DONOVAN, MARCUSE, SCHLESINGER, JULIA, CHILD & CO.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010015-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: September 24, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

\O
CPYR WASHINGTON FOS` BOOK WORLD
Troved? For Release 2000/0 / 3 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R
4 SEP 1972
_9 V .0
chlesin
1 t,
provided an excellent overview of the,
role of OSS during the 'two-front war.,
against Nazi Germany and imperial Ja-
The .S cret history o l America's
First Central Intelligence l.gency
.By R. 71,arris Smith
Cali f ornirt. 470 PP. $10.95
CPYRGHT
.By DAVID WISE
pan. He has woven together the richest
.material from dozens of existing mem-
oirs, books and articles about OSS, all
carefully footnoted, but in addition, he
has performed prodigious original re-
search, interviewing or corresponding!
wyith some 1:30 former members of _OSS,
many of whom, apparently, could hardly
stop talking..:
The chapter on the-OSS's dealings with
Ho Chi Minh is especially illuminating.
As is well known, an OSS medic saved II
WHAT UUU ar n o's life in 1945, and as the .war drew
bert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger. _, Jr. o a close, OSS officers maneuvered to
Julia Child, Benjamin.Welles, Pope Pau id the Viet Minh against waning French
VI, S. Dillon Ripley, Sterling Hayden colonial power in -Indochina. It.was not,
and David Bruce possibly have in com o be, for Washington would not allow it;.~
anon? Or, for that matter, John Gardner ut at least briefly.. the : Unitecl__.States
Frank Sc hoonmaker.; the -wine connois 'as supporting, in. Vietnam,-what Dean
seur, SEC chairman William Case Rusk liked to call "the other side." And
Douglass Cater, Henry Ringling North o :- -Smith -notthat Peter Dewey, a` young
the circus family, Merian Cooper, direr , SS colonel, was the: first American to-'.
for of the film King Kong, John Oakes tie in Vietnam; the date was September
page, and Arthur Goldberg? "wild Bill" Donovan's OSS; created
Answer: all formerly toiled for the Of With Franklin D..: Roosevelt's -backing,..,
five of Strategic Services, better know rought together ,what surely must have
as the OSS, the World War II cloak-and ern the most:. diverse group of "spies
dagger agency that, for better or worse : ver to gather..under age cloak for a
nd.Whitney Shepardson, moved out into
e universities, the foundations,. the
anks, and corporations, where many of
hem could be relied upon to carry water
or "the Agency" when asked. Some of
hose names showed up on the boards of
oundations and other CIA conduits two
ecades later, for they had not. forgotten
e old ties that bind, Tracing the names,
e half-submerged links between the
intelligence community, and::what Rich
rd Rovere has called-the American Es-
blishment,' is what makes Smith's book
o' fascinating and valuable. -
In a- final - chapter;:Smith, accurately-i
oints out that there were,-and are, many
berals in the CIA, but his effort, to
ortray-the Agency as the Virginia chap
r of the ADA is not entirely convincing,.
articularly since Smith himself., argues
at over the years, "TheAgency's covert
owes was consistently exercised on be-
alf of political repression and dictator-
ip." And ? Smith notes that a dynamic
artime secret service may ,lead, - in
eacetime, "to irreparable disaster" c'.~
became the forerunner of today's Centra
Intelligence Agency. common purpose. Upper-class WASPS,
the adenoidal scions. of America's great
Co get right to the point, In OSS, banking and-industrial families,.mingled
Harris Smith, who served briefly as with Communists and crooks, labor lead-
research analyst for CIA and then fle ers and professors-there were a lot of
to become a political scientist in Califo professors-in a bouillabaisse that might
nia, has written the best book abou have beenwhipped upby i4irs. Child
.America's first modern secret servic hasel h iii
Others have told of their own exploits i
General William J. Donovan's colorful And it is the names-the astonishing
,chaotic spy agency; Corey Ford has prlist of names-that form- the strength of,
vided an interesting portrait of DonovSmith's work, even more than the indi
himself, and Allen Dulles, in The Secrvidual episodes of OSS derring-do or
Surrender, detailed. the story of his su failure. With. the aid of ,a special system
cessful negotiations leading to the su of footnotes,. Smith not only "reveals doz-
render of the German army in Italy. BI-- ens of names but. tells -us where they
lh
It. Harris Smith has put it: al togeter
and added a great deal more.
No matter that he ealls.the CIA. `.th .
most misunderstood bureaucracy of th
American 'government," for perhap
Smith wishes to keep his friends wh
still toil ' invisibly across the river i
Langley, Virginia. No matter that th
"full" story of 0SS cannot be writte
unless and until CIA unlocks the wa
time files of OSS, which it still has squi
pct ' c ' '-~
are now.
Some of the OSS operators had found
their life's calling. Smith makes it clear-
4
hat the top echelons. of the CIA, past
and present, were former OSS men, and,
scattered through, the pages, they. are,
FOIAb3b
named-Allen Dulles and Richard Helms,
who became directors of CIA, Thomas
Karamessines, Larry Houston, Tracy
Barnes, Lyman Kirkpatrick Jr., John
Bross, Alfred Ulmer Jr., and William
Colby, all of whom became station chiefs !
reled away out there. I or top officials of the intelligence agency.
For all of that, Smith, combining th. Others with wonderful reversible names,
style. of a ournalist with the scholarl
~pproved For Relea ' 12001di69, dJoledAA kbP v}b9b R000100010.015-0