Strategic Services Unit
The Strategic Services Unit was an intelligence agency of the United States government that existed in the immediate post–World War II period. It was created from the Secret Intelligence and Counter-Espionage branches of the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy was instrumental in preserving the two branches of the OSS as a going-concern with a view to forming a permanent peace-time intelligence agency. The unit was established on October 1, 1945, through Executive Order 9621, which simultaneously abolished the OSS. The SSU was headed by General John Magruder.