INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALISM: A STUDY OF DEVELOPING INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALISM IN THE OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES IN ITALY AND THE CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN 1941-1945

Abstract

The legacy of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the forerunner of the post-war Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is well chronicled. However, the professional path of those involved in covert American Intelligence special operations has been almost completely neglected. Popular writers have focused on OSS heroics while CIA-insiders have meticulously detailed the bureaucratic struggles fought by the OSS in Washington, D.C. The special skills and organization developed by the OSS were unlike any ever before utilized by an American institution. The OSS built an organizational and operational capability that sought to take advantage of resistance in German-occupied territory through the collection of secret intelligence and special operations supporting resistance groups. To accomplish this, the OSS established and utilized inventive new methods of recruitment, training, and operations to lay the groundwork for the new professional path of the American Intelligence officer. An analysis of OSS field operations in the Mediterranean Theater during the Second World War yields the best insight into this nascent professionalism as it grew from ideas into reality. The OSS developed its own definition of intelligence while grappling with incorporating old and new standards of professional behavior into the organization and among its members. Covert training and recruitment materials generously provided by British agents such as William Stephenson gave the OSS the jump start it needed to begin to forge a new path in subversive operations. British covert intelligence embodied traditional field craft, but OSS members would be the missionaries of a new uniquely American specialized covert operations working for American interests in conjunction with partisans in enemy-controlled territory. OSS members hailed from a wide-variety of American business, military, academic, and civilian backgrounds, bringing with them new ideas and old conceptions of what it meant to be a professional. While ultimately unsuccessful in maintaining its existence after the war, the OSS established a new path forward for American Intelligence which recognized the groundbreaking work done by the OSS and incorporated many facets of that into the new CIA.