Apr 2008
OSS--Of Swashbuckling Sages
16 April 2008 Filed in: Charles
Pinck
The Nation, April 21, 2007
Robert Dreyfuss, in "Hothead McCain" [March 24], describes the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA, as a "rambunctious, often out-of-control World War II-era covert-ops team." Led by the legendary "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS was a visionary, daring, innovative, unorthodox, effective intelligence organization. It abetted Allied victories in North Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Donovan recruited an array of "glorious amateurs," as he called them, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Ralph Bunche, Arthur Goldberg, Julia Child, John Ford [and Nation puzzle setter Frank W. Lewis--Ed.]. Many OSS personnel--including my father--risked their lives volunteering for missions behind enemy lines.
Creating a new intelligence service patterned after the OSS is an intriguing notion that deserves serious consideration, not Dreyfuss's casual dismissal.
Charles Pinck, president
The OSS Society
Robert Dreyfuss, in "Hothead McCain" [March 24], describes the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA, as a "rambunctious, often out-of-control World War II-era covert-ops team." Led by the legendary "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS was a visionary, daring, innovative, unorthodox, effective intelligence organization. It abetted Allied victories in North Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Donovan recruited an array of "glorious amateurs," as he called them, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Ralph Bunche, Arthur Goldberg, Julia Child, John Ford [and Nation puzzle setter Frank W. Lewis--Ed.]. Many OSS personnel--including my father--risked their lives volunteering for missions behind enemy lines.
Creating a new intelligence service patterned after the OSS is an intriguing notion that deserves serious consideration, not Dreyfuss's casual dismissal.
Charles Pinck, president
The OSS Society
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
11 April 2008 Filed in: Dan Pinck
By Hugh Wilford
Harvard University Press, 342 pages
Reviewed by Dan Pinck
Mr. Wilford’s book is a surgical incision into the intelligence life of Frank Gardner Wisner, a preeminent cold warrior who served in the operational cockpit of our international attempts to rollback the spread of communism. That we achieved our goal is due in part to many of the schemes and strategies developed and set in motion by Mr. Wisner and his colleagues at the CIA. He took risks and made mistakes that come with the territory. If we intend to praise him, we should praise ourselves. If we care to heap calumny on him for his mistakes, we should blame ourselves. If a person is involved in operations and doesn’t take risks and doesn’t make mistakes, that person is not doing his or her job. (Inevitably, some mistakes are inexcusable.)
As there are no easy answers, there are no easy questions. In framing my review or observations, I would like to ask Frank Wisner what he thinks of this book. My feeling is that he would give it a High Pass; in fact, he would commend it for limning the major points in his career and especially the influence of his mentor, George F. Kennan, the principal architect of our earliest Cold War strategies and tactics. And I’d like to contemplate whether Mr. Wisner, had he lived a life almost as long as Mr. Kennan, who died in 2005 at age 101 and who retained his mental sharpness and severe skepticism until the end and repudiated some of his earliest assumptions, -- whether Mr. Wisner would have changed his bedrock outlook on containing communism. I’d like to think he would have changed some of the tunes that he played on his Mighty Wurlitzer. Mr. Wisner called his covert operation a Mighty Wurlitzer on which he could play any propaganda or operational tune.
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Harvard University Press, 342 pages
Reviewed by Dan Pinck
Mr. Wilford’s book is a surgical incision into the intelligence life of Frank Gardner Wisner, a preeminent cold warrior who served in the operational cockpit of our international attempts to rollback the spread of communism. That we achieved our goal is due in part to many of the schemes and strategies developed and set in motion by Mr. Wisner and his colleagues at the CIA. He took risks and made mistakes that come with the territory. If we intend to praise him, we should praise ourselves. If we care to heap calumny on him for his mistakes, we should blame ourselves. If a person is involved in operations and doesn’t take risks and doesn’t make mistakes, that person is not doing his or her job. (Inevitably, some mistakes are inexcusable.)
As there are no easy answers, there are no easy questions. In framing my review or observations, I would like to ask Frank Wisner what he thinks of this book. My feeling is that he would give it a High Pass; in fact, he would commend it for limning the major points in his career and especially the influence of his mentor, George F. Kennan, the principal architect of our earliest Cold War strategies and tactics. And I’d like to contemplate whether Mr. Wisner, had he lived a life almost as long as Mr. Kennan, who died in 2005 at age 101 and who retained his mental sharpness and severe skepticism until the end and repudiated some of his earliest assumptions, -- whether Mr. Wisner would have changed his bedrock outlook on containing communism. I’d like to think he would have changed some of the tunes that he played on his Mighty Wurlitzer. Mr. Wisner called his covert operation a Mighty Wurlitzer on which he could play any propaganda or operational tune.
Read More...