thinking about the place and role of COI. Working with the Secretary of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brig. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith—who would later to be
the fourth Director of Central Intelligence—Donovan devised a plan to bring COI
under the Joint Chiefs in a way that would preserve the office’s autonomy while
winning it access to military support and resources.
“Go Ahead and Try It”
This plan led to the
establishment of the Office of Strategic Services on June 1942.
The OSS owed its successes to many factors, most
of all to the foresight and drive of Donovan, who built and held together the
office’s divergent missions and personalities. “[The] OSS was a direct reflection of Donovan’s
character,” two former officers wrote soon after the war. “He was its spark
plug, the moving force behind it. In a sense, it can be said that Donovan was
OSS.”
In selecting Donovan to be COI
and then head of the OSS, President Roosevelt
chose an energetic civilian who shared his desire to do whatever it took to
resist Nazism and the danger it posed to America. “Wild Bill,” as he was
known, owned a sterling résumé of distinguished military service, executive and
legal experience, an abiding interest in foreign affairs, and a vision of the
important role that intelligence, irregular warfare, and propaganda could play
in rolling back the Axis.
Donovan succinctly stated the
mission of his new organization: “The Office of Strategic Services means what
its name implies: every service of a strategic nature, tried or untried, that
may be useful to our Army and Navy and Air Force.” Even more succinctly, he
conveyed the spirit of the OSS:
“Go ahead and try it.”
OSS Employs “The Best
and the Brightest"
Donovan recruited Americans who, like himself,
had traveled abroad or had studied or been involved in world affairs. In that
age, such people often represented “the best and the brightest” at East Coast
universities, businesses, and law firms.
At its peak in late 1944, the
OSS employed
almost 13,000 men and women—both civilians and military personnel. About 7,500 OSS employees served
overseas, and about 4,500 were women (with 900 of them serving in overseas
postings).
For the first time in its history, the United States had, in the OSS, a single national-level intelligence
agency engaged in all basic secret activities: espionage, covert action,
propaganda, and counterintelligence. Though the OSS was excluded from some theaters in the war by
Donovan’s opponents, it was strong and active in North
Africa, China, Burma, India,
and Europe.
WILLIAM J. DONOVAN
TENURE AS DIRECTOR:
- Coordinator of
Information, 11 July 1941–13 June 1942
- Director of
Strategic Services, 13 June 1942–1 October 1945
BIRTH: 1 January 1883, Buffalo, New York
EDUCATION:
-
Attended Niagara College
-
Columbia University,
B.A., 1905
-
Columbia
University Law
School, LL.B., 1908
APPOINTED:
EARLIER CAREER:
LATER CAREER:
- Released from US
Army, 12 January 1946
- Practiced law in New York
- Ambassador to Thailand,
1953-54
Died 8 February 1959
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