A LOOK BEHIND THE SHADOWY CLOAK OF INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100083-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 83
• Publication Date: July 24, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
STAT
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES ^ SUNDAY, JULY 24, 1983 7D
oak behind the shadowy cloak o
The Shadow Warriors
OSS and the Origins of the CIA
E x
By BRADLEY F. SMITH
9a8ic eookd, $20.75.
R
iew
d b
A
BERT
A
RY
y
L
ev
e
R
P
Even before FDR's death that
This is a needed book on an im- fateful' April, the ptesident. and the
portant historical subject, but its sub- shadow-warrior-in-chief had not been
title's second part is misleading. My as close as before. Still friendly, yes,
guess is that "the Origins of the CIA," but with no such ready access for Wild
was the publisher's ploy, not thee Bill to the Oval Office as before. In,
author's intent. Books on the CIA sell 1944-45 Roosevelt was tired, ailing,
better than' those on the OSS. - preoccupied, with no more sparkle in
It may well be that the average his eye for his friend's dreams and
American does not even know what schemes. Too, by then the White
the letters "OSS" meant. Nor does he House had no stomach to counter the
know that the Office of Strategic anti-Donovan storms raised by the
Services, "Wild Bill" Donovan's crea-; jealous J. Edgar Hoover and such ex-
tion, did not, win World War II but treme right-wingers as Col. Robert R,
that it did help; and that long before McCormick and his Chicago
the war's end Donovan tried his wily Tribune, who only pretended that
best to assure forhis`vital intelligence they no longer loved Hitler. -These
and dirty-tricks edifice a post-beilurn; never forgave the glamor and, the
continuation but failed. Only in his achievements, of Wild Bill, this.
work's last few pages does Smith maverick fellow Republican. And'
properly tackle: the question of the FDR, the supreme politician, keenly
extent to which the OSS, abolished by sensed the rising tide of power of both r
President Harry S. Truman in Sep_ the FBI head and' the isolationist
tember 1945, was restored in the July colonel. 1947 establishment of the Central In- Add to this the sharp competitive=
telligence Agency. Otherwise, ' - ness mounted by the traditional Intel-
throughout some 400 pages of the ligence cadres of the armed forces and
book's bulk, the reader has to search ` the State Department, who from the
for the answer by implication rather OSS'ivery start "deeply resented the
than in Smith's outright discussion. daring, innovative' rival so amply
SURELY, many of the OSS mo proving their own stodginess. And all
tives and methods inevitably survived through the war there was the mighty''
"Wild Bill"'
Donovan,
creator of the
OSS, vainly
sought to
have his'
intelligence
organization
live on after
the end of
World War 11.
An the CIA, Butas a Bronx friend of - enmity from Geis. Douglas MacArthur ONE OF THE book's weak= `emerge to his full height or depth,'
mine used to say (on another theme), and Adm. Chester Nimitz, who, with a on the outs ever since October 1918, farms. From 1947 on, the mass of the'., nesses is that Smith pooh-poohs the Thus his extraordinary bravery in the
the OSS was "a horse from 's different few reluctant exceptionswould not. :+ when Wild Bill accused Capt. Truman' CIA personnel, both in Washington FDR-Donovan fear of the Nazi fifth- field is barely mentioned- (on one
occasion of near-capture he was about I
were a completely new
along with his allow OSS protects and operatives into of not bolstering with his Missouri at, - and in the field
" Donovan
garage
ol
k b
hi
d
u
lin
M
n
o
,
.
,
c
umn wor
n
e
o
r
y
es,
w
:
staunch-admirer President Franklin: them Pacific. Ocean bailiwicks, toswallow
tillery Donovan's celebrated Fighting crop., experience 'convinces me that there thepoisoncapsuleheldbe
ti t
s u
h
a
c
' ? ???t?
c
y, our : and family, his pre-1939 years are not
lisped that the Nazis' ers stmt-suc OSS as a ossible ion arm of Wash? in their attacka ainst the Kaiser's ONLY A`F' the very top were a
country
en b
ef
ore
Pearl Harbor - i
such former sub chiefs as Allen Duties
l
d
h
d
'
'
w
ir
,
nc
u
ed.. For t
ese we must go to
FDR (also, at the
war
fifth-column. ington an
on the battle, but
s fi- troops, The Irish
the
Hit er
cesses were due to the
aid
to
Richard Helms and William J. Casey, s rendered by Brown who (unlike Smith) h
d a
ces
l
i
T
f
i
ith hi
t
i
h
e h
d W
ld Bi l l`
h
e
l
i
c
a
s
e, e
ruman)
n
er
e r
ng w
s t
osses wer
eavy, an
i
h
eir
cs no less tan to t
e
d, wa
tact
r, nak
such demagogues and organizations as, military fist and that we had to fight' theater; openly faulted Truman: The new Wt on at the CIA with at least some Father Coughlin, the Silver Shirtere, to many personal Donovan letters,
this insidious fire with similar flames. Conversely, Dens. Dwight Eisen- president must have remembered this of they policies 'and methods of Wild'
the America Firateraand"the Nazr diaries and other such intimate pa-
in o p
t
1945 he signed
e
Al bent l when
2
an
to
ether
the
A
..
p
--- .. ..
S
.
0,
- .
,
g
.
war's ?aw? -- I
Duna.. i. '
with many others, believed that the Wedemeyer in Southeast Asia were the order to dissolvd the OSS, to quote, For more than a decade, till his fi TlfEse failings aresomewhat re-
defeated Nazis would duck under- enthusiastic about Donovan and his Smith,"without hesitation or discus- nal illness and death (Feb. $,1959, at Another misjudgment by Smith !s couped by Smith's remarkable e is of
ground, and not in Germany's ruins OSS and urged their postwar reten-' sion," 76); Donovan was honored, consulted, blaming the British, and partl Dort- ; the work of the OSS Research and
alone, but the world over. So the OSS tion, This proved to be not enough. Of And yet, Donovan proved to be' sent on sundry missions (largely oven, for provoking the Na y zi 1941 Analysis branch, headed by Walter
would have to struggle on andon for course, what really finishd, the famed, right. Despite all the backbitings and, meaningless), and lauded by even drive into Yugoslavia and Greece, thus Langer, one of Donovan's ablest el
ears to come. Its above-the-ground wartime intelligence-and-sabotage. above all, the suspicions that America some of his old ill-wishers - no longer, hurling those countries into "four perts
a service universal) ac
laim
d'
,
c
e
branch, the splendid Research and phenomenon was Roosevelt's death. would get a "permanent Gestapo," the was he a rival and a menace to them. Years of hell, Smith somehow forgets and stilt surviving in today's CIA.
Even Smith (who, unlike Brown, views that this Hitler move forced him to Y
Analysis report writers, mostly Had he lived, he would have most need fora centralized, sophisticated Also, intricate wartime relations be::
academics, also had to be perpetuated. likely, with a few hems and haws and intelligence service was clear once the Donovan as no hero)- calls Wild Bill postpone his Barbarossa blow against tween Donovan and his "o osite'
But with the Nazis done for de caveats, reaffirmed his favorite at the Cold War heated up. Thus the ewer- :'brilliant" though "impulsive," also "a the Soviet Union from May to late numbers in the Soviet ally's secret o-'
cisively, the Cold War brought forth a helm, gence'of the CIA in July 1947, blessed prophetic observer" with a. "fertile and June, the month s delay exposing his lice and intelligence, ally's dreaded
different enemy, craftier and truly , BUT TRUMAN was quite con- by the very same Truman, perceptive mind, even if 's poor- troops near Moscow to the rigors and NIi VD, are related by Smith well and`
more global. Our allies were less u}it- trary about it all. Not only did he dis- Granting that the foe was different administrator. disasters of their first Russian winter. 'fairly, `certainly better than in any
ed, less stout-hearted. The whole like any unsolicited memorandums, so and far more difficult to wrestle, and, This last, in my opinion based on ,The move into. the Balkans also other book on the subject.
world was different, difficult, not with beloved by both FDR and Donovan as- noting that the old era was over, thou, my personal experience in the service, stretched Hitler's hordes own my for And then there are ' f
four long years, nailed down by the ' Smiths final
us. Still, Donovan thought his weep theft way of instant communication; , sands of-academics, lawyers: bus!- is entirely unwarranted. With his un? pages, in which he argues that "from
ons, with but a few alterations, would, but he also intense) disliked Wild nessmen and other: former civilians, I Yugoslav and Greek guerrillas, so that
' OSS to the present,` shadow warfare
, y doubted charisma his men s; and, the Nazis' panzer and other divisions
do as well against Stalin as they had Bill. .,were leaving their- shadow warrior; :women's phenomenal loyalty to him could not be shifted West is no substitute for basic, military,,
to when sorely
done against the Axis
posts "in droves ; (Smith s words) ' and to the Ogg
Many in the Smith omits this
but Anthon
Don
an knew ho
nd e
i
t
'
"
.
y
,
ov
w
,
a
conom
rew
c s
h
of an nation;
West shared his belief, even though Cave Brown in his recent book The,, already' in the months` of May to let his mammoth staff do their duty :, ,needed, especially to Normandy in aha a
. . ;
Would, that' tFEI al1t1101; had ,,)
crucial summer of 1944
some realized more intelligently than Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan brings,' August 1945, returning to their cam-, quite untrammeled,
Smith praise
d give more
. s- odds and the need '
o_- , f , it . ea to this weighty
uCed law of4ices b nks and factories ... these tiro....
t that r~......
a
d Tr
a
,
lli
tire
"in
` /vl._
l
g
ou
van
n
um
n were
p
an
ca
ng
.
-
ono
o
ically
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011103102: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100083-1
for new and better methods of strug
gle,
IN LIGHT OF his belief and
this support, how come he failed as his
curtain descended in September 1945?
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100083-1
..?, ALBERT PARRY;
The writer, professes ,
emeritus of Colgate
University, served with the,
OSS in World War II The
author of several books
including Terrorism: Frpm
Robespierre toArafat, he
lives in South Pasadena,,,
spired amateurs'... overwhelmingly - extremely well organized, but this is
idealistic," who "believed in what they marred early in the narrative by ex-
their ability to do it not an organ- France, also to the endless. bureau'
something more akin to a cross be- cans and the British, and among the';
tween a Rotary Club and Moral Americans themselves, all through the
Rearmament,"To my mind, in choos? war. While. the author pays deserved; '..
ing them or trusting his closestaides to tribute to the idealism, ingenuity'and
choose them from among the numer- valor of the OSS personnel in general,
ous volunteers and then letting them - he gives no accounts of the individual
self an excellent administrator indeed. - successes or failures. Entirely omitted
Smith has his reservations for is the tragic story of our team sent to
it was Donovan whom Roosevelt` our men (among them a close friend of
yet
,
summoned to the White House,right ' mine) and some British were captur"ed
`
and exe-
after the news of Pearl Harbor had by the Nazis, and tortured
thundered -. 'that very day! and. cuted by the Gestapo' despite their
l
itary uniforms. For; this tale, also
supported him and his OSS all ( mi
through the war. And if FDR, sa infal- for the OSS feats with the Italian and,
have to turn to
thus picked `- Greek resistance, you
lible in Smith's appraisal
,
,
Donovan, we must conclude that Wild Brown's book;
Bill and the 0SS were after all a bit of LAST 13IJT not least, in Smith's.
all right: .? t t, .