WORLD WAR II SPIES PLAN SYMPOSIUM ON O.S.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100033-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: November 11, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/04: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100033-6
NEW YURK TIMES
ARTICLE AWOL
World War II Spies Plan
By IRVIN MOLOTSKY
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 After 40
years, some of America's grand old
spies are preparing to come in from
the cold. They want to tell their story
before it is too late.
The people involved were part of
the Office of Strategic Services, the
nation's first organized nonmilitary
espionage and sabotage agency,
which came into being in World War
II and was a forerunner to today's
Central Intelligence Agency.
In particular, these former undere-
cover comrades want to shine up the
somewhat disputed image of their
leader of those days. Gen. William J.
Donovan, and they want to rebut
some recent assertations that the bgst
spies in the war were British, Mt.
American. To that end, some of them
are to meet here in the next two
weeks to plan for a symposium in the
spring at which they will attempt to
spread on the record the accomplish-
ments of the O.S.S. and the contribu-
tions of Wild Bill Donovan, who died
in 1959. If things go well, they then
hope to compile a written record of
the O.S.S.
"We feel Donovan has been ma-
ligned a little," said a former O.S.S.
official and former Deputy Director
of Central Intelligence, Ray Cline.
"There has been an emphasis on his
being a cowboy, while others of us
think he was more a scholar, a tem-
peramental, romantic type figure,
but with a shrewd understanding of
Washington politics."
Another old intelligence hand, Max
Corvo, publisher of a weekly newspa-
per in Midddletown, Conn., says for-
mer O.S.S. operatives particularly
want to rebut an assertion by Bradley
F. Smith in his book "The Shadow
Warriors" that the O.S.S. accom-
plished little and that the really suc-
cessful spies were the British agents.
Age Is the Enemy Now
Mr. Corvo says it is especially im-
portant that the surviving O.S.S. vet-
erans now get a chance to tell their
on O.S.S.
story because age is doing what
enemy agents did not to the 25,000
.people who served in the agency be-
fore it was abolished shortly after the
war. "Most of our people are in their
70's," he said. "During the last five
years, I have been to several meet-
ings and you can see that time has
taken its toll.".
The O.S.S. was started after Pearl
Harbor when President Roosevelt
asked General Donovan, a hero in
World War I, to set up an agency
separate from the military's intelli-
gence services. Participants in the
symposium will be asked to bring
with them evidence of all that hap-
pened thereafter, for lots of things are
missing from the files although the
secrecy protections were taken off
2,000 cubic feet of archives last sum-
mer.
Notes Will Be Sought
"It is my contention that a lot of
members took some documents with
them, probably as mementoes," Mr.
Corvo said. "We are going to call on
them to make any notes they made
available."
The people scheduled to meet here
for the planning session include Mr.
Corvo; William J. Casey, the Direc-
tor of Central Intelligence, as well as
two former C.I.A. directors, William
Colby and Richard Helms; Mr. Cline,
now a professor at Georgetown Uni-
versity, and Michael Burke, who once
ran the New York Yankees, the New
York Knicks and the New York Rang-
ers.
Mr. Casey said: "The O.S.S. activi-
ties against Germany and Japan
were really the genesis of today's
American intelligence service, and it
is an important and interesting story.
It would be a worthwhile thing to put
it together from the historical point of
view."
Mr. Helms, now a consultant, said
of the O.S.S. history project: "The
goal is a more balanced description.
It is a very ambitious, project, and
whether it is going to fly is something
else. Look at the calendar and you'll
see that most people who served in
the O.S.S. are no longer children."
He Learned Linotype Italian
Mr. Corvo, at 65 years old, is one of
the younger veterans. He got involved
as a spy in Italy, he said, because he
had learned idiomatic Italian as a
youth by setting type at his father's
newspaper, then 11 Bollettino, which
has since been converted into The
Bulletin, a weekly paper published in
Italian and English.
Mr. Cline said: "At 67, they con-
sider me one of the younger guys. The
feeling of the old O.S.S. crowd is that
we are going to die off soon. If some-
one doesn't capture Bill Donovan and
those times, it's going to be lost. It be-
hooves us to get our act together."
When they get together, will they
remember each others' agent num-
bers, as in 007 for James Bond? Mr.
Donovan was 109 and Allen Dulles,
later to head the C.I.A.. 110.
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