Jul 2008
UN Logo Designer Celebrates His Centennial
30 July 2008
by Catherine Lyons
United Nations Association of the US
Donal McLaughlin, like any architect, said his wish was to see his designs come to life in brick and stone. Instead, the hallmark of McLaughlin's distinguished career can fit on a button one and one-sixteenth inches in diameter.
McLaughlin, who celebrated his 100th birthday on July 26, designed the lapel pin for the United Nations Conference on International Organization held in San Francisco in 1945. At the time, he had no idea his creation would be a symbol of peace and global cooperation throughout the world.
His design, which is stamped on the UN Charter signed June 26, 1945, remains the emblem of the UN today and one of the most recognizable symbols throughout the world.
McLaughlin, who was working at the State Departments's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the time of the conference, said the assignment came to him more by the luck of the draw.
"The previous three years during the war, I was employed by "Wild Bill" Donavan in the OSS as chief of graphics in that division," McLaughlin explained. "The war came to an end and the State Department was planning a meeting of United Nations in San Francisco and th ey asked my boss if they could employ our presentation division to help out there … among the things they needed was an identifying pin for all the delegates."
After McLaughlin and his team of artists drafted about nine different designs, a final illustration was chosen, although not without the breaking of some basic architectural rules, he said.
"The hardest part of the project was fitting the design and copy onto the small, circular pin that was one and one-sixteenth inches in diameter," McLaughlin said. "I did my thesis at Yale involving circular design and when I finished that I swore I'd never do another circular design because everything has to radiate from one center point."
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United Nations Association of the US
Donal McLaughlin, like any architect, said his wish was to see his designs come to life in brick and stone. Instead, the hallmark of McLaughlin's distinguished career can fit on a button one and one-sixteenth inches in diameter.
McLaughlin, who celebrated his 100th birthday on July 26, designed the lapel pin for the United Nations Conference on International Organization held in San Francisco in 1945. At the time, he had no idea his creation would be a symbol of peace and global cooperation throughout the world.
His design, which is stamped on the UN Charter signed June 26, 1945, remains the emblem of the UN today and one of the most recognizable symbols throughout the world.
McLaughlin, who was working at the State Departments's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the time of the conference, said the assignment came to him more by the luck of the draw.
"The previous three years during the war, I was employed by "Wild Bill" Donavan in the OSS as chief of graphics in that division," McLaughlin explained. "The war came to an end and the State Department was planning a meeting of United Nations in San Francisco and th ey asked my boss if they could employ our presentation division to help out there … among the things they needed was an identifying pin for all the delegates."
After McLaughlin and his team of artists drafted about nine different designs, a final illustration was chosen, although not without the breaking of some basic architectural rules, he said.
"The hardest part of the project was fitting the design and copy onto the small, circular pin that was one and one-sixteenth inches in diameter," McLaughlin said. "I did my thesis at Yale involving circular design and when I finished that I swore I'd never do another circular design because everything has to radiate from one center point."
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Roger Hall; Memoirist of World War II Espionage
23 July 2008
By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff
Writer Tuesday, July 22, 2008; B06
Roger Hall, 89, who wrote "You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger," a wry memoir about World War II spycraft that became a cult classic in intelligence circles and appealed to a wide audience for its irreverence, died July 20 at his home in Wilmington, Del. He had congestive heart failure.
Mr. Hall's 1957 bestseller, dedicated "to whom it may concern," was based on his time in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime precursor to the CIA. The appeal was in Mr. Hall's narrative as a man of nerve battling the enemy and his pompous superiors.
Hayden Peake, a former Army intelligence and CIA agent and an authority on the literature of intelligence, called the book "one of the best OSS memoirs," saying it was written by "someone who could perform [dangerous work] but was a kind of a free spirit."
Critic Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times in 1957, called the memoir "the funniest (unofficial, that is) record of rugged adventure in the O.S.S."
The son of a Navy captain, Mr. Hall grew up in Annapolis. He said the OSS book was not meant to show "contempt for authority, but bridling at authority."
Mr. Hall described himself as an ideal match for the OSS, which was interested less in formal military expertise than in recruiting agents who could use their wits and innovation in sticky situations to win the war.
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Roger Hall, 89, who wrote "You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger," a wry memoir about World War II spycraft that became a cult classic in intelligence circles and appealed to a wide audience for its irreverence, died July 20 at his home in Wilmington, Del. He had congestive heart failure.
Mr. Hall's 1957 bestseller, dedicated "to whom it may concern," was based on his time in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime precursor to the CIA. The appeal was in Mr. Hall's narrative as a man of nerve battling the enemy and his pompous superiors.
Hayden Peake, a former Army intelligence and CIA agent and an authority on the literature of intelligence, called the book "one of the best OSS memoirs," saying it was written by "someone who could perform [dangerous work] but was a kind of a free spirit."
Critic Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times in 1957, called the memoir "the funniest (unofficial, that is) record of rugged adventure in the O.S.S."
The son of a Navy captain, Mr. Hall grew up in Annapolis. He said the OSS book was not meant to show "contempt for authority, but bridling at authority."
Mr. Hall described himself as an ideal match for the OSS, which was interested less in formal military expertise than in recruiting agents who could use their wits and innovation in sticky situations to win the war.
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McCain Advocates a New Go-Get-'Em Spy Agency
08 July 2008
But his plan, a slap at the CIA, could
create a whole new set of
problems
By Kevin Whitelaw
US News & World Report
Sen. John McCain is taking on the Central Intelligence Agency on the campaign trail.
The attack is a subtle one, contained in his call for a new espionage agency patterned on the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services. McCain's proposal, which has yet to be debated publicly in the presidential campaign, is clearly an indictment of the CIA for being too bureaucratic and risk averse.
"In the spirit of the original OSS, this would be a small, nimble, can-do organization that would fight terrorist subversion across the world and in cyberspace," says McCain. "It could take risks that our bureaucracies today are afraid to take—risks such as infiltrating agents who lack diplomatic cover into terrorist organizations. It could even lead in the frontline efforts to rebuild failed states. A cadre of such undercover operatives would allow us to gain the intelligence on terrorist activities that we don't get today from our high-tech surveillance systems and from a CIA clandestine service that works almost entirely out of our embassies abroad."
The idea for a new spy organization is a direct outgrowth of a burgeoning Republican critique of the CIA, given new life by the controversy over the agency's analysis on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, proponents of the war blasted the CIA for not being able to find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The CIA took even more flak in the aftermath of the invasion for its shoddy prewar intelligence, when it turned out that Saddam Hussein no longer had any such WMDs.
The McCain campaign has yet to issue a white paper detailing this new OSS, so many questions remain unanswered. The original OSS was a freewheeling organization of intelligence pioneers who operated with little oversight and whose primary mission was conducting sabotage operations in war-torn Europe. Today, there is a massive intelligence community made up of 16 different agencies that employ more than 100,000 people.
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By Kevin Whitelaw
US News & World Report
Sen. John McCain is taking on the Central Intelligence Agency on the campaign trail.
The attack is a subtle one, contained in his call for a new espionage agency patterned on the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services. McCain's proposal, which has yet to be debated publicly in the presidential campaign, is clearly an indictment of the CIA for being too bureaucratic and risk averse.
"In the spirit of the original OSS, this would be a small, nimble, can-do organization that would fight terrorist subversion across the world and in cyberspace," says McCain. "It could take risks that our bureaucracies today are afraid to take—risks such as infiltrating agents who lack diplomatic cover into terrorist organizations. It could even lead in the frontline efforts to rebuild failed states. A cadre of such undercover operatives would allow us to gain the intelligence on terrorist activities that we don't get today from our high-tech surveillance systems and from a CIA clandestine service that works almost entirely out of our embassies abroad."
The idea for a new spy organization is a direct outgrowth of a burgeoning Republican critique of the CIA, given new life by the controversy over the agency's analysis on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, proponents of the war blasted the CIA for not being able to find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The CIA took even more flak in the aftermath of the invasion for its shoddy prewar intelligence, when it turned out that Saddam Hussein no longer had any such WMDs.
The McCain campaign has yet to issue a white paper detailing this new OSS, so many questions remain unanswered. The original OSS was a freewheeling organization of intelligence pioneers who operated with little oversight and whose primary mission was conducting sabotage operations in war-torn Europe. Today, there is a massive intelligence community made up of 16 different agencies that employ more than 100,000 people.
Read More...