Records of the Office of Strategic Services (RG 226) [Interallied and Interservice Military Agencies Records]

The Office of the Director of the OSS, located in Washington, DC, constituted the organization's headquarters throughout the war. The principal divisions within consisted of separate Offices of Deputy Directors for Services (concerning administrative duties), Intelligence (including the Research and Analysis and Secret Intelligence Branches), Operations (including the Special Operations and Morale Operations Branches and the Operational Group Command), Schools and Training, and Personnel. In addition to field offices in New York and California, the OSS established more than 40 overseas offices, which fell under the authority of the Special Services Officer in a given theater of operations or the chief of a mission. At the height of its wartime activities in October 1944, the OSS numbered approximately 5,500 military and 2,000 civilian personnel overseas and approximately 2,700 military and 2,000 civilian personnel in the United States.

Among the constituent organizations, the Research and Analysis Branch (R & A) performed the principal task of collating and evaluating intelligence information for distribution to interested government organizations. Intelligence procurement, especially in the form of espionage, occupied the attentions of the Secret Intelligence Branch (SI) and the Foreign Nationalities Branch (FNB). The Special Operations Branch and (after May 1943) the Operational Group Command organized sabotage and resistance activities behind enemy lines; the latter organization assumed responsibility for guerrilla units operating in uniform. The Morale Operations Branch attempted to undermine Axis morale. Protecting the security of OSS intelligence collection and operations was the responsibility of the Counterintelligence Branch (X-2).

William J. Donovan, who had previously served as the Coordinator of Information, occupied the post of Director of the OSS throughout the war. By an Executive order of September 20, 1945, OSS was abolished (effective October 1, 1945), and its functions, personnel, and records were divided between the State Department and the War Department. {Note 1}

The OSS was drawn into the Safehaven Program - early in 1944, when the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) consulted on an informal basis. The general plan projected for Safehaven operations was explained to OSS and its cooperation enlisted. OSS instructed its agents to assist the men from the Departments of State and Treasury and the FEA who were to visit the European neutral countries in the summer of 1944, and to gather such intelligence as it acquired which fitted into the Safehaven program. OSS routed to FEA and to the Department of State copies of intelligence reports.

In the spring of 1945 the Secretary of State sent a directive to OSS regarding Safehaven work, and in April OSS forwarded instructions to its own field agents. Thereafter, so far as OSS was concerned, it was responsible to the Department of State for its part in the program.

OSS expected take an active part in the securing of German business records (a very significant aspect of the Safehaven Program) for the purpose of submitting them to careful Safehaven analysis. OSS expected to staff the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS). CIOS, however, was put under control of the Military, and OSS and other civilian operators were put into uniform to work under the commander of the U.S. Military Governor for Germany, U.S. This caused records to be channeled through Army control and had the effect of de-emphasizing FEA as well as OSS purposes so far as immediate use of German files was concerned. {Note 2}

Researchers will find, scattered throughout the OSS records, many Safehaven Program and Safehaven-related records.

OSS Grading of Reports
On October 19, 1942, the OSS modified its system of grading intelligence reports. {Note 3} Agency employees were notified that the present symbols used for grading purposes on certain reports distributed by OSS have, in some respects, been found to be inadequate and therefore they were being modified as follows:

"Reports are graded, according to the reliability of the source and the probability of the information, by letters and figures respectively. Please note that the following definitions of symbols vary from those previously used:

I. Sources
                "A" indicates "Absolute reliability" (inside source)
        "B" indicates "Previously or probably reliable"
        "C" indicates "Doubtful reliability"- this indicates uncertainty as to reliability of  source but does not necessarily mean the source should not receie  consideration.
        "D" indicates "Unreliability"
II. Information
        "O" indicates that the "Probability of the report cannot be adequately judged"  (please note that this a new and important addition to the grading system)
        "1" indicates "Entire reliability" (at first hand)
        "2" indicates "Information supported by other evidence or considered probably  true"
        "3" inidicates "Information unsupported but considered probably true"
        "4" indicates "Information improbably"

Many of the OSS records have been microfilmed. Researchers are requested to use the microfilm rather than the textual records.

{1}Return to text Researchers may find useful: History Project, Strategic Services Unit, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, War Department, Washington, D.C., War Report of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) with a new introduction by Kermit Roosevelt (New York: Walker and Company, 1976, 2 vols.); Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983); Richard Harris Smith, The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1972); and, George C. Chalou, ed., The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992).

{2}Return to text Margaret Clarke, "Safehaven Study," n.d. [1946] 193pp. Contained in Material on the "Safe Haven" Project 1943-1945 (entry 170) in the Records of the Foreign Economic Administration (RG 169) pp. 104-105; hereafter cited as Clarke, "Safehaven Study.". Needless to say, the Records of the Office of the Military Governor, United States (OMGUS) (RG 260) are full of intelligence based on seized German records.

{3}Return to text OSS Evaluation of Evidence, Entry 147, Box 7 (Office Procedure), Folder 103, RG 226.