The First Secret Agents of The O.S.S | Secrets Of War | Timeline

[Music] OSs today the letters conjure up cloak-and-dagger images of romance and intrigue in far-flung corners of the world trenchcoat rituals staged on foggy airfields and in murky cafes where secret agents exchanged microfilm for letters of transit but in 1942 the letters OSS meant different things to different people to an outsider they stood for oh so secret an enigmatic shadow organization of spies and saboteurs the predecessor to today's CIA to skeptical detractors OSS stood for also social because it counted among its members the cream of East Coast society sons and daughters of America's oldest richest and most influential families the Astor's melanie's the Morgans DuPont Vanderbilt Roosevelt to those in military intelligence in the FBI OSS meant amateur civilian dilettante who got in a way dabbling in the work of professionals but to the line soldier ready to hit the beach or perish into enemy territory OSS often spell the difference between life and death depending on the accuracy of the intelligence those amateurs provided the daring men and women of the Office of Strategic Services in July 1940 three weeks after France fell raping Great Britain as the last outpost of democracy in Europe America had a choice to make back Britain stand against the Nazis or write-off Europe and pursue the path of isolationism that many US politicians were calling for against the advice of Joseph P Kennedy his ambassador to Great Britain President Franklin Roosevelt sent a special envoy to London to gauge the English stomach for war the Envoy was a successful Wall Street lawyer named William J Donovan Donovan had been the most highly decorated hero of World War one he knew Roosevelt personally and although he was a Republican Donovan shared FDR's view that America should assume the role of leadership in world affairs throughout the 1930s Donovan had logged countless miles on fact-finding missions for the president but this mission to England would be one of the most important assignments ever undertaken by an American citizen because the fate of Free Europe hung in the balance in the ensuing days Donovan met with Winston Churchill and visited the headquarters of the special operations executive branch of British intelligence the SOE the SOE had recently been formed for the purposes of sabotage and subversion in German occupied territory when Donovan returned to Washington he assured Roosevelt that the British resolve was strong and that America should back the island nation with all the support it could muster the following spring as the specter of war grew closer FDR became increasingly frustrated with the disjointed and conflicting information he was getting from g2 the military intelligence branch of the Army and the FBI Donovan proposed to the president the creation of a central agency for collecting sifting and analyzing this intelligence on July 11 1941 by executive order the office of COI coordinator of information was established the coordinator himself not surprisingly was to be William J Donovan Roosevelt's wording at the executive order was deliberately vague so is not to antagonize jitu or the FBI [Music] but that vagueness also gave Donovan unprecedented freedom in creating his intelligence service later when America entered World War two the COI was incorporated into the military under a new name Office of Strategic Services in the early days of the OSS it wasn't what you know but whom Union Donovan's mission was to create an agency whose methods indeed its very existence needed to be top-secret but in 1941 there were spies everywhere who could be trusted he began by recruiting his friends people had known for years people who traveled with international contacts fellow lawyers bankers business clients club members contacts he'd made from a lifetime of doing business among the wealthy and social elite [Music] and those friends brought along with their friends all the cute girls wanted to work for the OSS because all the cute guys were there a lot of marriages were made the more affairs were had it was considered to be a very sort of chic thing to do to belong to the OSS there were Morgan's and Vanderbilt's and all sorts of society names and it was romantic there was a kind of elite Esprit to serving in intelligence it was dashing like a club Donavan set out to secure the best and the brightest for the seoi the name of the game was intelligence and he scoured the country for what he considered to be good spy material smart talented self-assured individualist Donovan's organization grew quickly to his rivals like FBI director J Edgar Hoover and General George V strong commander of g2 army intelligence it was much too quickly but with Roosevelt's backing Donovan couldn't be stopped among notable COI recruits were playwrights Archibald MacLeish Robert Sherwood writers Stephen Vincent Benet Thornton Wilder actors sterling Hayden and Marlena Dietrich director John Ford and future cooking go room Julia Child [Applause] if the gravest predictions proved correct America would be fighting a world war for stakes no less than freedom itself she would need to muster every asset every resource to that end Donavan signed up geographers historians mathematicians cartographers scientists botanists and anthropologists to create complete profiles of countries and terrain where the US might be fighting he was shocked the lack of solid intelligence available from g2 and the State Department and came to rely heavily on his close association with William Stephenson the head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service in North America the SIS Stephenson had been sent to this country by Churchill to energize the British Secret Intelligence Service in the United States and to do everything possible to subvert German and Italian strength business commerce not only in the United States but also in Canada and throughout South America the British by this time were old hands in the Espionage game they'd been spying on friends and enemies alike for centuries Donovan wanted to model his organization after SOE of Great Britain which took a far more proactive approach to intelligence work by actively participating in sabotage and subversion taking the war to the enemy one of the first cooperative efforts between the COI and sis was the interviewing of European refugees as they disembarked in America interrogating them and also collecting material that they were bringing with them that they could use maybe to send back with spies that we were gonna send in the books they had that clothing even the cigarettes that they were smoking they were collecting all of this together with information about who was doing what and they got a great deal of good material that way many of these refugees were recruited and sent back to their countries to work as allied liaisons with resistance movements a short time after they established this CEO I'm Donovan ASP Roosevelt what he thought was the most important piece of intelligence he needed Roosevelt replied that it was critical to know Japan's intentions with regard to entering the war but in only a matter of months Japan made its intentions very clear the attack on Pearl Harbor club president and his new intelligence gathering service completely by surprise America the powerful nation that beleaguered European countries hoped would be their salvation had been dealt a crippling blow from which it appeared it might take years to recover for the time being Donovan told Roosevelt America would have to wage a different kind of war a guerilla war a war without rules with America's entry into World War two at the end of 1941 Donovan's civilian Co I was incorporated into the military as the Office of Strategic Services the OSS was answerable only to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and indirectly to the president [Music] recruiting for the OSS wasn't a social matter anymore now it was serious business recruits were taken from all walks of life and every branch of the Armed Services any one of an assortment of proficiencies could get you an unsolicited interview with the OSS anything from fluency in a foreign language to specialized technical abilities the process was so secret that often times a prospect would have no idea that he or she was being recruited let alone what they were being recruited for Betty Macintosh was a newspaper correspondent in Washington DC when she got an assignment to interview a mysterious man inside a carefully guarded building but once inside it was Betty who became the interviewee he asked me what I was doing and I told him and he said what would you be interested in working for the government and and I said well what would I do and he said well you have studied Japanese and you're also a writer and I think we can we have a place for you and I said well what what do i do then I can't tell you what you do until then we get you cleared Carleton Swift's interview was more harrowing than mysterious my first interview I had my serious-minded fellow who had a lot of calico on his chest look me in the eye and said you rated the parachute jump into the Burma jungle my throat went dry for a minute but I finally choked out eh yes sir so that got me into the OSS Donavan divided his organization into two groups the choirboys scholars scientists and propaganda writers who stayed in Washington analyzing information and the Cowboys the field agents who roamed the world gathering information behind enemy lines basic training for researchers was often short and sweet but for the Cowboys the regimen was intense in order to qualify for basic training candidates needed to pass a three-day ordeal known as assessment the site was a nondescript farm in Virginia recruits were assigned false identities and told to maintain that cover at all times with psychiatrists looking on the recruits were subjected to a battery of tests designed to measure not only physical fitness and mental acuity but to separate the leaders from the followers I'll give you an example of one they said go out behind into the barn there's great big barn and open the door and you'll like get instructions well you go out open the door it's pitch black the speaker speaks up and says close the door so you close the door turn left feeling way along the wall put your right hand out come to a ladder well I give you a series of instructions and pretty soon there's no question you're four stories up in this black barn and they said which out there's a bar pull yourself out I'm down and then silence at that point a voice commanded the recruit to let go of the bar what do you drop for stories and the black those recruits who obeyed the command dropped and were surprised to find a platform covered with hey just a few feet below those guys are your troops they do what they're told and they take instructions well recruits who thought better of it and climbed back down the ladder had a surprise waiting for them to house absurd to drop forcefully of course I won't do it and they climb on back the way they came up saying well I guess I'm not an OSS oh yes you are you have good judgment here the staff officers then there were the recruits who looked around for another option actually if you were hanging man kick your feet around there's a ladder about two feet behind you you can climb down the ladder to a floor and say alright next instructions and those are guys who were you know potential commanders they didn't look for a third solution something different some way out of it there were many others each designed to gauge the candidates metal under simulated field conditions adding to the stress of it all was the fact that most recruits had no idea why they were being tested despite thorough background checks and tight security the selection process was sometimes infiltrated someone started talking about some days fall story and this guy I am so wrong he pretended to know when the became patented he didn't why is he pretending to know something he doesn't know at all well they finally they polygraphed him I guess and he was a german penetration they got no loss all the way through German intelligence wasn't the only organization interested in penetrating America's fledgling clandestine service even some of her allies had agents inside the OSS OSS had was very well infiltrated penetrated by the KGB the head for example on the Latin America division of research and analysis section was was a KGB agent assessment weeded out 25% of OSS recruits before they reached basic training the requirements were high in the sense that the men were being asked to participate in unconventional warfare they've not only would be fighting and exposed to death but where they would not always have the protection of the uniform where they would be spies or saboteurs or subversives and consequently they would be exposed not only to dying in battle but to mistreatment torture recruits who did qualify were sent to one of several secret OSS training schools the first and most famous of these was a British facility in Canada called Camp X the British SOE was mindful that if there was an invasion in England they needed the ability to have a fallback position or a school for training agents that was not in England Camp X was such a secret that originally it was concealed from even the Canadian War Cabinet they did not know of its existence but it became somewhat legendary in its successes agents from SOE the OSS and even the FBI trained at Camp X in the months following Pearl Harbor the OSS established its own camps in the Maryland mountains on Catalina Island off the California coast and at Congressional Country Club in Maryland in a grueling three weeks of 18-hour days OSS agents learned to send Morse code repair radio transmitters how to operate it in a hostile environment and to develop and maintain cover we were talked to tell lies in in a straight face and so I decided I'd be a secretary and the reason that my cover was finally blown was I could I can't type two fingers you have to learn how to be right on your toes all the time OSS candidates learned how to recruit agents and follow people without being seen how to forge documents sabotage utilities and if necessary to kill silently with the knife garret or with their bare hands by the time an agent completed OSS training he or she was qualified in an array of subversive criminal or deadly practices everything from lock-picking to throat-cutting but the enemy to have been trained and after two years of war he was experienced ready and waiting America was not ready for war the pre-emptive Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and further impaired the United States ability to respond to axis aggression time was needed it would be long months before American industry could turn out the weapons and materiel necessary for an effective counter-attack in the meantime the OSS prepared to fight what for America would be a new kind of war Donovan's OSS was divided into seven separate branches each with a specific purpose and mission [Music] the RNA or research and analysis branch pieced together what Donovan called the raw material of strategy it was staffed for the most part with the formidable group of scholars Donovan had appropriated from America's universities RNA was headquartered in Washington from here they were able to actually create intelligence by analyzing thousands of seemingly unconnected bits of information Uncle Sam is interested in any snapshots or photos you may have made on your travels abroad showing cities docks railroads airports or in other places of strategic importance headed by Colonel William J Donovan an Office of Strategic Services has been set up for the pictorial records branch to collect and sort such material research and analysis for the thinkers they took the raw intelligence that came from our agents or our liaisons people the security elements that we could deal with and put it together and more thoughtful reports in fact it was the RNA that got OSS started because the problems with Pearl Harbor were that bits and pieces were handed out to consumers and they weren't collated and thrown together and Donovan saw quite easily that had they been drawn together it was patent at the Japanese for going to attack RNA scholars scanned the newspaper obituaries columns to count the number of German officers killed in action from these figures they were able to provide the Allied leadership with a remarkably accurate count of German troop strength throughout the war you don't have to have spies for everything spies are only used for a very small percentage of the total take of intelligence even to this day even more so to this day the research and development branch was comprised of scientists inventors and even boasted a few crackpots their assignment was to develop an orthodox weaponers schemes and plots the sort of dirty tricks and booby traps according to Donovan that no enemy would suspect the straightforward fair playing Americans to be capable R&D was as proficient in counterfeiting foreign currency as they were in developing a silent fleshless submachine iya but for every idea that paid off for many others that did Stanley level head of R&D devised a plot to inject Hitler's vegetables with female hormones in hope that Hitler's already emotional temperament would be driven over the edge the plan founded when the OSS couldn't insert a gardener in the Berchtesgaden the MOR morale operations branch of the OSS was made up of journalists Madison Avenue copywriters playwrights and Hollywood screenwriters these men and women of letters spent their days and nights churning up propaganda both white and black for enemy consumption supposed to undermine of the frontline soldier the frontline soldier is upset he's not going to perform too well and the whole front line is going to crumble white propaganda is information nor material that doesn't disguise where it comes from its purpose is to convince the enemy that his cause is lost and that surrender is his only choice black propaganda is false or misleading information that purports to come from the enemy's own home or headquarters Donovan's scribblers spent countless hours in brainstorming sessions dreaming up new and imaginative ways to confound the enemy one good opportunity arrived late in the war when the OSS learned of an attempt by a faction of the German army to assassinate Hitler the generals tried to kill Hitler this was an excellent example of how you could move in right away and spread all kinds of rumors that Germany was collapsing and the people were not satisfied with Hitler and we did that and that that's again morale operation since we caught it and it's just changing people's minds changing the enemy's mind required more ingenuity than shooting at him but it often proved to be a more effective way of defeating him also in the mo payroll were expert forgers who fabricated false orders to German troops in the field in Italy in 1943 certain units of Field Marshal Kesselring's Command received orders to retreat and it was so authentic that over the airwaves costarring had to demand it that he never issued such an order because units receiving these forged papers started with reading black propaganda worked equally well on the other side of the world forging the documents was often the easiest part of a black propaganda operation trickier still were the other parts of the scheme obtaining the right raw materials for the documents and then disseminating them to the enemy so is not to arouse suspicion in 1945 Betty McIntosh was an OSS agent working in Morel operations in India here the M o--'s primary mission was to help convince the Japanese army and Burma that they were losing the war and should surrender I drew up what was a the order from the high command in Burma saying that in case we're surrounded if we're wounded we are out of ammunition out of food and the situation is hopeless then you may surrender and you will be forgiven by the Emperor the order was written on rice paper and with ink the British had captured from the Japanese the finished product was then planted on the body of a dead Japanese courier the increase in subsequent surrenders by Japanese troops in Burma was attributed to this and other morale operations missions Donovan encouraged his agents in our D and M all to go to any lengths to undermine the enemy his critics within the military High Command and decried the OSS as dirty tricks is waging below-the-belt warfare but Duncan ignore them suppress his no rules war the mo spread rumors throughout the right the Allies supposedly had developed a new bomb that suck the oxygen out of the air causing death by suffocation allied rockets carrying bubonic plague were supposed to be landing in German towns Heinrich Himmler had ordered German housewives - baby breeding farms these rumors and dozens more were carefully calculated to chip away at the enemy's psyche and spirit there's no way to measure the effectiveness of the black operations run but the choirboys of the morale operations branch of OSS but it's been estimated that as many as 10,000 German troops deserted as a result of OSS propaganda and while this war of rumor and disinformation was being fought the Cowboys voice as were fighting an even riskier unorthodox war of subversion sabotage and intelligence gathering deep behind enemy lines you the secret intelligence and Special Operations branches were the Cowboys of Bill Donovan's OSS they operated behind enemy lines either on their own or in concert with members of the resistance their mission was to identify recruit train and supply resistance groups in axis occupied countries meanwhile sending back information regarding enemy defenses supplies railroad schedules and troop movements anything that could help allied military blacks it was important to know who in France who in Yugoslavia who in Italy would work with the invading troops it would be important to know what individuals were leaders what resources they had what capabilities they had to carry out specific tasks such as blowing up bridges demolishing railroad tracks carrying on any kind of activity that would impede the movement of the Germans on the one hand or that would facilitate the movements of the British and the Americans on the other crews field agents Donovan chose young people who were more likely to be fearless and daring I think the age usually was between say nineteen and twenty five who we were awfully young the special operations or operations group branches of OSS engaged the enemy in a less clandestine or proactive way than the secret intelligence branch so besides subverting and sabotaging through any means that had engaged enemy troops and paramilitary operations together with the resistance and his independent units operations group or OD units wore uniforms and I hope that if captured they would be considered regular troops protected by the rules of the Geneva Convention American military strategists had selected North Africa is the ideal launching area for an invasion of axis held Europe but first the army would have to successfully land on and take control of the African coast the area was controlled by the French Vichy government under the watchful eye of German intelligence the Americans needed to determine what kind of resistance such a landing would encounter the US State Department had a trade agreement to sell food to the Vichy government which included a provision for 12 American food control officers to supervise distribution the 12 officers sent to North Africa were actually spies codenamed the 12 disciples later when America entered the war the disciples were assigned to the OSS they set up clandestine radio stations throughout North Africa to supply vital information to the planners of the 1942 invasion which would be known as Operation Torch the American landings in North Africa depended primarily upon surprise and deception there is no question but what Donovan's organization did a job in gathering basic and current intelligence on landing points in North Africa not only about facilities weather terrain but people at one point that even spirited out the Harbormaster to help guide troops on the landing the OSS had dramatically proven the value of intelligence gathering during Operation Torch but now Donovan's Cowboys faced an even bigger challenge as the Allies prepared to strike into axis territory si teams were sent into Italy preceding troop invasions to gather intelligence and make contact with the Italian underground in France si agents were dropped by parachute or four - or by PT boat or submarine the vast coastline was difficult to patrol effectively and when the moon was down it was nearly impossible to spot a landing party many agents preferred these coastline drops to the even more dangerous night drops from an airplane that in itself was a major clandestine operation setting up a landing zone setting up signals to make certain that they were dropped at the right time in the right location and the right people were there to meet them landing zones were pre-arranged with the resistance and marked with bonfires of crossed car headlights [Music] dropping down through the night sky each agent hope that his contacts below hadn't been compromised and replaced by a Gestapo welcoming committee since a suitcase would be a dead giveaway on the ground an agent had to wear everything he brought with him it was imperative that an agent cover be perfect the Gestapo was everywhere in any slip however small could have dire consequences many of the most effective si operatives were women as a crow effluence and specially for the girl was pretty she had an enormous advantage a girl could always smile and so flirt a bit with the German soldiers and whereas of course a man couldn't do that German intelligence operated vans with radio direction finders to track OSS transmissions the trick to transmitting intelligence from hostile territory was to keep moving [Music] then working any kind of radio you've got to be very careful in terms of being spotted by the enemy and they can find you there's no question about that it isn't it's easy isn't Hollywood shows it where you can get you in whatever hotel room you're in it doesn't work that way it never has it was more secure to be in in the city than in the country because the idea would be an apartment building where if you were on the air for too long you could be spot in to the building but not necessarily to the apartment so if he had somebody watching it was easier to run away in rural France as so units collaborated with the Maquis resistance members who took their name from the spindly aromatic evergreen bush that grows wild in the French countryside dense enough to conceal bandits working together the OSS teams and Maquis units terrorized the occupying Germans to the point where they were afraid to move off the main roads at less than convoy strength the resistance disrupted supply lines so completely that some German troops were forced to live off the land nearly starving in the process the resistance had no love for the German invaders their operations were Swift and brutal they took no prisoners in the winter in spring of 1944 as the Allies prepared to invade Western Europe there were more than 500 OSS controlled agents operating in France there would soon be more the OSS and SOE devised a plan to parachute 50 three-man teams into France to coordinate resistance activity for the Normandy invasion these teams consisting of an OSS or SOE officer a french-speaking officer and an enlisted radio operator were codenamed jet Burks after a town in Scotland not only were the jet Berg's charged with preparing the resistance for d-day but an equal part of their job lay in keeping the lid on scaling back underground operations so is not to attract German attention to the area the resistance was not given the actual date of the landings but told to commence operations when they heard the BBC broadcast the second verse of a poem by the french poet berlin the lengthening shadows the sad strains of the violins pierce my heart on that signal the Mucky swung into action destroying key bridges and railroads blocking German supply lines and hampering their retreat the liberation of Europe was underway meanwhile on the other side of the world in the jungles of Southeast Asia the OSS was fighting another guerrilla action far behind enemy lines in March of 1942 the Japanese army occupied into China and Thailand and was driving into Burma and Malaya US Army General Joseph W Stilwell's fifty thousand man army had been forced to retreat 200 miles from Burma into India by a Japanese force of vastly superior strength vinegar Joe Stilwell did not believe in paramilitary warfare but he had run out of options when the OSS presented him with a plan for a guerrilla force to engage the greatly extended Japanese behind their own lines a group of 21 commanders codenamed detachment 101 under the command of Colonel Karl Eifler was dispatched into the Burmese jungle its mission was to Harris and sabotage the enemy wherever it found him all I want to hear Stilwell told Eifler is booms from the jungle in the jungles of northern Burma detachment 101 encountered a fierce tribe of natives called Quechan but luckily these natives hated the Japanese even more than the Allies did the Japanese had terrorized the Quechan burning their villages and the tribes were more than happy to join with the Americans in a war of retribution this group really attacked the Japanese from behind the lines and worked making life totally miserable for the Japanese in Burma in those days it was important to keep the Japanese occupied so they wouldn't push into India the OSS trained the kitchen until they were expert with explosive handling and Morse code in return the kitchen showed their OSS partners how to rig deadly booby traps for the crossbow and tripwire or how to hide bamboo spears on either side of a trail so that an ambush Japanese patrol would be impaled while diving for cover [Music] within a year detachment 101 had 29 field stations in Burma and India and was staging almost daily forays against the Japanese general Donovan arrived unannounced in December 1943 to see for himself what was shaping up to be an OSS success story I've lured Donovan a hundred and fifty miles behind enemy lines to visit a guerrilla base a somewhat reckless excursion considering what a prize a captured American intelligence commander would make for the Japanese and they took off over Japanese lines and they had something that they used to call it l feel that the important people would have and this would be a pill if you took it you would be dead an instant and the general supposedly always carried one around at this point I was told by Carl I flew himself I floresta Donovan if he had his L pill along and and Donna said oh I forgot it and I have the feeling that Donovan never carried any I don't feel being a good Catholic detachment 101 growing eventually to a force of 10,000 catch in fighting alongside 500 Americans stopped the Japanese advance cold by the end of the war they were responsible for 5447 Japanese dead and another 10,000 missing and wounded during the same time only 184 catch in and 18 American officers were lost in those actions tenth airforce based in Assam India reported in 1944 that the kijun operating with the OSS accounted for 85% of its intelligence on likely targets as the war in Asia approached the endgame stage the OSS pursued other collaborations with Japan's enemies throughout the war the Allies had been baffled in their attempts to enlist China's aid in fighting the war against Japan the country was split into two main factions the Nationalists under Generalissimo Chiang kai-shek and the Communists led by a mob Zedong in July 1944 frustrated by years of half-hearted and ineffective participation by the nationalist army the OSS turned to the Chinese Communists OSS sent a team of officers to Yen anon what was called the Dixie mission to meet with matzo Tong and Joe and I and other members of the Chinese High Command and the hope of persuading the Communists to support the Nationalists in a concerted effort against the Japanese but when strong political opposition to these overtures arose in Washington the OSS was forced to withdraw the mission that same year OSS agents made another journey this time to North Vietnam where they hoped to enlist the aid of Viet Minh and leaders against Japanese troops in Indochina one of the things the team found was one of the Vietnamese North Vietnamese leaders were all sick and poor Hoagland the paramedic that was with the team happen to have some sulfur powder and he saved the lives of all these top leaders the Viet Minh were grateful and more than willing to provide intelligence and assistance in fighting the Japanese but there was a catch they also had in the back of their minds that they want the help of the United States government to get rid of the French colonial power and that's the one thing that the US government did not want to do and so there was a falling out after the war but basically you want to say that OSS saved Ho Chi Minh so he could be a trouble to us later on that's true we did we did save his life so when the end came the OSS was in the midst of gathering intelligence for the invasion of Japan the cost in lives the RNA people had determined would be enormous projected estimates of allied casualties numbered as high as a million the atomic bomb and the subsequent Japanese surrender brought a sigh of relief to the entire world little more than a month afterward the OSS America's first clandestine military organization by now numbering nearly 13,000 operatives many of whom had risked their lives behind enemy lines was officially disbanded by President Harry Truman the new President had decided that an intelligence agency was not needed in peacetime moreover Truman the Democrat did not number among Donovan's fans he considered the intelligence chief a dangerous Republican and the potential foe who harbored plans to run for president himself the contributions of the Office of Strategic Services to winning the war were definite and plentiful the OSS is role in organizing the resistance in Italy and France alone justified their existence as a credible often indispensable weapon in hands of the Allies and to that the countless incidents of subversion and sabotage behind enemy lines in Africa Europe and across Asia the life-saving information provided by the research and analysis section a propaganda conceived and disseminated by the morale operations branch all of these efforts and actions taken one by one were like bee stings each causing but a woman's pain yet their cumulative effect slowly and surely helped bring the axis giant to its knees the significant accomplishment of Lois's is that it was the vehicle by which modern American intelligence was created before the war there was no central intelligence organization no wish for one no desire for one it was a military and naval activity what Donovan and OSS did was to project intelligence as not a narrow army or Navy function but as essentially a civilian function which required the professionalism not of soldiers and sailors only but of historians geographers psychologists anthropologists engineers news men broadcasters and so on so forth it was Donovan's appreciation of the different character of modern warfare that enabled him to see that intelligence was no longer only with armies and navies but that it was concerned with the productive capacity of the country's farms the industrial capacity of the you know mineral resources the steel production the shipping capacity all of these things were now integral aspects of a much more comprehensive picture of intelligence than had ever really been envisioned and it was Donovan's new vision of intelligence in July of 1947 as Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union increased President Truman signed into law the National Security Act establishing the Central Intelligence Agency as a United States first national civilian peacetime intelligence gathering organization it was staffed for the most part by veterans at the OSS general William J Donovan was not offered a post in the new agency [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, secret agents, espionage, o.s.s, c.i.a, spy documentary, cold war

Id: 9o3mlVktTIQ

Length: 50min 57sec (3057 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020