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National Mall and Memorial Parks
General José de San Martín Memorial
- Type: Place
osé de San Martín (1778–1850) was one of the fathers of South American independence and sought the creation of an alliance of nations in South America. Argentinean citizens gave this equestrian monument to the United States in 1925, and the bronze plaque on the back of the sculpture likens San Martín to George Washington because they shared desires for democracy, justice, and liberty.
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
Latinas/os of 1940s Hanford
- Type: Article
The Manhattan Project at Hanford and the Tri-Cities looked like many areas of the American South during the 1940s. Practices of segregation, discrimination, and racism were embedded into the fabric of workplace and community. Latinos/as who were recruited to Hanford for the Manhattan Project experienced prejudice and segregation. Their presence in the workforce and community demonstrates how race, ethnicity, and gender impact demographics across the Tri-Cities then and now.
Aleutian Islands World War II National Historic Area
Al Weber Interview
- Type: Article
A child of the Great Depression Al Weber joined the Coast Guard to get some decent food to eat. He later worked for CIA and OSS and spent time in Alaska. Watch an interview with Al as he talks about his World War II experience.
- Type: Article
The decision to establish its first U.S. training camps at Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland, and Prince William Forest Park, Virginia, had been based on their’ rural, isolated location yet comparative proximity to the nation’s capital.
- Type: Article
Before there was the CIA, there was the OSS. The places where they trained for their dangerous mission are now national parks.
Catoctin Mountain Park
Converting Catoctin Mountain Park into Military Camps
- Type: Article
OSS men began to arrive on 1 April 1942, and started to convert their part of the park into a basic paramilitary training school.
Prince William Forest Park
Transforming Prince William Forest Park into Military Camps
- Type: Article
In 1942, the hilly, forested lands of Prince William Forest Park near Quantico, Virginia, became the site of training camps for the OSS Special Operations and the Communications Branches.
- Type: Article
With the onset of World War II, the OSS's secret operations—espionage, counter-intelligence, disinformation, and guerrilla leadership—expanded.
- Type: Article
The OSS training camps closed in 1945. The valuable contributions to the Allied victory made by those facilities and by Donovan’s organization itself are an important part of the history of World War II.
- Type: Article
The OSS may have won its battles in the field, but it lost its final campaign—in Washington. It was better prepared to fight armed enemies overseas than bureaucratic enemies in the nation’s capital.
- Type: Article
Although the most publicized achievements of the OSS occurred in Europe and North Africa, Donovan’s organization also contributed to the war against Japan in the Far East.
- Type: Article
In war it is the results that count, and the saboteurs and guerrilla leaders in Special Operations and the Operational Groups, the spies in Secret Intelligence, and the radio operators in Communications did produce some impressive results.
- Type: Article
During the recruiting process, the Office of Strategic Services was looking for a combination of intelligence, imagination, courage and, if necessary, ruthlessness. Most of the young recruits, that volunteered for possible hazardous duty, craved the excitement and challenge of a special overseas assignment.
- Type: Article
Creating the training process was a big challenge. To prepare spies, saboteurs, guerrilla leaders, radio operators, psychological warfare specialists and commando teams for their clandestine missions, the Office of Strategic Services had to obtain instructors, prepare a curriculum, develop courses, and devise practical exercises.
- Type: Article
When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, U.S. intelligence operations were splintered among nearly a dozen federal agencies.
- Type: Article
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence gathering service from 1942-1945. Its espionage and sabotage operations were pioneered by an eclectic team that combined some of America's brightest minds with burglars and con men. Their work in World War II contributed to Allied victory. When the OSS was disbanded after the war in 1945, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rose from its ashes.
- Type: Person
William “Wild Bill” Donovan is considered the father of American centralized intelligence. Major General Donovan led the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Centeral Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1942 to 1945.