Office of Strategic Services

Office of Strategic Services
(Intelligence agency)
Office of Strategic Services ; (Intelligence agency)
	An OSS training film
Successor	Strategic Services Unit
Formation	June 13, 1942
Extinction	30 September 1945
Leader	Head of the Office of Strategic Services;
Type	intelligence agency
Staff	13,000
Interest of	Omer Becu, Jacob Esterline, Jacobus Oldenbroek
Membership	• John Magruder; • Allen Dulles; • Frank Wisner; • David Bruce; • Whitney Hart Shepardson; • Thomas W. Braden; • Richard Helms; • William Casey; • Royall Tyler; • Kermit Roosevelt; • Tracy Barnes; • Arthur Schlesinger; • Stewart Alsop; • Charles B. Fahs; • Chadbourne Gilpatric; • Norman Holmes Pearson; • James Angleton; • Richard Ellman; • John Hay Whitney; • DeWitt Poole; • Ivar Bryce; • John Ford; • E. Howard Hunt; • Philip Horton; • Ernest Hemingway; • Francis Pickens Miller; • Alfred Parry; • Eugene Fodor; • Marcello Girosi; • Ilia Tolstoy; • Julia McWilliams Child; • Raymond Guest; • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; • John Hemingway; • Serafino Romualdi; • Walter Levy; • Lawrence de Neufville; • Harold Weisberg; • Hugh Tovar; • John K. Singlaub; • Jacob Esterline; • William Diebold; • Michael Elkins; • Raymond Rocca; • Lyman Kirkpatrick; • Aline Griffith; • Hugh Montgomery (diplomat); • C. D. Jackson; • Franklin Lindsay; • Paul Helliwell; • George H. Olmsted; • Henry Lithgow Roberts; • Ulius Amoss; • Louis Bloomfield; • Hans Tofte
	Precursor to the CIA.

The Office of Strategic Services was an intelligence agency set up during World War II. Its head William Donovan had been close to the British Security Coordination (BSC), which was instrumental in the Office's creation. Many BSC agents and collaborators became involved with the OSS.^[1]

US President Truman ordered the OSS disbanded on 20 September 1945.^[2] However, on 26 September, Donovan's Deputy, General John Magruder secured an order from Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy which preserved its operations as the Strategic Services Unit, keeping alive the hopes of those who advocated what would later become the Central Intelligence Agency.^[3]

References