Reply #16: Before the Nazis and Operation Paperclip, there was the OSS

[formercia]

and our own home-grown purveyors of witches' brew:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/formercia/9

Lovell Hires On
General Donovan recruited a biochemist, Dr. Stanley Lovell, to head the OSS’s “dirty tricks” Research and Development section. In Lovell’s biography, Of Spies and Stratagems, he recounted a private conversation with Donovan about this job proposal:

Without ado I opened up on my basic problem...”I’d relish your assignment, Colonel, but dirty tricks are simply not tolerated in the American code of ethics...Americans want to win within the rules of the game and devious, subtle devices and stratagems are, as the British say, ‘just not cricket.’”

“Don’t be so...naive, Lovell,” said Donovan. “The American public may profess to think as you say they do, but the one thing they expect of their leaders is that we will be smart...Outside the orthodox warfare system is a great area of schemes, weapons and plans which no one who knows America really expects us to originate because they are so un-American, but once it’s done, an American will vicariously glory in it...”

I pondered, then replied: “What I have to do is to stimulate the ‘Peck’s Bad Boy’ beneath the surface of every American scientist and to say to him, ‘Throw all your normal law-abiding concepts out the window. Here’s a chance to raise merry hell. Come, help me raise it.’”


--snip--