Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 261 Taiwan. For example, Wang Jisi plausibly argues that the United States consistently attempted to detach Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, in effect creating "two Chinas." Wang points to the U.S. policy of preventing any Nationalist attempt to recover the mainland and ofinterposing the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Straits, thus in effect sealing off Taiwan from the mainland. In sum, Harding and Yuan provide substantial insight into this oftenneglected but highly important period in the two countries' relationship. It is especially valuable because it includes views of both American and Chinese scholars. The book's faults are those inherent in any collection of essays: some essays overlap, and it lacks a chronology of important events. Nevertheless, this book is an important contribution to scholarship on Sino-American relations, and is recommended for all those interested in the area. Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945. By Barry M. Katz. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. 251 pp. $27.50/cloth. Reviewed by Dennis Richards, M.A. 1987, SAIS. In June 1942, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created from various intelligence groups attached to other departments to become the first true American intelligence institution. The organization contained three principal branches: Secret Intelligence, Special Operations, and Research and Analysis. This last branch was the heart ofthe agency in terms ofits interdependence with the other branches (its "veins and capillaries"), as well as its head in terms ofthe intellectual credentials ofthe staffand the sophisticated methods ofresearch and analysis employed. Foreign Intelligence takes a detailed view of the Research and Analysis Branch as the "head" of OSS. In this book, characterized as an "epistemology of intelligence," Katz has two principal objectives: (1) to analyze academic scholarship adapted to wartime conditions, and (2) to review the careers ofa handful of scholars who participated in the venture. Most of the book is divided into a review of scholars from the major social science disciplines represented in the Research and Analysis Branch: political and social scientists, historians, and economists, most recruited from East Coast academic circles. One chapter covers the work of the USSR Division, whose pursuits filled the vacuum of Soviet studies in the United States and set an agenda for postwar foreign policy, according to Katz. This historical study of intelligence focuses only on European Operations, one of the regional sections created in a major reorganization in 1943. Katz says this shakeup, which streamlined the functional research disciplines into regional sections, challenged the bases for intellectual thought within each functional area and threw seeds of confusion into the Branch's academic style. The insularity ofthe Branch's scholars, both from other disciplines and from a political milieu, limited their influence on intelligence operations. The Branch continuously struggled to integrate the research methodologies of the social 262 SAISREVIEW researchers, historians, and economists, even while the disciplines themselves were in turmoil. Difficulty in adapting academic style to a useful and rigorous objective analysis, the lack of a political constituency, and a reputation in Washington as "a hotbed of academic radicalism" impaired the Branch's ability to contribute to military or diplomatic policy. Regardless of the success or failure of the Research and Analysis Branch, Katz portrays the evolution of social science scholarship when faced with the exigencies of wartime conditions. With limited time, a dearth of reliable information, and the need to work in an interdisciplinary setting, the Branch "faculty" was forced to adjust its traditional research methodologies. It seems, although it is not clear in the book, that the occasion broadened the scope of individual disciplines. Economists, for example, ventured beyond the selfimposed walls of mathematical and statistical analysis to design the "Philosophy of Air Power," whose rationale formed the basis for strategic bombing. The elaborate detail on each discipline can be overwhelming and of questionable utility to the reader who is not a student of each discipline. How many readers will understand what Katz means when he writes that Herbert Marcuse "evolved an unorthodox synthesis of a Hegelian Marxism with Heidigger's fundamental ontology"? The reader might also wonder if the focus on a few individuals within each discipline represents a comprehensive view...