NEW BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010020-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: August 17, 1972
• Content Type: TRANS

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41 ZA f 42ND 6TR! T, NF:'W YORK, N. Y. 100M.007-5100
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAVE'
PROGRAM Noontime
DATE- August 17, 1972 -. 12:16 P.M.
CPYRGHT
STATION
CITY
KNXT TV.
Los Angeles
(PARTICIPANTS WERE SHOWN IN MEDIUM CLOSEUP SHOTS.)
MARIO MACHADO. The CIA may be one of the world's most secret in-
telligence operations, but it wasn't always that way. There is a new
book out about the origins of the CIA and its freewheeling predecessor:
.the World War II OSS, including their activities in Indo-China. R.
Harris Smith wrote the book and he's hereto tell us about it.
I .was fascinated last night, reading this thing; so many interest-
ing highlights. Of their career, the OSS, when it was in existence,
where do you think they were their most effective?
R. HARRIS SMITH: I think probably in Europe at the time of the
'cross channel invasion, they were very effective in getting information
from the French Resistance to Eisenhower.
MACHADO: You mentioned to me offstage that the Dulles, Alan
Dulles, `who was head of-the overseas or European operation was the
most, the best agent that we had. Yet it seemed from reading the
book, he sat in a hotel room in. Switzerland, how did he get all this
information?
SMITH: Well, Switzerland was a hotbed of espionage at the time
and his great coup was to find a man in Hitler's own foreign office
who was so anti-Nazi that he was willing to give literally hundreds
of German documents to Dulles.
MACHADO: Most of the coverage here deals with Europe and then
of course with Viet Nam and some in China; very little is said about
Japan. Did we have an OSS operation in Japan at all?
SMITH: The problem was that General MacArthur did not care to
have OSS operating in his theater, just as he didn't care to have the
CIA operating-in Korea, later.
MACHADO: Interestingly.also is that the pictures that you have, --
.every OSS,man that I~saw, -- they were all'parachuters, it looks like.