Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces.

Read more about Office Of Strategic Services:  Origins and Activities, Dissolution Into Other Agencies, Facilities, Personnel, Branches, Detachments, In Popular Culture

Famous quotes containing the words office, strategic and/or services:

    Woman was originally the inventor, the manufacturer, the provider. She has allowed one office after another gradually to slip from her hand, until she retains, with loose grasp, only the so-called housekeeping.... Having thus given up one by one the occupations which required knowledge of materials and processes, and skill in using them ... she rightly feels that what’s left is mere deadening drudgery.
    Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)

    Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.
    Helen Hayes (1900–1993)

    Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)