Office of Strategic Services (OSS)

Predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), an office formed during World War II to provide the United States with the ability to conduct intelligence and wage clandestine operations. Led by the colorful William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a lawyer turned military commander who earned a Medal of Honor in World War I, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) made significant contributions to fighting the Axis forces, including parachuting behind enemy lines and developing spy technology.

In July 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, dissatisfied by the lack of coordination among State Department sources, Army G-2 intelligence, and Naval [Page 548]Intelligence forces, appointed William Donovan to be coordinator of information (COI). Donovan's job was to direct the nation's first peacetime, nondepartmental intelligence organization, and Donovan pulled together what became known as a “fourth arm” of the military. He combined an odd collection of hand-me-down units from the military and State Department, including intelligence, research, propaganda, subversion, and commando operations, into a unified whole.

The United States' entry into World War II in December 1941 prompted new thinking about the place and role of the COI. This led to the establishment of a new agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was formed in June 1942 with a mandate to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies.

The OSS was soon moved under the Joint Chiefs and some of its original responsibilities were split, with radio broadcasting operations—the Foreign Intelligence Service—becoming part of the Office of War Information. The other responsibilities included the Research and Analysis Branch, which gathered information from unclassified sources such as the Library of Congress; the X-2 Branch (the counterintelligence branch); and the Special Operations Branch, which ran guerrilla operations in Europe and Asia.

As the United States developed its military operations in Europe, OSS operatives played a key role by deploying behind enemy lines and engaging in commando operations and sabotage. At its peak strength in the mid-1940s, the OSS employed 13,000 personnel, the size of an army division. This figure included 7,500 individuals deployed overseas and 4,500 women overall. One prominent woman in the OSS was Virginia Hall, who helped coordinate French resistance fighters prior to D-day and ultimately earned a Distinguished Service Cross, the only one awarded to a civilian woman in the war.