William Joseph Donovans life was packed with personal drama. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovans relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, Wild Bill Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the countrys first national intelligence agency) and the father of todays CIA. It does not store any personal data.He was one of Americas most exciting and secretive generalsthe man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. After much discussion and debate over structure, Truman finally signed the National Security Act in September 1947, which gave birth to the CIA. Truman himself had similar concerns, but as the Cold War heated up, he became more open to its development. Formally created in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) grew out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). What was the CIA called before?Ĭentral Intelligence Agency (CIA), principal foreign intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the U.S. The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the CIA Special Activities Division. The National Security Act of 1947 established the Central Intelligence Agency, which then took up some OSS functions. On September 20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9621, terminating the OSS. As World War II heated up in 1940, President Franklin D. He was a rather stocky, silver-gray haired, highly successful senior partner in a Wall Street law firm. As a young man, Donovan had acquired the nickname “Wild Bill,” but in 1940, at age 57, however, he seemed anything but wild. Donovan led the Office of Strategic Services from 1942-1945. “Wild Bill” Donovan, who played football and rowed while a student at Columbia, went on to become the “father of American intelligence” after creating and leading the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which eventually became the CIA. Who is the father of American intelligence? Truman ordered him to dissolve the OSS by 1 October 1945. Donovan, knowing that the OSS would be disbanded, sought to preserve the covert branches by incorporating them into a peacetime intelligence agency. The special operations branches were not compatible with a post-war world. The main goal of the COI was to get the intelligence braches of the Army, Navy, FBI, and State Department to work more closely together. In 1941, President Roosevelt chose Donovan to head the new Office of the Coordinator of information (COI).