No Bugles for Spies chronicles the formation and important missions of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The OSS, created in 1942, was the first centralized agency of United States for both the civilian and military intelligence community. The mission of the OSS was to collect foreign intelligence and to sabotage enemy war efforts. Maintaining espionage, analysis, and research forces, the OSS acted as a clearinghouse for information gathered from human and signals intelligence sources. At its peak, the agency employed 13,000 men and women.

Before World War II and the formation of the OSS, the United States employed only small, select intelligence forces within the military. The Army had the Signals Intelligence Service, a surveillance and cryptanalysis force, and the Navy had its own intelligence service. Despite the recognition by national leaders that peacetime intelligence was a strategic necessity, the War Department's G-2 Intelligence Division was ill-equipped to analyze and disseminate the intelligence information it received from military operations.

The outbreak of World War II in Europe prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to press for a more centralized and capable national intelligence service. In 1941, with the aid of representatives from the British intelligence community, Roosevelt and his advisors drafted a plan for the creation of a new United States intelligence organization. William J. Donovan was appointed as the first director of the OSS. Following the war, the OSS was disbanded, but, in the face of growing Cold War-threats, the Central Intelligence Agency was formed a short-time later.

This edition includes a new Preface by Steve Chadde and photographs illustrating the activities of the OSS.