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]
Organisation
- Research and Analysis Branch (R&A)
- Special Operations Branch (SO)
- OSS Secret Intelligence Branch (SI)
- Morale Operations Branch (MO)
- Foreign Nationalities Branch
- X-2 Branch
People
- William Donovan - head
John Magruder | Allen Dulles | Frank Wisner | David Bruce | 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
External Resources
- Records of the Office of Strategic Services [OSS], US National Archives
