OSS, by R. Harris Smith

OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency, by R. Harris Smith
University of California Press, 1972
383 pages plus notes, bibliography and index. A few b&w photos scattered throughout the book
Library: 940.548673 SMI

Description
In this book read about the involvement of the man who was later to become Pope Paul VI in an American espionage network in Tokyo in 1943; the British plot to overthrow the Franco government of Spain in 1942, General Donovan's secret directive ordering OSS espionage against the Russians long before the end of World WAr II, and many similar clandestine operations never before described in detail.

Concieved in the military crisis of World War II, the US Office of Strategic Services was America's first central intelligence agency. All the triumphs - and disasters - of CIA espionage and covert action during the Cold War era had their historical antecedents in the topsy turvy world of OSS and the fertile imagination of its founder and director, General William "Wild Bill" Donovan.

The author has tracked down virtually all the available documents and other sources pertaining to the still-secret OSS operations in EUrope and Asia. He has corresponded iwth or interviewed most of the key figures in OSS exploits and pieced together their fascinating stories.

OSS was not a tidy, routinized bureaucracy. It did not function with military precision or efficiency. Policies and operations were sometimes contradictory and often improvised. Orders were given and forgotten or ignored.

The agency was wracked by ideological conflict, and the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. Millions of dollars were spent without budgetary control, but there were also great espionage troops. OSS officers were typically young, brilliant, amateurs who dared to establish "unofficial" emotional rapport with such revolutionary leaders as Ho Chi Minh, tito, and Mao Tse-tung.

This study - the first to deal with OSS systemsatically and on a global scale - may spark a new academic interest in the subject of clandestine political subversion and its impact on US foreign policy.

What did Stewart Alsop, John Birch, David Bruce, Julia Child, Allen Dulles, John Gardner, Arthur Goldberg, Charles Hitch, Herbert Marcuse, Walt Rostow and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. have in common? They were all members of OSS.

Table of Contents
Preface
1. Donovan's Dreamers
2. The Torch of Reaction
3. Mediterranean Interlude
4. Italian Sunset
5. Of Communists and Kings
6. "Contre Nous de la Tyrannie"
7. Herrengasse
8. The Chinese Puzzle
9. "Save England's Asiatic Colonies"
10. Mission to Indochina
11. OSS and CIA: The Espionage Gap
Notes
Bibliography
Index