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OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.127309
EAN: 9781592287291
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 1592287298
Label: The Lyons Press
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 456
Publication Date: August 01, 2005
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Studio: The Lyons Press
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Editorial Review:
“The best book about America’s first modern secret service.”
--Washington Post Book WorldIn 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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Dated But Decidedly Still Worthwhile
Recent archival research has partly superseded "OSS," but it remains a valuable survey of America's main undercover service in World War II.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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Long Since Superceded by More Complete Works
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - A Wild and Crazy Organization
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 ... Read More
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