[2] The American president Franklin Roosevelt personally directed all important steps of the operations of the Office of Strategic Services related to Mihailović's Chetniks because they were an instrument of US policy to avoid Partisan dominated Yugoslavia.

[3] McDowell, who had been an OSS desk officer in Cairo,[4] arrived in the German-occupied territory of Serbia with six members of the "Ranger" team in late August 1944 to organize transport of the Allied pilots rescued by Chetniks during Operation Halyard.

[6] At that time the Chetniks had already ordered a general mobilization aimed against Axis forces, so McDowell personally witnessed positioning of mobilized Chetnik troops to follow this aim and their resistance to German and Bulgarian forces to the final limits of people and equipment, capturing substantial number of prisoners and quantity of ammunition.

[8] In his later statements, approved by the War and State Departments, McDowell emphasized that Mihailovic did not attend the conferences about the surrender of German forces in Yugoslavia in August 1944.

[11] In September, the Partisans began a major offensive against the Chetniks preventing McDowell's team from using an already prepared landing site for the evacuation of American airmen.

[17] After McDowell left the Chetnik headquarters by plane on 23 November 1944 they remained without direct contact with the Allies during their retreat before the Partisan forces.