More on the OSS
Commonly glossed as “the precursor to the CIA,” the O.S.S. was an unwieldy organization in 1944, when Opapa joined its ranks. Founded just two years earlier, in July 1942, it was envisioned as a way to centralize US intelligence. President Roosevelt, under pressure from British Allies, agreed to appoint a William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a World War I hero and an Irish Catholic Republic from New York, as the “Coordinator of Intelligence,” (COI) in 1941 and later, as head of the Office of Strategic Services, or O.S.S., when it was founded in 1942.
Nicknames for the O.S.S. and its officers offer insight into the multi-faceted and unusual make-up of the organization. One, the “Oh-So-Social,” alluded to the Ivy League hobnobbers who joined the “club.”1 The ideal OSS officer was “a PhD who can win a barfight,” indicating the combination of intellectualism and brashness that were valued by the organization.2 Indeed, the ranks of the O.S.S. were checkered with academics: the founder of American Studies, Perry Miller, was part of the O.S.S.’s operation in Germany, where he specialized in psychological warfare. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an American historian who, like Miller, would go on to become a Harvard Professor, spent three years at the Washington office O.S.S., where he wrote to his parents that he was had a “mounting suspicion that the entire operation was a giant boondoggle.”3 Another famous O.S.S. operative was Julia Child (then Julia McWilliams), who apparently researched sharp repellant.
Yet the O.S.S. was not just made up of American blue bloods.
With its indifference to background checks, the O.S.S. also had its fair share of Communists and even Soviet spies (apparently, there were at least twelve). European Jews who had fled their homelands made up another important sub-population of OSS personell. These individuals — like Opapa — usually spoke multiple European languages, and had intimate knowledge of enemy terrain.
Historians – and O.S.S. personnel – have long disagreed about the impact of the organization, particularly on the war effort. How much of a difference did it make? It was not part of the critical code-breaking efforts of the British and American military intelligence operations, which allowed the Allies to read German and Japanese communication. Several of its operations – like the one that Opapa participated in – were unsuccessful in gaining crucial intelligence about the enemy. But in other arenas, like the invasions of North Africa and Italy, OSS personell played a crucial role on the front lines, and in collecting intelligence.
In my opinion, the OSS is best understood not in relationship to its’ future (the CIA) but within the context of war. It was, to be sure, an intelligence-collecting operation, but it was also a start-up, with all the chaos, brilliance, and missteps that such a term implies.
Louis Menand, “Wild Thing,” The New Yorker, March 6, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/03/14/wild-thing-louis-menand.
Fernando M. Luján, “Wanted: Ph.D.s Who Can Win a Bar Fight,” Foreign Policy (blog), March 8, 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/08/wanted-ph-d-s-who-can-win-a-bar-fight/. Cited in Michael Graziano, Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors: Religion and the History of the CIA (Chicago, UNITED STATES: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 14, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umn/detail.action?docID=6577380.
Cited Menand, “Wild Thing.”