Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (1913–1988) was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942–46. Lee is identified in the Venona project as the Soviet double agent operating inside OSS under the cover name "Koch," making him the most senior alleged source the Soviet Union ever had inside American intelligence. Career OSS As an OSS officer, Lee served as head of the China section of SI, the Secret Intelligence Branch. While an officer, according to Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley, Lee—reportedly a descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee—covertly furnished her with information on "anti-Soviet work by OSS" and other topics of interest to Moscow, which was technically an ally (in Europe) following the collapse of the Nazi-Soviet pact. In November 1944, Anatoly Gorsky reported to Moscow that according to Elizabeth Bentley, Mary Price had begun a sexual relationship with one of her sources, Duncan Chaplin Lee. "(Price) established an intimate relationship with (Lee), and she did not tell us about it until recently." Gorsky was concerned that this affair might result in Lee's cover being blown, because his wife, who was also a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), knew about his espionage activities. "(Lee) and (Price) met in two places, at her flat and at his. The meetings were held in the presence of (Lee's) wife, who was aware of her husband's secret work." Lee's wife discovered her husband's infidelity and complained in a series of jealous scenes. The NKVD became worried about these developments and ordered Price to stop serving as Lee's handler. Earl Browder told Iskhak Akhmerov that Price's "nerves had been badly shaken" by these events. However, as Kathryn S. Olmsted has pointed out: "Mary Price... continued the love affair, hoping that Lee would divorce his wife and marry her. Distraught over his deteriorating marriage, the pressures of the love affair, and intensified security probes at the OSS, Duncan Lee, by late 1944, had become an extremely reluctant Soviet source. Moreover, he distrusted Elizabeth Bentley, who now acted as his primary courier and contact with Soviet intelligence." As Bentley told the FBI when she defected in 1945, she transferred this information to her Soviet handlers. HUAC In her August 1948 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Bentley testified that