Prior to the formation of the OSS ( the American version of the British Secret Intelligence Service and Special Operations Executive ), American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including the State, Treasury, Navy, and War Departments.

The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the Special Activities Division of the CIA.

From OSS to Green Berets: The Birth of Special Forces ( Novato, CA: Presidio, 1986 )

* On April 22, 2009, Ross Perot was made an Honorary Green Beret at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that also honored the OSS, Alamo Scouts and the First Special Service Force, elite World War Two units that were inducted into the " 1st Special Forces " Regiment.

The very same Caltrops were used extensively and to very good effect during World War II so much so that the modifications and variants produced by the Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) and the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) are still in use today within Special Forces and Law Enforcement bodies.

* Aaron Bank ( 1902 – 2004 ), World War II Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) agent and co-founder of the U. S. Army's Special Forces Group ( later, Green Berets ), was a lifeguard and medical ( physical ) therapist's aide at Biarritz before he enlisted in the army in the late 1930s.

) In establishing the 10th, he was as flexible as he had been with " Iron Cross ", drawing upon former members of the " 1st Special Service Force " known as the Devil's Brigade, as well as veterans of the OSS, the Parachute Infantry units, and guerrilla elements in the Pacific.

He wrote two books, first, From OSS to Green Berets: the Birth of Special Forces, which describes his exploits in France and Indochina and his role in founding the Special Forces and then Knight's Cross, a fictionalized account of a completed Operation Iron Cross which was co-written with E. M. Nathanson.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, Camp X opened for the purpose of training Allied agents from the Special Operations Executive, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and American Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) intended to be dropped behind enemy lines as saboteurs and spies.

The British SOE ( Special Operations Executive ) Welrod assassination pistol with an integral suppressor was also used by the American OSS on clandestine operations in Nazi occupied Europe during the Second World War.

Operation Jedburgh represented the first real cooperation in Europe between SOE and the Special Operations branch of OSS.

The direct descendant of the OSS ' Special Operations is the CIA's Special Activities Division.

* personnel with at least 120 days ' wartime service prior to 1955 in certain units, including the 1st Special Service Force, OSS Detachment 101, OSS Jedburgh teams, OSS Operational Groups, and the Sixth Army Special Reconnaissance Unit ( the " Alamo Scouts "), and

The 10th Special Forces Group, more commonly referred to as Green Berets, was founded at Prinz Heinrich Kaserne in Lengries Germany in 1952 by Colonel Aaron Banks, himself a former OSS operative.

The tactics of guerrilla warfare were used successfully in the 20th century by — among others — the Soviet partisans and the Polish Home Army and the OSS in Burma in World War II ; Mao Zedong and the People's Liberation Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War.

The Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II.

Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply resistance movements, including Mao Zedong's Red Army in China and the Viet Minh in French Indochina, in areas occupied by the Axis powers during World War II.

One of the greatest accomplishments of the OSS during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany by OSS operatives.

At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24, 000 people.

* OSS Detachment 101 operated in the China Burma India Theater of World War II.

Some of the earliest World War II predecessors of the SEALs were the Operational Swimmers of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.

During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ), which was a forerunner of the CIA.

During American involvement in World War II, the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS, predecessor to the CIA ) used facilities and staff at St. Elizabeths hospital to test " truth serums ".

In 1942, the COI became the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) and Donovan was returned to active duty in his World War I rank of colonel ( by war's end, he would be promoted to major general ).

As World War II began to wind to a close in early 1945, Donovan began to focus on preserving the OSS beyond the end of the war.

Having led the OSS during World War II, Donovan ’ s opinion was especially influential as to what kind of intelligence organization was needed as a bi-polar post-war world began to take shape.

However, it should be recognised that McClellend's thinking was strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Murray, both in terms of Murray's model of human needs and motivational processes ( 1938 ) and his work with the OSS during World War Two.

During World War II, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) — the predecessor to the CIA — where he became head of its Secret Intelligence Branch in Europe.

In his autobiography Edition of One, Power details the development of the company, including how University Microfilms assisted the OSS during World War II.

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II ( 1939 – 45 ).

An alumnus of Nichols School in Buffalo, New York and a 1940 graduate of Brown University, Hunt during World War II served in the U. S. Navy on the destroyer USS Mayo, United States Army Air Forces, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) which he worked for in China.

Bunche spent time during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ), the predecessor of the CIA, as senior social analyst on Colonial Affairs before joining the State Department in 1943.

The other colonels were Henry Skillman Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer ; William Joseph Donovan ( a. k. a. " Wild Bill " Donovan, a hero of the First World War who would later head the OSS ).

He is also famous for his exploits as an OSS officer during World War II, parachuting into France to coordinate and activate the French Resistance and organizing an operation intended to capture Adolf Hitler.

During the War, the OSS supplied policy makers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities.

Thus in the following days from September 20, 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Department of State and the Department of War.

The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder ( formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS ) as the director to oversee the liquidation of the OSS, and more importantly, the preservation of the clandestine intelligence capability of the OSS.

Griffin's Honor Bound and Men At War series revolves around fictional OSS operations.

* Bartholomew-Feis, Dixee R. The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan ( Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006 )

) War Report of the OSS, two volumes ( New York: Walker, 1976 )

OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996 )

" The OSS was also focused on the battle for hearts and minds during wartime ; " the very practice of simple sabotage by natives in enemy or occupied territory may make these individuals identify themselves actively with the United Nations War effort, and encourage them to assist openly in periods of Allied invasion and occupation.