The Organization Spook
Grier, Peter
The Organization Spook by Peter Grier By the fall of 1944, Mario Morpurgo had discovered that the life of a secret agent was not all trench coats and smokey-eyed blondes. An operative for the...
...Certainly the OSS office in Washington displayed symptoms of the bureaucratic problems that slow the step of many government agencies (or corporations, or universities, for that matter...
...State felt that it was the only agency that ought to report on foreign affairs to the president...
...Control of intelligence brings with it much power to shape policy, and officials from J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General Francis Biddle felt the OSS was threatening their influence, and so conspired against it...
...When asked why, he sighs as if the question were utterly naive and says, "Come now...
...threats are quickly identified and attacked...
...Hoover's antipathy toward Donovan and the OSS apparently had roots in South America...
...Donovan hotly denied this...
...On September 30, 1945, Truman ordered the OSS dissolved...
...This attitude at times is taken by those who should know better...
...and the word "budget" never, ever passes anyone's lips...
...The receiving operators seemed to be rather in a hurry to finish and go home, and several times they cut the broadcast just saying they had to go, without bothering about giving an extra appointment time," complained Morpurgo...
...The agency featured a "present rumor committee," for instance, whose duties involved dreaming up morale-defeating propaganda to sow behind enemy lines...
...Perhaps because of these portrayals, to many people actual secret services are awesome agencies, capable of accomplishing almost any deed, devious or otherwise, with dispatch...
...envoy in Madrid, Carlton Hayes, was perhaps the OSS's most implacable State Department foe...
...Frequently, new administrators "had to be educated to the meaning of our work and before completing this education would set up new policies which were impossible of realization ." OSS/Algiers was also afflicted with intra-office jealousy...
...These documents, just declassified by the CIA, provide an account of the day-to-day life of a modern spy agency perhaps more detailed than any ever made public by the U.S...
...Joseph Darlington, chief of OSS intelligence in Madrid, wrote in a nasty 1945 report that the agency's principal problem in Spain was not so much the Axis as "our relationship with the U.S...
...At times these struggles seemed to tax Donovan and other OSS personnel more than the fight against the enemy in the field...
...The personal element also inevitably played a part in the relations between [the OSS] and the armed forces services, and this was not always a happy part," is how one OSS report discreetly puts it...
...An aptly named West Point graduate, Strong was chief of military intelligence...
...agency empowered to conduct intelligence operations in the western hemisphere...
...Ambassador Hayes, however, was not in J. Edgar Hoover's league when it came to bureaucratic infighting...
...Playing musical desks Power struggles over spying, especially between agencies, can be "peculiarly savage," notes Anthony Cave Brown, a biographer of William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, founder of the OSS...
...As a group we were far above the regular embassy personnel in intelligence and personality, we had wider acquaintanceships, we talked more Spanish, and were obviously engaged in more interesting work...
...An operative for the U.S...
...Unfortunately, I am handicapped by a certain slowness of wit, which makes it more difficult for me than for others to follow a verbal discussion on an intricate subject, particularly when there is great pressure and when some of the participants speak rapidly and emphatically!' Budget justification...
...As a result, it sometimes seems that government memos multiply like coat hangers: leave two of them on your desk at night, and you will find three there in the morning...
...Memos to headquarters tended to be full of such phrases as "a total of 7,692 pouches and cable reports have been received [from OSS/Spain] . of the last 74 evaluated by the British, 91 percent were of value and use...
...At the moment the OSS men fled the embassy, clutching their loot, two FBI cars arrived with great fanfare, and the G-men arrested Wild Bill's boys...
...Apparently the radio operators at the OSS base in Algiers who received Morpurgo's clandestine communications had the work habits of Commerce Department clerks...
...Without a hint of irony it then suggests Donovan's first line be "I'm happy to see familiar faces!' The four-hour hearing is scripted down to the minute, with the committee to be entertained first by a map of spy nets in France, then by an agent who will describe one net's exploits, then to a chart tracing arms drops to resistance groups, then to a graph showing the number of enemy operatives converted to double agents, and so on...
...Hoover bided his time, compiling an extensive dossier on Donovan, which contained little of interest...
...Feelings ran particularly high at U.S...
...Feelings ran high on both sides of this issue," concludes an internal OSS paper, "and in the end it was carried to the White House," where Roosevelt ruled the OSS was innocent of untoward turf grabbing...
...Hoover arrested them...
...Strong, already a member of the club, wanted to keep Donovan out...
...The first was hospitalized...
...One OSS man in Washington justified the situation in this way: "Dear Dick," he wrote to a superior, "I can sympathize with your desire to obtain agreement with a minimum of memorandum writing...
...He considered the OSS a bunch of Ivy League dilettantes who threatened his influence...
...While there, they were spotted by the Gestapo, who trailed and arrested them when they returned to occupied France...
...A friend of mine, a man with extensive State Department experience, believes the CIA knows who is behind El Salvador's death squads...
...secret weapons are ready on time, and never seem to need maintenance...
...This is particularly disturbing when one considers that at secret agencies the stakes are higher...
...The OSS kept a thick file on Drew Pearson, one of its main enemies in the press...
...They have to know'.' Any old spook can attest that there's no bureaucracy like a secret bureaucracy...
...In quick order his commanding officer was captured, his truck was commandeered by the Gestapo (he was in it at the time), and he was ambushed by his own men...
...spies were given embassy cover in neutral countries, the whole foreign service could fall into disrepute...
...Press leaks accused Donovan of harboring communists, being too close to the British, and plotting war with Russia...
...They would then move on to the number of 1:50,000 scale maps of the Iberian peninsula recently collected...
...The OSS, being a young and tender agency, needed to hold off its many enemies within the U.S...
...might face—in effect saying, "How can you cut our funds when the worst lies ahead...
...who made no effort to protect our cover, who imposed restraints on our work of both a major and petty nature...
...Under the control of Henry Hyde, in civilian life a prominent New York lawyer, its secret intelligence desk was eventually a great success, digging up information that saved thousands of Allied lives...
...The House Appropriations Committee, unswayed by Donovan's scripted presentation, slashed the OSS budget...
...The special operations branch thought counter-intelligence was overly suspicious...
...OSS officers tried the last defense of an embattled government agency: they sought to sway the president to their side...
...This was notably true in the case of General Strong...
...Most bureaucrats consider it a sacred duty to defend their agency against the onslaughts of the forces of budget reduction...
...Since the collection of information was one of the OSS's primary purposes, the agency undoubtedly produced mounds of paper...
...Memoranda, after all, can be ends in themselves, proof that some sort of action (i.e., memo writing) has occurred...
...intelligence agency more essential than ever before...
...The third has been reasonably satisfactory except that he likes the bottle, smashed up a jeep, and has been sick a good deal:' wrote Lawrence...
...in addition, diplomats feared that if U.S...
...Committees and Meetings...
...Being of Italian origin it is most painful for me to make this statement," said Morpurgo in his mission report, "but I really was surprised and ashamed of their behavior...
...What I am trying to illustrate is the common-sense notion that secret services are bureaucracies, and that it is quite possible that many of today's intelligence blunders (such as the "So You Want To Be A Guerrilla" manual produced by the CIA for the Nicaraguan contras) could simply be examples of bureaucracy at work...
...Consider, for instance, Morpurgo's bete noire—the large OSS installation in Algiers...
...Bureaucracies expend much energy on the formation and maintenance of committees...
...An intellectual and a man who fancied himself an espionage expert, Hayes made a sport of firing off cables that demeaned OSS agents' talents...
...But the OSS's most formidable foe within the U.S...
...The KGB, CIA, and MI6 are shown moving with an institutional agility IBM managers can only envy...
...But the end was near...
...In this classic maneuver, officials compile long lists of figures in an attempt to create at least the illusion of action and to justify their jobs...
...They describe great bravery and violence—as well as agents entangled by red tape, furious battles between U.S...
...Personnel officer Eric Barnes complained in a bitter cable of "the continual reorganization which characterizes most of the history of the Algiers" base...
...As adjutant, Lawrence had a tough job...
...One of his most irritating problems, however, had nothing to do with the situation behind enemy lines...
...Donovan was furious...
...Embassy...
...government while it built up operations...
...by summer the agency was staggering about the streets of Washington, easy prey for its enemies...
...OSS files also contain a tragic illustration of the truism that meetings can sometimes be counterproductive...
...To help solve the base's chronic administrative problems, senior officers at Algiers often used a standard bureaucrat's ploy: when things aren't going well, play musical desks...
...The second was carted off by the MPs...
...Given these constraints, it is a small miracle that by 1945 the OSS in many respects rivaled the best intelligence agencies in the world...
...Late one night, in the back of an old file, I ran across a briefing book prepared for use by Wild Bill Donovan in a 1945 House Appropriations appearance...
...He was in charge of scrounging supplies, and he faced a situation familiar to almost any GS-10: the only things he could have were things he didn't need...
...agencies...
...Then, in October 1942, he got his chance to strike back...
...I have been reading quite a bit about Donovan and the OSS lately in a cramped room on the 13th floor of the National Archives as I have riffled through box upon box of OSS operational records...
...But poor administration and planning made life at the base a daily adventure, according to the OSS's Own documents...
...SI operatives apparently did not consider humility one of the higher virtues...
...Established after the Allies captured North Africa from the Vichy French in 1942, OSS/Algiers was one of the most important U.S...
...government was probably General George Veazey Strong...
...An OSS black bag team had been sent to steal cipher information from the Spanish embassy in Washington...
...For example: Beancounting...
...The only difference is that, because the secret agencies have no reason to fear public disapproval, their bureaucracies are often more chaotic...
...A memorandum might, therefore, well be prepared for the president or secretary of state or for the War Department, setting forth the wartime work of OSS on this subject...
...According to one memo written in the fall of 1945, "Several recent editorials have noted that large-scale scientific developments have made a coordinated U.S...
...Fortunately for Morpurgo, his men were very poor shots...
...At times Donovan refused to attend meetings where Strong would be present for fear he would not be able to restrain his temper...
...For one thing, chronic understaffing meant that officers had a hard time finding good help...
...In this type of forum, the OSS—which could produce real live spies with tales of derring-do— undoubtedly excelled...
...In one memo, Captain James Lawrence, base adjutant, complained that he had run through three enlisted-man assistants in ten days...
...He complained about everything from OSS contacts with the Basques, which he felt unwise, to the agency's Madrid financial attache, whom Hayes accused of being "mentally unstable!' This sniping infuriated OSS...
...The book then suggests Donovan end by describing the German underground a victorious U,S...
...This shuffling, he claimed, "was devastating in its effects on our intelligence-gathering operations:' Each change, said Barnes, meant "a new signature was required on certain requisitions...
...Committee meetings, like memos, can create the appearance of action, and in addition give officials the opportunity to dash out of their offices wearing harried looks...
...While it was almost impossible to find rubber boats for special operations, wrote Lawrence to OSS headquarters in Washington, an inventory memorandum went on for 12 pages listing "special forms...
...Some of them had strange duties...
...intelligence agencies, and other forms of organizational irrationality...
...Get pictures of committee members so recollections can be pointed at individuals," advises the book...
...government...
...Proliferation of paperwork...
...The U.S...
...counter-intelligence thought research and analysis was a bunch of desk-bound librarians, and so forth...
...The agency was created from nothing in mere months while the world was at war...
...When FDR died on April 12, 1945, the OSS lost its most powerful supporter...
...and-who in the end were instrumental in having us removed from Spain ." Darlington claimed that the State Department meddling was inspired by jealousy: "They were resentful that we were not concerned with their office politics," he wrote...
...The Secret Intelligence desk was disliked by almost everyone...
...In this respect Bond-type adventure novels differ but marginally from the more "authentic" LeCarre school of espionage fiction...
...Bureaucracies live to create paperwork...
...One of the most important battles in this annual struggle is the Appropriations Committee hearing, at which the agency chief justifies his or her spending with charts, graphs, and every sort of gimmick short of dancing girls...
...Games are routinely played at the CIA and other intelligence agencies that are remarkably similar to the turfprotecting, memo shuffling, budget protection, and other bureaucratic games that go on at the Department of Agriculture...
...Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Morpurgo had parachuted into Germanoccupied southern France on August 11...
...Hayes wrote memos about OSS agents...
...In June 1943, high officers of the French Secret Army sneaked into Switzerland for an OSS conference...
...in the latter, western agents are morally troubled, less athletic, and more poorly dressed—but also ultimately successful...
...The State Department, for one, viewed the OSS with that intense hostility old money reserves for new...
...One explained his department's unpopularity this way: "The fact that we were alone, were producing results which the Army finally recognized were of first importance, did not endear us to other branches which were either still in the planning stage or were performing less glamorous functions ." 7,692 pouches I do not wish to imply that life at the OSS resembled a Mel Brooks movie...
...intelligence installations in the Mediterranean theater, the support base for operations as far away as southern France...
...In the former, the hero gets to either ski or wear a tuxedo en route to saving JudeaChristian civilization...
...but Hoover, early in the war, suspected Donovan was poaching on his territory by running agents in Mexico...
...Hoover's ambush All these intramural bureaucratic games, however, pale in comparison to the turf wars that raged between the OSS and other U.S...
...they never listened to the emergency calls at one o'clock in the morning!' In films and spy novels, secret services are almost always efficient...
...This was much more gripping stuff than an analysis of the growth of food stamp spending...
...Eventually, the black bag crew had to discreetly leave the country, as Hoover was pressing for their indictment on robbery charges...
...Donovan wanted to join the select circle of officials who had access to this intelligence...
...Upon his arrival he found the local Resistance fighters more concerned with internal politics than with battling the enemy...
...after all, the collection of intelligence is an activity fraught with more danger than the administration of farm price supports...
...According to presidential directive, the FBI was the main U.S...
...in addition, he and William Donovan loathed each other...
...Eventually President Roosevelt allowed the OSS to have Magic and Ultra material—but Strong's service was given much power over exactly what intercepts Donovan would see...
...posts in the neutral countries of Sweden and Spain, according to a Secret Intelligence branch report...
...Perhaps the most critical battles were over "Magic" and "Ultra," Allied code-breaking operations that were rich lodes of strategic information...
...Moving south to work with Italian partisans battling Mussolini, the young OSS man lived for weeks on nothing but boiled sheep, and often found himself deserted by his paisanos at the first sound of gunfire...
...Where the Axis powers had failed, the bureaucratic enemies of the OSS prevailed...
...as a result, its beancounting was particularly impressive...
...Peter Grier is a staff writer in the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor...
...The OSS had many committees of its own, and was part of numerous inter-agency panels...
...Strong fought the OSS throughout the war...
...On Sundays it was almost impossible to make contact...
Vol. 16 • December 1984 • No. 11
