Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion , and post-war planning. The OSS was dissolved a month after the end of the war. On December 14, , the organization was collectively honored with a Congressional Gold Medal. Prior to the formation of the OSS, the various departments of the executive branch, including the State , Treasury , Navy , and War Departments, conducted American intelligence activities on an ad hoc basis, with no overall direction, coordination, or control.
A previous code-breaking operation of the State Department, the MI-8 , run by Herbert Yardley , had been shut down in by Secretary of State Henry Stimson , deeming it an inappropriate function for the diplomatic arm, because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of William Stephenson , the senior British intelligence officer in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that William J. Donovan envisioned a single agency responsible for foreign intelligence and special operations involving commandos , disinformation , partisan and guerrilla activities.
I was soon requested to draft a blueprint for an American intelligence agency, the equivalent of BSC [British Security Co-ordination] and based on these British wartime improvisations Ellis, described as Donovan's "right-hand man", "effectively ran the organization".
According to Thomas F. Troy, paraphrasing Stephenson, Ellis 'was the tradecraft expert, the organization man, the one who furnished Bill Donovan with charts and memoranda on running an intelligence organization". Donovan had responsibilities but no actual powers and the existing US agencies were skeptical if not hostile to the British.
