Remarks of Major General William Donovan at final gathering of OSS personnel, September 24, 1945, Washington, DC

Men and Women of OSS:

We have come to the end of an unusual experiment.  This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross-section of racial origins, abilities, temperaments, and talents could meet and risk an encounter with the long-established and well-trained enemy organizations.

How well that experiment has succeeded is measured by your accomplishments and by the recognition of your achievements.  You should feel deeply gratified by President Truman's expression of the purpose of basing a coordinated intelligence service upon the techniques and resources that you have initiated and developed.

This could not have been done if you had not been willing to fuse yourselves into a team - a team that was made up not only of scholars and research experts and of the active units in operations and intelligence who engaged the enemy in direct encounter, but also of the great numbers of our organization who drove our motor vehicles, kept our records and documents and performed those other innumerable duties of administrative services without which no organization can succeed and which, because well done with us, made our activities that much more effective.

When I speak of your achievements that does not mean that we did not make mistakes.  We were not afraid to make mistakes because we were not afraid to try things thad had not been tried before.  All of us would like to think that we could have done a better job, but all of you must know that, whatever the errors or failures, you have done and honest and self-respecting job.  But more that that, because their existed in this organization a sense of solidarity, you must also have the conviction that this agency, in which you played a part, was an effective force.

Within a few days each one of us will be going on to new tasks whether in civilian life or in governmental work.  You can go with the assurance that you have made a beginning by showing the people of America that only by decisions of national policy based upon accurate information can we have the chance of a peace that will endure.