The Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) was an intelligence and propaganda agency of the United States Government, founded on July 11, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prior to U.S. involvement in the Second World War.

[1][2] Roosevelt was persuaded to create the office several months before the United States entered the war by prominent New York lawyer William J. Donovan, who had been dispatched to London by the president to assess the ability of the British to continue fighting after the French capitulation to German aggression.

[7] British-Australian MI6 intelligence officer Dick Ellis has been credited with writing the blueprint for Donovan.

[5] He recruited the noted radio producer John Houseman, who because of his Romanian birth at the time was technically an enemy alien,[12] to develop an overseas radio program for broadcast to the Axis powers and the populations of the territories they had conquered, which became known as the Voice of America.

Donovan's desire to use propaganda for tactical military purposes and Sherwood's emphasis on what later became known as public diplomacy were a continuing source of conflict between the two men.