The Research and Analysis Branch, w

The Research and Analysis Branch, which survived intact the metamorphosis of COI into OSS, was conceived as the heart of the intelligence organization: the other principal branches of OSS—Secret Intelligence and Special Operations—would be as veins and arteries, feeding into and supplied by it, respectively. It may be more suggestive, however, to regard R&A as the "head" of the agency, for it rapidly acquired a reputation, both within OSS and beyond, for the extraordinary intellectual credentials of the personnel attracted to it and for the sophistication with which they adapted the methods of modern scholarship to the discovery and analysis of data.