Some OSS Operations at a Glance

The Associated Press

Published
9:00 pm EDT, Friday, June 7, 2002

A look at some operations of the Office of Strategic Services, World War II forerunner of the CIA:

_Snapshot: Up to 25,000 people worked for the OSS, 4,500 of them women. At its peak in late 1944, OSS employed nearly 13,000 people. The majority came from the Army, with civilians making up about one-quarter. About 120 died in service. In all, 7,500 served overseas.

_Jedburghs. Three-man commando teams that parachuted into occupied France to organize resistance and prepare for the Normandy invasion. They typically consisted of an OSS officer, a British intelligence officer and a French radioman.

_Detachment 101: A unit of up to 120 Americans who operated in Japanese-occupied Burma, sabotaging installations, recruiting 11,000 tribesmen, spreading propaganda and attacking isolated Japanese positions.

_Morale Operations: Psychological warfare through the use of "black propaganda" _ fake German newspapers, radio broadcasts, leaflets and other subversive material disguised to look like it came from demoralized Axis soldiers.

_R&A: The Research and Analysis Branch was staffed by some 900 scholars. Historians, political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists and more crossed over from academe. Economists were key in selecting bomb targets because they understood German industry. They directed bombers to synthetic-fuel plants and specific sections of sprawling warplane factories, such as the ball-bearing production line.

_SI: The Secret Intelligence Branch cultivated spies from its stations in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In neutral Switzerland, SI station chief Allen W. Dulles established contacts with German conspirators opposed to Hitler and brokered a deal secretly offered by a German SS general that led to the surrender of German forces in Italy.

_X-2: The counterintelligence arm of the OSS worked with the British in analyzing intercepted and deciphered German messages, known as ULTRA intelligence. The U.S. armed forces did not share its MAGIC intercepts from Japan with OSS.