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OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Harris Smith
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 342328
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 456
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1592287298
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.127309
EAN: 9781592287291
ASIN: 1592287298
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
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Product Description
“The best book about America’s first modern secret service.”
--Washington Post Book World
In the months before World War II, FDR prepared the country for conflict with Germany and Japan by reshuffling various government agencies to create the Office of Strategic Services--America’s first intelligence agency and the direct precursor to the CIA. When he charged William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, a successful Wall Street lawyer and Wilkie Republican, to head up the office, the die was set for some of the most fantastic and fascinating operations the U.S. government has ever conducted. Author Richard Harris Smith, himself an ex-CIA hand, documents the controversial agency from its conception as a spin-off of the Office of the Coordinator for Information to its demise under Harry Truman and reconfiguration as the CIA.
During his tenure, Donovan oversaw a chaotic cast of some ten thousand agents drawn from the most conservative financial scions to the country’s most idealistic New Deal true believers. Together they usurped the roles of government agencies both foreign and domestic, concocted unbelievably complicated conspiracies, and fought the good fight against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. For example, when OSS operatives stole vital military codebooks from the Japanese embassy in Portugal, the operation was considered a success. But the success turned into a flop as the Japanese discovered what had happened, and hastily
changed a code that had already been decrypted by the U.S. Navy.
Colorful personalities and truly priceless anecdotes abound in what may
arguably be called the most authoritative work on the subject.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dated But Decidedly Still Worthwhile June 12, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Recent archival research has partly superseded "OSS," but it remains a valuable survey of America's main undercover service in World War II. As a pioneering history, some facts inevitably have been supplemented and/or corrected, but the overall outline presented here is quite valid. The OSS collected intelligence and executed some useful operations, along with a few blunders (e.g. Allen Dulles's peace feelers to Nazi Germany, which outraged the USSR and briefly imperiled the alliance). But their efforts were largely peripheral to the major ground, air and sea campaigns. The book's main value now may be to suggest topics and raise questions for future research. It also contains a more subtle message in documenting the idealism and (often) progressive sympathies of citizen-soldiers dedicated to fighting Japanese and German tyrannies. Smith's 1972 publication reflected the backlash against the CIA and US militarism during the Vietnam War era. His vision of a clandestine outfit which actually promoted positive change, and respected expertise, offers hope in our current time of troubles. A CIA that routinely violates the Geneva Conventions with torture and kidnapping, and chickenhawk officials who pervert information-gathering in their rush to disaster overseas, are unworthy heirs of OSS veterans and the leaders of their time.
 Long Since Superceded by More Complete Works December 12, 2005
12 out of 20 found this review helpful
This work was the first genuinely scholarly work on the OSS. The author, an academician, wrote it way back when most OSS works were memoirs or compilations of tales of derring do or sensationalistic political acreeds concerning intelligence matters; although the still interesting memoirs and tales were fact based, those early books were based solely on memory and not on sound documentation. In addition many sensational critiques of intelligence agencies and the CIA msntioned some OSS activities. The date of 2005 given is that of the reprint, not the original 1972.
The former files of the OSS remained in use by the OSS's two successor agencies: the State Department's Intelligence Bureau (INR) and the War Department's Special Services Unit (SSU), which carried on the OSS's HUMINT clandestine operations. SSU in turn was folded in 1947 into the newly estabished CIA, which continued to use the classified OSS files and added to them. The former OSS files then continued in use for many years; in the eighties, the CIA finally weeded out sll the long since unecessary files concerning operational, organizational and procedural matters and sent them to the Nationsl Archives. Thia action resulted in a huge quantity of memoirs being written by veterans of OSS (c.f. Elizabeth MacIntosh's study of women in the OSS, "Sisterhood of Spies"), in technicals studies (c.f. John Brunner's "OSS Weapons" and in organizational histories (c.f. Yu's "OSS in China"). All of these and many similar recent studies I have reviewed on this site.
This pioneering work by Harris is necessarily sketchy due to lack of sources, being based on a few scattered memoirs and incomplete and undocumented popular publications and interviews, snd riddled with omissions and errors, has been overtaken by events.
The book is best looked at as a curiosity demonstrating the lack of public knowledge in its day, when CIA insiders remaining in the intelligence business were actively discouraged from publishing. Harris, having never been in the OSS, was not constrained by secrecy oaths from publishing what he could glean from no longer serving veterans and other sources.
Why this was reprinted is beyond me. There are enough copies to be found in the used book trade to satisfy the completist collector of OSS related works while to those who are doing current research, it is simply an obsolete curiousity.
Not all works published in the last fifty years are no longer of continuing validity; many first hand accounts and compilations of derring do tales are still valuble, for example "You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger". (c.f reviews on this site.)
 A Wild and Crazy Organization August 21, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
FDR seemed to have a natural interest in spies. Before World War II started he had contacted William 'Wild Bill' Donovan and asked him to set up a foreign intelligence agency along the lines of what the British were doing. He formed just what FDR wanted and it was called the Office of Strategic Services, a non-descript name that could have meant anything. ==The OSS was a crazy agency that grew like crazy, eventually reaching some 10,000 people. All in all, the OSS provided some useful intelligence. They performed some useful operations during the war. They trained some very good people. This book will give you all the details. ==This whole concept was done over the intense opposition of J. Edgar Hoover who fought with every skill he had to prevent what he considered competition with the FBI. ==After FDR died, Truman and Donovan didn't get along all tht well. Truman shut down the OSS, but shortly thereafter realized that the Navy, the Army and the FBI along with all the others didn't play well together so he set up the CIA a few months later. ==Of course 9/11 taught us that none of them play well together now.
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