1
OSS & the Frankfurt School:
Recyling the “damaged lives of cultural outsiders”
by Susan Cavin, Ph.D.,
Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University
The relationship between sociology, psychology, and O.S.S. espionage
represents one of the most fascinating, but closeted triangles in recent American
intellectual history. O.S.S. was laughingly referred to as “Oh So Social” because its
ranks were filled with upper class old boys and society girls. In a period that spanned
only four years (1941-1945), the O.S.S. and Office of Wartime Information (OWI)
tapped the rising, fleeing and falling stars of the American and European academy.
In July 1941, General Wild Bill Donovan was asked to direct the Coordinator of
Information (C.O.I)., which became O.S.S. in 1942.
i
Then O.S.S. and O.W.I.(later to
become Voice of America) were one, but later split into two separate organizations. In
1945, when the war ended, the O.S.S. was disbanded, but the famed Research and
Analysis branch, which at war’s end had grown to 900 scholars,
ii
was moved into the
C.I.A. in 1947.
iii
In 1976, Ray S. Cline’s Secrets Spies and Scholars Blueprint of the Essential CIA
uncloaked Herbert Marcuse as an O.S.S. sociologist in R & A’s “German section.”
iv
In
1987, Robin Winks’ classic Cloak and Gown Scholars in the Secret War named Paul
Massing, Barrington Moore, Edward Shils as O.S.S. researchers, among many others in
all branches of the social sciences.
v
In 1989, Barry Katz revealed the O.S.S. Central
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Convention