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---
created: 2025-07-23
updated: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-10-09
title: Office of Strategic Services
aliases:
- OSS
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ tags:
- Donovan
description: The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the United States' wartime intelligence agency during World War II and the direct institutional precursor to the CIA.
category: "Intelligence & Government"
summary: "The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the U.S. wartime intelligence and covert operations agency (1942-1945) founded by General William Donovan on British Security Coordination templates, dissolved by Truman in 1945 and reconstituted as the CIA in 1947."
summary: "The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the U.S. wartime intelligence and covert operations agency (1942-1945) founded by William Donovan on British Security Coordination templates and dissolved by Truman in 1945."
start: 1942-06-13
end: 1945-10-01
location: "Washington, D.C."
@ -38,20 +38,31 @@ OSS operations ran through several branches: Research and Analysis (intelligence
Allen Dulles directed OSS operations in Switzerland from November 1942 through the war's end, developing a European intelligence network that became the foundation for the CIA's clandestine service. He subsequently became CIA Director from 1953 to 1961.[^1]
The agency drew heavily on the [[Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service]] for monitored Japanese broadcasts. In September 1941 [[Breckinridge Long]] wrote to FCC chairman [[James L. Fly]] that the service "has a counterpart in the organization of which Mr. Donovan is the head," and assumed that the information was "made instantly available to some of his people" in the [[William J. Donovan]] organization.[^3] On August 13, 1942 Dr. Charles B. Fah, acting chief of the Far Eastern Section, wrote to FBIS director [[Robert D. Leigh]] that the section "has found the various reports of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission indispensable in our work."[^3] On November 16, 1942 [[William L. Langer]], director of the Research and Analysis Branch, wrote to Leigh that "Without the monitoring service of the Federal Communications Commission, our knowledge of current events in Japan would be meager."[^4] After the 1944 budget cut, Langer wrote on April 22, 1944 that recent developments had "led to a curtailment of the output of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service."[^5] On January 17, 1945 [[Geroid T. Robinson]] of the agency wrote to [[Charles S. Hyneman]] to express regret that the service's analytical work had been discontinued, and added that he hoped the Daily Report would carry more Soviet radio material.[^6]
### The Truth Drug Program
The OSS established a "truth drug" committee under Dr. [[Winfred Overholser]], head of [[St. Elizabeth's Hospital]] in Washington, which tried and rejected [[mescaline]], several barbiturates, and scopolamine before settling in spring 1943 on [[marijuana|cannabis indica]] as the most promising substance. Testing ran in cooperation with the [[Manhattan Project]], which supplied the first dozen subjects; oral delivery failed and the committee found cigarettes the most effective vehicle. [[George Hunter White|George White]], an Army captain who had come to OSS from the [[Federal Bureau of Narcotics]], conducted the first field test on New York gangster [[August Del Gracio]] on May 27, 1943, then tested the technique on suspected Communist soldiers at camps outside [[Atlanta]], [[Memphis]], and [[New Orleans]]. The program seeded the CIA's postwar [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|ARTICHOKE]] and [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]] work, which began by getting the old OSS files out and approaching the same George White.[^3]
The OSS established a "truth drug" committee under Dr. [[Winfred Overholser]], head of [[St. Elizabeth's Hospital]] in Washington, which tried and rejected [[mescaline]], several barbiturates, and scopolamine before settling in spring 1943 on [[marijuana|cannabis indica]] as the most promising substance. Testing ran in cooperation with the [[Manhattan Project]], which supplied the first dozen subjects; oral delivery failed and the committee found cigarettes the most effective vehicle. [[George Hunter White|George White]], an Army captain who had come to OSS from the [[Federal Bureau of Narcotics]], conducted the first field test on New York gangster [[August Del Gracio]] on May 27, 1943, then tested the technique on suspected Communist soldiers at camps outside [[Atlanta]], [[Memphis]], and [[New Orleans]]. The program seeded the CIA's postwar [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|ARTICHOKE]] and [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]] work, which began by getting the old OSS files out and approaching the same George White.[^7]
### Weapons and Behavioral Science
[[Stanley Lovell]], a Boston industrialist and self-described "saucepan chemist," headed OSS Research and Development through Division 19 of [[James Conant]]'s National Defense Research Committee, producing devices such as the "Aunt Jemima" explosive disguised as pancake mix and the "Who? Me?" harassment substance, and pursuing several schemes to assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]]. Donovan also commissioned a psychoanalytic study of Hitler from psychoanalyst [[Walter Langer]], who predicted his suicide, and brought in [[Harvard University|Harvard]] psychologist [[Henry Murray]] to build an OSS recruit-assessment system in only fifteen days, a milestone as the first systematic American effort to evaluate personality to predict future behavior.[^3]
[[Stanley Lovell]], a Boston industrialist and self-described "saucepan chemist," headed OSS Research and Development through Division 19 of [[James Conant]]'s National Defense Research Committee, producing devices such as the "Aunt Jemima" explosive disguised as pancake mix and the "Who? Me?" harassment substance, and pursuing several schemes to assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]]. Donovan also commissioned a psychoanalytic study of Hitler from psychoanalyst [[Walter Langer]], who predicted his suicide, and brought in [[Harvard University|Harvard]] psychologist [[Henry Murray]] to build an OSS recruit-assessment system in only fifteen days, a milestone as the first systematic American effort to evaluate personality to predict future behavior.[^7]
### Dissolution and CIA Transition
Truman dissolved the OSS on October 1, 1945, distributing its functions to the State Department (Research and Analysis) and the War Department (Strategic Services Unit, which preserved the clandestine service infrastructure). The Central Intelligence Agency was created by the National Security Act of 1947, signed July 26, 1947, and formally established September 18, 1947. The institutional culture Donovan developed - including the use of academic, journalistic, and cultural figures as intelligence assets; the cultivation of foreign service networks; and the use of proprietary companies as operational covers - became standard CIA practice after the transition.[^1]
### Emigre Scholars
The Office of Strategic Services considered the [[New School for Social Research]] "the best collection of German, left-leaning intellectuals in the United States." Over two hundred students who had studied at the school's University in Exile worked for the government during the war, and New School scholars were involved in more than twenty-five government-associated projects routed through [[Rockefeller Foundation]] intermediaries.[^8]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Smith, Bradley F. *The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A.* Basic Books, 1983. Troy, Thomas F. *Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency*. CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1981. "British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45." Fromm International Publishing, 1998.
[^2]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
[^3]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 1.
[^3]: Stephen C. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis, 1941-1945," Studies in Intelligence 45, no. 5 (2001), on Long's letter of September 1941 and Fah's letter of August 13, 1942. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^4]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Langer's letter to Leigh of November 16, 1942, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^5]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Langer's letter to Leigh of April 22, 1944, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^6]: Roop, Part I, pp. 267-268. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^7]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 1.
[^8]: Daniel Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD diss., Duke University, 2013), pp. 137-138, citing Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), pp. 139-149, 165-167. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/232a76ac-f2d8-4827-99fe-50b3b109fa6c/content