The Special Intelligence Service was a covert counterintelligence branch of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) located in South America during World War II. It was established to monitor the activities of Nazi and pro-Nazi groups in Central and South America. The organization was a forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.[1]
In 1934, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt became concerned about the activities of Nazi groups within the United States. The FBI was ordered to begin investigating these groups operating within the country. The goal of this work was to determine if foreign agents were working within these pro-Nazi groups. In 1940, the government decided to expand the scope of this mission. There were more than 1.5 million expatriate/ethnic Germans living in South America, including Argentina and Brazil. As a result, this area had become an active area of Axis espionage, propaganda and sabotage. In June 1940, Roosevelt ordered the formation of the Special Intelligence Service to monitor these activities.
It is commonly assumed that Assistant Director Percy E. "Sam" Foxworth was the first Chief of the SIS. He and SIS agent Harold Dennis Haberfeld died in a plane crash on 15 January 1943. The second Chief appears to have been Jerome Doyle.[2]
The front for the organization was a law firm, the Importers and Exporters Service Company, which operated out of room 4332 of the International Building, 30 Rockefeller Center (a.k.a. the RCA Building), from August 1940.[3] The organization took some time to become fully operational, due to language and cultural differences, but within a year the SIS had a number of agents in place under various covers.
Following the war the SIS was disbanded, having been in operation in 1940–1946. After it was disbanded, its region of operation was incorporated into the responsibilities of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. Concurrently, the FBI would expand its own primarily domestic counterintelligence role to hunt spies and combat espionage.
- ^ Selden, Zachary (2022). "Special Intelligence Service of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: Forgotten Forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency". International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence: 1–18. doi:10.1080/08850607.2022.2113988. ISSN 0885-0607. S2CID 252339789.
- ^ Anderson, Susan Heller. "Jerome Doyle, 79, Noted Lawyer Who Became a Public Defender". The New York Times, January 1, 1989: D27.
- ^ "A Look Back: A Small Office with a Big Mission". fbi.gov. Retrieved December 30, 2016.