The Agency: Inside the CIA Page #2

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exclusively the domain

of, uh, Skull and Bones

and aristocratic types,

and people often said that

OSS stood for "Oh So Social"

because so many blue

bloods joined it.

And... and the reason

for that was, uh,

fairly obvious, you know.

These are people who are

well-connected all

around the world,

they were well educated.

Uh, they spoke

foreign languages, and

they knew people,

and if you're looking in

the intelligence business

for people that know

people, that would be

a natural constituency.

But you know,

they... they recruited

from Hollywood.

John Ford was the

head of the, uh,

OSS field photographic unit. Uh,

Sterling Hayden, the actor,

who was a marine,

served in the OSS.

Uh, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. They

recruited writers, artists,

really recruited from every

part of, uh, American society

and culture. With

this new breed

of warriors, Donovan

was determined to make

a splash. The OSS would drop

behind enemy lines, recruiting

resistance fighters,

and causing massive disruptions

of troop movements,

sometimes with Donovan

himself leading the way.

Somebody once said that i

ithe Germans wanna know

where the next invasion

was gonna take place,

they should follow General

Donovan, 'cause he,

he was always there, you know?

He was at the front.

Even went behind enemy lines

on more than one occasion

during the war. So,

imagine you're an OSS guy

somewhere and you're

risking your life

behind enemy lines, and

General Donovan shows up,

you know? Well, if

he's willing to risk

his life, obviously

you're willing to risk

yours. So, he led by example,

and I think that made

a huge difference.

Under Donovan's leadership,

the OSS flourished,

but the major test of

World War II espionage

was still to come.

The OSS may have been

the direct predecessor

to the Central

Intelligence AgAgcy,

bubuit was the British that

were considered the spymasters

on the eve of World War II.

The British are the masters

of intelligence, and

always have been,

Bill Donovan, who had

been head of OSS,

learned a lot from the British

about their organization, how

they went after conducting

intelligence. After

some hesitation,

British intelligence began

training and coordinating

with their American

counterparts.

The British were

renowned for careful

and highly-detailed

planning of operations.

The OSS, on the other hand,

took a different approach.

You know, General Donovan

was famous for telling

OSS personnel that

you couldn't succeed

without taking chances.

He described it

as calculated recklessness.

The OSS I Inched

far-reaching raids

on Gerern forces,

even parachuting

directly into Germany

at one point. This

calculated recklessness

made the Germans take notice,

and America intelligence

began to blossom in advance

of the invasion of Europe.

Allied intelligence had deceived

the German defenders in France

that invasion forces

were preparing to attack

the Port of Calais, a target

many miles to the east

from their intended

landing site of Normandy.

There were a number of

contributions of intelligence

to deceiving the Germans

as to where we would land

when we invaded Europe.

The largest

amphibious invasion

in the history of the world

was about to take place,

and intelligence services

were working around the clock

Intelligence turned

the tide of the war.

Right in that one battle.

As Allied soldiers began

pouring ashore at Normandy,

the German reserve forces

remained at Calais, waiting

to prevent an invasion...

an invasion straight

from the minds

of Allied intelligence officers.

After the landing,

small teams of OSS

operational units

moved in. And these

were 15 to 30 men

teams sent in to Europe to

work behind enemy lines

with resistance groups, and

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

of the Cold War.

We would need some... mechanism

to collect intelligence

on a national level.

We could streamline

and centralize the intelligence

that various military services

and others collect.

Hence the name

"Central Intelligence

Agency. " In a sense, it was,

it was developed so

there would, quote,

"Be no more Pearl Harbors. "

This new CIA didn't have

to wait long until

their first challenges

arrived. The Soviet

Union, or USSR,

had liberated half of

Europe from Axis control

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