There will be a large number of criminal investigators and counterintelligence specialists in Charleston from Sept. 5-8, when the Association of Former OSI Special Agents (AFOSISA) holds its annual convention.
The Association brings together former USAF service members and civilian employees of the USAF Office of Special Investigations in friendship, and common effort between former and present AFOSI Special Agents in the common interest of promoting the security of the U.S. Air Force.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations has been the Air Force’s major investigative service since Aug. 1, 1948. The agency reports to the Inspector General, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. AFOSI provides professional criminal investigations and counterintelligence services to commanders of all Air Force activities.
Seventy years ago the AFOSI was the creation of one man, Joseph F. Carroll, a special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover. He conducted a study of the newly established Air Force and presented a plan to Secretary Stuart Symington for an Air Force version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Congress commissioned Carroll a Colonel in the Air Force and he came on active duty as a Brigadier General.
He was initially disdained as “that cop” by other Air Force generals, but after his personal investigation proved to the House Armed Services Committee, that a lengthy anonymous letter attacking Secretary Symington and the first Chief of Staff, Hoyt S. Vandenburg’s “integrity, patriotism, and morality,” was the scurrilous and fabricated work of a public relations officer in the U. S. Navy hierarchy, he and OSI could do no wrong.
I was a Special Agent with OSI from 1953 to 1959. This service played a major role in developing my post-1959 professional career and I am indebted to the service for the training and experience gained in this vital work helping to protect the Air Force.
The convention will offer golf excursions, tours of Charleston, a dinner cruise and closing banquet, program and dance, as well as a business meeting.
