OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency

465 Pages·1972·63.88 MB·English

by  R. Harris Smith

TIIE SECtlET HISi'ORY OF AMERICA'S
FIRST CENTRAI. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
The Secret History of
A m e r i c a ' s F i r s t C e n t r a l
Intelligence Agency
R . H a r r i s S m i t h
University oE CaliEornla Press
Berkeley Los Angeles London 1972
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.
LONDON, ENGLAND
COPYRIGHT © 1972, BY
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ISBN: 0-520-02023-5
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-153553
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DESIGNED BY DAVE COMSTOCK
Ci- 4)—I'liotoprint by Maurice Constant, 1942, from the Library of Congress
collections.
(Pg. 155)—From the Charles W. Thayer Papers, courtesy of Mr. George Thayer.
(Pg. 230)—From Allen Dulles. The Secret Surrender, 1965, reprinted by permis
sion of Harper and Row.
(Pg. 249)—From William Peers and Dean Brelis. Behind the Burma Road, 1963,
reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Co.
(Pg. 264)—Courtesy of Colonel David Barrett.
(Pp. 271, 299)—From Nicol Smith and Blake Clark, Into Siatn: Underground
Kingdom, 1945, reprinted by permission of The Bobbs-Merrill Co.
(Pp. 339, 343)—Courtesy of Mr. Herbert Bluechel.
(Pg- 355)—Courtesy of Colonel Archimedes Patti.
TO MY MOTHER
AND
IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER
C o n t e n t s
Preface, xi
1. Donovan's l")rcamers, i
2. The Torch of Reaction, 56
3. Mediterranean Interlude, 68
4- Italian Sunset, 83
5. Of Communists and Kings, 123
6. "Centre Nous dc la Tyrannie", 163
7. Herrengasse 23, 204
8. The Cliinesc Puzzle, 242
9. "Save England's/Asiatic Colonics", 286
10. Mission to Inciocliina, 320
11. OSS and CIA: The Espionage Gap, 361
Notes, 387
Bibliography, 421
Index, 437
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
Since I began
this OSS project in June 1969, I have had the unflagging moral support
of Dr. Paul Scabury, Professor of Political Science at the University of
California at Berkeley. I cannot thank him enough for his cheerful
encouragement. I am also grateful to Dr. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who
read the entire manuscript and gave me the great benefit of his com
ments and aiticisms, both as historian and as OSS veteran.
My thanks also to Dr. Eugene Lee, Director of the Institute for
Governmental Studies at Berkeley, who generously allowed me the use
of the Institute's facilities in the course of my writing; to Dr. David
Apter, now of Yale, who helped me obtain an initial travel grant from
the Institute for Intemafional Studies at Berkeley; and to my former
graduate advisor, William Sheppard, now chairman of the Public Ad
ministration program at California State College, Hayward.
This book could not have been written without the assistance of
some 200 OSS and State Department "alumni" who went to consider
able trouble to provide me with written and verbal recollections of their
wartime service. My special thanks go to Mrs. Ilarlev Stevens, Nicol
Smith. Peter 'I'ompkins, Dr. II. Stuart Hughes, |ohn Ser\-icc, 'Pom
Braden. Colonel Francis Miller, Dr. James Hamilton, and Dr. Walter
Pforzheimer. I also wish to thank Dr. Ernst Lassiicr and Dr. Kenneth
Glazer for allowing me access to original OSS documentation in the
Preston Goodfcllow, Leiand Kouiids, and Milton Miles Papers, dc-
posited at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
My dear friends Tom and Nancy High contributed to my work in
X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
many ways, but I am especially grateful for the constancy of their
friendship.
Grant Barnes, my editor at the University of California Press, de
serves a special commendation for faithfully suffering through my crises
of confidence during a year and a half of writing.
My father did not live to see the completion of this work, which
he and my mother encouraged through many months of gestation. This
book is dedicated to them, in belated appreciation of their warmth and
understanding.
P r e f a c e
In May 1968
I resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency, after a very brief, un
eventful, and undistinguished association with the most misunderstood
bureaucracy of the Anieriean government. Having left Washington for
tlie academic "calm" of tlie University of California at Berkeley (an
ecjually misunderstood institution), I began this political history of the
CIA's organizational forebear, the wartime Office of Strategic Services.
My former employers made it clear at the outset that the classified
OSS archi\'es would not be available to me. Quoting Malcolm Mug-
geridge's observation, "Security, as applied retrospectively to intelligence
matters, is a superb device for fitting locks onto empty stables," I ac
cepted iny fate and began the laborious research which has produced
this very unofficial anatomy of America's first intelligence service.
As an academic journalist seeking to penetrate a time-worn curtain
of government secrecy, I often pondered the historic issues recently rc-
haslied in the debate over publication of the "Pentagon Papers." With
out delving too deeply into the political dialogue that followed that
national sensation, I would suggest one random thought.
Winston Churchill was once asked by an Opposition member of
Parliament to diflerentiate between res'elation of a vital state secret
and a politically awkward affair. The first, he replied, was a danger to
the country, the second a nuisance to the government. His retort begged
the question. Who is to decide where nuisance ends and danger be
gins? In a democracy, the government should not have the unchal
lenged responsibility for that decision. I am equally reluctant, however,
to sec that function given exclusively to the American press. Wliile my
xii
PREFACE
first impulse is to applaud the position of the New York Times, I am
left with a nagging concern that instantaneous popular uproar over the
disclosure of classified material is not the proper atmosphere in which
to forge public policy.
Is there an alternative? For too many years, social scientists have
paid scant attention to the broad problem of official secrecy. The
majority of American academicians may spend hours denouncing the
sinister CIA, yet not a single university in the United States fosters a
serious research effort into the organization and activities of the "intelli
gence community," that massive bureaucratic conglomerate that has
played such a major role in our foreign policy.
That vacuum ought to be filled. The academicians should form
a partnership with journalists in providing the American citizenry with
a reasoned and thoughtful critique of the excesses of clandestine bureau
cracy. I offer this book as a first step toward extending intellectual
responsibility into a new field of public concern.
R.H.S.
September ir^i
ifi
THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICA'S
FIRST CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY