The Agency: Inside the CIA Page #4

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these were forerunners

of today's US Special Forces.

Donovan's OSS

operational groups

were successful

because he picked its

members very carefully.

What he did is he went out and

he found recent immigrants

from these countries.

From Italy, from Greece,

from France, from

all over Europe,

who knew the country,

spoke the language,

and could easily meld right

back in by going back.

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They blew up bridges,

cut telegraph wires,

and attacked enemy

supply depots,

in order to clear the advance

towards Nazi Germany.

But these weren't the only

type of operations the OSS

engaged in. Engaged

in morale operations,

uh, which today are termed

psychological operations.

Uh, the maritime unit did

a lot of really, um,

incredible things.

This was the branch

that, uh, trained people to

go in and put mines on ships,

and go in and advance an

invasion by swimming,

using boats, stuff that

had never been done

before. By the end

of World War II,

William Jay Donovan's band

of warriors had grown to:

But, the OSS's days

were numbered.

Really, it was

Roosevelt's death

that I think, uh, thatateant

the death of the OSS,

'cause he'd been its

greatest benefactor.

He'd protected it from all

its political enemies,

at the Pentagon, at the FBI.

Uh, Truman and Donovan

didn't get along well, um. So

as soon as Roosevelt died,

um, the OSS was disbanded

October 1st of 1945.

Another reason for

the dissolution

of the OSS came from

post-war optimism

for the future. After, uh,

after the war, we kind of felt

that, uh, World War II is over,

and everybody took a deep breath

"That's it, no more

wars. " It was an end

of an organization that

laid the framework

for the CIA. And a historian

who, uh, works for the

Intelligence Community

said to me, "You

know, it's amazing,

whenever I look at any aspect

of the intelligence community

today," he said, "It's

amazing to me how much

of it started with

OSS." But even decades

after Donovan's

organization was disbanded,

there is still a

constant reminder

of its legacy at:

You walk into CIA

Headquarters,

the first thing you see is

General Donovan's statue.

I mean, there's an OSS memorial

there, so the CIA understands

that really everything it

does goes back to the OSS.

We had no intelligence service.

Over the space

of three and a half years,

weweet up a global intelligence

organization. It's

really remarkable

what they did.

Only two years passed

before the CIA was formed,

in part to combat a new threat.

The National Security Act

of 1947 created the CIA. The

leadership of the country

realized, uh,

that we were then

in the incipient stages

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