Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a US intelligence agency operating during the Second World War.
OSS head William Donovan had been close to British Security Coordination (BSC), which was instrumental in the Office's creation. Many other BSC agents and collaborators became involved with the OSS. [1]
President Truman ordered the OSS disbanded on 20 September 1945.[2] However, on 26 September, Donovan's Deputy, General John Magruder secured an order from Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy which preserved its operations as the Strategic Services Unit, keeping alive the hopes of those who advocated what would later become the Central Intelligence Agency.[3]
Contents
Organisation
Structure and Personnel
- William Donovan - head
Research and Analysis Branch (R&A)
Main Page: OSS Research and Analysis Branch
Special Operations Branch (SO)
Secret Intelligence Branch (SI)
Morale Operations Branch (MO)
Main Page: OSS Morale Operations Branch
Foreign Nationalities Branch
X-2 Branch
Miscellaneous officers
- James Murphy - head of Counterintelligence[4]
- David Bruce - Chief of London Mission[5]
- Allen Dulles - Chief of Mission in Switzerland[5]
John Magruder | Frank Wisner | | Whitney Hart Shepardson | Thomas W. Braden | Richard Helms | William Casey | Royall Tyler | Kermit Roosevelt | Tracy Barnes | Arthur Schlesinger | Stewart Alsop | Charles B. Fahs | Chadbourne Gilpatric | Norman Holmes Pearson | James Angleton | Richard Ellman | John Hay Whitney | DeWitt Poole | Ivar Bryce | John Ford | E. Howard Hunt | Philip Horton | Ernest Hemingway | Francis Pickens Miller | Alfred Parry | Eugene Fodor | Marcello Girosi | Ilia Tolstoy | Julia McWilliams Child | Raymond Guest | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | John Hemingway | Serafino Romualdi | Louis Ream | Atherton Richards | James Grafton Rogers | Henry Murray | H. Stuart Hughes | Arthur Goldberg | Gerhard Van Arkel
External Resources
- Records of the Office of Strategic Services [OSS], US National Archives
Notes
- ↑ Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception, Brassey's 1999, p.182.
- ↑ Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Penguin, 2007, p.8.
- ↑ Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Penguin, 2007, p.10.
- ↑ R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.12.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.9.
