OSS/London

Origins (later the author of James Bond) was one of several Brits instrumental in drafting the blueprint for the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI). Throughout 1939 and 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were in constant communications, where Churchill tried to convince Roosevelt to contribute militarily to the war. Roosevelt could not do this without an Act of Congress. However, in June 1940, he did deploy William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan – the man that he called his "secret legs" – to London on a fact-finding mission to gauge British strength, and to discover any information regarding fifth columns. While Donovan was in England, he formed relationships with Stewart Menzies, King George V, John Henry Godfrey and Ian Fleming. Upon his return to the United States, Donovan presented his findings to Roosevelt that they were in desperate need of a new style of civilian intelligence agency, to be modeled after the British system. In July 1941, Roosevelt appointed Donovan as the head of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI). After the British officers Dick Ellis, John Godfrey, and Ian Flemming contributed to the blueprint for the agency, corralled initially by William "Little Bill" Stephenson at the British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the first batches of COI-trained operators were sent to Camp X, which was operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose first commandant was Richard Melville Brooker. (COI) was the first non-departmental civilian intelligence agency in the United States.Whitney became the first Director of the London Outpost, and toured the country with Robert Sherwood, director of the Foreign Information Service (FIS) at the time, inspecting military installations and other relevant special and secret installations belonging to the SOE, SIS, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), and the Ministry of Economic Warfare(MEW). After the United States entered into the war, Whitney was overly forthcoming in communications to his British counterparts about the internal political landscape in Washington. One of his most damaging reports came in the form of a memo entitled "The Crisis in COI," detailing the political machinations trying to assail Donovan at the time. This memo created a British mistrust in the COI, especially in the political allies to the military. William Dwight Whitney resigned from his post two weeks later. This came with the commission into the rank of Brigadier General (BG). With the OSS coming under the command structure of the Joint Chiefs, the leadership felt less threatened by the civilian nature of the military organization, but Donovan still maintained enmities among the military ranks. However, another arrival in June 1942 to London was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who quickly established himself at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), which was also based out of Grosvenor Square. Eisenhower himself took up residence in the neighborhood, as well. The close proximity of all of these American offices, both military and civilian, allowed effective in-person communication between the entire American mission to London. The mass influx of Americans to the neighborhood caused reporters from The Guardian to refer to the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square as "Little America" or "Eisenhower Platz." While the North African campaign was underway, the staff of OSS/London steadily grew over that summer, and especially in the leadup to Operation Torch., a career diplomat, as Chief of OSS/London smoothed-over the political infighting between OSS and the US military in London and saw the station grow to its zenith of over two thousand staff.In December 1942, David K. E. Bruce replaced William Phillips as the Chief of Station. Phillips, meanwhile, was personally sent by the President to an Ambassadorial post in India during WWII. Theater Commanders thought that OSS/London should function as an extension of the G-2 in London. This perspective was shared by both General Frank Maxwell Andrews, who was killed in a plane crash in May 1943, and his successor, General Jacob L. Devers. The growing pains of development were solved under the leadership of David Bruce, who managed to disperse and place new staffs relatively evenly between the branches of OSS/London. As more staffers arrived from the United States, the OSS managed to expand their reach into Europe, acting as a vital relief to the beleaguered Resistance organizations in occupied territories. Each of the branches, especially SI/London and SO/London, grew from core groups of individuals into large underground enterprises. By the end of 1943, large numbers of staff were in place at OSS/London, and regular operations were deployed to France. However, many of the newly arrived military generals and OSS leadership had been somewhat indoctrinated into a mythos that had grown around the British intelligence apparatus, and were hesitant to allow OSS to undermine the success of SOE and MI6. General Devers was particularly susceptible to the British myth, causing David Bruce to include the General's apprehension about allowing OSS to expand here in memos bak to Washington. This mythos pervaded pockets of OSS/London for the rest of the war. Successively after Algiers, Casablanca, and Cairo were liberated by the Allies, OSS/London was involved in deploying members to staff large field bases there. However, those bases were not nearly as large as OSS/London. This provided for a coordinated effort leading up to the Allied invasion of Sicily. While there was coordination between OSS/Europe and OSS/MEDTO, OSS/London had no operational control over MEDTO (Mediterranean Theatre of Operations). By 1944, shortly before D Day, there were 2800 people working at OSS/London. At this time of hectic activity, Bruce and Donovan established the OSS/London Secretariat, which facilitated Bruce in managing the complex and its staff. Shortly after D Day, while maintaining command over OSS/Europe, David Bruce advanced forward onto the continent and worked mostly out of offices there, rarely returning to London. Much of the staff of OSS/London, after the success of Operation Cobra and the establishment of a beachhead in Normandy, then relocated onto the continent to be closer to the front line, reducing the overall staff at OSS/London through 1944. The OSS was formally dissolved by Executive Order 9620 on 20 September 1945, leaving the facilities at Grosvenor Street to eventually become residential complexes. == Activities ==

OSS had been designed as a centralized intelligence agency with all aspects of intelligence under its purview, but the British system which emerged was by 1942 no longer structured under a centralized organizational hierarchy. As such, each of the branches of OSS stationed here formed semi-autonomous operational capabilities. To some onlookers, this seemed like it might have hindered their abilities, but this was not an opinion shared by most OSS/London branch chiefs. Each of these branches also formed separate liaison offices with their British counterparts. In many cases, the relationships formed between these OSS branches and their British counterparts were stronger than they were with each other. David Bruce, as a result, had to constantly mediate arguments between SIS and SOE in order so that the American effort might be perceived as unified back home, instead of siloed as it was. Another complication was that while their British counterparts would share information with SO/London and SI/London, they would not share information with SO/Washington or SI/Washington. SO/London oversaw the radio communication operations at Station Charles in Poundon (not Hurley). The French Resistance operatives controlled by SO/London were commanded by an American of Belgian birth named William Grell. On October 18, 1943, Colonel Charles S. Vanderblue was replaced by Joseph Haskell as Chief of SO/London. Operation Jedburgh in Milton Hall Early in the planning stages for Jedburgh, SO/London assigned liaison officers to be attached with field army staffs. These attached officers moved with the army to coordinate with resistance movements on the ground, and request for assistance from these groups to prepare for Allied movements across the battle space. They also kept Allied commanders apprised of whatever local underground organizations might be of use to the military. Between January and September 1944, a total of 93 JEDBURGH teams, each composed of one SOE member, one SO/London officer, and one officer native to the country of operations, were parachuted into occupied Western Europe to assist resistance movements and coordinate clandestine operations. Bill Maddox took over for Shepardson as Chief of SI/London, and saw the office through its largest and most successful operations on the continent. SI/London oversaw the radio communication activities of Station Victor in Hurley, Berkshire (not Poundon). Operations SUSSEX and PROUST The single-largest joint operation undertaken by SI/London and SIS was Operation SUSSEX, also known as the Sussex Plan. Planning for Sussex on the American side began in April, 1943, initially suggested by Stacy Lloyd. The operation was officially given a planning committee on January 4, 1944. This Tripartite Planning Committee, also called the SUSSEX Committee, or the Tripartite Control Committee, was staffed by Kenneth Cohen from SIS as chair of the committee, Francis Pickens Miller from SI/London, and Gilbert "Rémy" Renault from the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action (BCRA). Nearly three-quarters of the staff of SI/London were involved in SUSSEX. SI/London, instead of creating individual liaison officers to serve with field commanders like SO/London had done, created SI Field Detachment units, whose purpose was similar. Operation SUSSEX involved the recruitment of 96 agents recruited from the Free French Army. Half of that number became OSSEX agents, dropped in two-man teams by parachute into American objective areas. The other half became BRISSEX agents, dropped into British and Canadian objective areas. On D Day, there were already seven BRISSEX and seven OSSEX teams deployed behind enemy lines reporting on enemy movements. In the event of anything going wrong with the SUSSEX Plan, there was devised another operation called Operation PROUST, or the PROUST Plan. Unlike SUSSEX, PROUST was an operation only under the control of SI/London and the BCRA. was made chief of SI/London in June 1944, and saw it through the Allied push into Germany. FAUST Plan In June 1944, William J. Casey was brought from Washington to become the chief of SI/London, replacing Bill Maddox, and with the consent of SHAEF, was given full responsibility to organize the penetration of Nazi Germany by a wide swathe of agents. They were called the TOOL series because each of the missions was named after a type of tool; HAMMER, CHISEL, PICKAXE, MALLET and BUZZSAW. The major component of SI/London involved in the planning and operations of TOOL was the SI Labor Division, (sometimes called the Labor Desk), whose Chief was Arthur Goldberg. Gould made contact with the group in a local bookstore, recruited a full staff of former union workers to lead the mission, and took the group to be trained at OSS/London Area F, today known as the Battle of Britain House in Ruislip. Parachute training for TOOL took place at Ringway Airfield. When he was stationed here, he had no knowledge of the other branches, and especially had not been briefed on the existence of SO/London. He saw the early period of R&A/London as a fertile breeding ground for new ideas, or as he wrote later: "...a free-for-all pioneering and expansion." Enemy Objectives Unit . Seated left to right: Charles Kindleberger, Roselene Honerkamp, Irwin Nat Pincus. Standing left to right: William Salant, Walt W. Rostow, Agent Selko, Edward Mayer. The Enemy Objectives Unit was a unit of R&A/London whose duties involved making use of on-the-ground intelligence and R&A studies to identify strategic targets for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). EOU was a largely successful unit of R&A/London, focused on identifying targets in Germany. Their success was largely due to their ability to provide policy suggestion to commanders in addition to pure intelligence. X-2 was directed by James R. Murphy for the bulk of the war, who moved X-2 Headquarters to OSS/London in 1943. In London, the staff of X-2 were involved to some extent in the Double-Cross System. X-2 was also the primary American organization to interpret and pursue agents mentioned in ULTRA intercepts. The agreements between SIS and X-2 were reached in December 1942, according to the British Official History; "for full cooperation on counter- espionage between Section V and...X-2, in London and at overseas stations. Representatives of X-2 joined Section V in March 1943 and a mutually profitable liaison developed." The X-2 field base in Rome, after it was established in OSS MEDTO, eventually fell under the direction of James Angleton. Angleton would spend the next several decades hunting after Kim Philby. == References ==