THE HISTORY OF THE CIA: The OSS and the Birth of American Intelligence [Pt. 1]

so I guess just to start off a bit if you don't care about hearing a bit of background about where I've been for these past six years you can skip the time set on screen otherwise here we go well it's been a while I guess I should address my absence for those that have stuck around this channel used to be called Everything You Need to Know and when I started this channel I was a 17 year old high schooler with a passion for geography and history I made these videos for fun and I really did

have a blast making them if I would be honest and I had some moderate success which that was a lot of fun to have as well I wish I'd continue to make those videos but life got in the way I began my undergrad shortly after uploading my last video and well I never got around to making new ones every year, I would tell myself that this would be the year where I would revive Everything You Need to Know I'd read a script or two keep editing them, keep tweaking them but I never actually got past

the finish line today, that changes as you're watching my first finished video in six years I'm a bit nervous I'm a bit stressed I'm not sure how people are gonna respond to this but I am really excited to bring videos back to this channel and to be back doing something creative now a lot has changed in the past six years I now have an undergrad degree and a master's degree and I'm almost 25 I work a full time job and I'm now fully in adulthood one thing that has never changed though is my passion for

history and geography in university I took several history electives and I've always continued to follow my passion and in the past six years I've developed a deep interest in modern American history especially, clandestine and intelligence history I've read dozens of books in the subject and continue to read more books in the subject especially for this series now before we roll the intro and begin this series officially I want to weigh out a few ground rules for this project firstly this series will likely be a lot more serious in tone than my previous videos looking back

at the videos I made while I was in high school they were all fairly informative and I'm still somewhat proud of them but they always had a sort of cheery atmosphere for the most part this series will be very different we will be aproaching some very sensitive and often gruesome topics throughout this series so I guess this is a trigger warning if you're not into that kind of thing that's fine it's just I'm not gonna be sugar coating anything I want these videos to be as informative and accurate as possible I will not censor them

and I will not hold back from discussing some ugly truths I don't care if that will exempt me from any monetization I think this is information that is very important and I want to bring it forward I found that there's a serious gap on YouTube and on social media in general for this kind of history this history of American intelligence secondly, everything I will be discussing in the series will be properly cited in the description of every video this is super important to me when I make a claim that is not self evident a small

number will appear at the top of the screen like that this number is referring to a citation in the description and a page number if you ever wanna follow where I'm getting my sources or you don't trust my facts you can always check in the description I really value the dissemination of factual information so I hope this system will be adequate especially the factual information about these very sensitive topics but also topics that are often misrepresented by the media as a final note on this if I'm either making assumptions or sharing my opinion on a

topic or a theory on a topic you will see this green eye show up at the top of the screen in these instances which I hope will be quite rare I will be sharing my personal insights on whatever topic we are discussing we will be covering many contentious topics in this series so I will chime in from time to time to break down my personal analysis finally I'm a fairly busy person this is a massive undertaking I'll be making these videos on my own pace and I'm actively researching as I go as I previously mentioned

I am very well versed in American Cold War history and specifically the history of American clandestine projects however I do still have some gaps and I want this series to cover everything therefore I will need to conduct some additional research for videos which takes time on top of that, I'm actually recording this intro after I'm finished the video entirely and from start to finish this 25 ish minute video maybe a bit longer now with the intro took me about 20 hours I hope to be able to cut that down as I get back into editing

and get back into the groove of things but it still takes a long time so with that being said I do aim to make one video a month this may be an overly ambitious goal but for the time being it seems feasible I hope that the time I put into these videos will pay off with a higher quality product in the end so the weight should be worth it well I've been rambling for a while I guess there's no better time to start you're watching Eyes Wide open and this is part 1 of the history

of American intelligence welcome to the series because people have got to know, whether or not their president is a crook well I'm not a crook I have absolutely no recollection of destroying any document told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages now watch this drive the history of the CIA begins where much of modern history starts during the Second World War shockingly, the United States did not have a dedicated foreign intelligence agency before the Second World War the FBI handled domestic intelligence much like it does today and that was only founded in

the early 20th century it was LED by its long time director the first director of the FBI J Edgar Hoover all other foreign intelligence was largely handled by the State Department and the Department of defense before World War 2 the entirety of US intelligence capabilities and capacity could be found in a few disparate filing cabinets at the State Department all this would change and balloon during the war as the United States was caught off guard by Pearl Harbor in 1941 the surprise attack by the Japanese on Hawaii necessitated a response from President Roosevelt where he

created the office of Strategic Services or the OSS for short an innocuous sounding agency that would oversee all intelligence and covert operations during World War 2 now this is important here to make a note office of Strategic Services on the surface sounds quite, you know, benign this is something that was often used throughout the CIA's history they would name operations they would name departments very benign sounding names to try to make the public unaware of the sinister undertones within those agencies so let's get into the history of the OSS and how the CIA became what

it is today I guess let's lay out a few quick things before we get into the actual history throughout this series a general theme that will be explored heavily will be that of the CIA as an integral part of a parallel shadow government beside the elected government of the United States now I want you all to hold on this is language that is highly codified it's been used often by the American right especially since the rise of Trump and right wing populism has become very strong in the United States I think this is actually really

muddy's the waterfor serious conversations about the existence of a deep state within a country The United States is not the only country in the world with a deep state this can actually be observed everywhere pretty much any democratic capitalist country has a deep state to speak of let's just get into the explanation of it and the theory behind it the theory of deep states and deep politics was developed by a man named Peter Dale Scott and essentially his theory goes that the United States has obviously an elected government that being the house of representatives the

Senate and the presidency although behind this overt government stands a largely unelected, unaccountable and often reactionary wing of the government that acts as a guardian of elite interests and corporate profits this is often termed the deep state this term deep State has been hijacked by right wing conspiracy theorists using it to denounce any government actors that they disagree with in this series we will be using the term deep state to mean any unelected officials that work to undermine the democratic will of the people of the country and most of the time it will be the

United States but also all the other countries that will be impacted by the CIA throughout this history going by this definition the Deep State will include in this series just as a short list the department of defense primarily the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of staff but we can also include the entire sort of security state as it's called which includes the Department of Homeland Security and a lot of other affiliated departments just for example, the department of defense also has an intelligence unit so does the Air Force, so does the Navy so all of

these pieces together form sort of the security state this deep state also includes the FBI which can be seen quite clearly as a domestic counterpart to the CIA it includes the defense industry itself sort of what we're gonna call the military industrial complex so, essentially all of the industries in the United States that produce weapons, arms, military technology these have a very strong role in American government and continue will continue to gain a larger role throughout this history this will also include any industries that have maybe an indirect link to military for example, the oil

industry fossil fuels think tanks and institutions such as NATO and the International Monetary Fund organized crime elements, for example the mafia mafia not only in the United States but across the world this can include church institutions such as the Vatican which will be very important with the history of Operation Gladio which will be coming up shortly and of course arguably the center of this deep state network is the CIA now, it's important to note that these institutions are not always working explicitly together, right I mean we're not talking about all of these people right this

is quite a large group of organizations I've talked about here and you could be skeptical and I wouldn't blame you for being skeptical that all these people are colluding in a serious way to push their interests the important thing is that these groups undeniably all have shared interests those being capital those being US empire and those being anti communism these three central tenants come together in all these institutions to create what could be considered a blob or the deep state a link of organizations a network that moves in unison to push these goals forward with

the central piece being the CIA and arguably the security state as a whole now as is typical of these deep institutions the OSS was not created as a usual military establishment much like the future CIA its offshoot the OSS was quickly filled with members of the elite ruling class which will be seen throughout this series not only in the CIA but across this entire deep state network is that most of the people involved are not average folks like you and I these are people that come from you know, Wall Street these can be bankers lawyers,

business executives former generals these are the types of people that filled the ranks of the early CIA and the OSS so it's important to note that these are not average US soldiers these are people that come from the American elite class so I guess we'll start with the first director of the office of Strategic Services the first director was William Donovan otherwise known by his nickname "Wild Bill" William Donovan's nickname of "Wild Bill" comes from the baseball player Wild Bill Donovan who would coach the Yankees between the years of 1915 and 1917 he's most notable

for being a World War 1 hero and he was also a self made millionaire Wall Street lawyer during World War 1 he served as the US Coordinator of Information which was an early intelligence arm of the US Department of defense so when FDR created the OSS in 1942 Donovan was likely high on his list he had some intelligence background and Donovan was named as its director now in the history of American intelligence Donovan was largely overshadowed by his subordinates especially a man named Alan Dulles which will be talking about a lot in the early parts

of the series as the director of OSS he worked as a coordinator ensuring that his agents were undertaking successful missions and most importantly his army bonafides provided a cover for the OSS and the future CIA has he was perceived as a respectful and dignified man by the security establishment this is an important key the CIA and the OSS were often scrutinized by the security state as they believe that they could take over that role so having Donovan as a military man a former military hero some would say being the leader gave a certain sense of

legitimacy to the new OSS now despite him being a quote unquote honorable man at the time most accounts of Donovan portray him as a blunder failing to achieve success in his exploits and overall just not having the the success that the future CIA would have for example in a report written by Colonel Park about the OSS in 1945 this report was presented to President Truman when he was thinking of creating a new spy agency Donovan is portrayed as a drunk that does not hire based on merit but based on the quote "old boy network" of

connections from Wall Street now this is pretty glaring especially since we know that elitism is is deeply ingrained in the OSS now this is corroborated by a story of when Donovan went to Romania with a he left a briefcase filled with critical OSS Intel in a brothel in Romania which was later intercepted by Gestapo agents the report notes that he often forgot about agents that he sent across the world such as an OSS agent that was stranded in Liberia he had also accidentally ordered to blow up some OSS agents in France in another blunder Donovan

was subsequently dismissed by Truman and replaced by Roscoe Hillenk Oetter a US naval officer to become the first director of the CIA so at the end of the day President Truman did not have faith in Donovan and he was fairly ineffective as a leader of intelligence and I think Truman saw more respect in and more dignity in an actual operating military officer even though Hillenk Oetter as we'll see later, was not exactly a saint himself either quite a quite a devious man himself now this is bringing us to another important theme and a recurring subject

in US intelligence is that, the idea that you never really leave the CIA once you are sort of you retire or once you are discharged whatever it is often these agents remain intimately involved and Donovan was no exception he would remain an integral part of the agency and officially he returned to public life after the war returning to his law practice however he remained present as an advisor to Alan Dulles during his tenure as director of the CIA and was present for many landmark operations now just a wrap up on Donovan here he may have

been fairly irrelevant to our larger history but he was the anchor that brought together all the agents in the OSS many of these agents informed the original Cotter of the CIA many of the CIA's most notable and criminal acts would take place while these original characters were in control so we can really see Donovan as the godfather of modern American intelligence now, even if you haven't read any history about the CIA it is likely that you've heard the name Alan Dulles he is arguably one of if not the most important person in modern American history

gets talked about quite a bit a lot of glowing sort of op eds about Alan Dulles which I think, are pretty shameful as probably one of the most reprehensible characters in American history but still incredibly influential in this next section which will be probably the majority of this part uh we will outline Alan Dulles's career at the OSS how he became a spy and how he will be a major fixture of the next episodes how he's going to rise to become the future the first civilian director of the CIA and how this man had such

impact on American history so that being said I just wanna leave one last note before we get into Alan Dulles the most of this background information about Dulles is from a really great book by David Talbot called The Devil's Chessboard it's actually a book that I have have quite fond memories of reading cause it actually got me back into reading after taking quite a large break it is a great read I highly recommend it if you're interested in any of the topics talked about here cause a lot of my information is sourced from there and

David Talbot is uh an incredible author and very readable so highly recommend The Devil's Chessboard let's talk about Alan Dulles so Alan Dulles found himself at the upper echelons of the American elite class his maternal grandfather John W Foster was secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison and his uncle by marriage was Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state so these are some serious links to uh the American democracy American government and Dulles himself came from one of the pre eminent East Coast families of lawyers and Wall Street men he was born in Watertown New York and

then he would go on to graduate from Princeton University and he would get his law degree at George Washington University before the war Dulles worked as a lawyer at the prestigious Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell which his brother John Foster Dulles who would be the future secretary of state under President Eisenhower was a partner of so it's important to note that there there is a severe conflict of interest here between uh the Sullivan & Cromwell list of clients and Alan Dulles's duties as an OSS agent let me elaborate a bit so Sullivan &

Cromwell's clients included many Nazi adjacent firms such as IG Farben who manufactured the Zyklon B gas that was used in the Nazi gas chambers also included KRUP AG which is a German arms manufacturer and many other notorious firms what we see here is a person that is stuck between two worlds right they are working for the OSS that gets its orders mostly directly from President Roosevelt who's trying to defeat the Nazis but they are also representing their clients who are these firms that are either fully Nazi such as IG Farben and KRUPP AG or affiliated

with the Third Reich so this had a serious impact on Dulles's decision making and some of the operations that the OSS would go on Dulles's resume does not end there he was also elected as the president of the council of Foreign Relations in 1927 which is an influential conservative organization made up of business elites bankers industrialists high making government officials and former military men according to the organization's mandate quote their mission is to use interventionism to make the world safe for democracy which obviously is quite in line with Alan Dulles who has access to the

OSS which is one of the largest operating agencies in the world that can make interventions happen Dulles used this platform on the council of Foreign Relations to influence others towards his firebrand view of America's future he would state at the 1946 council meeting so right after the war that the United States should not go too far in its efforts to cleanse Germany of its Nazi past because quote "most men of the caliber required to run the New Germany suffer a political taint" i.e they were Nazis this further entrenched Dulles as a clear Nazi sympathizer which

he was throughout his entire career will continue to show more examples it continues to come up before we move on to Alan Dulles's exploits during the Second World War with the OSS let's discuss IG Farben the German chemical conglomerate that was on the Sullivan & Cromwell customer list a bit before we move on to other things relationship between the Dulleses and the German chemical company IG Farben further displays where the Dulleses sympathies lie during the Second World War which were likely with the Nazis IG Farben represented one of the pillars of the Reich's industrial base

it was formed as a conglomerate of several of the top German chemical and pharmaceut companies in the 1920s we're talking a massive firm we're talking one of the biggest companies in Germany this was essentially a monopoly that included all of the major chemical producers in Germany and was one of the largest companies in the Reich so IG Farben supplied many of the essential supplies such as synthetic fuel which IG Farben had the patent for at the time and during the rise of Naziism in Germany the Reich supplied price guarantees and purchased a 5% equity stake

in IG Farben to help fund the increase in capacity of synthetic fuel production so we're talking literal state control of this company we are talking about a direct link to the Nazi party in IG Farben and who is their legal representation? it's the Dulles brothers so with that being said IG Farben would produce a massive share of the fuel that would run the Nazi war machine cause remember the Nazis didn't have access to huge natural oil supplies so they relied heavily on this synthetic fuel that was produced by Farben IG Farben is not the only

sinister company that the Dulles brothers were working with at Sullivan & Cromwell but it represents the cornerstone of the Dulleses complicity in Nazi terror it is important to note that the intelligence agents casted from the Wall Street circles never stopped serving their former clients this is an important note to make because it's honestly it's almost like a revolving door it's often this metaphor is used that you know somebody from the private sector will come into the intelligence agencies or into the Pentagon and they will still have their former clients best interests in mind it's just

natural I mean a lot of these people continue to be shareholders they continue to have deep intimate relationships with the people on those boards so it would make sense that they would continue to have sympathies for those former clients and of course you know the Dulles brothers knew that the war was gonna end eventually especially Allen and that he might have to go back and work for Sullivan & Cromwell so of course he wants to continue to see the success of that firm which means continuing to serve IG Farben and serve the Nazi Reich so

with that being said the revolving door was in place here with Alan Dulles he continued to serve his clients and as we will see defied the orders of the President of the United States and the State Department at every turn, when it came to working with Nazis so I guess I want to share one more anecdote about this just to sort of really hammer home this Nazi connection cause I think it's quite important to understanding really how I guess cynical calculating and inhumane these people were so both Alan Dulles the OSS agent and John Foster

Dulles the Sullivan & Cromwell law partner actually had personal ties with the Nazis Alan Dulles met with Hitler in 1933 while on a diplomatic mission with the State Department so Dulles you know was writing letters back correspondences back to his State Department colleagues and he displayed curiosity and interest in the rising fascist party he saw potential business deals with Nazi Germany and was particularly enamored by the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who led the cruel anti Semitic media empire in the Reich despite all his horrible features Alan Dulles remarked that he admired Goebbels quote "frankness and

sincerity" lovely to hear John Foster Dulles the elder brother he arguably admired Nazis openly and he was even more of a Nazi sympathizer than his brother he insisted that all correspondences from Sullivan & Cromwell to their German clients were signed off as "Hail Hitler" and until his death in the mid 60s John Foster Dulles publicly displayed his admiration of Naziism so really it runs deeper than just wanting to you know serve their clients the Dulles brothers saw some serious potential in Nazi Germany not only from a business sense but also from a Geopolitical sense so

it's important to note this because it will keep coming up especially with the CIA's continued support of fascist governments around the world and I guess that leads us into another key tenant of the US intelligence network and of US intelligence history, is that these people are rabid anti communist this was ingrained in the institution at its most fundamental level as most of its key members were members of the American ruling elite who benefited from the capitalist world order the Dulleses certainly fit into this anticommunist mold broadly speaking American anti-communists viewed the Nazi regime in Germany

as a useful fixture in Europe due to their violent anti communist stance they were seen as a bull work against the Soviet Union the Nazis believed in private property this aligned with the Dulleses and even had a policy of reprivatizing businesses wherein they restored seized property to former owners, especially the seized property of Jewish people anti communist elites such as the leaders of the OSS viewed the Nazis as workable allies against communism in Europe, therefore the OSS and the subsequent CIA would often ally arm and fun fascists to fight the Soviet Union and other socialist

states this phenomena gave rise to multiple alliances forged between the OSS and high ranking Nazi officials but also led to what we can call stay behind organization, so essentially underground organizations of former Nazis or I guess Nazi sympathizers that are armed and funded by these institutions to remain in Europe to keep it away from the communists, so we'll get into that a bit later with all that being said I think it's fairly clear that the OSS was largely ineffectual infiltrating and sabotaging the Nazi regime during the war and imparting any useful information regarding enemy troop

movements or enemy activity at all I mean this could have been chalked up to incompetence I mean Wild Bill was seen as largely incompetent but I see it more as a lack of effort due to a lot of the high ranking OSS agents having clear Nazi sympathies what is clear though is that the OSS main successes if you wanna call them that these were by no means successes if you're you know an anti fascist came near the end of the war and usually involved collaborating with Nazi elements by outlining OSS activities during the end of

the Second World War we will see the laying of the groundwork for the future CIA operations throughout Europe and their activities that are aimed at circumventing European democracy to ensure that communists or even left leaning governments will never be elected in Western Europe so in the next part we will be covering Operation Sunset which is Alan Dulles's Hairbrain scheme to broker a separate peace with Nazi Germany and to ensure that the Nazi Reich would exist post war that being said this is all I've got for today these videos take a really long time for me

to make and I put a lot of effort into them so if you did enjoy this video at all I would love to hear it in the comments below or any feedback you have about the series anything you'd like me to do differently anything you'd like me to cover anything at all I'd be happy to hear about it any support means a lot a like on the video is free goes a long way to help in the algorithm and I'm gonna need it, I mean these videos are definitely not algorithm bait and with that being

said if you could subscribe to the channel as well helps a lot and also ensures that you'll get updated888 when I upload another one of these I have the script written for the second part and the third part of this early OSS history so it shouldn't take too much longer although the editing for these videos is the longest part but that being said, stick around and they should come pretty shortly so thank you so much for watching this has been the first part of our history of American intelligence and remember always keep your eyes wide

open, take care