Copyright by Ann Todd Baum 2014
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Copyright by Ann Todd Baum 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Ann Todd Baum certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: BETTY AND JANE: Two OSS Women who Waged Psychological Warfare in a Forgotten Theater Committee: Robert H. Abzug, Supervisor H.W. Brands Gail Minault Don E. Carleton Roger A. Beaumont BETTY AND JANE: Two OSS Women who Waged Psychological Warfare in a Forgotten Theater by Ann Todd Baum, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2014 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my professor, mentor, and friend, Robert Henry Abzug. Preface The pathways of Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris lead one through what seems like a very old, very quiet, little hamlet. Many of the crypts resemble miniature houses, with pitched roofs and columned facades, situated side-by-side on narrow brick “streets.” Leafy trees shade the neighborhoods of this famous city of the dead, with flowering vines softening marble edges and corners. Elizabeth P. McIntosh, (Elizabeth MacDonald during the war) had come to visit her old friend, Jane Foster, someone whom she would always remember as her best friend. Betty MacDonald and Jane Foster did not know each other before the war. They met in November of 1943, in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) fingerprinting room in building “Que,” having been recruited into an organization they knew nothing at all about and having no clue as to its risks and challenges. It soon became apparent that they had become part of a new and secret wartime agency responsible for waging unconven- tional guerilla warfare, inserting undercover agents in order to plant bombs, gather intelligence, join and supply resistance movements, and train native populations in remote areas to fight the enemy with devious and deadly methods. MacDonald and Foster were among the more than 4,500 women who served in the OSS during World War II in the United States and abroad. Their tasks ranged from secretarial and administrative duties to operations in the field, and they were recruited using standards hardly in keeping with conventional military duty. Imagination, writing skills, courage, education, and experience in the world all were valued, especially for agents in war zones. By those criteria, MacDonald and Foster were ideal recruits. They v knew just enough about guns and knives to be of danger to themselves and anyone near them, and furthermore had no interest whatsoever in developing weapon proficiency. Rather, MacDonald was a professional journalist working for Scripps Howard News Service, and Foster an accomplished artist with several international gallery showings to her credit. They were the same age, 29, bright, fun-loving, independent, adventurous, somewhat mischievous, and each were in first marriages destined not to last. Both wanted to travel to the Far East to contribute to the war effort. Recruited to produce black propa- ganda in the Morale Operations Branch (MO) of OSS, they trained as a team, conspiring to demoralize the enemy. Some of their schemes are legendary. MacDonald served first in New Delhi, where she was eventually made “Acting Head” of Morale Operations for all of Southeast Asia. She was transferred to Calcutta, and ultimately China. Foster began her operations in the MO shop in Kandy, Ceylon, then Calcutta, and immediately after the war became the first OSS operative to be inserted into Malaya and Indonesia after the Japanese surrender. She gathered intelli- gence in Saigon, French Indochina, before returning to Washington in December 1945. MacDonald and Foster served a total of eighteen months overseas in Southeast Asia and China. They met and interacted with people as diverse as Allen Dulles, Julia Child, and Ho Chi Minh, experiencing not only a World War, but also the early Cold War. The dissertation that follows is both an act of recovery and an attempt to put a human face on the lives of OSS operatives, especially women, during the war. Despite its novel and important role during the war and immediately after, the history of the OSS has until recently been somewhat overshadowed by later events and the presence of a new vi and more powerful agency, the CIA. Immediately after WWII, a number of books were written about individual experiences of OSS members. These were the days before the Central Intelligence Agency had gathered itself together enough to begin classifying a great deal of information or requiring its officers to gain permission to publish their wartime experiences. The disbanded OSS was in some ways resurrected when the CIA was formed in 1947, which meant the “secret” activities of OSS were treated as part of one Agency, and the files of one became the files of the other. Over time, the phrase “precursor to the CIA” has become such a common moniker that we have lost sight of the fact that there was a period of time, from the autumn of 1945 to 1947, when OSS had, at least on the surface, ceased to exist. By the time the new Central Intelligence Agency was born, old allies had become enemies and the world found itself still divided, only now it wasn’t America, England, France, Holland, and China against the Germans and the Japanese, it was Western Democracy against Communism. Time, circumstance, and shifting alliances had transformed the community of intelligence operations. The reconstruction of MacDonald and Foster’s wartime experiences was made immeasurably easier by MacDonald’s own book Undercover Girl, written in 1946. Jane Foster wrote her own memoirs, which were not published (and probably extensively edited posthumously by her husband) until 1972. In the years between the appearance of these two books, many other volumes of personal reminiscences of varying quality appeared in print as people tried to describe to the the world what it had been like to serve in the OSS. By 1980, the declassification of archival sources and progress with the Freedom of Information Act yielded some very fine scholarly treatments of the OSS. vii First and foremost were the books on William J. Donovan, founder of the OSS and one of the few “great” men in history; as large in life as he became in death. Soft- spoken and charming, Donovan left no one who knew him untouched. The soldiers he commanded in WWI revered him as much as the men and women who served under him in OSS. His detractors were many, however, and their feelings toward him were also not tepid. If you liked Donovan, you really liked him. If you hated him, it was a fierce hatred. There was precious little Donovan’s subordinates and friends would not do for him and those who were threatened by him stopped at nothing to have him thwarted. Ultimately, his detractors put an end to Donovan’s dream, only to see it re-emerge as the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces. Both claim OSS as their predecessor. The first truly comprehensive treatment of Donovan and his organization, Thomas F. Troy’s Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (1981), had actually been completed in 1975 as a history “aimed at satisfying the need of employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, especially new or young professional ones, for a compre- hensive and detailed account of the Agency’s origin.” It was classified SECRET, and remained that way for six years. To date the only comprehensive treatment of OSS women in World War II has been compiled by one of the subjects of this book, Elizabeth McIntosh herself. Sisterhood of Spies, based on interviews and extensive archival research with declassified documents, was her retirement project. The story of Betty McIntosh and Jane Foster touches on many things. Their lives and careers were well underway when on December 7, 1941, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor put normal life on hold. Although the war brought great uncertainty, it also viii brought much into sharp focus. Advancing a career was no longer an immediate goal, but rather preserving a free world in which to even have a career. The two women, along with their friends and husbands, all became part of an epic global effort. The war brought many well-known changes to society: women began doing the work of men, men travelled and fought in places they had never heard of, an economic depression gave way to millions of war-related jobs and business opportunities, and most Americans would never again believe themselves insulated or disconnected from global concerns. All this happened in a relatively short period of time, but much of it assumed permanent forms. This is the story of a friendship between two women whose adult lives spanned events which affected an entire globe: a world-wide economic depression, a world war, the rise and spread of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, and the twilight of imperialistic colonialism. After VJ day, MacDonald received the same theater unit citation as the group of friends with whom she served: Jane Foster, Julia McWilliams (later Child), Paul Child, Dillon Ripley, Gregory Bateson, William Magistretti, Marj Severyns, Bill Smith, Cora DuBois, and her own husband, Alexander MacDonald. She stayed on in China for a month to compile a history of Morale Operations in that theater for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Back stateside, she became a radio information specialist for the Voice of America, was given a special assignment by the State Department as a speech writer for delegates, covered the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations, as well as the Commission on the Status of Women.