Civilian At the time of staffing COI and later the OSS, the British, and especially
C, held firm to the notion that "Intelligence is the business of gentlemen." Bill Donovan agreed with C on this point, and recruited the majority of these early members from the
social elite of the
Eastern Seaboard. So many of these were the relations of people on the
Social Register that the OSS was often referred to as the "Oh So Social Club." COI attracted some of the top
scientists,
artists,
economists,
poets, and
adventurers in the country. Many of these original recruits were graduates of
Ivy League schools, and especially linked to the
Skull and Bones at
Yale University. One prominent Skull at COI was
Archibald MacLeish, who created the
Research and Analysis Branch (R&A) and headquartered it out of the
Library of Congress. The members of the
Research and Development Branch (R&D) recruited by Donovan and Goodfellow to work for
Stanley Platt Lovell, however, were more or less considered
pyromaniacs and mavericks who enjoyed making things blow up – which is why they were eventually tasked with such experiments as silenced pistols, the
bat bomb and cat bomb. Not all civilian academics were best-suited for their positions. In one specific example, OSS officer
Kermit Roosevelt Jr. writes in the second volume of the official history of the OSS regarding officers deployed into Africa, that one contract agent completely ignored his assignment and effectively used OSS to fund his research: "...one
anthropologist spent his six-month tour of duty acquiring apes, caring for them when they fell ill and eventually catching their disease himself." Roosevelt does not name the agent, but many anthropoligists were indeed deployed by OSS around the world.
Julia Child, who later authored cookbooks, worked directly under Donovan.
Military OSS military personnel, including soldiers, commandos, and frogmen were primarily inducted from the
United States Armed Forces. These recruits came from all branches; the
Army,
Marines,
Navy, and especially vital to maritime successes were its members from the
Coast Guard. Among the hundreds of foreign nationals in its ranks were Prince
Serge Obolensky and other displaced people from the former czarist Russia. Donovan sought independent thinkers, saying. "I'd rather have a young lieutenant with enough guts to disobey a direct order than a colonel too regimented to think for himself." Seeking intelligent, quick-witted people who could think out-of-the box, he chose them from all walks of life, backgrounds, without distinction to culture or religion. Inspired by Britain's
Special Operations Executive, he had clinical psychologists evaluate OSS candidates, including at Station S in northern Virginia near today's
Dulles International Airport, whose records describe a quest for independent thought, effective intelligence, and interpersonal skills. In months, he formed an organization that soon rivalled Great Britain's
Secret Intelligence Service. player
Moe Berg of the
Boston Red Sox was an OSS agent. One such agent was
Ivy League polyglot and
Jewish American baseball catcher
Moe Berg, who played 15 seasons in the major leagues. As a Secret Intelligence agent, he was dispatched to seek information on German physicist
Werner Heisenberg and his knowledge on the
atomic bomb. One of the most highly decorated and flamboyant OSS soldiers was US
Marine Colonel Peter Ortiz. Enlisting early in the war, as a
French Foreign Legionnaire, he went on to join the OSS and to be the most highly decorated US Marine in the OSS during
World War II.
René Joyeuse M.D.,
MS,
FACS was a Swiss, French and American soldier, physician and researcher, who distinguished himself as an agent of Allied intelligence in German-occupied France during World War II. He received the US Army Distinguished Service Cross for his actions with the OSS, after the war he became a Physician, Researcher and was a co-founder of The American Trauma Society.
"Jumping Joe" Savoldi (code name Sampson) was recruited by the OSS in 1942 because of his hand-to-hand combat and language skills as well as his deep knowledge of the Italian geography and
Benito Mussolini's compound. He was assigned to the
Special Operations Branch and took part in missions in North Africa, Italy, and France during 1943–1945. One of the forefathers of today's commandos was Navy Lieutenant
Jack Taylor. He was sequestered by the OSS early in the war and had a long career behind enemy lines.
Taro and
Mitsu Yashima, both Japanese political dissidents who were imprisoned in Japan for protesting its militarist regime, worked for the OSS in psychological warfare against the Japanese Empire.
Nisei linguists In late 1943, a representative from OSS visited the 442nd Infantry Regiment looking to recruit volunteers willing to undertake "extremely hazardous assignment." All selected were
Nisei. The recruits were assigned to OSS Detachments 101 and 202, in the China-Burma-India Theater. "Once deployed, they were to interrogate prisoners, translate documents, monitor radio communications, and conduct covert operations... Detachment 101 and 102's clandestine operations were extremely successful." The 750,000 pages in the 35,000 personnel files include applications of people who were not recruited or hired, as well as the service records of those who served.
Women in the OSS Of the estimated 13,000 people who served in the OSS during World War II, more than 4,000 were women. Their work in a wide range of roles—espionage, intelligence analysis, research, communications, cartography, clerical work, and more—contributed to the organization's wartime success and helped shift gender norms in the decades that followed. Among them were
Julia Child, who served in Washington, D.C.,
Ceylon, and
China, where she handled the movement of classified documents in India;
Marion A. Frieswyk, who as the first female intelligence cartographer for the Cartography Section helped create high-precision maps used in Allied military operations; and
Eloise Page, William Donovan's secretary, nicknamed the "Iron Butterfly" for her manner and rank. Many worked on black propaganda in the MO department. Some gained internal renown as "glamour girls", such as
Virginia Hall, singer
Marlene Dietrich,
Betty McIntosh, and
Barbara Lauwers. In
Sisterhood of Spies, McIntosh reflects on the women's ability to "understand gossip in a way men never could". Lauwers worked on
Operation Sauerkraut, which dispatched OSS to Allied prisoner-of-war camps to find and train German and Czech POWs to travel back across enemy lines to spread black propaganda meant to dismay Axis troops. Black propaganda for psychological effect was one of Donovan's key initiatives, inspired by the Nazis. Lauwers created the "League of Lonely War Women" to demoralize German soldiers: Many women had familial or spousal connection to the war effort. Jane Hutton-Smith, wife and daughter to military officers, worked as the Washington manager of Far East MO, and trained field agents in spreading propaganda against Japanese soldiers. Her weekly
Rumour Mill session with the staff involved spreading "devastating lies" about the wellbeing of the families of Japanese soldiers, creating misinformation on planned attacks, and disrupting "puppet" relations between Japan and China. Novelist
Mary Bancroft acted as a liaison between OSS officer Allen Dulles and German resistance groups. OSS women had direct engagement with foreign nationals and Allied counterparts, shaping wartime diplomacy and postwar foreign policy by building trust with international partners and establishing precedents for female involvement in foreign service, which had long-term soft power affects. Many went to work for the CIA or State Department. ==Dissolution into other agencies==