Book Report: Book and Dagger

A recommendation from my friend Jared.

I slacked off on writing notes for this one. It was well written and a really fast read.

This is a book about the beginnings of the intelligence service in the US. A man named Donovan was asked by Rosevelt to bootstrap this service because it didn’t exist. This service was named the OSS: Office of Strategic Services. Donovan, a lawyer, filled this with scholars from all fields. Including many fields that traditionally didn’t not do intelligence work. They were able to get information from unconventional sources: newspaper clippings, family photos, etc.

Apparently there was an intelligence service that was started during WW1, but was closed afterwards because “gentlemen do not read each others mail”. This allowed the attack of Pearl Harbor to be a complete surprise.

Building an intellengence service from the ground up allowed the US to employ different techniques. Using public information: phone books, newspapers, train schedules, etc. The information service was able to combine the information in ways that allowed them to derive valuable information for the military.

There was a lot written about misdirection: making fake airfields, flooding the enemy with fake information to obscure true plans.

There was also a chapter about sabotaging a factory. How it is much more effective to sabotage the right machine vs. trying to bomb a factory. Bombing a factory often leaves the machines unharmed or repairable.

There was a chapter about misinformation to obscure the Manhatten Project and how to frame the story after the war was complete in order to hide details on how the bomb was built and how information was controlled.

Finally, there was a chapter about how the OSS was wound down after the war and the CIA created to take its place.