The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). How much of the OSS's leadership, strategies and intelligence were adopted by the CIA?

by George_S_Patton_III
k1990

The OSS was disbanded almost immediately following the end of the war, with President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9621, which effectively cleaved the OSS in two. The Research & Analysis Branch — OSS' intelligence analysis division — was transferred to the Department of State, where it exists to this day as the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). The remainder, comprising the intelligence collection and covert action divisions, was placed under the control of the Department of War, becoming the Strategic Services Unit (SSU).

The dismantling of the OSS was at least partly the result of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been a key supporter of its founding chief, William J. Donovan, and who shared Donovan's belief that the US needed a permanent foreign intelligence service. Donovan was instrumental in building consensus around that need in the federal government and Congress that, but there was significant debate about what form the new agency should take.

The period between EO 9621 and the creation of the CIA with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 was characterised by extensive bureaucratic manoeuvering, frantic attempts by OSS veterans to preserve the organisation's hard-won institutional experience and expertise, and a prolonged tug-of-war between the three departments that possessed their own longstanding intelligence services: the Departments of State, War and the Navy.

In January 1946, Truman established the National Intelligence Authority, creating a new Central Intelligence Group and Director of Central Intelligence, to coordinate intelligence strategy and operations between State, War and Navy. Donovan, who hoped to lead the new intelligence establishment, was essentially sidelined — but OSS veterans would go on to play a major role in the early history of the CIA. Some prominent examples:

  • the SSU was stewarded for its short existence by Brigadier General John Magruder, who as Deputy Director of Intelligence in OSS had been one of Donovan's key lieutenants
  • Allen Dulles, who had been OSS station chief in the service's critical Swiss outpost during the war, went on to serve as Deputy Director of Plans, overseeing the CIA's intelligence gathering and covert action departments, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1951-53. From 1953-59, he was Director of Central Intelligence
  • William Harding Jackson, an old OSS hand who played a significant role in the counterintelligence and disinformation effort during the war, served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1950-51
  • Frank Wisner, another senior OSS officer in wartime Europe, succeeded Dulles as Deputy Director of Plans, serving from 1951-59
  • Richard Helms, who had started his career in OSS and became Wisner's deputy in the Directorate of Plans, served variously as Deputy Director of Plans, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and Director of Central Intelligence from 1962-73
  • William Colby, who served in the Jedburgh direct action units during the war, was later appointed Deputy Director of Operations and Director of Central Intelligence from 1973-76
  • William J. Casey, onetime head of OSS' Secret Intelligence Branch, went on to serve as Director of Central Intelligence from 1981-87

So, it's fair to say that there's a significant amount of OSS influence in the CIA's DNA. In particular, the Agency's longstanding love affair with covert action (as distinct from pure intelligence collection) — psychological warfare and subversion campaigns, political and economic warfare, paramilitary operations, etc. — can certainly be traced back to its OSS roots.

Some good further reading on OSS and CIA: