President Roosevelt Creates Office of Coordinator of Information (11 JUL 1941)
By mid-1941, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, as well as several federal agencies, were all competing to collect, analyze, and distribute intelligence on the war in Europe and the Pacific. This resulted in a high volume of information being forwarded to President Roosevelt and being broadcast through various public affairs and information bureaus. Some form of overarching control was needed to stop the duplication of intelligence efforts.
The answer came in the form of Colonel (later Maj. Gen.) Donovan, a New York lawyer who served with distinction during World War I and was a trusted advisor to the president. After extensive tours of Europe and the Middle East between 1932 and 1940, Donovan proposed a centralized intelligence organization modeled after the British intelligence services to oversee the information collection and psychological warfare efforts across the various federal agencies. Roosevelt concurred with his recommendation and, on July 11, 1941, established the civilian office of the COI with Donovan as its chief.
The COI was tasked with collecting and analyzing “all information and data which may bear upon national security” and providing said information to appointed government departments. It was also broadly authorized to perform “such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.” The COI was authorized to form subcommittees and employ personnel to perform secret intelligence operations so long as it believed national security to be at risk, making it the first national civilian intelligence agency.
Despite what its title implied, Donovan desired the agency to go beyond mere coordination. He wanted the COI to conduct multiphase clandestine operations, using propaganda as the “arrow of initial penetration” into a region from which agents could launch sabotage and subversion operations, commando raids, and behind-the-lines activities before conventional military operations commenced. This required the support of Allied theater commanders and coordination with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Donovan campaigned to move the COI under the JCS but was obstructed by resistance from the Military Intelligence Division and Office of Naval Intelligence over cooperating with a civilian intelligence agency.
The competition between federal propaganda organizations also hindered the COI’s development. In March 1942, military psychological warfare efforts were centralized under the Joint Psychological Warfare Committee. However, personal rivalries between the COI’s propaganda department—the Foreign Information Service (FIS)—and other civil propaganda agencies were a consistent source of tension. To ease these tensions and consolidate some of their efforts, President Roosevelt established the Office of War Information (OWI) on June 13, 1942, under the executive branch. OWI took control of several agencies, including the FIS, to form a centralized
Seal of the Office of the Coordinator of Information service providing war information to the American public and placing the production of propaganda aimed at foreign audiences largely under civilian control.
At the same time, the COI’s remaining departments were reorganized as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). As Donovan had lobbied, the OSS reported directly to the JCS and worked more closely with military intelligence. Over the course of the war, it employed more than 13,000 agents (more than half of which came from the U.S. Army and Army Air Forces) to perform covert and special operations, collect intelligence, and conduct limited psychological warfare activities against enemy troops. The OSS would continue operations until it was dissolved on Oct. 1, 1945.
***
Article by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
