Office of Strategic Services

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: Signal Intelligence Service and OP-20-G. (A previous code-breaking operation of the State Department, the MI-8, run by Herbert Yardley, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, deeming it an inappropriate function for the diplomatic arm, because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail".) 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 (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE). Colonel Donovan was employed to evaluate the global military position 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 "coordinator of information" on July 11, 1941 heading the new organization known as the office of the Coordinator of Information (COI). Thereafter the organization was developed with British assistance; Donovan had responsibilities but no actual powers and the existing US agencies were skeptical if not hostile. Until some months after Pearl Harbor, the bulk of OSS intelligence came from the UK. British Security Coordination (BSC) trained the first OSS agents 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 policymakers 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 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 World War II, 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 (or Finnish information on them) 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 ("Black Joe") or bags of Chinese flour ("Aunt Jemima"), 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 ("K" and "L" pills), and cigarettes laced with tetrahydrocannabinol acetate (an extract of Indian hemp) to induce uncontrollable chattiness, among others.

The most authoritative sources on OSS weapons and kit are the books OSS Weapons, OSS Weapons II, and OSS Crossbows by OSS veteran and scholar Dr. John W. Brunner.^{[59][20][60][61]} A fair number of commonly cited references on the OSS and its equipment contain misinformation.^[59] Regarding Melton's book OSS Special Weapons and Equipment: Spy Devices of World War II, for example, Brunner points out that about 40 percent of the items included in the book were in fact not OSS issue. Furthermore, Brunner notes that several widely read books on silencers contain "mostly incorrect" information on OSS silencers. Some previously published materials get excellent reviews from Brunner, others get mixed reviews, and many commentaries include phrases like "fanciful stories, a generous sampling of misinformation," and "highly unreliable." Even Stanley Lovell, who was in charge of R&D for the OSS until 1944, proved to be an unreliable source of information.^[59] Lovell's book Of Spies and Stratagems was "so unreliable that nothing here can be taken as literal truth unless confirmed by other sources.”^[61] By far the most popular weapon in the OSS arsenal was the High Standard HDMS silenced pistol.^{[62][63][64][65]}

The OSS also developed innovative communication equipment 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 Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr for her ability to distract men, saved lives of some trapped OSS operatives.

Not all projects worked. Some ideas were odd, such as producing pathogenic synthetic goat dung in PROJECT Capricious (1942) 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 World War II 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 (the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit) 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. Soon Japan surrendered, ending the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II.

A month later, on September 20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9621, terminating the OSS. His Order became effective October 1, 1945. In the days following, 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 (originally created by Edward Mead Earle) which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service or IRIS, headed by U.S. Army Colonel Alfred McCormack. Later it was renamed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research by the State Department.

The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-Espionage (X-2) Branches, which were then housed in a new unit created for this purpose—the Strategic Services Unit (SSU). The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder (formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) as the new SSU director. He oversaw the liquidation of the OSS yet, more importantly, he managed the institutional preservation of its clandestine intelligence capability.

In January 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), which was the direct precursor to the CIA. SSU assets, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence, were transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). The National Security Act of 1947 established the United States's first permanent peacetime intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, which then took up OSS functions. The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the CIA Special Activities Division.

Facilities

Prince William Forest Park (then known as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area) was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945. Area "C", consisting of approximately 6,000 acres (24 km²), was used extensively for communications training, whereas Area "A" was used 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 (Area F) 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 (in part) 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, near Whitby, Ontario, 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.

The main OSS training camps abroad were located initially in Great Britain, French Algeria, and Egypt; later as the Allies advanced, a school was established in southern Italy. In the Far East, OSS training facilities were established in India, Ceylon, and then China. In addition to training local agents, the overseas OSS schools also provided advanced training and field exercises for graduates of the training camps in the United States and for Americans who enlisted in the OSS in the war zones. The most famous of the latter was Virginia Hall in France. The OSS' Mediterranean training center in Cairo, Egypt, known to many as the "Spy School," was modeled after the SOE's training facility STS 102 in Haifa, Palestine. It had once been a lavish palace of King Farouk's brother-in-law. Americans whose heritage stemmed from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece were trained at Cairo's "Spy School." Secret Intelligence (SI), Special Operations (SO), and Morale Operations (MO) agents from here were also sent for parachute training at the SOE's STS 102 Ramat David camp outside Haifa. Morse code and encryption lessons were taught by the SOE to these OSS agents at the SOE's STS 102 training facility at Mount Carmel outside Haifa, as well as weapons, commando, and defensive-type training. After completion of their spy training, these agents — many of whom were of Yugoslavian, Greek, or Italian descent — were sent back on missions to the Balkans and Italy where their accents would not pose a problem for their assimilation.

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, Rene Joyeuse 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.

"Jumping Joe" Savoldi (code name Sampson) was recruited by the OSS in 1942 because of his hand-to-hand combat and language skills as well as his deep knowledge of the Italian geography and interior of Benito Mussolini's compound. He was assigned to the Special Operations branch and took part in missions in North Africa, Italy, and France during 1943–1945. A member of the McGregor Project (2677th Regiment APO 512), Savoldi, a former all-American running back at Notre Dame under coach Knute Rockne, and World Champion professional wrestler/originator of the flying "dropkick", took part in multiple missions behind enemy lines. His service in Special Operations (now known as Navy Seals) included at least three successful, high-visibility operations, all within the McGregor Project and all under the assumed identity of Giuseppe DeLeo. The real Giuseppe DeLeo was a captain in the Italian Army who had been captured in North Africa during Operation Torch. Savoldi's first operation under the McGregor Mission, or McGregor Project (July 1943 – December 1943), was approved by President Roosevelt and overseen by General William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Captain Edward A. Hayes, Captain E.M. Zacharias, Col. William Eddy and led by John Shaheen. Savoldi worked with Lt. Mike Burke, Lt. John Ringling North, and Peter Tompkins, and his orders were to protect Marcello Girosi during time spent in Morocco, Algiers, Palermo, Messina, Stromboli, Calabria, Terracina, Maiori, Capri, Ischia, Salerno and Naples. The McGregor Mission secretly arranged the surrender of the entire Italian Naval Fleet (just prior to D-day Salerno) through direct contact with Rear Admiral Massimo Girosi, Commander of the Royal Italian Navy and brother of Marcello Girosi. On a larger scale, the mission also worked through the Girosi brothers in Italy (all royalists and loyal to King Umberto) to orchestrate the over-throw of Benito Mussolini and to set ground work for the subsequent armistice agreement that led to Pietro Badaglio's position as Prime Minister of Italy. During this period it is thought that Savoldi was also tasked with the protection of OSS leader General Donovan, during his meetings with General Patton in and around Palermo Sicily during July 10, 1943. Savoldi's second operation as part of the ongoing McGregor Mission was to extract secret documents along with torpedo scientist, professor Carlo Calosi and his wife out of Nazi-occupied Rome. Calosi was the inventor of the highly effective SIC trigger "Silvrifici Italiano Calosi" torpedo and the OSS knew about the Germans' intention to locate Calosi and kill him if he refused to help German scientists with weapons development. This mission, carried out by Joe Savoldi, Donald Downes, and Andre Pacatte, was successful as they located Calosi, extracted him from Rome, and transported him and his wife to the Amalfi Coast, the hills of Algiers, and eventually the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. Once in the USA, Calosi worked to reconstruct the SIC torpedoes and developed effective countermeasures later used against the Germans. During his third major mission, Savoldi worked undercover (as Giuseppe DeLeo) in Naples, Italy where he was credited with infiltrating the local mafia and helping to break up one of the largest black market operation in all of Italy. While undercover, Savoldi again assumed the identity of Giuseppe De Leo, but he worked in civilian clothing posing as a rogue operator. Savoldi spoke Italian in several dialects as well as French, Spanish, and some German, and his dangerous work behind enemy lines was highly regarded according to several, now declassified, documents. The 1946 book titled Cloak and Dagger, written by Alastair MacBain and Corey Ford, includes an entire chapter titled, "The Saga of Jumping Joe", recounting Savoldi's participation in the McGregor Mission.

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.

Nisei Linguists

In late 1943, a representative from OSS visited the 442nd Infantry Regiment looking to recruit volunteers willing to undertake “extremely hazardous assignment.” All selected were Nisei. The recruits were assigned to OSS Detachments 101 and 202, in the China-Burma-India Theater. "Once deployed, they were to interrogate prisoners, translate documents, monitor radio communications, and conduct covert operations... Detachment 101 and 102’s clandestine operations were extremely successful.”

In popular culture

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In "Call of Duty: World at War" (2008), Dr. Peter McCain is an OSS spy.