Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service
By Frederic Wakeman, Jr.
Reviewed by Bob Bergin

Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence and CIA Operations
By James Callanan

Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and The Persecution of John S. Service
By Lynne Joined
Reviewed by Joseph C. Goulden

~ updated review ~

World War II: Saving the Reality (A Collector's Vault)
By Kenneth Rendell
Reviewed by Dan Pinck

Go To Book Reviews

(l. to r.) Major Caesar Civitella, USA (Ret.), OSS Society Board Member Arthur Reinhardt, Geoff Barker, President of the Special Operations Memorial Foundation, and OSS Society Board Member Walter Mess.

The Hornet's Sting: The Untold Story of Britain's Second World War Spy Thomas Sneum
By Mark Ryan

James Jesus Angleton, The CIA, & The Craft Of Counterintelligence
By Michael Holzman
Reviewed by Dan Pinck

Ian Fleming's Secret War
By Craig Cabell

Go To Book Reviews

The Cloak and Dagger Cook: A CIA Memoir
By Kay Shaw Nelson

Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
By Christopher Andrew

Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
By Charles Faddis

Dr. Seuss & Co. Go to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of America’s Leading Comic Artists
By Andre Schiffrin

World War II: Saving the Reality (A Collector's Vault)
By Kenneth Rendell

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
By Robert Edsel

A Spy's Diary of World War II: Inside the OSS With an American Agent in Europe
By Wayne Nelson

Go To Book Reviews

See The Full Issue.

Published in The Washington Times
By Charles T. Pinck

An 'inglourious' view of the intelligence services

Given the very close relationship between Hollywood and World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Forces, whose ranks included director John Ford and actors Robert Montgomery and Sterling Hayden, it's troubling that Hollywood has distorted the history of the OSS in two recent major motion pictures, "The Good Shepherd" and "Inglourious Basterds."

These two movies present diametrically opposite but equally false assertions about the OSS, particularly about the important role played within the organization by Jews and other minorities.

In "The Good Shepherd," OSS founder Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan (portrayed as Gen. William Sullivan in the movie), recruits Matt Damon's character, a member of Yale's Skull and Bones, to join OSS by telling him, "We are looking for honorable and patriotic young men. No Jews, no blacks, and only a few Catholics."

The notion that Gen. Donovan -- a devout Catholic -- would say such a thing is preposterous. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Read More...

PR Newswire

Remarks by General Petraeus

SEE MORE PHOTOS

Gen. David H. Petraeus, commanding general, U.S. Central Command, received the William J. Donovan Award from The OSS Society on May 2, 2009 at an event attended by more than 600 people in Washington at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

The William J. Donovan Award is named after the founder of World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Maj. Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan.

OSS was the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations Forces.

Donovan is the only American to have received our nation's four highest decorations, including the Medal of Honor.

Charles Pinck, OSS Society president, said, "In much the same manner that General Donovan created a revolutionary new organization capable of waging unconventional warfare with OSS, General Petraeus has revolutionized the Army's view of counterinsurgency by challenging conventional wisdom, by recruiting supremely talented and diverse people to help him, and by overcoming formidable internal and external obstacles to turn the tide in Iraq and, we hope, in Afghanistan."

In his intoduction of Petraeus, Maj. Gen. John K. Singlub, USA, Ret., a 2007 award recipient and OSS Society chairman, said "The William J. Donovan Award is given to an individual who has rendered distinguished service in the interests of the democratic process, public service, courage in all its forms and the cause of freedom."

Adding, "General Petraeus' leadership of our nation's military in Iraq and Afghanistan has been nothing less than revolutionary and inspirational.

Read More...

See The Full Issue.

By John Whiteclay Chambers II
U.S. National Park Service, 2008
Reviewed by Dan Pinck

What a rare occasion it is to read a book about the Office of Strategic Services that deserves a host of encomiums. Mr. Chamber’s book is not one of those 20-watt intelligence books mugged by writers who can’t write. Far from it, his book is a startling and unexpected illumination by an outstanding historian. His book is actually a report commissioned by the National Park Service. It is likely to be published in hardcover in the near future by Rutgers University Press.

The title is a camouflage for a 719-page book about how OSS personnel were taught to shoot pistols and submachineguns; to throw hand grenades on a golf course; to detonate plastic; to dismember trees; to read maps; to kill an enemy with a rolled-up newspaper or a small knife; and to encode and decode one-time pad messages. It is a superbly-researched history of the Office of Strategic Services, from its pre-war birth as the Office of the Coordinator of Information to the OSS’s activities around the world during the war, and to the adoption of many OSS branches by the CIA and the U. S. military after the war.

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The Spring 2009 issue of the 801st/492nd BG Newsletter.

Public Affairs, $26.50
by Thomas Bass

Pham Xuan An was a brilliant journalist and an even better spy. A long-time correspondent for Time and friend to many American reporters covering Vietnam, he was an invaluable source of news and font of wisdom on all things Vietnamese. At the same time, he was a masterful double agent, a North Vietnamese operative whose secret reports were so admired by Ho Chi Minh that he clapped his hands with glee on receiving them and exclaimed, “We are now in the United States’ war room!” An inspired shape-shifter who kept his cover in place until the day he died, Pham Xuan An ranks as one of the preeminent spies of the twentieth century. Thomas Bass began his conversations with An in 1992. And when he set out to write the story of An’s remarkable career for The New Yorker, he uncovered fresh revelations almost daily during their freewheeling conversations. But a good spy is always at work, and it was not until An’s death in 2006 that Bass was able to lift the veil from his carefully guarded story and provide this fascinating portrait of a hidden life.  A masterful biography, The Spy Who Loved Us reveals the true motivations of a man who, caught between dueling loyalties in a time of war, “lived a lie and always told the truth.”
_____

"I enjoyed this book enormously and learned a lot. The Spy Who Loved Us is a fine read and a gripping story; but, most of all, it is an object lesson in why human intelligence and a great spy will always trump the most sophisticated espionage and surveillance technology. It's not the simple accumulation of information that counts. It's the recognition of what's important and then knowing what to do with it." 
- Ted Koppel

“This is a chilling account of betrayal of an American army—and an American press corps—involved in a guerrilla war in a society about which little was known or understood.   The spy here was in South Vietnam, and his ultimate motives, as Thomas Bass makes clear, were far more complex than those of traditional espionage.  This book, coming now, has another message, too, for me—have we put ourselves in the same position, once again, in Iraq?”
- Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

“Thomas Bass has rendered a sensitive, revealing portrait of the strangely ambivalent personality I knew during the Vietnam War.  In doing so he provided us with unique insights into the nature,  conflicting sentiments and heartbreak of many Vietnamese who worked with Americans, made friends with them, but in the end  loved their land more and sought , as their ancestors had a for a thousand years, to free it from all trespassers.”
- Seymour Topping, former Southeast Asia Bureau Chief and Managing Editor of The New York Times

“The story of Pham Xuan An is the revelation of a remarkable life and a remarkable man. Fictional accounts of practitioners of the Great Game—the craft of spying—come nowhere near the real thing that was practiced by An. In The Spy Who Loved Us, An is revealed as a man of split loyalties, who managed to maintain his humanity. Cast prejudices aside and you will discover a true hero, scholar, patriot, humanist and masterful spy.”
- Morley Safer, Correspondent, CBS 60 Minutes and author of Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam

See The Press Release

New York State Assembly member Sam Hoyt (D-Buffalo, Grand Island) and Assembly member Mark Schroeder (D-Buffalo) held a commemorative event in Buffalo, New York on February 15, 2009 recognizing the 50th anniversary of Buffalo native General William Donovan's death and commemorating his incredible legacy. The Assemblymen were joined by numerous veterans, Colonel Patrick J. Cunningham, and New York State Supreme Court Justice Salvatore Martoche, who read a letter from the OSS Society which thanked the Assemblymen for remembering "one of America's greatest patriots."