Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The Open-Source Spies of World War II

Though the technology to hemorrhage data about yourself has made the job easier, it’s by no means a new practice. For as long as we’ve had open sources, we’ve had open-source spies. And that was especially true during World War II, when the job of open-source intelligence analysis fell principally to the men and women of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. OSS chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan believed in collecting secret intelligence by covert means. But he also saw value in hoovering up as much information from open sources as possible, and charged the R&A branch with analyzing it.

3 comments:

PO'd American said...

Gotta love "Farcebook" and btw, this blog is a great open source for the NSA, BATFE, etc.

Sean said...

Open sourcing is how North VietNam, by way of their partners, the USSR, was able to determine if the Soviet Unions money was having the desired effect on colleges and media in America circa 1960-1975. Took a while, but useful idiots like Obongos' pal, Alinsky helped make it happen, with media playing along, and it went from stupid, trumped up war, to tragicomedy. I got played, along with everyone else, but hey, C'est la vie, Non?

Anonymous said...

on a side note, this morning I awoke to the news that IJN battleship Musashi's wreckage has been located. I have read of a Swiss salvage company that would very much like to raise her and restore her. Personally I do not at this time believe she is in one piece. Like Yamato she probably exploded as she sank. In any case, its an awesome bit of WW2 news. I am a lover of the era of the big gun navies. What I really want is for someone to find USS Indianapolis.